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A Litany of Labour Government Failure to 2023
An incomplete list of Labour’s appalling record
• Since 2017, when Labour took power, gang membership in Auckland has gone up 51%.
• The number of Kiwis living in cars has more than quadrupled since 2017.
• Gross government debt is now $722.62 billion, up 47% from 5 years ago.
• Under Labour, the tax-take has gone from $86 billion per year when they took power to $118 billion – up 38%.
• Retail crime has doubled since Labour came to power in 2017, and 70% of the crimes are not even being reported.
• Labour has taken away all healthcare targets. Every single healthcare metric has gone backwards in the last five years.
• Average weekly rent in 2017: $400, in 2023 up 50% to $600.
• 37,000 more kids are in benefit-dependent homes than when Labour’s government took power 5 years ago.
• Labour’s fast track immigration processing: Only 20% processed with the 10 day timeframe promised by the minister. Set-up to process 3500, only got through 169 with only 1 approved within the 4 weeks it has been open.
• Labour government has increased consultant spending from $900 million the previous year to $1.24 billion this year – a massive 33% increase, even after Labour increased public service employees by 50,000 since Labour took office.
• NZTA (a.k.a. Waka Kotahi) has increased staff by 60% in last 4 years (1000 extra bureaucrats).
• More than 100,000 students were chronically absent from school. In certain areas up to 50% of students not attending school at all.
• Government refuses COVID-19 inquiry, despite cross-party support.
• 70% of NZ businesses have no confidence in this government to steer them through the economic down turn.
• Stats NZ data showed a deficit of $10.5 billion between export earnings and import costs for the year ended June, the highest annual deficit since current records began in 1960.
• Ram-raids on retailers have soared under Labour, with a more than 500 per cent increase within the first six months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2018.
• Emergency Department wait times are now the worst in at least a decade, with more than one in five people waiting at least six hours for treatment.
• Domestic inflation is 7.3% and has a higher weighting than trade based inflation.
• In a multi-nation survey involving 12,000 people, NZ is now ranked 51st out of 52 countries for best place to live; no. 52 was Kuwait.
• This was a Government elected to make housing affordable, help those less well off, reduce child poverty, and give us a kinder, more united society. On every front, it could not have failed more profoundly.
• 316 foreign entertainers, including 64 DJs, were fast-tracked through Managed Isolation and Quarantine in 2021. Taxpayers have spent $1.2 billion on MIQ – $660 for every household in the country.
• Patients waiting for specialists for over a year has gone up 17 fold since 2019.
• 25% drop in prisoners, just ‘let them out’ to do community sentences, while there has been an increase in offending against prisoner officers. Violent crime has increased 21%, gang membership increased 56%, record low number of offences resulting in prison sentences in last year representing an overall decrease of 44% under Labour.
• Savings report from Finders that looks at savings data across all the OECD says NZ will record the second to lowest savings in the world at -0.2% (only Poland is lower) compared to the average of +7%, showing how bad the cost of living crisis is.
• For more than three decades, the Swiss Institute for Management and Development (IMD) has compiled annual rankings of competitiveness for 63 of the world’s most important countries. Back in 2017 when Labour took power, New Zealand ranked #16 – ahead of Australia at #21. Five years on, New Zealand has fallen to #31, while Australia is now ranked #19. Over the past few years, we have plunged in economic performance, falling from 22nd to 47th place. Government efficiency has also deteriorated markedly from 7th to 17th place. Consumer confidence in New Zealand now stands at the lowest level since Westpac’s Consumer Confidence survey began in 1988. And, perhaps most damningly, for the first time, a majority has a negative 5-year outlook on the economy.
• Jamie Ngatata Love – 3rd strike law removed by Labour resulting in his sentence for armed robbery reduced from 10 years to 18 months, with 138 previous convictions!
• Sixty-four percent of Kiwis, across all ages, believe New Zealanders are more divided than ever.
• The day Jacinda resigned, news pushed aside of food price inflation data released showing the highest rate of increase in more than 30 years.
• Doctor GP waiting times are now 5th to bottom of OECD countries (38 countries). Access to GP’s is the first thing to go in a failing health system.
• The government collected $78 million more tax than forecast for the five months ended November 2022 while its expenses were up $742m on forecast.
• After near 6 years of a Labour government, emissions have increased and the importing and burning of coal has more than doubled — all after Jacinda declared climate change was her ‘Nuclear free moment’.
• Farm conversions into forestry in 2013 = 1, under Labour in 2022 = 31 due to ‘carbon credits’ incentives, 2017 = 695 Hectares, under Labour in 2022 = 18,000 Hectares. At the same time Labour calling foul on amount of slash washing away bridges etc. & killing a child in East Cape.
• The Governmentt car fleet grown 16% for past 3 years and 1000 of them are petrol or diesel, their stated ambition of being EV by 2025 is a joke.
• New Zealand is now bottom of the OECD for access to modern medicines.
• Retail crime increased 40% in 2022, with most police districts reporting twice as much as 4 years ago. There were 292 incidents a day last year, compared to 140 a day in 2018.
• Ramping hours (Ambulances sitting outside ER waiting to get patients in) went from 3,000 hours in 2019 per quarter to 9,756 hours per quarter in 2023. Targets of 90% of patients should receive MRIs within 42 days – currently it is 36%, 95% for CT scans within 42 days – currently it is 57%.
• Crime: 46% increase in victimisations, 140% increase in serious assaults, 551% increase in ram raids, number of people in prison for that has dropped 45%.
• Public sector managers have been growing at nearly twice the rate of frontline workers since the current Government came to power.
• Nearly 5000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia since August 2022, and as of March 4th 2022, only 1 nurse has arrived from overseas to NZ.!!
• Burglaries crime stats: 49% under 18 years old, 51% of those did not face court action. 112 up to 17 arrested received a family group conference — that’s it. Most was just a formal or informal warning. 94 didn’t receive any consequence whatsoever.
• Much of the bad luck is the result of Government’s own actions. The Reserve Bank only agreed to the inflationary $100 billion money printing programme after the Labour Government gave a taxpayer guarantee. Labour is recklessly running a deficit at a time of over-full employment. Borrow and spend always results in bust. The bank has no doubt that Labour’s borrowing to spend is inflationary.
• IMFs 2023 outlook forecasts New Zealand will have one of the lowest GDP growth rates and one of the highest inflation rates in the Asia Pacific region in the coming years. In their projections for GDP, NZ’s current account balance is reported as -8.6 percent of GDP, that’s worse than Greece’s at -8.0 percent, in 2023. NZ was one of the best GDP performing countries in the world after the GFC in 2088 (a Rock Star economy we were) under National and John Key, now we are at the bottom half of advanced countries in the world with the worst current account deficit of all of them. National always fixes Labours huge spending sprees until they get elected once again and another cycle of spend, spend, spend starts all over again. They always give the voters FREE things and buy the votes so watch out for this in September.
• Frontline police told to ‘consider necessity’ of bail arrests as NZ’s largest prison nears capacity.
• 2023: 19,000 nurses have left the profession in the last 5 years under this Labour government. In 2017 it was under 3000 leaving compared to 5000 leaving in last year – a 60% increase in nurses leaving.