Labour's take on economy outlined

Labour Party leader Phil Goff knows what he would have done with the New Zealand economy had he been in power during a recession - and it would have not been what National was doing, he said yesterday.

"[National's tax cuts] were not enough and for the needs of the time, they were not appropriate."

The $800 million used in the tax cuts benefitted the top strata of income earners but instead could have been given to people with families who earned under $40,000, in order to stimulate the economy.

The top income earners would not be spending the money from tax cuts in New Zealand; instead, it would be spent overseas or saved.

Mr Goff said the tax cuts were an election promise on which National had to follow through, and they might have cost New Zealand "thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs".

Mr Goff was in Dunedin yesterday and made whirlwind visits to the Kokiri Training Centre, the Otago Chamber of Commerce and Hillside Workshops.

If Labour was still in power it would do three things: spend money on retrofitting houses with insulation which would provide jobs, cut power costs for the public and create healthier living conditions; look at encouraging on-the-job training so that when New Zealand came out of a recession, it had skilled workers; and continue with environmental sustainability issues, such as the emissions trading scheme.

New Zealand was "going back in the opposite direction" in terms of environmental sustainability, he said.

The Greens and National look to be brokering a deal in terms of policy on the retrofitting of houses, but Mr Goff believed National would merely rehash Labour policy.

The Labour leader said he hoped any recovery would be "sooner rather than later" and it was important to remember the human side of the recession, not only the statistics involved.