New Zealanders looking for some kind of economic coherence from the Labour Party will have to keep searching, after yet another round of conflicting positions from its Leader and Finance spokesperson, says senior National MP Chris Bishop.

“Directly after the Budget was released yesterday, Chris Hipkins refused to commit to reversing the Government’s pay equity changes. This morning, Barbara Edmonds has told RNZ’s Morning Report that Labour will ‘absolutely’ reverse the changes, at a cost of $12.8 billion.

“This comes just days after Edmonds committed Labour to the 50 per cent debt-to-GDP cap, before Hipkins uncommitted Labour to the same cap, unbelievably claiming Edmonds was using future tense to describe Labour’s old position.

“Yesterday, Hipkins said Labour backs the Budget’s InvestmentBoost policy, now Edmonds is refusing to commit to it.

“While the Government has released a Budget that carefully manages the economy and taxpayers’ money to grow our economy and create jobs, Labour is in crisis about having no economic or fiscal plan whatsoever.”

Note :

Barbara Edmonds on RNZ’s Morning Report today:

CORIN DANN: … let’s deal first with pay equity and this large number we now have, $12.8 billion over the four years. Would you reverse the changes that National has made here? And if so, where would you find that money from?

BARBARA EDMONDS: Yes, absolutely, we have committed to reversing those changes to the pay equity legislation that National had gone through. What we've also said is that we're going to work through the budget carefully to understand where they got the 12 billion from, and then work through that carefully to figure out what sectors do we need to keep talking to because they know we know they've cut out some sectors, and then work through that as part of our fiscal plan.

…

CORIN DANN: How would you find this $12 billion, nearly $13 billion? Because a lot of that money has been refunnelled back into core public services. So that's going to be built in. How would you find that in a future budget?

BARBARA EDMONDS: We're going to have to find it because we are committed to it, because, again, women are not worth less, and that's our Labour value. We don't believe that. So we are committed to finding that. We will look through the books carefully…

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