Grant Robertson and Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
National and Labour are both promising to front up with their full fiscal plans this week, their rhetoric over the economy growing increasingly feisty.
Labour - still down in the polls - has been criticising National's take on the economy as a "doom and gloom" campaign; National says Labour is the negative one.
The economy is a key battleground this election, with major questions hanging over each of their flagship policies. Despite economists' calculations suggesting National's tax plan has a roughly $530m shortfall more than a week ago, the party has so far failed to provide evidence debunking those calculations - or front up with its own.
Labour has also largely stopped drawing attention to its GST off unprocessed fruit and vegetables policy, with the consensus from economic and tax experts saying it would be ineffective. The savings would more likely go into supermarkets' pockets than shoppers' and it would be an erosion of the broad-based tax system nearly impossible, politically, to reverse.
This fiscal rivalry was on show in the roughly hour-long head-to-head debate between Nicola Willis and Grant Robertson on TVNZ's Q+A. More lively than the TVNZ leaders' debate of last week, but offering little new information; the discussion centred on the familiar claims, counter-claims and accusations about one another's plans. Willis committed to returning to surplus in 2027 - the same year Labour said it would - but not earlier.
So far, so similar.
Willis continued the attack in the early afternoon, claiming some $51 billion worth of Labour's promises remained "unfunded" with no money set aside for light rail in Auckland and Wellington, the Lake Onslow power scheme, social income insurance, or the GST-free fruit and vegetables policy. This criticism doesn't appear to stack up.
When it announced the GST policy, Labour said it would be paid for by again removing depreciation for non-residential property. The move is unpopular with some who say it would curb future development, but it's one National has also promised to make to help fund its own tax plan.
Robertson defended the other four measures to reporters later in the day, explaining it was a problem for future budgets.
The social unemployment insurance scheme was put on hold during Labour leader Chris Hipkins' policy bonfire, and Robertson said it "wouldn't come in until economic conditions were appropriate - and I can't see that in the next term of government".
The light rail and Lake Onslow projects meanwhile were not yet past the business case stage: "It's correct to say there's some plans that have been laid out and we wanted to give the - excuse the pun - direction of travel of what we were doing," Robertson said.
"There is a series of different ways that it will be funded over the coming years, and just as the National Party funded part of the City Rail Link and we added on to it, there is the scope for that."
He said these funding solutions could include value capture or congestion charging, approaches National has relied on in its own promises.
Hipkins said Labour was still committed to light rail in Auckland, despite the long timeframes.
"We think it'll be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change Auckland for the better ... very few cities the size of Auckland wouldn't have a mass rapid transit system. Auckland doesn't and it needs one."
The pair were there with Megan Woods to announce their policy to build 6000 additional public houses, and came armed with a bit more positivity about the economy, buoyed by GDP numbers out last week which showed stronger than expected growth, cancelling earlier predictions of a shallow "technical" recession.
Hipkins said it showed "what we've been saying all along, that we've been managing New Zealand's economy carefully".
"The New Zealand economy is turning the corner, and despite the doom and gloom being preached by the National Party, actually we've got one of the strongest growing economies in the world."
He had just given a speech highlighting "the clear choice ... between Labour and progress or National and their coalition of chaos and cuts".
"You do not take our country forward by winding things back and that is all the parties on the other side are offering."
National's Housing spokesperson and campaign chair Chris Bishop took issue with his opponents' attacks, saying Hipkins was "turning up the notch on negativity, spending most of his speech today, to a Labour Party group, attacking the National Party and Chris Luxon in particular".
"I think it says something about the Labour Party campaign that they've got no new ideas and nothing positive to say about the future ... while the Labour party goes negative, the National Party is announcing a positive plan and manifesto to get New Zealand back on track."
He cited National's policy events of the past three days: the 100-point plan (a round-up of previous policies); promoting their open-ended goal of doubling energy production by easing the consenting, and the party's big announcement on Sunday, a promise to reverse all Labour's speed limit reductions.
"I think it's important for New Zealanders to know just what a negative and nasty campaign the Labour Party is running," Bishop said. "Basically their campaign is 'don't vote for the National Party, and we're better'. That's about it and actually I think politics should be better than that."
Of course, Labour announced its housing and free school lunches policies during that time too, never mind the almost identical immigration policies announced by both parties along with the ACT party on Saturday.
So far, so similar; the claims of negativity and counterclaims of a positive plan forward echoes of one another on either side, often with little to distinguish them.
Bishop's chat with the media soon moved on to attacking their housing policy, highlighting the $1m-per-house cost and criticising Kāinga Ora, the government's public housing landlord, for high levels of spending and debt.
Crucially, he pointed out Labour had not explained where the $6.2m social housing policy would be funded from.
With early voting just one week away now and both parties promising to release their full fiscal plans before then, voters will be expecting full explanations for these missing details.
It remains to be seen whether National's will include evidence to support its costings. For Labour and their GST policy, the polls are suggesting it may be too late.
