This car crash of a campaign for National just got worse.
It appears that Paul Goldsmith, financial spokesperson for the party that prides itself on its ability with finances, has made a rather large miscalculation.
When creating National’s budget he anticipated that stopping contributions to the Cullen fund would “save” the Government $19 billion dollars. I put “save” in parentheses because it will actually cost the Government and the country long term but that is a topic for a different day.
But the actual figure was $15 billion, so National had banked on $4 billion in savings that it was not going to get.
From Jason Walls at the Herald:
This morning, Robertson accused National of not properly costing its policies.
The error is in regards to the savings National would make by cancelling its contributions to the NZ Super Fund.
National’s economic plan said scrapping these contributions would save $19.1 billion – but Robertson said Treasury’s estimates show the Government would have been contributing $15 billion over that time.
“National has used the wrong numbers,” Robertson said.
And this is not a Steven Joyce inability to understand the figures gap. This is an actual gap. Even Goldsmith admits this. Again from the Herald:
National’s finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith has copped the mistake on the chin, saying it was “irritating” but did not mean the whole plan was flawed.
…
Speaking to media before National’s official campaign launch, Goldsmith apologised for the error, calling it “irritating”.
“This is an irritating mistake, we missed it and our external checker missed it as well – that’s a mistake.”
He said he had apologised to leader Judith Collins.
National’s response is jaw dropping in its hyprocrisy. Goldsmith has said National will just borrow more money instead. Fancy that. You have $4 billion less in savings than you hoped and all you have to do is borrow $4 billion more.
But wait there is more. Not realising that this was a good time to shut up Paora then tried to blame Labour for slipping in changes to the super fund and not telling anyone. The problem with this is that the contributions are calculated according to a legislative formula. Recently the stock market and the fund have been doing well. To add to Paora’s difficulties with numeracy and things to do with finances we can now add an inability to understand how the legislation behind the fund works.
This is a disaster. Today is the day of National’s campaign launch. Guess what everyone will be talking about instead.
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