Stark contrast in finance ministers’ answers to key stat
What’s the most important economic statistic? We put it to finance candidates — National’ s Steven Joyce and Labour’s Grant Robertson — at the Mood of the Board Room this week.
The answers were stark and offered some insight into their different ideological approaches.
For Joyce it is debt: “Despite the fact a lot people don’t go around counting the debt, that drives everything else in terms of interest rates, the opportunities that New Zealand has.
“Frankly it drives the ability to deal with the issues that we all care about.”
For Robertson it is child poverty: “It is the number of children in poverty, we have to be able to lift them out, because in the end our economy i s simply a means to an end for delivering a decent life for New Zealanders.”