Election 2026: Election wait leaves businesses with ‘decision debt’ – Mike Burke

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Prospa’s latest SME tracker found almost a quarter of small businesses were delaying big purchases until the result was in and 15% were holding off on expansion or hiring. The…

With official election results not due to November 27, Mike Burke urges small businesses to get on with decision-making. Photo / Getty Images

For the past six months, one sentence has done more heavy lifting in New Zealand business than most of its workforce: “Let’s wait until after the election.”

It has parked fleet upgrades, held back hiring and postponed more strategy days than a wet long weekend. Prospa’s latest SME tracker found almost a quarter of small businesses were delaying big purchases until the result was in and 15% were holding off on expansion or hiring. The bigger the business, the more likely it was waiting.

Well, good news, “after the election” has arrived. The less good news is that the bill has arrived with it.

ASB’s economists recently went back through the seven elections from 2005 to 2023, looking for the post-election catch-up you would expect if businesses really had been sitting on their decisions.

Confidence dips before polling day, but business investment still grew ahead of five of those seven elections and employment generally kept rising. In short, we tell surveys and anyone else who’ll listen that we’re waiting, but then mostly just get on with it.

So the election is rarely the real reason. Perhaps it’s simply that “we’re waiting for certainty” sounds far better at a managers’ meeting than “I haven’t decided yet”.

And if certainty is what we’re after, I have bad news. Official results aren’t declared until November 27. Then it’s Christmas, then summer, then whatever the world throws at us next.

Certainty since Covid is like the tradie who is “definitely coming on Thursday”.

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