“Look, I’m not, not trying to justify how the Prime Minister has handled himself on stage,” Dann said.
“But I listened to what he said. I think he’s got a point about the way the question was framed, essentially this idea that we’re hanging on for the recovery.”
Dann concedes that he and other commentators may be guilty of fostering a notion that we should be hanging on for a recovery that is just around the corner.
“I’m guilty of talking about green shoots earlier in the year and probably the year before that. And then I think one of the worst things that we got in our heads was that slogan ‘survive ’till ′25’, because there was this implication that normal service was going to suddenly resume.”
For several reasons, a lot of them to do with global events and US foreign policy, that had not happened, he said. We were stuck with a higher-inflation environment and businesses had to adapt.
But there were some things the Government could be doing to make life easier for business, Parker said.
“They could regulate big businesses to pay smaller businesses faster,” she said.
“I know this is a real bugbear. A lot of the big businesses are like, “Oh, we’ll pay you on the 20th of the month … and now we’ve decided we’ve got a new policy and we’re gonna pay you 10 days after the 20th of the month.”
“In small businesses, cashflow was king,” she said.
“They need that money to keep flowing and to pay their staff and everything like that.”
“Okay, the Government shouldn’t be giving handouts, but I think they could make the landscape, the settings maybe a little bit easier, because I know there’s a lot of small businesses out there that are doing it tough.”
In an effort to cheer up, the pair also take a look at the local sharemarket, which has hit new highs in recent weeks.
They also unpick some positive trends beneath the gloomy headline unemployment figure.
BNZ economists have made the point that employment – the number of people moving into work – was better than expected (at 0.5% for the second quarter).
It was only that the labour force grew by even more than that which pushed the unemployment rate higher.
That was a healthier trend than a rise in unemployment driven by falling employment and job losses, as we had in 2024, Dann said.
Listen to the full episode for the complete conversation.
The Economy of Everything is available on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large and Tamsyn Parker, business editor for the NZ Herald. Thanks to CMC Markets.