New Zealand

When people meet under Chatham House rules, you cannot disclose afterwards who said what. That’s the drawback. The advantage is that you find out what people really believe when they do not
have to hold back. And that can be most telling.

It is hard to follow the Cameron chameleon and make sense of his latest mimesis. Suddenly he believes in tax cuts, reducing benefits, cutting the budget and fighting the EU . He now actually sounds like a, well, Tory.

It is good to see housing high on the policy agenda. That is where it should be. As anyone with a stake in the housing market knows, there is a massive undersupply of housing. This is what is responsible for high and rising prices.

By international standards, New Zealand has one of the world’s most centralised forms of government. In other OECD economies, local government runs health and police services, accounts for the majority of public investment, and typically controls a third of public spending. In New Zealand, by contrast, local government has traditionally been small and weak in comparison with central government.

Plans to increase the top rate of income tax may be good populist policy – they may even win elections. But they would be a sure disaster for the New Zealand economy by robbing us of one of our key competitive advantages over Australia.

Australia and New Zealand: They have been going in different directions for the past five or six years. It will be interesting to see in which direction Australia opts to go on Saturday, and where Australia will be in next year’s competitiveness index.

The Canterbury earthquakes certainly demonstrated how resilient New Zealanders are in the face of adversity, but there is no doubt we would have been better off without them. Don’t let bad economics suggest otherwise.

Ultimately, fiscal management is about choices: choices made according to principle and responding to circumstance. Swan made easy but poor choices, while English made difficult but sensible choices. As a result, New Zealand’s public finances are in good shape, and the Kiwi economy looks forward to continuing its healthy growth rates.