Oct 5, 2026 · 12 min · 8 segments
**THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE *(from Tuesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast)*** Good Try Though/Wait... We Can Vote Twice?/Another Poll to Ignore/Let's Get This Over With/Does Anyone Actually Know…
With the period of digestion now complete, I think it is more than fair to suggest that the Labor Party's fiscal plan has been marked a failure.
This is not just me, but as far as I can read, virtually every journalist, every commentator, including every economist.
This politically should be a disaster.
Economic credibility, this election in particular, is everything.
The election's almost sole vote-swinging or determining issue is who do you think can run the economy better? Has the government done enough to convince you they have stopped the bleeding and a path to better days is in front of us, or do Labor have an alternative plan that appeals enough to you to give them your vote? And in that last bit is their biggest problem.
By looking to be as close to the Nats as possible, they have stuck the 2.4 billion with new money annually.
Uh, they've promised the same surplus target.
They've more broadly promised debt reduction over time.
So ironically, not really any reason to vote for them given it's no different.
But what has undone them is no one can square, no one can square away the headroom, the 10 billion and the equity bill that's coming.
Even if it sits within the 10 billion, there's nothing left for anything outside of health, which is partly covered, of course, by the CGT.
Police, defense, cost of living, teachers strikes, there is no money.
So they've bagged the government for austerity and yet offer the same thing if, in fact, not worse.
Not one person has made it work arithmetically.
They have snookered themselves.
The prefu came and went.
The fiscal plan came and went.
Those who quite rightly were suspicious that there was something not right with all the Labor reassurances, that it would all be explained, all add up, all make sense, have been proven correct.
At the very, very best, there are a lot of questions left unanswered, but its more probable reality is it was always a con.
They were hoping you wouldn't ask too many questions, but they made such a song and dance about the big reveal, when it finally came, the snake oil almost drowned us.
With the period of digestion now complete, I think it is more than fair to suggest that the Labor Party's fiscal plan has been marked a failure.
This is not just me, but as far as I can read, virtually every journalist, every commentator, including every economist.
This politically should be a disaster.
Economic credibility, this election in particular, is everything.
The election's almost sole vote-swinging or determining issue is who do you think can run the economy better? Has the government done enough to convince you they have stopped the bleeding and a path to better days is in front of us, or do Labor have an alternative plan that appeals enough to you to give them your vote? And in that last bit is their biggest problem.
By looking to be as close to the Nats as possible, they have stuck the 2.4 billion with new money annually.
Uh, they've promised the same surplus target.
They've more broadly promised debt reduction over time.
So ironically, not really any reason to vote for them given it's no different.
But what has undone them is no one can square, no one can square away the headroom, the 10 billion and the equity bill that's coming.
Even if it sits within the 10 billion, there's nothing left for anything outside of health, which is partly covered, of course, by the CGT.
Police, defense, cost of living, teachers strikes, there is no money.
So they've bagged the government for austerity and yet offer the same thing if, in fact, not worse.
Not one person has made it work arithmetically.
They have snookered themselves.
The prefu came and went.
The fiscal plan came and went.
Those who quite rightly were suspicious that there was something not right with all the Labor reassurances, that it would all be explained, all add up, all make sense, have been proven correct.
At the very, very best, there are a lot of questions left unanswered, but its more probable reality is it was always a con.
They were hoping you wouldn't ask too many questions, but they made such a song and dance about the big reveal, when it finally came, the snake oil almost drowned us.
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