While the rest of the lyrics have dated badly, the basic sentiment of surveying the field before making a final decision holds as true today as it did in 1960.
We cannot attest to the quality, or otherwise, of Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ singing voice, but she was on the same songsheet as The Miracles this week when she encouraged New Zealanders to shop around when considering mortgage lending.
Ms Willis’ comments came in the wake of Westpac delivering a moderate shock to the market by having had, as she saw it, the temerity to increase some of its home lending rates.
National has been trumpeting its economic management prowess for months, and the two main pieces of evidence it offers up for this are falling inflation and falling interest rates.
Inflation, as forecast, has nudged slightly upwards towards the end of this year but still — just — remains within the target band.
Interest rates have steadily dropped all year and many keen observers of the home lending market —including the finance minister — had expected them to either stabilise or drop a little bit more after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand dropped the official cash rate by another 25 basis points at its final meeting for the year.
It is all very well for her to say so, but for many mortgage holders it will not be as simple as that.
Expensive break fees are a deterrent to those on longer-term loans from making a change, and for some of those whose fixed terms are about to expire they may be contractually obliged to retain some or all of their banking with their existing lender.
Moving banks is complicated at best and despite the introduction of measures such as open banking it is still not as trouble-free an exercise as many might wish.
National’s economic mantra for the past two years has been that it wants to put the wages earned by hard-working Kiwis into their back pockets.
That was the rationale for tax cuts and it is central to the battle to keep interest rates low.
Even a small bump either up or down on a home loan rate can make a significant difference to mortgage borrowing costs.
Many of those people are the middle-class, middle-aged voters who National will need to tick both boxes blue at next year’s general election.
Hence why Ms Willis’ somewhat surprisingly strong response to Westpac’s interest rates move.
Many of the voters described above are about to refix — an estimate in May this year was that as many as 80% of mortgages were due for refixing within the next 12 months.
Election 2026, like most elections, will be decided by the state of the economy.
National wants those voters to be content with their economic lot, and interest rate hikes are a rude interruption to their narrative as to how NZ Inc is performing.
It is not an easy argument to make, when the cost of living is burdensome, that the economy is in clover.
Doubly so when National and its coalition partners have overseen a sharp rise in unemployment.
The government will have been banking on a forecast drop in unemployment arriving in time to be felt before next year’s ballot, and for that to coincide with an increase in economic growth and stable interest rates and inflation.
Westpac has made that chair look a little rickety this week.
Ms Willis does not want to be left feeling sad and blue now come election night, so has some work to do to stop voters from shopping on the red side of the street.
