Price increases are the “tough reality” amid the Iran war, and New Zealand needs to deal with them as best we can, acting Prime Minister David Seymour says.
His comments follow a report that shipping giant Maersk has added a 27% fuel surcharge across the board on land transport for imports within New Zealand, thanks to soaring energy costs.
“This is unfortunately what people right through the whole economy are facing,” Seymour told Ryan Bridge TODAY.
Mitre 10 had recently told him plastic guttering maker Marley had upped all its prices by 20%.
“Their guttering’s made from plastic, which is made from oil. So you can understand that this is having a massive impact on people.”
ANZ New Zealand’s chief risk officer Ben Kelleher warned over the weekend that New Zealand was heading toward a “stagflationary environment” - meaning a combination of low growth and high inflation.
Seymour said that while that wouldn’t be great, the antidote was growing productivity.
“How do we ensure that young people especially believe that working hard is a viable strategy in life? That has to come back to productivity growth, wages rising in real terms each year.”
He said cutting red tape would be the key to getting that outcome.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, Seymour said if New Zealand were to help the United States open the Strait of Hormuz, it would be after a ceasefire was agreed.
Seymour said the US contacted New Zealand’s embassy last Wednesday about the proposal.
He said the Government was “open-minded” about potentially helping.
“But [we’re] also aware that there is so much uncertainty about what actually happens next.
“We’ve been clear that we would wait for a ceasefire, we’re not going into a conflict zone, but if there was genuine cross-partisan support for us to join a coalition of like-minded nations to ensure that trade on the seas can continue, that is in New Zealand’s interest.”
Speaking as Act Party leader David Seymour said there was plenty that was new in his party’s immigration policies, despite an immigration lawyer calling the proposals “superfluous” to what the Government had already done.
Lawyer Marcus Beveridge told Newstalk ZB’s Ryan Bridge Early Edition on ZB earlier this morning Act’s newly announced policies were “posturing” and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford had already tidied up the issues they addressed.
But Seymour told Ryan Bridge TODAY that Beveridge needed to take a closer look at Act’s six-point plan, which includes a new $6 daily “infrastructure surcharge” on temporary work visas.
“I can see a world where we raise $80 million on this daily levy on temporary visas. Imagine for a moment every couple of years opening a new courthouse, police station, small hospital, saying migrants to New Zealand funded this, we’re actually contributing to infrastructure.”
There was also much more that could be done on enforcement, Seymour said, with an estimated 20,000 overstayers that Immigration NZ was aware of last year.
In the past four years there had been 2500 visas issued for fast food workers, he said.
“That’s not really the skill that most people have in mind. Biomedical engineers, people might think that’s what we’re looking for, only 30 of them in the same period. So we are addressing that.”