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Speaker 1: The sixty six billion dollar question hanging over Labour's head

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Speaker 1: has been answered. This new Treasury report tells us pretty

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Speaker 1: much what we already knew about Labour's COVID response. They

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Speaker 1: went too far. They spent like drunken sailors. They made

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Speaker 1: it rain dollar bills, and then Treasury said, hey, hey,

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Speaker 1: heyy pullback, pullback, And what did they do. They didn't

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Speaker 1: listen and they kept on spending. COVID was the most

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Speaker 1: expensive economic event this country. Seeing the government splashed out

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Speaker 1: sixty six billion, which is twenty percent of our GDP.

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Speaker 1: And guess how much of that went on specific pandemic

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Speaker 1: healthcare costs eighteen percent, one eight The rest of it, well,

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Speaker 1: they just kept spending. Forget the Nigerian prince. This is

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Speaker 1: the biggest scammed hit Kiwi Shaws in a very long time.

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Speaker 1: They spent money the COVID fund money on things like

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Speaker 1: school lunches and art therapy programs. The report tiptoes around it,

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Speaker 1: but the clear inference is Labour went too far pulling

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Speaker 1: the fiscal lever. The Reserve Bank should be using monetary

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Speaker 1: policy to do the bulk of the heavy lifting in

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Speaker 1: future events. And at the same time, this report lands

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Speaker 1: on our lapse like a thud, like a ton of bricks.

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Speaker 1: Chrishipkins was in Queenstown yesterday chatting about the policies they

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Speaker 1: don't have but will probably have going into the election.

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Speaker 1: Guess what's on the menu. A capital gains tax, probably

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Speaker 1: more government spending definitely, and talk that the Treasury imposed

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Speaker 1: safe debt cap could be increased, so debt, tax and spend.

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Speaker 1: People may not like Christopher Luxen's delivery of this message.

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Speaker 1: It greats people at the moment, you can sense it,

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Speaker 1: but you can't hide from the fact that those guys

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Speaker 1: as in labor screwed the pooch, and the pooch if

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Speaker 1: they were to get back into power best be preparing

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Speaker 1: for more screwing. For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge,

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Speaker 1: listen live News Talks it'd be from five am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.