Treasury warns of unprecedented cuts in real spending per capita to achieve surplus

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, September 27:

1. Treasury’s Chief Economics Adviser Dominick Stephens gave the year’s most important speech yesterday, saying real and per-capita cuts in public spending implied by the Government’s surplus ambitions for 2028 would have to be unprecedented without tax increases, implying a fiscal savagery worse than that unleashed by Ruth Richardson in her ‘Mother of All Budgets’ of 1991.

2. In the scoop of the day, Marc Daalder reports for Newsroom the Government could use creative accounting to claim it has sequestered millions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide.

3. In the deep-dive of the day, Jem Traylen reports via BusinessDesk-$$$ on how the new Government ignored advice from Treasury and MBIE about the need for a proper medium-to-long term review of immigration policy.

4. In solutions news, Hastings District Council has appointed unelected youth councillors to its committes with voting rights, even though they’re currently too young to vote in next year’s council elections, Stuff’s Marty Sharpe reports.

5. In quote of the day, Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich is shocked the Government is downgrading its plans for the new Dunedin Hospital. Stuff

6. In chart of the day, NZ’s workforce participation rate of over 65s has surged to among the highest rates in the world in the last 20 years.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. Treasury warns of spending cuts worse than in 1991

It was billed as a speech about the Crown’s medium-to-long-term fiscal challenges because of an ageing population, which it did admirably, but it was the outlook for the next three years that was the most startling.