Q+A: Finance Minister Grant Robertson interviewed by Corin Dann

Finance Minister Grant Robertson – looking into the funding model for bus services.

“There was something that the last government brought in called PTOM – Public Transport Operating Model – which effectively asked councils in metropolitan areas to re-tender their bus services on a regular basis. It’s pretty clear that that lead to a bit of a race to the bottom in Wellington, there was under bidding based on drivers wages and conditions and the end result of that is what I agree is a shambles in Wellington. We can’t do much about that contract but we certainly can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

When asked whether low business confidence is hurting economic growth, Minister Robertson told Corin Dann, “I don’t believe it is, there is a risk that if the sentiment that is in those surveys translates into the investments that businesses make then it will have an impact but I don’t believe it needs to.”

Minister Robertson said he is committed to the current debt target.

“What NZIER have said is at the end of that five year period that we set ourselves we would be at 20.6 per cent and we were targeting 20 per cent. I’m hoping we will be at 20 per cent but if we ended being at 20.6 we would still have done a good job of managing our debt and investing…. I’m not expecting us to we’re at 19.1 per cent on the forecast we had and I’m expecting we will still meet it but what I‘m saying is even if we did Corin we would still have very good debt levels compared to the rest of the world.”

On Shane Jones calling Air New Zealand CEO Christopher Luxon a celebrity appointment, Grant Robertson said, “I don’t agree with Shane about that.”

Please find the full interview here.

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