That's great data, W69, cheers for that. If I filled out one of those surveys, I'd be tempted to be a bit political too.
What I noticed from the graphs is that while there was a definite offset depending on whether National or Labour were in power, the prediction trends within the terms of office tended to be about right. Business people could predict two quarters out, what was likely to happen in the wider economy, for better or worse. So I can't fully agree with Rodney, as this sudden downturn in the confidence survey, both for the wider economy and their own businesses, is probably real. It certainly lines up with the thoughts of the regional business owners I've been talking to, plus some who are exporters and based in the cities. We are all fairly scared about the sales prospects going forward.
The ANZ prediction charts both peaked positively just before the last general election. Actual results in GDP growth weren't so good.
The other point is that Labour's policies achieved GDP growth in the face of those earlier pessimistic surveys, quite good growth that the businesses must have seen, despite their political persuasions. And it was done when we didn't have record immigration. I wonder how bad the National Govt's GDP growth data would look, if we took away the wealthier immigrant effect. Although the population of NZ has been trending upwards since at least 1990, at a fairly constant rate. Labour achieved a peak of 6.5% GDP growth at one stage, National hasn't managed better than 3.5%, and that was in the last spell, where population growth has been 2% p.a.
NZ has experienced record net immigration levels up to the end of 2014, of more than 47,000 annually. This will have helped the GDP numbers, just by itself.