Delivering last term's promises

The government will raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour from 1 April. Good. Not only will this help people on the bottom by giving them an immediate pay rise - it will also help ratchet up wages for everyone else as well. But let's not forget that this is last term's promise, agreed in their coalition agreement with New Zealand First - so Labour is simply doing what it said it would in 2017. As for this term, they've promised further increases, but nothing specific. That's probably something we can trust them on, but the lack of any specific target means that there's no accountability for whether they're meeting even their own expectations - or for whether those expectations are, as in other sectors, too low.