Ryan Bridge: Will Labour's election bribe work?

It's not quite Briscoes sale level, but 10% off your student loan is not to be scoffed at.

Unless you're not a student, never had a student loan, and don't plan on sitting in a lecture theatre for three years.

Then you don't really care about this policy except for what it costs you as a taxpayer.

The unfortunate thing about democracy is that we're all taxpayers.

It'll cost almost half a billion dollars next year, totalling almost $600 million over five years.

This is an old trick in Labour's playbook.

Helen Clark secured a third term in power after introducing interest-free student loans in 2005.

But this week, the Nats will hit back with their own little sweetener.

The books are open tomorrow for everyone to have a peek under the hood.

Listening to the sounds Nicola Willis was making yesterday, and to the bank economists on Friday, growth and the surplus should be looking a bit better than they did in the last update in May.

And then Nicola Willis will use those numbers to release policy: tax cuts.

She dropped hints about this at the BusinessNZ election conference a few weeks ago.

She's going to try to do something about bracket creep.

Which, unlike Labour's student loan bribe, is a bribe that almost all Kiwi taxpayers will benefit from.