National Party Finance Spokesperson Paul Goldsmith has a five-point plan for the government to revive the economy ahead of the budget this week.
Mr Goldsmith was speaking with the Indian Weekender on Sunday, May 10, ahead of the budget this week, which many experts believe is going to be the most important budget in almost a decade as the country is set to enter into an economic recession for quite some considerable time.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson will be presenting arguably his most defining budget on Thursday, May 14 that will decide his future legacy, putting him either in the illustrious company of the likes of Sir Roger Douglas or Sir Bill English for steering the economy well at the crucial moments of the nation’s history or will go in with a whimper and not a bang in the history.
Mr Robertson has already revealed the Government will be running deficits for an "extended period" of time and its debt levels will reach an all-time high.
Speaking with the Indian Weekender on a zoom interview - the new normal in the Covid-19 world - Mr Goldsmith responded to the question of what National will do differently to shake the economy up in a manner to get it going fast, with “five-point plan.”
“National has a clear five-point plan to get the economy going,” Mr Goldsmith said.
Getting out of the lockdown faster was obviously the first point - as the National Party has been strongly advocating at least since the last two weeks.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will address the nation later today to inform of the cabinet decision on moving from Alert Level 3 to Alert Level 2.
“The second point National is proposing is to get some cash in the hands of desperately struggling small businesses,” Mr Goldsmith said.
“The second part of this point is also massively lifting the threshold for capital investment in businesses. For businesses to come out strongly we want them to be investing strongly in their growth. So we have to lift the threshold by $150,000 for two years - that will drive investment growth,” Mr Goldsmith added.
National is also for being pragmatic about the economic rules and letting the private sector investment drive the growth.
“It’s people like you and me, and small businesses deciding that they want to expand their businesses, start a new project, hire a new person, start something new. So the most important thing for the government is to provide them with an environment where they feel confident to invest. It’s not overtaxing them, it's not over-regulating them, not changing the rules every day, getting the basics right - good sound economic management,” Mr Goldsmith said.
The fifth point according to Mr Goldsmith was leading in public infrastructure investment.
“Government does have a role in investing in good quality infrastructure. Remember the biggest one we did was the Ultra-Fast Broadband, which is coming handy during this Covid-19 crisis,” Mr Goldsmith said.
However, on being reminded that the current coalition government had already many announcements of investment in public infrastructure projects Mr Goldsmith argued that the government had till date not started any of those projects, saying “We will get on with them.”