Reality Of Government Policy Sees Confidence Tumble
Business concerns about the economic direction and policies of the Labour/Alliance Government have translated into
plummeting business confidence in the latest National Bank’s Business Outlook Survey.
ACT Finance Spokesman Rodney Hide said the Government was well briefed by officials and the business sector on the
negative impact of its policies to hike up taxes and re-nationalise ACC. “They are repeating the same pattern of
arrogance with the Employment Relations Bill that will take confidence down further,” he said.
Today’s survey is in sharp contrast to Finance Minister Michael Cullen’s hard sell to investors in New York recently
where he talked of high levels of business confidence in New Zealand. At the same time we had foreign fund managers
saying they believe the Government is driving New Zealand to a Third World country and in the words of one Wellington
broker “they just want to be out of here”.
Rodney Hide said the nose dive in business confidence is the reality of the Government’s anti – business and
anti-employment policies. “You can’t expect businesses to be confident and booming when they are being hammered by a
Government that takes more of their hard earned money in tax, forces them back into a costly failed ACC system, then
tells them that unions are going to be running their workforce from now on,” he said.
“With the real dollar impact of the Government’s policies still to bite into the balance sheets of businesses, we have
to expect that this drop is, unfortunately, just the start. But it is not too late, the Government can turn this dismal
result around. A good place to start would be to listen to what their officials and business are telling them,” said
Rodney Hide.
ENDS