Kirk Hope, Blair Turnbull, and Nicola Willis respond to key findings from this year's CEOs survey. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion
OPINION:
Reading through the findings from this year's NZ Herald Mood of the Boardroom report left me feeling as grumpy as the survey's participants, although for very different reasons.
Has Aotearoa New Zealand's business elite, not known for self-awareness at the best of times, ever been quite this out oftouch or – I tried to come up with a better word but couldn't – whiny?
I could cite a dozen examples from the reporting.
Among other things, survey participants bemoaned our post-Covid economic performance in contrast to similar economies.
This view, asserted with characteristic c-suite certainty, is a textbook case of what US late-night comedian Stephen Colbert termed "truthiness" – not a fact per se, but something that sure feels like one.
In fact, New Zealand's economy grew at a faster clip last quarter (1.7 per cent) than Australia (0.9 per cent), Canada (0.8 per cent), Japan (0.9 per cent), the European Union (0.7 per cent) and easily outpaced the OECD average (0.4 per cent). Both the UK and the US actually saw an economic decline last quarter (-0.1 per cent each).
Our unemployment rate of 3.3 per cent is lower than it is in Australia (3.8 per cent), UK (3.8 per cent), US (3.6 per cent) or Canada (5.1 per cent).
Exports are booming and company profits have grown by 60 per cent in the past two years. It's doubtful the Mood of the Boardroom contributors are doing it tough on the home front, either – unless you count those frustrating kitchen renovation delays, which I understand can be very upsetting for them.
Since 2015, the richest 20 per cent of households (which include my own) have seen wealth increase by $300,000 – while the poorest 20 per cent of households saw an increase of just $3000.
The top 10 per cent of households in NZ still hold more than 50 per cent of all household wealth. The top 5 per cent own 37 per cent.
Meanwhile, there are 125,000 children in New Zealand who live in material poverty. That means they don't have many of the things that we take for granted – a winter coat, two hot meals a day. Shoes that keep the rain out.
And, according to MSD, as many as four out of 10 of these children will have a parent in full-time work.
Should GST be removed on fresh fruit and vegetables? Photo / Sylvie Whinray
And yet the boardroom doom and gloom is palpable. Some seem aggrieved by wage increases, even though one-third of Kiwis missed out on a pay rise last year, despite inflation spiking. (Could even one of the survey participants say the same of their income over the same period?)
It's certainly the case that, even accounting for inflation, wages are rising faster under this government (2.75 per cent) than the previous one (1.7 per cent). But imagine looking at those numbers and concluding it is Labour, not National-Act, that has something to answer for.
Cost of living pressures are hardly new for the poorest families. Over the past 10 years, the inflation rate has risen for the poorest 20 per cent of households much faster than for the richest 20 per cent of households.
This is because core inflation on things like food, rent and energy have all been rising at a faster rate than overall inflation, putting savings out of reach for low-income households. So, during a time that families like my own have enjoyed historic (virtually untaxed) capital gains, the poorest face a brutal rental market from which they can never hope to escape.
Earlier this year median rent in Wellington hit 97 per cent of the minimum-wage workers' take-home pay. In 2021, a minimum-wage earner on $20 per hour would need to work an additional six hours, almost a full day, to cover rent for the same property compared to 2009.
Surveying this landscape, it is the boardroom, of all places, in a foul temper? It is corporate elites who feel unloved by their government, urging spending and tax cuts, expressing resentment at the ingratitude and avarice of workers who can barely make ends meet? Give me a break.
To conclude on some common ground, though, allow me to put one tax cut on the table: exempting staples along with fresh fruit and vegetables from GST.
The Mood of the Boardroom might be for smaller government and lower taxes, but I'm not holding out much hope for a stampede in support of a revenue measure that leaves them no better off.
It's almost as if all the high-minded carping is just camouflaging good old fashioned self-interest and partisan preferences.
But that's just my opinion. Maybe we can ask the smoko room what they reckon.
• Shane Te Pou (Ngai Tuhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour party activist.
