6 Comments

"the Government’s announcement of an accelerated loosening of migration shackles to ease labour shortages and suppress wage inflation" - has the government actually said that they are aiming to suppress wage inflation? It still hasn't risen anywhere near above inflation, that seems an awful thing to try to achieve!

Expand full comment
author

The govt hasn’t said out loud that’s what they want, but they face complaints from businesses worried about profit margins and a Reserve Bank worried about a wage/price spiral. The main aim of any National/Labour government is to keep interest rates low to support asset prices of home-owning median voters, who are often also employers of said migrants. Win, win, …

Expand full comment
Feb 6, 2022Liked by Bernard Hickey

So despite close to 500,000 people migrating into NZ in the 10 years pre-COVID-19 we have a labour shortage? God’s breathe, who the hell have we been letting in then? Uber drivers, ethnic cooks and cleaners? Epic fail with our immigration policy.

Expand full comment
author

Agreed. Productivity Commission doing research on this.

Expand full comment

Just caught up on this, but wished I hadn't TBH. Valient effort to 'rein in the reckons' Bernard, but I found this a painful listen due to Peter's constant interruptions.

Expand full comment
Feb 8, 2022·edited Feb 8, 2022

Some great and insightful comments on this podcast from Rodney Jones in particular. Please have him back on a regular basis! Where else can we go to hear more from him?

I was a little disappointed that he wasn't asked the question as to whether other nations can pick up China's manufacturing baton and run with it to maintain deflationary pressures in the West, eg, India, Bangladesh, etc.

It was also very refreshing that Rodney was able to take a lot of the covid hysteria out of the other commentators... his argument was so powerful that -shock horror- he compared omicron to flu and he wasn't cancelled.

It seems that Australia flinging open their border some six months ahead of NZ to tourists, depending on how you look at it, post-dated this podcast. It would have been very interesting to hear Rodney's take on this and the detrimental long term effects of this on NZ's economy.

Expand full comment