Whilst Grant Robertson was talking himself up in Parliament about his wonderful political career and how proud he was of his achievements, the result of his past six years as Finance Minister were clear for all to see. We've just fallen out of the world's top ten "happiest" countries and are in recession, practically to the day he gave his farewell speech. Our problems are largely due to Robertson's excessive fiscal expansion, done on borrowed money, during the pandemic, which amazingly was one of the largest in the world in spite of us having the least number of cases during that time of Covid compared to others. Why did Robertson not figure that our 2020 success in keeping the virus out meant that far less government borrowing & spending was required? In 2020, for example, our tourism industry was not much affected - many people holidayed domestically instead of going overseas.
On top of one of the world's largest fiscal expansion, the Reserve Bank went & printed more cash than virtually any other Central Bank. Those two decisions by Robertson & Orr threw NZ into the recession we are now experiencing today. By my account, we are one of only a tiny handful of nations on the planet in recession. Unbelievable. Robertson & Orr snatched economic defeat from the jaws of a Covid victory. For that, both of them should have been fired way back. Instead they remain two of the most highly paid people in the country, both on salaries between $500,000 & $1,000,000, as VC of Otago University and Governor of the RBNZ. Its pay for non-performance.
What is most unforgiveable about Grant Robertson's tenure as Finance Minister & Deputy PM is that, in the aftermath of our greatest health crisis ever brought on my Covid, he left our health system in a declining & tattered state. The only thing he needed to get right, more than any other, was to ensure our health-care was world class, because a new type of virus could obviously afflict us again at any time. But he threw always billions on everything but health-care. Clearly he deserve the title, "Worst Finance Minister Ever".
Maybe its also time our Big Media investigated the false claim made by Hipkins just a few months ago in the run-up to the election that NZ was one of the fastest growing countries, after Japan, of all. What garbage - but he was never challenged on that claim - except of course from DownToEarth Kiwi.