PMNZ November Newsletter Lobbying the Mayor of Dunedin and a Press Release on “The Magic Money Tree”.
Welcome to our November 2024 newsletter. Here is a link to previous newsletters.
Lobbying the Mayor of Dunedin
We approached the Mayor of Dunedin, Jules Radich, saying that Minister Chris Bishop is spinning a false narrative when he tells the people of Otago and the nation that there is no money to pay for the new Dunedin hospital.
We told Mayor Radich that our Reserve Bank provided private banks and financial institutions with $55 billion dollars in 2021 and 2022 and there was no suggestion of a lack of money back then.
We said that rather than provide stimulus to the banks, Reserve Bank money should fund public works such as the new Dunedin hospital as well as fixing up our failing infrastructure: roads, schools, bridges, water, etc.
The mayor thanked us and suggested we approach the Government with our idea for funding. He went on to say that they are not advocating for a change in funding, rather their current focus was on ensuring the Government builds the new southern region tertiary hospital as promised.
While there was no direct uptake of our idea by the mayor in this instance, we consider it important to put the issue of Reserve Bank funding for infrastructure in front of decision makers as often as we can.
Press Release on “The Magic Money Tree”.
We sent out a press release titled “There is a magic money tree Minister” in response to Minister Chris Bishop’s statement that there is no Magic Money Tree to pay for the new Dunedin hospital. Our press release got picked up by The Daily Blog.
Appealing to the heart and not the head
We are looking at appealing to the heart with some of our messaging as a lot of our communication is technical and does not pull at the heart strings. We are building a team and If there are any creative people out there, please get in contact with us at info@positivemoney.org.nz
During October we also
Posted a good news story from the banks, which is a rare achievement. New Zealand banks are going to institute a confirmation of payee service which checks if the account owner name matches the account number of the person you’re paying. This is long overdue.
Posted a 10 minute interview on Q&A with Ganesh Nana. He says Kiwis should be more worried about levels of private debt than the Government’s borrowing.
Made an approach to Bernard Hickey asking if he would be interested in using the Reserve Bank to fund significant infrastructure projects to assist his Kākā project.
Accepted an invitation to appear before Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Select Committee inquiry into banking competition.
Nga mihi
Don Richards