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Speaker 1: To Carolyn McLeish. She probably don't know her name, but

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Speaker 1: she is the Treasury boss. She's the outgoing Treasury boss

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Speaker 1: going back home to Australia after a five year term here,

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Speaker 1: and she says we have a structural deficit in New

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Speaker 1: Zealand and things are so bad. She reckons we need

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Speaker 1: a capital gains tax, comprehensive capital gains tax to try

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Speaker 1: and fix it into the future, and we need to

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Speaker 1: change our pension age. Jeff nightingales with us this morning,

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Speaker 1: Independent tax advisor Jeff good morning.

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Speaker 2: Good morning Ryan.

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Speaker 1: Does she have a point here?

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes she does. Unfortunately, it's very consistent with what

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Speaker 2: Treasury has been saying for well a better part of

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Speaker 2: five or six years now. They publish every four years

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Speaker 2: a long term fiscal position, and that's consistently showing The

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Speaker 2: last one they published was twenty twenty one, and that's

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Speaker 2: consistently showing that we're spending more than we're collecting and

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Speaker 2: that results in unsustainable levels of debt into the future.

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Speaker 2: So she's unfortunately, she's right.

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Speaker 1: She's also linking it to COVID quite pacifically as well,

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Speaker 1: isn't she. When she talks about the structural deficits. So

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Speaker 1: we're currently at forty three percent of GDP, well up

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Speaker 1: from the sub twenties before COVID.

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Speaker 2: That's right. So the COVID expenditure has bumped us, bumped

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Speaker 2: our debt levels up from sort of twenty forty to

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Speaker 2: sustainable debt. But it's the outward looking trackly worries and

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Speaker 2: particular and healthcare when we're all aging, our population is aging,

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Speaker 2: more of us will draw down on national super it's

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Speaker 2: a universal benefit, and the aging population is going to

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Speaker 2: need more healthcare. So the projections on those two crown

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Speaker 2: expenditures are pretty frightening over the next sort of thirty years.

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Speaker 1: Is this not somebody's text And why can't we just

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Speaker 1: keep cutting? Is this not something we can just cut

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Speaker 1: our way out of.

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Speaker 2: Well, we could. Look, when you're dealing with public finances,

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Speaker 2: there's only three believers. There's more tax there's cutting expenditure,

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Speaker 2: or there's debt. The debt is pretty unsustainable. We've been

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Speaker 2: drawing on that. This current government's doing a little bit

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Speaker 2: of expenditure cutting, but it's not really addressing that structural deficit.

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Speaker 2: So that really leaves us in the position of more

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Speaker 2: taxes and none of us like.

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Speaker 1: That, certainly not, Jeff, Thank you for that. Independent tax

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Speaker 1: advisor Jeff Nightingale.

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Speaker 2: For more from News Talks B listen live on air

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Speaker 2: or online, and keep

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