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Liam Dann asks Herald’s question on Sunday last weekend.
Photo: Herald on Sunday
“The economy is slowly showing signs of life,” said Simon Dallow of TVNZ to viewers 1News across the country last week.
“Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers of the last three months of 2024 show that the country coming out of the recession and starting to grow – only – 0.7 %.”
“The GDP number is on the day our largest company Fonterra registered a huge profit. Dairy among the bright sparks in a still dark economy,” he said.
Great news.
Soon after, TVNZ’s business correspondent Katie Bradford found growth signs at an Auckland cake store.
“The popularity of these cinnamon rolls is rising almost as fast as the dough,” she said with images of people in line at the door. An employee told her that she would be hiring two more people to meet the demand.
More good news as unemployment continues to increase.
But even with all the housing and infrastructure we need, construction production has fallen in the latest official economic statistics. Tourism and dairy products mainly feed the COBB collision.
“Are you worried that we return to dependents of some sectors to keep the economy working?” Bradford asked the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Nicola Willis.
“I am confident that the economy of New Zealand has many green shoots in various sectors,” she replied.
Does that do?
“I think the only super excited person about these numbers today is Nicola Willis,” said Katie Bradford on 1News.
“Of course it’s good to see this growth signal. We are also seeing good numbers in exports and Fonterra today – but some other areas are still really suffering.”
“We are seeing companies restructure, redundancies, collapse companies – and this should continue to go up. And of course, there is also global economic uncertainty now in jobs,” he added.
(Katie Bradford is coming to the end of her work on TVNz in her last round of redundancies and cuts. She’s going to a new one in Infrastructure New Zealand.)
And not everyone was convinced that the GDP collision was the proof of progress.
“If I have to hear that we are getting some green sprouts again in the media or an article, I will really cry,” said Esther Robinson, podcast presenter, three girls, a hive, released as “three Kiwi women on a mission to make politics interesting, sexy and even fun.”
“This was the quarter ended in January 2025, so most of the 0.7 % was tourism at the peak of summer,” she argued.
“Just get the good news,” said Brigitte Morton, a former national LED government competitor and a member of the national party that offered to Nicola Willis.
“Eleven of the 16 industries they measure grew this quarter. So when you’re like, ‘Oh, it’s just the people who arrive this summer’ – it’s not.
But one thing the three girls seemed to agree was that the increase in surprise in GDP will not mean much with the ordinary kiwis.
At least not yet.
And there were other data in the news last week that was not positive.
The latest monitor of issues, which tracks and classifies important issues for the New Zealanders, found the approval of this government at the lowest level recorded since 2018.
Westpac McDermott Miller’s latest consumer confidence survey had consumer confidence in 89.2 %. Anything below 100 is considered negative and, in the previous quarter, was 97.5 %.
BNZ economist Stephen Toplis called the result “simply horrible” at a level last seen in the deep recession of 1991.
But on Friday, Anz’s chief economist insisted that the economy was improving, despite New Zealand’s NZ employment data from February, to seek job ads, Westpac employment confidence research and ANZ consumer confidence research, all in postcovid minimums.
Newsroom Rebecca Howard has calculated all terrible data added to the view that growth “will probably remain slow, even though New Zealand came out of the recession at the end of 2024”.
In addition, some politicians were spreading news talking to the depth of this week’s economic problems – even close to the government top.
Winston Peters did a lot of the bad state of our economy in his state speech last weekend.
Last Monday, at Newstalk ZB, he told Mike Hosking that we are “needing desperate for an economic turnaround.”
He said the previous government -led government had damaged the economy – and accused the media of simply standing while doing so.
Hosking could have mentioned that, most of the last seven years, Winston Peters himself has been the vice -first -minister with other people from his party around the cabinet table. But that didn’t come up.
Is the news media offering the contradictory messages in the economy – or adding -les?
Under the Herald on Sunday Title: ‘If this is a recovery, why does it seem so bad?’ the HeraldLiam Dann’s business editor generally found “the gap between the data and how we feel about the economy is growing.”
“As an economic commentator, I try to be optimistic. I can see a lot of green fights from economic perspectives,” he said.
But he also said that Westpac and Ipsos searches suggest “discontent is very real.”
“This is a concern, because it suggests that people don’t think things are getting better. They are still bogged down in the kind of darkness that would have made the most sense in the middle of last year, when we were in a recession that rivaled in 1991.
“If people don’t think things will improve, then they may not.”
A dark thought, especially if media reports shape public perception.
THE HeraldLiam Dann thought the agricultural gains and the return of tourists supported by the impulse of GDP was a good thing. But Farmgate Records prices for farmers and fonterra mean record shelf prices for milk, butter and cheese for the rest of us.
Node Herald on SundayLiam Dann said people in cities “still feel that we are still in recession.”
“Things like construction … really affect a place like Auckland. You would be forgiven for being more surprised if you were in the cities. Wellington is doing it very difficult,” he said at Newstalk ZB.
Westpac chief economist Michael Gordon pointed out that the employment confidence survey in March quarter – released last week – also had a large city.
Only four of the 11 regions recorded a confidence drop, but an Auckland era, which dominated the national average.
The darkest regions – Wellington and Auckland – are also the centers of our national media. Does this colo the coverage of our economy?
“Wellington is the worst guilty, I have to say, although it is a very small part of the economy,” Dan Brunskill told Mediawatch.
“In Auckland, you also have this urban/rural problem, but in Auckland, you are providing almost a third of the economy. So if something is happening in Auckland, it is probably happening in most of the economy.
“But certainly the regions of Southern and Agricultural Island are performing much better than urban regions at the moment. Therefore, agricultural publications and people in contact with the regions are telling this story – but perhaps more focused journalists, high street, urban environments – they may be telling this story less.
“A news hook will form – and a narrative will form around it. A great example is the closure of hospitality in Wellington.
“So you regularly see stories about closed places and it looks like a great recession. But for most of the closed cafes and restaurants, a new one opened in the same place.
“I think the media sometimes loses sight of it, because you just see a series of stories about things closing and doesn’t go to see what came behind it,” said Dan Brunskill Mediawatch.
Sometimes they do.
This weekend, the post reported a restaurant that closed after fighting on a CBD street on the construction site last year “is back and larger than ever” on previous facilities of another Asian restaurant.
Gap between economic data – and how we feel
“I think economists, entrepreneurs and commentators like me tend to live in the future. We analyze the forecasts all day, we think about what will happen next.
“We are constantly thinking and talking about how good or how bad will be soon.
“While normal people live in the past – and think about how good or bad their lives have been last year. They, simplistic, but useful, predict that this will continue.
“So I think journalists could be a little better at living the moment and not living in predictions that may or may not happen.
“I’m skeptical of how the media controls people’s opinions about economics or politics. People think this happens and exercise a lot about it.
“But when I write a story about an economic forecast, if you roll to the comments section, most of them [say they’ve] I saw these predictions first. “
Dan Brunskill also estimates that politicians’ approaches to the economy are not influential.
“If people in financial markets believed what Winston Peters said [this past week about the economy] We would be having a financial crisis now.
“He’s not serious and people don’t take him seriously because you would see a huge reaction in global markets at the price of our titles to investors. We just had a lot of investors here in New Zealand who want to join the government to make PPPs.
“None of them would be here if they thought our tax accounts were counterfeit.”
Whether green shoots are about to sprout or not, US chaotic policy is a factor that no journalist or analyzer can predict.
Does this make the economy reports a frustrating guessing game?
“Companies hate uncertainty. Journalists love it. You don’t know what will happen next. This is much more fun than knowing. But for companies and the economy, it’s very difficult,” Brunskill said.
“Trust remains low because people don’t know what Trump will do. Trump will impose some rates next week, but no one knows what.
“But this is always the case. We have written a lot about predictions, but we never say that economic predictions are assuming nothing else changes, and everything will plan. And there are always surprises. The forecast that you are almost never going to happen.
“A forecast is just a scenario saying that if nothing changes here, this is how things will be. Predictions are useful, but they never represent the future. And this is only true at the moment than usual.”
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