Auckland Airport wants you to miss your flight - because its money ticket is shopping and malls.

Traffic jams to the airport caused mass panic in Auckland over the weekend as fliers struggled to get to their flights because a huge new mall with over a hundred shops had opened nearby. It jammed George Bolt Memorial Drive, which is the airport road. So who owns it? "Mānawa Bay is proudly developed and owned by Auckland International Airport Ltd" the brochures say. Of course. When will Aucklanders understand what was perceptively pointed out, as usual, months ago, ahead of the news, by your helpful consumer and social service, DownToEarth.Kiwi. We explained how in America "traditional malls in cities are declining due to online shopping, but retail sales at airports are booming. Slate Magazine reports, "Your Misery at the Airport Is Great for Business: Retail in terminals is booming" at a 20% compound growth rate. Airports supply the greatest desire of physical retail: foot traffic. Misery of flyers brings joy to airport retail. Delays mean more money spent in airport shops. Airlines now supply little to eat or drink. So restaurants at airports are thriving".

So Aucklanders, get it into your heads that Auckland Airport wants you to miss your flight. Its executives will get paid more for every travel cock-up since then you will have to hang out at the airport for longer and spend more at "Mānawa Bay" - why not go and have a $100 spa-massage there to de-stress? That will give a boost to Auckland Airports stock price. The CEO of Air NZ was once boss of Walmart in America. He understands how Auckland Airport knows there's more money in the mall business than running an efficient, low margin airport. After all, what do you think our National Airport is: a social service? No its a good old fashioned Kiwi monopoly with a market even more captive than the Supermarket Duopoly (oops, we better stop that language, or Foodstuffs will send another letter from Chapman Tripp to the University of Auckland threatening defamation). On that note, we better even stop writing this Blog, since Auckland Airport may get the same idea and threaten us with defamation for revealing the truth about how it is making money these days. So much for freedom of speech. Big Business put an end to that in NZ - and I wrongly thought that the threat was coming from the left.

The World Bank confirms 150 Developing Nations are on Track to overtake NZ, as a succession of National and Labour governments have turned NZ into one of the planet's worst performing economies

If there is one graph that symbolizes the relative economic decline of NZ, then I believe it is the one below. It measures NZ GDP per capita from 1990 to 2022, and compares it with all other nations in our Asia-Pacific region. Its a good comparison, since it controls for the effect of geography, and how the rise of many Asian-Pacific nations should, but haven't, been strongly tied to NZ fortunes (China having become our biggest export partner):

The scale is logarithmic for a reason. It gives you a measure of the percentage increases in GDP per capita in NZ compared to other nations. Every single year over this 35 year period, as far I can see from eye-balling the graph, with the exception of 1998-99, NZ's percentage rise in GDP per capita has been way lower than the average. When I was in my 20s in the 1990s, NZ's GDP per capita was about 6 times the average in the Asia-Pacific region. As of 2024, our GDP per capita is only about 2 times the Asia-Pacific average. Give it another decade or two, and there won't be much difference - the rest of Asia will be richer than us. What's more, aside from endless political rhetoric from National & Labour, can you tell who was in power in NZ by GDP performance? In fact, during the Key years, from 2008 to 2017, our relative decline accelerated. For the past Labour government, well, don't ask: NZ has recorded a drop in GDP per capita of 4.6%, one of the biggest falls in the world, during the past few years, when nearly every other Asia-Pacific country's per capita income has strongly risen. Last year, Stats NZ reports our GDP has shrunk by 0.2%. Our economy has contracted in 4 out of the past 7 quarters, recorded 0 per cent growth in one, and small positive increases in two. NZ's GDP has gone nowhere over the past two years. The World Bank reports GDP growth numbers for 150 developing countries for 2023-24. Which ones are doing worse than NZ? Argentina, Haiti (war torn), Iraq (war torn), Syria (war torn), Yemen (war torn), Equatorial Guinea (war torn), Sudan (war torn); West Bank and Gaza (war torn).

Our Main Stream Media refuses to put as its leading headline, "NZ is one of World's Worst Performing Economies", since it would make Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins - the leaders of the previous Labour government - look so awfully incompetent. But this Blog is not partisan. John Key did as much damage as that lot. In his case, it was what he didn't do, when he had the opportunity, more than what he did do. What's most remarkable to me is that a nation brimming with natural resources; a nation that never had the energy shock of Europe, which was dependent on Russian gas at the start of the Ukraine invasion (whereas NZ industry runs from hydro power); a nation that was meant to have succeeded in keeping Covid out; a nation with enough food to feed 50 million people (so we export most of it); a nation with zero illegal immigration so suffers none of the problems of Europe & America in that regard; a nation with no troubling neighbors with conflicts raging on our borders; a nation with a mild climate; a nation with a largely decent, trust-worthy, friendly and, despite some poor stats, mostly literate & educated citizenry, can have been so badly led & managed that our abundant advantages have been wasted. My conclusion? Dummies have been in charge.

Sources:

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6feb9566-e973-4706-a4e1-b3b82a1a758d/content