You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks at Best Start Save for Things, Monyquee.
Start sa F Things Do Monay cham starts say.
It's past three.
I'm Jess Davidson in for the Weekend Collective on the Saturday, the twenty fifth of January. Very soon we'll be joining the panel today. We have Brad Olsen and Shane to Poe who requested that very song to kick us off.
Today.
At four o'clock will have the one roof Property Hour, Ashley Church joining us for that and you'll talk about what makes a property valuable. From five o'clock we've got Midwife gray Son for the first time today and we'll talk parenting and also the recent increase an elective sea sections in New Zealand. So that is coming up on the remainder of the show for now, though, it is
wonderful to say a good afternoon to our panelists. Firstly Brad Olson, chief Chief executive and principal economists at Informetrics.
Hi, Brad, good afternoon, It's wonderful to be back.
Yeare nice to be with you.
And Shane Depoe who requested that beautiful piece of music.
Commentator and blogger calda shade That's.
A Sunny Day originally written from by the one and only Bruce Spinstein for Clarence Clemens.
There you go, folks, Oh, there you go.
Nice way to start things off. Will expect the caliber of music to stay the saying the show, Shane's a no pressure at all, ain't And of course Auckland Anniversary holiday on Monday.
What are you both? What have you got planned for it?
Well? I'm a sporting tragic and I'll be watching two great games I hope of American football, the Eagles versus Washington and in the afternoon the Chiefs versus the Bills. So I'm very pleased that those playoff games are happening on a public holiday.
I would say so because that'll take about nine hours out of your day, wouldn't least at least?
And what about you, brad Well, I'm actually Valentonium officially at least. And so apparently Wellington Anniversary was this previous Monday. And I say that because I went to the office early on Monday morning. I thought that it was a little bit quiet around But that's all right. It was early in the morning and a couple of hours later realized that it was a public holiday. So I'm also I'm working this Monday. I've got meetings and some ofilar coming up, but I'm trying to figure out what day
I might take off in the future. So no rest of the wicked in the economy.
Hey, can I ask a question, Brad, Don't you work for a national organizations? So couldn't you claim seven many different regional holidays?
I don't know if that's how the law quite works.
And to be fear, from a productivity point of view, if I claimed every regional holiday, I'd probably never do any work.
Oh my goodness, gracious me.
Well, we're going to talk about teachers and they get a rap for that, so we'll get to them, madjey course. But I want to start off with Donald Trump's second inauguration? Did you both watch it?
Shane?
Yes, I did it.
How did you get through all of it? Like I watched all of it?
I didn't get through all of it. My gosh, it wasn't that long ago. I lined up four hours to watch him in New York. No, I didn't. I didn't watch all of it. Look, I don't like the guy. I despise the guy, but I'm just being very careful over the next little while not to be just anti Trump for the sake of being anti Trump. It was it was theatrics. It was a little bit bizarre, and but you know what, he came out with a very
strong range of policy position. A lot of it's I don't know if I can say bullshit, but a lot of it's published because he doesn't actually have the legal authority to enact it. It has to go through Congress.
But they didn't stop him.
But they didn't stop him, and it galvanizes his supporters, and he's got a few of.
Them, indeed. I mean, I think for me, it was one of those things we're looking through. You know, he had a lot of action. What was more important was what he didn't do on an auguration day. We didn't see tariff's immediately leveled. I know that's what the economist is going to talk about, but like that, that's a big one.
For New Zealand.
If we see terrorists come through, if we see trade activity that's more difficult, like that has a very direct influence on us. So it was I think encouraging to see a little bit more restraint than we perhaps thought. But still the thing that gets me looking through one some of those announcements too, talking to businesses and households, is just this level of uncertainty because we don't know what he's going to do at any given moment, we don't know how he's going to react, so all a
little bit of a big question coming through. What was more impressive was that the new Sectory of State, Marc Rubio, got sworn in immediately, and I think he's even had a call with Winston Peters straight away, so like, at least we're on the radar pretty quick, which is encouraging.
Yeah, it looks like a new ambassador has been appointed today as well. But what I found intriguing was that he didn't rest on his laurels. He was straight into the office signing orders, including that very controversial one to release the fifteen hundred protesters from January sixth.
Yeah the insigence. Yeah.
Well and then I mean it's one of those things as well. Again and did he said all along he was going to do that, So it came through pretty quickly. There seems to be a lot that I still don't quite understand it. I don't know if the American system quite understands with the number of pardons and commutations and that that came through I mean Biden the day before
he left office, you know, pardoned or retrospectively or productively pardoned. Yeah, all of his family, you know, and then you had these fifteen hundred you know that that got pardoned and released. It's sort of the worry here is that everything in the US has become so politicized and chaotic.
The big pardon was the guy behind the Silk Road. This was.
It was like that black market online.
No, no, but this was a guy that actually directed to murders. But he got caught up with the FBI agent and he actually participated in the transaction. He just didn't known the infrastructure. He actually participated, inn't it. And I think he had three life sentences and he's body had home.
Yeah.
Yeah, Well, there's many people scratching their heads after those pardons. And the other head scratcher too, Shane. I'll get your view on this. First was pulling out of the Paris Agreement and climate change. Poor timing. The governor of California very angry given what's happened just there.
Yeah, no, he doesn't care about that. His supporters wanted him to pull out of their paro's agreement. He'd done it before. He knows that he's got a sort of wrestle with folks like Newsom in California. This is about securing his base and also about calling his calling the Congress and the Senate to order and saying you do as I say.
And from an economy point of view, Brad, what kind of a message does it send? Firstly, when he's talking about landing on Mars and then claiming splitting the atom, but surrounding himself with people like Elon Musk Bezos, what kind of messages that sending to the rest of the world.
Well, I mean, there's obviously a few different leaders in the US administration alongside Trump. I mean people I'm seeing quite a lot of jokes online about President elect Musk and Vice President Trump. You know, where people are saying that Musks is sort of more important that The interesting one for me is how business is responding and everyone all the businesses are saying, look, we're not being political,
we're not being political. But you see the likes of Facebook and Amazon and some of these big tech companies who you know, were very close to the inauguration. They were deliberately invited, they were given a very prominent position, and lo and behold, you know, they're changing fact checkers and they're changing the way their company policies have gone. I do sort of worry that everyone is pandering a little bit to However, the politics of the day shifts.
Business is generally not like that, but again in the US, everything seems so much more hyper politicized. The difficulty for us here in New Zealand is again going, well, how do we operate in that environment when generally we don't operate in the US system, we're not nearly as hyper politicized. How do we turn how do we sort of negotiate through this maneuvering? And I mean we talked a bit about trade. We've talked about you know that, the changes
to the World Health Organization, the climate agreements. I think the big one for us as that going forward, we're not going to be able to just have our trade envoys in the room. We need our national security people and our big diplomats not just on the trade space, but thinking broader because the next four years, in my mind, they're going to be way more focused on security issues,
on geopolitical issues not nearly as much on trade. Trade is secondary economics is secondary to getting those geopolitical aims done.
If you don't want, I got a couple of comments. First of all, if the average American thinks that billen years are going to share their wealth and act in the average Americans best since just they're fooling themselves. I've got two predictions for twenty twenty five. Ready for the first one, go for it a pardon or someone that lives in New Zealand dot com. Oh, go save that one, folks, and if it happens, say you hit it first from Shane to Poe. And the second one is that bitcoin
and its counterparts are going to skyrocket. These people are the folks. They have got a lot of money're going to pump it up, and they're going to dump it and run.
Well, did you guys see the trump coin or whatever that came out? Point that came up just before I was like, I mean, okay, One, it just sort of showed that you can make up anything these days and it can rocket ship. But two, like, when have you ever seen a US president very clearly try to profit
like T minus one day out from their presidency. And I get that we're in different worlds and all this thing is, all these sort of norms are changing, but I thought that was that was really a different one to go through to see Trump coin go, you know, rocket ship to the moon.
Yeah, And speaking of rocket ships, Musk's trade sheeers doubled as well after that announcement with Mars, so yeah, money money, money speaks, massive, massive volumes. And of course the other big announcement yesterday was the declassification of documents around assassinations.
What did you both make of that?
I can't wait to see what sort of Netflix documentaries we're going to get out in the next couple of years. But I mean, look, there's there's this view of like, we're all going to uncover all these great secrets, and I sort of feel like, given how many times official documents get leaked and all that sort of thing, surely
by now we'd have bit of an idea. But hey, look, I'll certainly be having a look, I'll have a dig through at some point, but I don't know if we're going to have necessarily the big revelations that everyone's hoping for.
I'm a tragic in many front and American politics. It is one of them people that read me and follow me to know this. I will read every single page really, oh yeah, particularly around the JFK and RFK assassinations. I think that RFK one is the most interesting. I don't think she Runs. She Run was the was the primary assassin, And funnily enough, I had a lengthy discussion with Bobby Jr. A few years ago about this. So I'm going to be watching and reading every single page ten times over.
What I want to know is when do the UFO ones come out?
When do we get the well?
Yeah, oh, and they won't come out anytime soon Epstein.
Oh yeah, just saw a lot of comments online about that. And also how much of these files will be redacted?
Yes?
Was the other question as.
Well, wasn't it the point of d classifying them was that, like most of it shouldn't be redected.
I mean it's been that long.
I mean, what sort of investigation techniques from the FBI we're going to learn at the slate piece.
But recently, one of the CI directors, I think he's recently been shifted because what happens over there. If you've got a federal job, you basically have to resign a you know, and then they replace and people don't realize it's quite deep. There's about eight thousand positions that are filled. And so you know with the CIA leader, the last CIA leader said that there are people that are still alive that can could be jeopardized as a result of
releasing information in relation to the jfk assassination. My gosh, if the guy was eighteen ninety, he b in his mid eighties.
Now, yeah, well we wait with Beata breath to see. As you say, it's like a Netflix show in itself, so we'll see what comes out next. I do want to move on to the teacher shortage ahead of the new year, and it is shocking. I myself have an eleven year old son and I know my school is impacted. But it's not just teachers. It's also principles. Guys, Why do we have this problem. Do we just have a lack of respect for teachers? Is that the big thing?
Shane, Yeah, we don't value teachers. This is also pay parity issues. We've paid teachers less and nurses less because it's been a heavily female dominated industry in the past. This is about pay equity and it's a big issue, and there have been. The thing is, over the last ten to fifteen years have been some pretty big jumps. Teachers have had a twenty thirty percent increase. And the other thing is that, you know, I've just got a boy that's left high school and the girl that's only
got a couple of years. But my gosh, I walked past our school at six thirty in the morning walking the dog. The car parker is full, teachers are at work. I come back at five thirty six o'clock, there's still there. And the other thing is that the parents expect a heck of a lot more to go to visit my kid school, particularly when they're teenagers. I don't want to embarrass them, but you've got parents lining up.
You've got parents lining.
Up every day all day to talk to the teacher. And the other big issue about teaching is that, you know, I live in Epsom, I live in inner city. Our teachers have to travel about it hour to work because they can't afford to live near their schools.
Yeah wow, wow, what about you, Brad? What's going wrong? And how do we get more teachers?
Well, I mean, this is the worry that I have is that how many you know, January February stories have there been in the last decade about aleck of teachers. We seem to identify the issue every year and then we sort of, I don't know, from a policy point of view, go to sleep because we clearly haven't solved it. Why have we not got the proper sort of pipeline.
I definitely agree part of its pay. I think part of it's also I mean, Jesse, you noted that the Principles, but I think that's the one that worries me a bit more because you can put in place, you know, a greater ability to train up a number of teachers. Are some good initiatives that are going The worry for me is those principal positions. You can't just do a quick course and all of a sudden you're good. That's
a long lead time. But also the work that Principles are doing these days is so much more detailed, so much bigger of a task than it used to be. You know, they've got to be you know, looking after all of the health and safety. They've got to you know, worry about everyone's sort of well being, both staff and the wider community, and all this sort of things. So there's a lot in there, but it just frustrates me that each and every year we get to this point
and we go, oh, we haven't got enough teachers. We've identified this for long enough. And my big thing government at the moment is talking about tertiary education and about what's happening to training sort of more broader going forward. We need to get way smarter at instead of saying to everyone, look, do whatever course you want at whatever time you want, and sort of we will provide a bit of support for everything. Be a bit more targeted.
Government needs to go through, in my mind, have a national skills plan and go, look, we always say we haven't got enough teachers. We always say we haven't got enough water technicians. We always say that we don't have enough nurses. So let's train a certain number each every year,
and look, you get a full ride. Because I've seen a number of times before if someone had said to me that, Brad, if you go and do the training and will pay for you to become a water tech or a teacher or whatever, I probably wouldn't be here as an economist today because I'd follow the money. So give people an incentive and they will go that way.
Can I also say the other thing is that a huge pipeline has died up. I'm in my mid to late fifties now and we had a lot of Australian and English teachers. They just don't come here anymore. They just don't come here anymore.
Is that because of pay Shane?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, Look people are going the other way. Yeah, we're losing hundreds hundreds of teachers a year because they're moving to places like Brisbane. They're earning thirty percent more, they're paying thirty percent less for their rent or their mortgage and they've got a good, solid, stable superannuation plan that gives them a twelve percent return.
Yeah.
I think the big one going forward for me is that also there's all these changes coming through to the curriculum from government, and look, I really hope that because we've had education issues over a longer period of time. It's not one any one government's fault. But we really are in the position now unless we change it, we're in for a world of pain in terms of not having enough smart up and comers coming through, and that's
where teachers do a huge amount of work. So I really do hope that some of the government changes coming through, some of the resources they're trying to push out do work and help our teachers a lot more, rather than put a whole new burden of more and more work on top of people who are already doing a lot.
Yeah, because it's all well and good saying we're changing things, we're adding more things. But the thing that strikes me, guys, is the amount of non teaching work our teachers do, our social workers, they're counselors that they're looking after more often. They're not hungry kids, upset kids. They aren't just teachers anymore.
In fact, when there was talk back this week, some were calling in saying that around twenty percent of what they do each day is actually teaching, the rest is managing behavior.
Well, look, teaching is a tough gig. But the reality is if you are a teacher, say it at an epsom or meadow bank, or you get a bigger gig and the same amount of pay, a better gig and the same amount of pay compared to a teaching manga and or those folks do it tough on lots of fronts, not just the teaching front, but the attendance fronts the
law and disorder in the local community. When we've got a teacher shortage and you and you talk about those socioeconomic areas of disproportionately pop pop poverty, it's even more in the it's even more exacerbated.
It's also one of those things for teachers. I think we could all name a few great teachers that we had in our lives. Those make or break where people go in the future. The other people that either push you into doing bigger and better things and sort of back you to the hilt and keep you going, or they make it so much harder for you to keep going.
And a lot of the time that's because they don't have the right time, the right resources themselves, because I've got so much work to do, so I told I mean, look, good teachers are absolutely gold, and we've got to got to keep supporting them. But at the moment, it is one of those challenges where the fewer we have and the more we obviously need to hire to get in, the more pressure that places on people who are currently there. And so this is I think again, it's not going
to be a quick fix. But man, the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes to do.
Yeah, you're not wrong, and the narrative has to change. We have to respect the more, stop having digs about teacher only days and how many holidays they have, and make it more attractive for someone to become a teacher.
Thank you, gentlemen. We will take a quick break.
We are with the panel on the Weekend Collective brad Olsen and Shane to Poe. On the other side, we'll be talking about act and the Estate of the Nation address. It is twenty five minutes past three. Jess Davidson with you today. Tim is away, well owned, well earned break for him and our panel today. Brad Olsen, who is chief executive and principal economists for Informetrics, and Shane to Poe comment commentator and blogger. And we're going to us now.
We've heard, haven't we guys. Everyone's had their State of the Nation pretty much this week. We've heard from the National Party also, Labor have been talking a big game and it was ax turn yesterday with David Seymour coming out and saying New Zealand needs to get past the squeamishness about privatization and saying that we need to make some big calls about what we actually own.
Brad, what was your reaction to Seymour's speech.
Look, I do get some of David Seamore's point there around the likes of privatization and but more from the point of view of going should government be doing this? Is it a smart move? Is it something that no one else can do? Or is the government sort of just taking up the spot of the private sector itself, especially when look, we've got some big financial issues. From the government account's point of view, we're looking likely to be in deficit for the next.
Half a decade.
The numbers aren't good, so I do very much understand that point. I think the difficulty or the worry there is again, once you've made some asset sales, once you've pushed them away one, you can't get them back nearly as easily too. Where is this money going to go?
And that's probably the big question for me is that yes, it's all fine and well to say, look, we might privatize a few more things, government might not be good at doing it, but I think the question should remain for the public what are we going to do with the money? And out the other end, what.
About you, Shane, what did you make of it?
I think it's I think that he's an extremist on the issue and he won't get half the agenda. The other thing is that let's recognize folk the other portion of the coalition is an economic nationalist. That's not my words, that's his words, and that's Winston Peterson saying Jones, So good luck with that day one, David. Simple, but it's pretty simple, and you can break it down to your own fuddy and your own work, your own car. You
sell your car, how are you going to get around? Well, you're going to have to spend a bit of money on a bus or you're going to have to lease a car. And that's what happens when you privatize our national assets. You just end up paying for them through
a different way. And one of the things that he's spoken about is public health and saying to the New Zealander, we're going to give you six thousand bucks and you go and get up whatever insurance you're likely to get if you are abeese, or if you've got diabetes, or if you've got preconditions as we know in America, which to the highest level of personal breakruancy bankruptcy is health insurance or the lack thereof. It's not good for the mid to long term in terms of people's health, So
be careful of the extremes. But I think what we'll do is we'll end up somewhere in the middle. I think if we're going to have more roads and more bridges, we probably have to pay some tolls, and we're probably going to have to get some private public private public
partnerships with a bit of international equity involved. Part of the problem, brands of the economists, I'm not part of the problem is a lot of these projects are big to us but small to the international companies, and whether they'd be interested in investing their money for a project all the way in New Zealand where perhaps they could just build more roads and bridges in Texas or in Arkansas. Transferring the investments in here is not going to be easy.
But I think as well.
I mean, you look at the likes of these but the PPPs and a lot of that talk, particularly around infrastructure, and I get it. But if I'm an overseas investor,
what am I actually buying? Like there isn't currently something that's see on any government website that says here international investor, here are the four PPPs you can invest in, Like you're going to go and have to go through some NBA officials first, then you might have gone to some ministers and they'll eventually go to Cabinet and they.
Might sign it off.
If I'm an investor overseas, I find way better opportunities that are way quicker, way faster, And I think that's why, especially in the Prime Minister State of the Nation, I do think this invest in z organization that is a real winner for me because that is one of the issues that often comes up from overseas investors. But I mean, Shane, you've just been talking about health, and I think you're exactly right. I think that is a very dangerous road
to go down. But here's the difference, and here's my part around particularly the privatization as a country, as society, I think we sort of say, look, health is something that is not really a for profit thing. It's something that we think has to be provided for all people because those who can't afford it will get sicker and they won't be nearly as well off. But other things, and I mean you think about the likes of electricity companies and similar, why on Earth, through the government run
an electricity company? Why and more importantly, if they own an electricity company, why shouldn't they own everything? Well most of the time, because they'll rubbished it. So I do think that again, on some areas like health, I'm pretty very strongly supportive of keeping it as a public ownership model, very strongly, very very strongly. Other stuff, I go, well, if it's setting a market price and it's getting households to pay, why on earth does the government think it's the best one?
Yeah, I get that, but a part privatization and that just hasn't benefited the you and I. It hasn't benefited people that use power basically.
But nor has government control on that.
But the thing is that they were legacy investments by us, the tax payer, and we're paying ourselves to extract our own electricity. And the reality is part of the problem, folks, is we're actually quite small and there isn't the economies of efficiencies that exist, and I think that's going to play the problem with or an investment.
I think my big thing on on privatization, you look at some of the options on the table, you look at some of the stuff that we currently own. Unless government is going to be directive, unless it's going to say, look, I own fifty one percent of a lot of electricity companies and I'm going to direct them to do stuff, or you know, I own a bank they don't even government doesn't even bank with their own bank that they own. If they're not willing to put their own money where
their mouth is, then we shouldn't own it. Why on earth If I'm a normal member of the public and I go, well, there's banks out there that you know, the government doesn't use, why should I use it? If the government who owns it isn't willing to back its own thing, that seems bizarre. Either use it or lose them.
So does that contribute to us being squeamish about this? Then? Do you think is that why we're uncomfortable?
I don't know if it's squamish or if we just haven't gone through. I don't want to turn into an academic debate, but I mean, just what are the principles here? Because, like I say, seriously, if we are if we've got stuff, if we own it and we don't use it, then
what's the point in owning it? So either government should grow some or muscle and use its ability to dictate what it owns, because that's the point of having ownership, or if it's not going to use those powers, then it should relinquish control.
I think we're skirmish because we're a relatively small country. Five point two million dollars. Our economy we've mentioned three or four names at the top of the show, probably earns less than what they do individually. And here is the thing, because we're such a small economy, because we're such a small population. If we are not careful, if we don't get it right, we could be tenants in
our own country. I think we're skirmish because we believe this could be a fundamental issue about sovereignty.
Right.
There has been a lot of chat around infrastructure and roading and privatization of those, so I mean, in reality, if we're happy to pay for toll roads, that's potentially what we could see.
I think that's part of it, out of it, and I think as well, it's one of those things where this is the one of the conversations it always gets me. We talk about prioritization and similar if you're going to have, you know, private ownership of road or eything else. Someone still needs to get paid. Either private sector needs to get paid all the public person needs to pay. Someone pays, and other stuff is free. I mean, economist joke a lot, but you do say that there is no such thing
as a free lunch. So I think that's probably the difference there is that what is the right model to get public because public money doesn't stretch all that far. So sometimes the idea is if you get the private sector to fund it, you get it a little bit quicker and then you don't have to pay it back all at the same time, all in one big hit, So you can stretch your money a bit further. But at the same time you need to make sure you get good quality roads. I mean, you look at some
of the stuff we've currently got. I don't know if Transmission Gully is officially an open road like it's I know that we use it, but I don't think it's officially finished yet. And that's you know, that's obviously a big PPP. So yes, these options work, but we've got to think. I think we've got to think through what the money is and how it pays for its at.
But also I think we've got to be more fundamental than that. We've got to have to have multi party agreements. Say these are the top forty projects in the next third twenty five years. Now, the new minister is not going to come in and choose the color of the curtains. This is what we agree on. This is what we do. So we don't reach the fairy FIESCO and the other fiesos that And here's the thing about we don't start on infrastructure now, Abrad, you're the economists, not me. It's
only going to be one thing that happens. You're going to cost you more totally.
But I mean, you look at the furies and I think that the other one and this is a real big I think this is a challenge for politicians generally. Do not come out with a press release on the first back of the envelope, back of the napkin number and say that's the cost of it, because we know that's never the case. We know that those numbers continue
to increase. And when you sort of go out to the public and you're like, this project, be it hospitals, but a skill buildings, bit faury terminals are going to cost x billion dollars and then they three times higher in a couple of years time. People hold you to that first number. That first number is rubbish. It was never anywhere close to the truth. But we seem to take the very earliest essmen say that's lockdown, yep, and look at the fallout from it.
And I've seen many posts online from people looking to come over to news Iner now and everyone's saying, just don't book a faery, do not even go there. Thank you, gentlemen. I want to continue on the theme of act in a way. After the break, we're going to talk about that Artina celebrations happening today and the one party that's not there will take a break though first ten News Talks. He'd be the Weekend Collective now twenty two minutes away
from four. Wonderful to have your company. I'm Jess Davidson with you today, Tim on a break and we're joined by Brad Olsen and Shane the Pot on the panel. And of course that artin are very special anniversary for them today, Shane one hundred years and at party.
No surprise that they're not there.
Yeah, bit of a shame. I think they should they should have fronted and you know what again, I'm no fan of David Simils. My local journal seat in people normally does front and people actually do respect them for that. It was I think it was last year or the year before. I was in No last year I was in White Tongue. He got up in here its little quartered for ten minutes and people were booing him. But you know what when he said, other people respected that.
And I think that Ratna. I know that it has its political sort of connotations, but if you actually go through Artna I think I've been there ten fifteen times, you get a real sense of unity and oneness, and apart from one or two minutes political speech, it's a wonderful occasion to be it, as is why.
Toney, Yeah and Brad? What did you make of their absence? Would it have been wise for them to go?
I think from a democratic point of view, it's always good to have people front up. I mean that's you don't just go to the conversations that are easy, you go to the ones that are hard. Although I must say, sort of hearing and seeing some of the reporting that's come through, we spent seem to be spending a lot of time talking about what we're definitely not going to
do in politics this year. I mean, like, and I get that because people are asking a lot of questions about it, right, They're saying, well, why are we spending time on this? And everyone's going, well, we're not spending time on it, but we are spending all of our ear time or so like that. That one just challenges me because, look, I know that there's a lot going on, but it really does sort of make me a question. We're spending so much time saying what we're not doing?
What are we doing? What are the good things that we're sort of pushing forward on? Because that is being a little bit lost in the conversation here.
Yeah, exactly. And I wanted to chat about emergency housing as well. Now government have hit targets, they've decreased the amount of people in them by seventy five percent five years early, Brad, What do we put that down to? Is that great management by the government or great supply?
I think I think there's a few things going on. I think, to be fair, one of the big parts has been a much greater government crackdown on who can get through into emergency housing. And look, I think one of the challenges there is that is a balancing act. On one hand, you want to make sure that when people need support they can go into it. That's completely true, and I think we very much are you know, I
very much support that. But at the same time, there does seem to have been over the last couple of years a number of occasions where people were going into emergency housing with no intention, no support, no plan to leave it, and things just seem to be keeping going on. The question here is that, Okay, so we have less fewer people going into emergency housing, that is good.
Where are they going though?
That doesn't seem to be being measured quite as much, which does raise concerns over are we seeing more homeless or more people that are in precarious housing situations having to you know, sleep in their cars or you know, go and sleep with friends and family for.
A couple of nights.
But the big one for me is that again, this was an issue that was identified, it didn't seem to have an exit plan. It's now had probably a much faster exit plan than we hoped for. But trying to figure out where those people are going in the future, were they helped through or have they just been sort of put out? Is going to be one of the big questions for the next couple of months.
Yeah. Look, I think that part of it is supply a lot of the stuff that started on labor came starting to come online. So that's happening. A lot of the work they were doing with h HAPPA ANDIVIA are starting to come online. But I also think we're seen, and I said antidotally, every day I see more homeless people again on the streets in Queen Street, out in Manerewa, and just more and more stories about people living in
their cars. And you know, these are people that are on the peripheral of society anyway, and they're often not counted. But sooner or later the chickens come home to rest and we notice it, and we notice that it's increasing, and I think that's happening.
Yeah, And even the people moving out of emergency housing, they're still getting some kind of support through accommodation supplements. And with the way job losses are going, as you say, this isn't going to be a problem that's just magically dealt to.
No, it's not.
Although I think again we've on the housing front. More generally, I feel like there are a number of more positive trends that have been coming through. You know, house prices are effectively going down, certainly not going up. We've seen there's a little bit more rental price inflation restraint, not going down but not going up nearly as fast as before.
We have yip seen the number of building consents come back quite a bit, but thankfully that looks like it's plateauing out at a still fairly high level, and all of that still coming after quite a big weight of building that's still being complete at the moment, so that is encouraging. There are some nice new homes coming through for a number of Kiwis, but there is I think there's just this big question of again, where do we go to from here? We had this big bulk of
people through in emergency housing. It's encouraging to see one that those numbers have come down so quickly and that there's still support for them. But what is the wider plan because we're not seeing that same level of building coming through from kyeing Aura. Again, government doesn't have nearly as much money, so that question of okay, better numbers now, but the future bit is I think still the big question.
I don't want to be the downer at the party. I'm the party boy, but I will bring a bit of downer to the party here. I don't have the level of optimism that Brad has. And I think one of the big issues we're going to be faced in the next five to ten years is work force capability. We're losing some seven hundred to eight hundred people every
week out in New Zealand. They are folks, the nurses, the teachers, the plumbers, the electricians, the builders of the houses and you know, you know, twenty years ago lot of my fino left and then they sort of stayed here and now they're leaving again. I had a nephew leave three weeks ago. He's living in Perth. He's on seventy five bucks Australian.
Our as a builder.
His house rental is about forty percent. Now I know he's the week in thirty five degrees celsius every day and guess what. The other thing, he's got a bloody great superannuation program twelve percent. You know, I help pack them bag and bags.
Is it?
Get on your boy?
If I was a bit younger, I'll do the same.
You got to be a site foreman. You can oversee the building works a bit more. But I mean, look, seriously, you are right about that workforce question. I think one of the difficulties for construction is that it's gone through such a big up the last couple of years. It went from sort of high levels to super high and
unsustainable over the long term levels. Now it's trying to figure out what's the goldilock zone and figure out also what workforce doesn't need because we've had, you know, changes in the number of residential dwellings, we've got shifts and how much commercial building is going on. But also that
infrastructure piece. You know, we need the right talent to be able to build that because again we know that we've got water pipes that need to be invested, and we know we've got more roads and more rail and more cycle ways, all those different options. Ports and airports that are looking to either expand so that we can trade more or bring in more tourism. All of that
takes people. And again that sort of thing of where are the future talent coming from, because there are some parts of New Zealand that are losing three times as many people to retirement, not only the people going overseas, but retirement then people coming in who's going to do this work not just today, not just in five years, but in ten, fifteen, twenty.
And also we're going to have the crunch will come to I love here in Tommigi, Makoto. We build far and wide. We've got to stop that. Man, we are going to have we are going to have to get mid mid to high high intensity housing. The other thing is that badness. Quite right, It's not just about the house, it's about the infrastructure. And we've got where I live. Their infrastructure isn't coping with the people that live in there now, let alone more housing.
Exactly right, exactly right.
And I want to touch on the job aspect because we did have some news this week about the amount of people on job seekers. We'll get to that after the break. Eleven minutes after three, sorry, eleven minutes away from four here news talks here b week in collective. Back shortly and time for one more topic with Brad Olson and Shane Tapoe. The number of people on a benefit gentlemen have dropped, has dropped by thirty three thousand people.
Your reaction to that has it well, I mean it's one of those things you've had more people that are getting into work.
That's totally true.
But you are still seeing that increase coming through in the number of people on benefit, particularly that those jobs seeing numbers, and I think, I mean, this is one of the things. Yes, you're definitely having more people go into work, that's that's true, that's encouraging. Part of that's also because you've got more people on a benefit, so there's more that can get off it at the same time.
And for me looking at some of those figures, the one that really struck me for the December twenty twenty four quarter, that's the data that came out the other day, is that you've now got six point five percent of the working age population on a job seeker support benefit. That's up from five point nine percent of the population a year ago and getting pretty close to that peak of six point eight percent that we saw during the peak of sort of COVID that first year in twenty twenty.
And the worry for me is, I mean, we talk a lot about these jobs seeker numbers, and a lot of the time it is around the labor market and people getting jobs. I totally acknowledge that, and that's pretty
tough when you've got fewer job opportunities. The one that worries me, I think actually a little bit more is the higher number of people that are classified as job seeker support but they're on the health conditions or disability benefits, so they are we call them job seekers, but a lot of the time it's around sort of some of the mental health challenges they face, and similar those numbers have come up massively, they're not coming down nearly as much.
And my worry there is that very hard to get you to go back on to the work side or to get into that corporate job or whatever it might be when you do have those sort of health challenges, And why are we seeing this greater and greater mental load. It suggests that we're not putting the right resources in and if we don't support people there, we're not going to have good workers come out the other side.
Yeah, I think that these figures are a little bit of a little not I wouldn't say shady.
But they're sort of cast them a good life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, But there are no there's no good news when it comes to employment in New Zealand, where at four point six four four point six four point eight, four point eight percent but you know what four point eight is an average in rural New Zealand, that's nine percent, and if you're Jengite or young Marti,
it's fifteen, sixteen, seventeen percent. And what I do know, having been around for a little while, is when you get to say ten percent unemployment in a place like a poor Tiki or a Hipata or fare, it becomes entrenched and it becomes generational, and you can't fix it in a political term. So that really is worrying me.
It has.
It has been encouraging though to see one of the latest WETSPAC reports that came out showed a bit more of an increase coming through an employment confidence and sort of expectations of better job conditions coming. The numbers are still pretty grim, and that that's totally understandable when the unemployment rate is high and continuing to rise, but maybe just a bit of a shift on that job's front. Are some of the SIAK number I think out last week showed again a bit of a shift around in
the number of job ads coming into the market. You're not seeing huge new numbers, but you're not seeing it drop away quite as much either, And that just suggests that businesses out there are seeing some of those early green shoots and going, look, maybe we can either hire a few more people, we don't have to cut back quite as much. So yes, very tough at the moment, but hoping still for better things as we move through into twenty twenty five.
Gentlemen, thank you so very much for your time today. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you both.
This has been great, fun, awesome.
Absolutely I've learned a lot. That's Brad Olson, chief executive and principal economists for Infometrics and Shame to Poe, commentator and blogger. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll be getting to the news now at four o'clock. On the other side, the One Roof Property Show with Ashley Church.
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