Radio NZ leads with exporters trying to survive ("grimly holding on") the continuing overvaluation of the NZ $ and the Dominion Post is leading with an article highlighting the implications of high debt levels. These are not things that a Government wants to see at the start of election year (Labour strategists had been working on the assumption that the realities of the structural imbalances in the economy would not be seen by the average voter until 2009 - the 2009-2011 strategy was to be one of saying "we left the economy in perfect shape, look what National has done to ruin things").
The PM will find these sentences from the Dominion Post as particularly worrying:
"Mr O'Donovan said provincial New Zealand was likely to do well this year, spurred on by a diary boom, higher commodity prices and solid growth in rural property prices.
"[But] if you're sitting in the main cities you're not going to be too happy." Wage growth would be offset by higher petrol, food, rent or mortgage servicing, he said.
Don't more voters live in urban New Zealand than rural New Zealand?
