Cunliffe on interest rates

David Cunliffe has said:

New Zealand’s interest rates are among the highest in the world and homeowners that are bearing the brunt of them should join Labour’s call for an Economic Upgrade, Labour Leader David Cunliffe says.

“New Zealand mortgage rates are higher than Australia and much of the developed world. That’s because our economy is not paying its way in the world and has major issues that need to be fixed.

No it’s because our economy is growing faster than Australia’s and hence our interest rates have started to go up.

This is using official Reserve Bank data on effective mortgage rates. Note they were up to almost 9% when David Cunliffe was a Minister and are below 6% now. The RBNZ data is not yet updated to take account of the 0.25% OCR rise but it will have only pushed things up by around 0.25%.