Treasury Archive

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  A government at war with its own Treasury

  
  
  
  In all the time I’ve been hopping around Parliament I’ve never heard a statement more extraordinary than this one: The numbers from Treasury are nonsense. Treasury can’t tell us what the deficit is going to be in December let alone what’s happening in 2030 or 2040. Now, I’ll admit to having a go at Treasury forecasting myself [...] read more
  November 18, 2009 1:50 pm - 128 Comments
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  The strange, mysterious and odd case of the Overseas Investment Technical Reference Group

  
  
  
  If I were an overseas frog looking to buy up some prime Kiwi land I know who I’d be using as a law firm to lodge my application.  I’d be calling Russel McVeagh or Simpson Grierson or Chapman Tripp or Bell Gully or Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.  The reason for my hypothetical hiring of these firms [...] read more
  July 29, 2009 10:34 am - 4 Comments
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  Treasury’s Oil BEFU

  
  
  
  I promised to follow up on last week’s Budget Economic Forecast Update, (BEFU), in order to compare it to my own predictions of what Treasury would predict. If you look at the chart from my post before Budget day, you will see that I predicted that Treasury would be lazy and just cut and paste [...] read more
  May 28, 2008 9:36 am - 26 Comments
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  Peak oil rescues the Prime Minister

  
  
  
  The Prime Minister is defending her flip flop on the Emissions Trading Scheme on the basis that oil prices are rising and thus having the same effect on motorists’ behaviour as the ETS would have done anyway.  This, as Jeanette has pointed out on The Panel this afternoon, ignores the fact that taxpayers are subsidising [...] read more
  May 6, 2008 9:35 pm - 12 Comments
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  Does the left hand have any idea what the right hand is doing?

  
  
  
  Do Treasury and the Reserve Bank know that the Ministry for the Environment is talking about Peak Oil on this webpage?  So, to be accurate, it’s really the right hand that doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.Now, should Cabinet get rid of the offending web page, or should it pay $50 dollars and [...] read more
  March 17, 2008 9:20 am - 2 Comments
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  Rates rise because oil prices rise

  
  
  
  Oil price rises are the single biggest factor in a proposed rates increase discussed today by the Greater Wellington Regional Council. The proposed rates increase for the 2008/09 financial year is 6.8%. Rising transport costs, in particular diesel to fuel the region’s buses, account for 40% of the proposed rates rise. However, ratepayers will not pay [...] read more
  February 25, 2008 5:41 pm - 16 Comments
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  More on the price of oil

  
  
  
  The Minister of Finance might be standing by Treasury and the Reserve Bank’s farcical attempts to pick the future price of oil, but it seems the Associate Energy Minister does not believe the price of oil is retreating from its current US$90 a barrel price any time soon.  He’s using it as a justification to [...] read more
  December 3, 2007 3:41 pm - 7 Comments
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  What have Treasury and the Reserve Bank been up to?

  
  
  
  Nothing apparently. Jeanette asked Michael Cullen in the house today if he had any faith in the economic projections that Treasury does on his behalf. She then pointed to their last seven economic forecasts and their predictions for the price of oil going forward. Here is the graph of their predictions:   One can only describe Treasury’s [...] read more
  November 13, 2007 3:50 pm - 23 Comments