Nona
Pelletier Senior Business Reporter
National’s
Simeon Brown and Labour’s Barbara Edmonds are the top
choices for the Minister of Finance job, according to labour
market leaders.
The role is now vacant after current
Finance Minister Nicola Willis failed to make it back to
Parliament on the list.
While leading business
organisations declined to name their top choice, the
Employers & Manufacturers and the Council of Trade
Unions were keen to share.
NZCTU president Sandra Grey
said Edmonds would be the best for workers.
“Her
approach is ensuring strong economic stability by focusing
on making sure all workers can cope with the cost-of-living
crisis that was deepened by Nicola Willis’s failed economic
plan,” Grey said.
EMA’s head of advocacy &
strategy Alan McDonald was confident it would be a
National-led coalition.
“It’s going to be a National
Party minister, so probably Simeon Brown, who is a safe pair
of hands and a known quantity, with associate ministers from
ACT and NZ First, as there are now, and possibly a National
associate minister as well.”
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If a coalition government
was National-led, Grey said the Minister of Finance should
be an experienced National MP.
“It is critical that
should National form the next government, they put an
experienced minister from their own party in the role of
Finance Minister.
“The biggest challenges for the next
government are tackling a labour market at its lowest since
the mid-1990s and the inability of families to make ends
meet financially,” she said.
She said the Finance
Minister should be a well-seasoned member of the largest
coalition party.
“Given these are intertwined issues,
we would urge Christopher Luxon to make sure that the
Workplace Relations portfolio also stays within his own
party and not given back to economic and social
vandals.”
McDonald said businesses would also be OK
with that choice of Edmonds for a Labour-led
coalition.
“I think certainly business would be more
comfortable with knowing that Barbara was the person than
maybe a couple of the other options that are floating around
in the background,” he
said.
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