Trump back in politics, more climate change - Richard Prebble’s 2024 predictions

Richard Prebble predicts Donald Trump will win the Republican primary. Photo / Doug Mills, the New York Times

OPINION

Last year, my first prediction was: “This time next year, Christopher Luxon will be Prime Minister.”

I forecast Labour would lose, the Greens would avoid the third-party curse, Act would do well, and the Māori Party would pick up Māori electorates.

I did not predict that a member of the Cabinet who introduced mandates, Winston Peters, would ride the anti-vax vote back into Parliament.

Forecasting is difficult because humans are so unpredictable.

I correctly predicted the Reserve Bank would not get its recession and would fail to tame inflation.

We have never had a three-party coalition. There is no form to guide us. It must be more difficult. The negotiations to form the Government were lengthy, but the agreement is surprisingly good.

Christopher Luxon will be Prime Minister this time next year.

Labour may have already sunk the coalition’s re-election. The quarter of a million new residents Labour admitted in 2023 are overwhelming the country’s infrastructure. On Boxing Day, Aucklanders queued for hours just to get into mall carparks.

From the moment the coalition was elected, the new Government owned every issue.

The coalition has been preoccupied with pinning responsibility on Labour for the deficit and massive fiscal cliffs. The population explosion will have a greater impact - from hospital waiting times to overcrowded classrooms, traffic jams and a housing crisis. Impossible to solve in three years.

Labour was all sizzle and no sausage. The number of Government communication workers increased by 50 per cent to 532.4 fulltime equivalent roles during Labour’s time in office, RNZ reported in April last year.

The new coalition is all sausage and no sizzle. The new Government’s honeymoon was over before the ministers were sworn in.

Determined to keep their identities, the coalition parties negotiated policy and did not negotiate a marketing strategy.

Marketing starts with a narrative. Lacking its own narrative, the coalition has allowed others to create one for them.

There is a narrative in the coalition agreement.

Restoring sound money by crushing inflation. Central planning is a myth. Collectivism kills initiative. The dynamism of free markets outperforms state enterprises. The politics of envy are socially divisive.

There is a vision: Undoing red tape, enabling New Zealanders’ hard work and entrepreneurial spirit to create a dynamic economy that makes a larger cake so we’re not fighting over shares of a smaller one.

Managerialism is not a vision. The coalition’s awful representation in media will only improve if Christopher Luxon uses his State of the Nation address to articulate the coalition’s vision.

The good news is inflation is falling. The people who gave us inflation are still in charge of monetary policy. I have no confidence in the Reserve Bank’s ability to correctly time the easing of interest rates.

The skills that made Chris Hipkins a failure as PM - all tactics and no strategy - will give him easy wins in Opposition. The lack of any coherent strategy will prove damaging. Instead of a review as to why Labour failed in government, the party is swallowing the myth that if Labour had advocated a wealth tax, it would have been re-elected.

The Greens and Te Pāti Māori have embraced the politics of redistribution. A Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori coalition with no practical solutions, just a promise to “tax the rich”, has even odds of winning the next election.

I believe 2024 will bring more external shocks. Predicting the outcome of the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine is beyond my pay grade. It is unlikely to be good.

While economic news from the US dominates our media, China is our biggest trading partner. China has significant structural issues and an ongoing trade dispute with America.

Slower growth in China has impacted the New Zealand economy.

I had expected China to rebound from the lifting of Covid restrictions. There is entrepreneurial energy in China. BYD has overtaken Tesla as the world’s largest electric car maker. A faster-growing Chinese economy would be good news. India will never be an alternative market for dairy.

Donald Trump is going to win the Republican primary. As the presidential candidates are old men, it is likely the election will be determined not by the voters or the courts but by their health.

Climate change will accelerate in 2024. Scientists warned climate change would result in destabilising huge population shifts. There are massive people caravans on the southern border of the US. Refugees crossing the Mediterranean. Australia, like New Zealand, has had an immigration surge. Immigration is going to be a growing issue.

Climate change is a solvable issue. The world has never had more scientists and engineers. Moore’s Law predicts AI capacity will double every two years.

The one certain prediction is that 2024 will be a year of technological change.