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Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of commentary in the last couple

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Speaker 1: of days about our government's debt position. We're up over

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Speaker 1: forty percent of GDP, doubled on pre COVID. You already

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Speaker 1: know all of this, but there are those on the

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Speaker 1: left who say that is way too little. Basically, we

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Speaker 1: should borrow more. Forget about a debt selling, borrow more,

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Speaker 1: throw it at the public service, create some jobs, any jobs,

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Speaker 1: who cares, just get them out there, right And that's

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Speaker 1: what Karne is doing in Canada right now. His budget

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Speaker 1: would double the debt position, debt to GDP ratio. They've

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Speaker 1: got Trump tariffs coming at them, they've got weak domestic demand.

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Speaker 1: So he's basically getting out the defenb and he's trying

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Speaker 1: to revive the economy and make no mistake, if a

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Speaker 1: labor lead government were to get and that is exactly

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Speaker 1: what they would be doing here, maybe not to the

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Speaker 1: same extent. The problem is we don't know. Chris Hopkins

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Speaker 1: has said, yeah, we need to invest more, yeah Knes

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Speaker 1: in economics, et cetera, et cetera, but how much don't

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Speaker 1: know to party Maldi and the Greens, you know, will

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Speaker 1: make sure that they do more and spend the money

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Speaker 1: on what that is the question. Now, remember Robertson had

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Speaker 1: a debt ceiling thirty percent of GDP. Well, that didn't

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Speaker 1: go very well. Didn't last very long, did it. The

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Speaker 1: fact is, it's quite popular to spend money. It sounds

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Speaker 1: like you're doing something. The more you spend, the more

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Speaker 1: you care. That's the kind of prevalent theory, isn't it. Actually,

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Speaker 1: if you look at average public debt, the ratio to

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Speaker 1: GEDDP for big economies advanced economies, it's roughly one hundred

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Speaker 1: and ten percent. So we are way under that. But

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Speaker 1: we need to remember we're a small country. We're a

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Speaker 1: trading country. We are exposed, and we're in the middle

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Speaker 1: of a trade wall. It's not forget. What we need

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Speaker 1: is headroom. Now. Morning Star, they've just given the government

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Speaker 1: the triple A credit rating. They said as much. And

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Speaker 1: as for those banks we've been talking about this week

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Speaker 1: making massive profits and everyone's saying, oh, so evil, it's

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Speaker 1: so nasty. Well, turns out in the same morning Star report,

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Speaker 1: it's actually quite important that we have profitable banks. Morning

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Speaker 1: Star says that we've weathered this housing market corrections so

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Speaker 1: well because in part of well capitalized banks that are

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Speaker 1: also very liquid that have strong buffers to absorb losses.

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Speaker 1: So not all is as it seems. Bank profits and

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Speaker 1: a seemingly stingy government insisting on returning the books to

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Speaker 1: surplus not only keep our interest rates down, but also

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Speaker 1: help keep us afloat. For more from early edition with

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Speaker 1: Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks at B from

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Speaker 1: five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio