NZ Herald editorial: Prosperity for all Ardern's New Year task

Editorial

The New Year is a hopeful time for many - one of ambitions, resolutions and grand plans for the months ahead.

Many pledge to get fit, others to learn a new language and some swear they'll finally use those golf clubs gathering dust in the shed.

But the feeling of New Year promise can quickly dissipate as the holiday euphoria fades.

And when the Christmas credit card bills begin to arrive, it can give way to nervousness and worry about getting through the coming 12 months.

It won't help that this year Kiwis were already feeling financially uneasy, with consumer confidence falling sharply in the lead-up to the holiday season.

Westpac put the glum mood down to the election result, with the public apparently apprehensive about how the new Government's policies will impact on their finances. Economists, too, were showing signs of wariness towards the tail of 2017.

Westpac, in November, revised down its forecasts for gross domestic product growth in 2018 to just 2.4 per cent - following downward revisions from ASB, ANZ, BNZ and Goldman Sachs.

That compares with actual GDP growth of 3 per cent in the 12 months to September 2017.

The good news for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is that some pundits are more optimistic about growth in 2019 and the all-important election year of 2020. Many, though, are still trying to assess the impact of the Government's policy plans.

Immigration cuts - which Ardern has said would amount to 20,000 to 30,000 people a year - could help push up wages in a tight labour market.

Equally, they could mean some businesses are unable to grow because they simply can't find local workers for particular jobs.

Cutting foreign investors out of the housing market may make it easier for first-home buyers to get on to the ladder.

But it could also take away demand in an already cooling market and cause uneasiness for anyone who bought at the peak of the property boom.

Indeed, it was in better-off households - earning more than $70,00 a year - where the drop-off in confidence has been sharpest.

On the other hand, the mood was up in households earning less than $70,000 a year.

Kiwis on more modest incomes do have something to look forward to in mid-2018, when Labour's Families Package kicks in.

Those changes are expected to benefit 384,000 families with children by an average of $75 a week. A further 650,000 families without children are expected to benefit by an average of $14 a week through the increases in Accommodation Supplement and Winter Energy Payment.

The move is welcome and long overdue; the previous Government's slowness to confront social problems was one thing counting against it at the polls last September.

But Ardern now faces the challenge of convincing sceptics that her Government can boost the prosperity of all New Zealanders, not just those most in need. If she can do that, then some of that New Year hope could stay around well after the holidays are over.