Chris Hipkins: Labour Leader on their policy costings in the wake of PREFU, Adrian Rurawhe's death
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So the pre-food told us the economy is looking better than some might have thought. A $4 billion surplus, $28.29, will borrow $15 billion less over four years. For Labour, though, they made much of the pre-food day. Of course, its ability to explain where their $18 billion worth of promises is coming from is interesting. Chris Hipkins is with us. Good morning. Good morning, Mike. What is the bill for pay equity? We're going to demonstrate in our fiscal plan, when we set out our breakdown of numbers, that we have room there to pay for pay equity. What I said yesterday, and there's a bit of divining tea leaves that's been going on here, is that we're not going to have a specific line item, but our fiscal plan will clearly demonstrate that there is money in there to be able to meet the cost of pay equity.
So why isn't it a line item? Because you don't, basically, when you're going through a bargaining process, you don't tell the other side what's in the envelope. And, you know, we wouldn't do that with any other process of bargaining. We've never done that with pay equity. The Crown has never put a line item in the budget that said, here's how much we're setting aside for pay equity. But it has been there. And our fiscal plan will be the same. It'll be about $12 or $13 billion. Is that fair, though? Within that ballpark, that's what we're dealing with. We're certainly expecting it to be a big number. OK. Where's it coming from? Well, we're going to set out in our fiscal plan how we're going to balance the books.
We're committed to getting back into surplus in the same timetable as the budget was getting the books back into surplus. Obviously, we will now digest the pre-food numbers and figure out whether that makes any change, whether that brings that forward or not. But we're certainly committed to getting back into surplus at the same timetable as the budget set out. But when's this coming, by the way? Give us a few days. What do you mean days? By the end of next week? Yeah, absolutely by the end of next week. Okay. So just help me out because I've seen the pre-foo. I know what's in it. None of this is actually fiscally that complex. You either borrow or you cut or a mix of both. Reprioritisation will certainly be part of our spending and our revenue plans.
We'll set that out in detail in our fiscal plan. We make different choices, different priorities. That's what campaigns are about and that's fine. But you're telling me, are you going to borrow more? No, we've been really clear about the fact that we're going to get back into, we want to get back into surplus, same level as the government. We want to make sure that the net core, net crown debt is getting back to below 20% of GDP. And we want to set out the fact that we can head in that direction. Yeah, but that's in the never-never. You're not going to do that in the end. next term well similarly with the current government their debt targets in the longer term future as well but it's important that people know the direction that we're heading in yeah but the advantage of the current government is they've got a track record now three years and and you don't okay so their track record of three years hang on just stop right there don't buy into the national party spin let's talk about their track record three years go back to the pre-election fiscal update three years ago mike is debt that we have now higher or lower than it was forecast to be three years ago this isn't question time in parliament
well why not you just made a claim that's not true so why don't you actually so let's stick to the truth go back to three years ago debt is higher now than it was forecast to be three years ago yes it is 100 i'm not i'm not disagreeing with you let's have the facts on the table the numbers are there what i'm asking is if you're not borrowing you must be cutting and that's fine it's you're allowed to do it and you can say anything you want in an election campaign what are you cutting Well, we've made some different choices. We've already set out one of them, for example.
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