Budget 2025: Nicola Willis' focus on the Opposition shows she's feeling the pressure
It was an unusual decision by Willis to lead off the general debate yesterday with a speech on the Labour Party and whether it will have a core Crown debt ceiling of 50% of GDP, as advised by Treasury. There were discrepancies between what leader Chris Hipkins said this week – no decision – and what finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds said last week – she supported the ceiling. It was hardly the issue of the day, one day before her much-anticipated second Budget.
When she was at the Budget printers in Petone in the morning, Willis explicitly told media she was not focusing on the Opposition, then promptly went back into town and drafted a speech about them. The attack on the eve of her own Budget shows she will use anything that promotes her own sense of discipline. It also suggests she may be nervous about polling since the pay equity changes were passed under urgency.
It wasn't just Labour in her sights. She ended her speech with a flourish against the big-spending Greens' alternative Budget: 'Just spare a thought also for Chlöe Swarbrick: she wants to save a planet that she doesn't even live on,' Willis said. The BS Budget or the BA Budget?
Labour's Kieran McAnulty immediately responded to Nicola Willis' speech and her preferred nickname for the Budget as the 'No BS Budget': 'A confident finance Minister doesn't talk about her opposite; she talks about herself and what they've achieved and they didn't mention that once and New Zealanders know exactly why: because they have done bugger all, because they've buggered up the Budget.' C-bombs in the House – the sequel
Andrea Vance, who used the c-word in the Sunday Star Times in describing the actions of women ministers over pay equity law changes, won the political journalist of the year award at last week's Voyager Media Awards for work in 2024.
The other finalists were my Herald colleague Jamie Ensor and RNZ's Guyon Espiner. The Herald on Sunday won weekly newspaper of the year and the overall newspaper of the year.
I was intrigued to see how Hansard, the record of Parliament, would handle the c-word after Act's Workplace Minister Brooke van Velden used it in Parliament last week in a bid to convey her outrage at Andrea Vance's column.
Curiously, Hansard spelled out the full word in reporting van Velden's words, but put square brackets between the second letter and the last letter, like this: c[***] (asterisks ours).
After making an inquiry to the Office of the Clerk as to why the brackets were there, I was told the reason is that van Velden's quote was not an exact quote from the Vance article; van Velden uttered the word, whereas the article used the letter c and three dots. Hansard handles all quotes the same way. If an MP claims to be quoting but it is not an exact quote, it gets the square bracket treatment. Justice delayed
The Government normally has control of what happens in Parliament, but not this week. The debate on the Privileges Committee report recommending the suspension of three Te Pāti Māori MPs had to be held as the first item of business following the tabling of the report last Thursday, which meant it had to be held on Tuesday after Question Time.
There was no way the debate could be delayed at the discretion of the Speaker, the Leader of the House or even by agreement among parties. The only way the debate could be adjourned was after the debate had begun, which is what Chris Bishop, as Leader of the House, moved after speeches by Privileges Committee chair Judith Collins and Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
It was a closely guarded secret until Bishop's ambush, though why it was so secret is not evident. There is little sense of collegiality in the parliamentary complex at present. But Labour was not nimble enough, and having spent a couple of days calling for a delay in the debate so Te Pāti Māori leaders could take part in the Budget debate on Thursday, it got a minute's notice to think about the delay motion and vote against it.
Hipkins thought that while the delay might let the MPs speak in the Budget, it might prevent them from voting on the Budget. It turns out they will be able to do both, although that is no guarantee they will.
The whole episode has been frustrating, and that is clear in the comprehensive comment piece by political editor Thomas Coughlan. More crime and punishment
Winston Peters was thrown out of the House on Tuesday for the first time this term for a completely daft question to his benchmate, the Prime Minister. Peters had not read the room properly and did not pick up on the fact that Speaker Gerry Brownlee was at breaking point in his attempts to tighten the leash at Question Time, ahead of what he thought was going to be a fraught debate following it. Deputy PM Winston Peters leaves the House on Tuesday. Photo / Adam Pearce
Luxon had been answering questions from Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer about his interview the previous day with Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. Hosking had used the term 'Māorification' in a question around Stop/Go signs being in te reo (Taihoa/Haere). Ngārewa Packer questioned him about what he thought it meant and why he had not pushed back on the question, to which Peters made the following contribution: '...on the issue of 'Māorification', would it be 'Māorification' if every Thursday I went down and got myself a suntan?'
Brownlee, having issued a warning two minutes earlier that he was not in a mood to be trifled with, told Peters to leave the House, although he let him back in at the end of Question Time. If you're going to get thrown out of the House, Winston, it is better for it to be on a point of principle, or at least something clever. Hanging judges
Perhaps Peters' equilibrium had been disturbed. Earlier in the day, while making a KiwiRail Budget announcement at Wellington Railway Station, Peters had been heckled by a staff member of Tonkin + Taylor on his way to work, including the term 'You f***ing moron.' The heckler was wearing his work lanyard and the company has contracts with KiwiRail.
Peters yesterday showed no sympathy for the staffer, whose conduct is being reviewed by his company and whose actions are being defended by the Free Speech Union.
Perhaps following the example of the hanging judges on the Privileges Committee, the heckler could get a three-week suspension with no pay – and maybe some discount if he showed some contrition to Peters. By the way...
• Winston Peters puts on his Foreign Minister's hat tomorrow and leaves for a trip taking in Adelaide, the home city of his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India. It will be the first visit ever by a New Zealand Foreign Minister to Nepal and coincides with the 72nd anniversary of the summit of Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary.
• Parliament is set to go into urgency after the Budget today and is expected to stretch into a Saturday sitting. We know this because the cafeteria staff have been asked to open at 8am on Saturday. Quote unquote
'It is not a Budget filled with rainbows and unicorns. It is a reality Budget that will deliver genuine hope for the future.' – Finance Minister Nicola Willis at the Petone printers yesterday. Micro quiz
What year was the so-called Mother of All Budgets presented? (Answer below.) Brickbat ACC Minister Scott Simpson. Photo / Hagen Hopkins
Goes to ACC Minister Scott Simpson, who said in response to a question from Labour's Camilla Belich about a particular ACC programme that has been stopped: 'ACC is an independent Crown entity, and I, as Minister, stand at arm's length from operational decisions.' You don't hear the ministers of Health, Housing or Transport say that about Health NZ, Kāinga Ora or Waka Kotahi. Bouquet Eric Crampton, chief economist of the NZ Initiative.
Goes to Eric Crampton, the chief economist of the NZ Initiative think-tank, who refused to accept Treasury's invitation to today's Budget lock-up unless it lifted itsban on Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney– which it did. This week's top stories
OPINION - Budget 2025: KiwiSaver changes, tax write-offs and other 'surprises' – Jenée Tibshraeny on what to watch out for in today's Budget.
Budget 2025 – debt debate: In the final days before the Budget, Finance Minister Nicola Willis has been turning up the heat on Labour for its flip-flopping on debtthat .
Budget 2025 preview: The Government needs to find billions of dollars for the numbers to add up in today's Budget. Derek Cheng outlines what we know so far.
Budget 2025 – health spending: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Health Minister Simeon Brown have announced that $164 million will be spent on urgent care across the country.
Peters heckling: The employer of a man who heckled NZ First leader Winston Peters during a press conference has drawn criticism after apologising for his behaviour and saying the company had launched an investigation.
MPs' punishment: The Government has passed a surprise motion to delay the debate on the punishment of three Te Pāti Māori MPs for participating in last year's controversial haka in the House.
OPINION – MPs' punishment: MPs' failure to compromise on the punishments meted out to three Te Pāti Māori MPs after last year's haka in the House bodes ill for Parliament, writes Thomas Coughlan.
MPs' property: The latest disclosures of politicians' financial interests have been released by Parliament, revealing how MPs' property portfolios looked at the start of the year.
Regulatory Standards Bill: Implementing the Regulatory Standards Bill will cost a minimum of $20 million per annum across 20 years, government officials estimate.
Digital Services Tax: The Government has binned a tax worth an estimated $100 million each year after threats of retaliation from US President Donald Trump.
Greens' budget: Labour leader Chris Hipkins has called the Green Party's alternative budget 'unrealistic', but says he agrees with some elements.
ANALYSIS – think-tank 101: What is a political think-tank and who are the key players in New Zealand? Audrey Young explains.
ANALYSIS – social sector shakeup: 'We need a different model' - Andy Coster talks to Audrey Young about his new role in reshaping social sector funding.
Stay with us for comprehensive coverage of today's Budget, including live coverage from 2pm, with interviews with major players, in-depth analysis and commentary. Parliament will go into urgency later today to debate Budget-related legislation. Parliament will be in recess next week.
Quiz answer: 1991, by Ruth Richardson
For more political news and views, listen to On the Tiles, the Herald's politics podcast.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Legislation that lets workers talk about salaries likely to pass into law
Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech. Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen. Legislation that lets workers talk about salaries likely to pass into law Labour MP Camilla Belich. Photo / Mark Mitchell By Lillian Hanly of RNZ A Labour Party member's bill that seeks to stop employers enforcing gag orders on workers talking about their salaries is likely to pass into law. Labour MP Camilla Belich's bill – called the Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill – passed its second reading on Wednesday night. Currently, employers can put pay secrecy clauses in workers' contracts, preventing them from discussing their salaries with colleagues. Belich's Bill would make pay gag clauses unenforceable, meaning employers could not take legal action if an employee does talk about pay.
Newsroom
4 hours ago
- Newsroom
Govt winds up council reform storm
Analysis: It's a sentiment likely to set pulses racing among the current crop of Government ministers. In 2010, four-term councillor Bryan Cadogan aimed to unseat sitting Clutha mayor Juno Hayes by running on a platform of tying rates to inflation and focusing on core services. Cadogan won by 354 votes, turning around the previous election result in the district hemmed in by Dunedin, Central Otago, and Southland. Now, the Clutha mayor, who isn't running for re-election in October's elections, finds himself, and his sector, in the firing line of an interventionist Government considering rates caps, and introducing legislation to ensure councils focus on – that's right – core services. The Local Government NZ conference in Ōtautahi/Christchurch was formally launched on Wednesday with a video address, of less than two minutes, by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Councils need to get back to basics, he said, spending wisely and delivering value. What does that mean? 'Prioritising pipes over vanity projects,' explained the prime minister, flanked by national flags. 'It means roads over reports, and it means real outcomes.' When the address finished, conference MC Miriama Kamo started clapping loudly, joined somewhat unenthusiastically by a smattering of conference attendees. 'I'm the only one clapping, I see,' Kamo quipped. Cadogan says the Government's message landed 'pretty flatly' with him. 'It's getting a wee bit tedious getting asked time and time again to do the impossible.' Chris Bishop, the minister overseeing resource management reforms, took a more fire and brimstone approach than his leader, saying there was shrinking evidence councils were cutting their cloth and enabling growth. 'You cry out for more financing and funding tools. We're giving them to you. You ask for a better, simpler planning system. We're giving this to you, too. 'We are getting our house in order. It's time you sorted yours out.' (Some would have thought that line a bit rich, given analysis of May's Budget suggests Luxon's coalition will increase gross debt by more in five years than the Covid-affected previous government did in six.) Bishop announced a 'plan stop', warning councils not to waste money and time reviewing city and district plans, and regional policy statements – with narrow exceptions – ahead of an overhaul of resource management laws due to land in 2027. 'The time for excuses is over,' Chris Bishop told the Local Government NZ conference in Christchurch. Photo: David Williams Sam Broughton, mayor of Selwyn, just south of Christchurch, and president of Local Government NZ, says: 'It was really good to have that certainty.' Is that just common sense? Broughton says the progress on reforms is pleasing, but adds: 'It feels like councils have been in this reform storm for six or seven years, and has just been ongoing change without actually landing something.' Local Government Minister Simon Watts introduced the bill to focus councils on core services, which is expected to have its first reading on Thursday. ('It feels like the Government has a caricature of local government that isn't true,' Broughton says. He notes 80 percent of Selwyn council's capital spending is on pipes and roads.) Watts' explanation of why it was necessary to force councils to concentrate on core services, like roads, water and rubbish, sent offended ripples through the conference crowd. The minister used the analogy of setting boundaries for his children. Letting them do whatever they liked might lead to bad choices, he suggested. Instead, he might tell them, 'Hey, you've got these five things to do'. Among the crowd's murmurs, one conference-goer shouted: 'Just a bit patronising, mate!' From the conference stage, Watts appeared to pour cold water on the idea regional councils were about to be scrapped. 'We're thinking about it,' Watts said, adding ministers were cognisant 'there's already a huge amount of reform underway in your sector'. Bishop tried to mollify concerns about potential environmental consequences from the audience, saying a new Natural Environment Act would focus on biodiversity, ecology and human health. Later, the minister tells Newsroom: 'There will be environmental limits that will be set through the new regime.' (After a remit passed at Local Government NZ's annual general meeting on Wednesday, councils called for a review of local government's structure.) Christopher Luxon beamed in to the Local Government NZ conference in Christchurch. Photo: David Williams Government reforms for local government include the network-merging replacement for three waters, Local Water Done Well, waving city and regional deals under the noses of councils, and offering different funding and financing options for infrastructure to speed up house-building. Back to Cadogan, the Clutha mayor, who talks to Newsroom while walking to a negotiation with other councils on water services. He says despite Government rhetoric, councils can't be expected to achieve the triumvirate of lower rates, infrastructure upgrades and under-control debt. 'The Government know it, we know it, but we just keep on getting this.' Clutha council's experience puts those financial management challenges in stark relief. In 2019, its external borrowings were $5 million. Five years later, it had ballooned to $123m. To add salt to the financial wound, this year's average rates rise was an 'ungodly' 16.59 percent. How did this happen? 'Three waters, wholly and solely,' Cadogan says. (Last year, the mayor predicts the financial consequences of the 'three waters debacle' will hit. In the latest annual plan, he says 89.4 percent of this year's rates rise is attributable to roads, rubbish and three waters.) Clutha's unfortunate figures are: the third-longest water reticulation network in the country, with 27 sewage or water plants on 30-year consents, and, crucially, only 18,500 people to pay for it. Of the country's 565 drinking water quality breaches last year, 338 or 60 percent were in Clutha. 'We all want lower rates increases,' says Sam Broughton, the Selwyn district mayor and Local Government NZ president. Photo: David Williams Cadogan gives the example of a water upgrade for the tiny town of Waihola: running an 18.5km pipeline from Milton's water treatment plant oto the reservoir cost $6.3m. After years of problems with water quality and quantity, boil water notices were removed for all but 20 of the town's 247 houses. 'Then we go to Heriot, and then we go to Tapanui, then Owaka, then Clinton,' Cadogan says. 'It's a financial delusion that you can have rates cap, you can have debt ceilings, and you have to do this infrastructure update.' It would have been better for the National-led coalition to lift the hood on Labour's three waters policy and chuck out what they didn't like, Broughton says, instead of scrapping it and starting again. He thinks resolving water across the country might take seven or eight more steps. Policy lurches and delays cost millions of dollars and can, of course, increase council rates. Many councils might feel aggrieved by the ministerial attack given the National Party's pre-election commitment to devolution and localism. Luxon promised to reshape the relationship between central and local government. 'It does feel like every party in opposition is a localist,' Broughton says, 'and then as soon as they're in power, they become a creature that draws all the more power to themselves.' Broughton was applauded by conference attendees for his opening comments – made before Bishop's address. 'We all want lower rates increases. I want lower rates increases, I know you want lower rates increases, I hear from my community they want lower rates increases. But it can't be at the expense of our children picking up the tab because of our negligence today.' The Selwyn mayor tells Newsroom a key problem is councils have few alternatives to raise money. The best tool the Government could give councils, in his opinion, is to return GST spending on new houses locally. 'That would be a game-changer for us,' he says, noting between 1000 and 3000 houses have been built each year in Selwyn over the past five or six years. Broughton's also a fan of bed taxes, something Queenstown's council has, for years, been pushing for. Luxon said this week the Government's not actively considering a bed tax. 'It has just been an avalanche of unstoppable figures. Unstoppable.' Bryan Cadogan, Clutha mayor This is the second year ministers have used the Local Government NZ conference to berate councils for spending on 'nice-to-haves'. Last year, the venue, Wellington's $180m Tākina centre, was in the crosshairs. But Christchurch's half-billion-dollar monolithic convention centre, Te Pae, is of a different ilk – paid for by taxpayers as a post-quake anchor project. Luxon, Watts and Bishop did miss a trick in Christchurch, though. A 15-minute walk away from Te Pae is the new stadium, Te Kaha – a loss-making facility that will cost ratepayers $453m to build. The city's ratepayers face a three-year, cumulative rates rise of 24.66 percent that without the stadium, that would have been 19.43 percent. Using Luxon's words, the stadium isn't roads, rubbish or water, and tends, perhaps, more towards a vanity project. The last word goes to Cadogan, the outgoing Clutha mayor. He hopes a water services 'umbrella' with other councils will help his district save on infrastructure spending. 'We've been basically a stand-alone council for the last five years. Have a look what that did to our debt,' he says. 'I'm gutted as a mayor. I pride myself on really understanding figures. I understand them all right. It has just been an avalanche of unstoppable figures. Unstoppable.'
Newsroom
4 hours ago
- Newsroom
Seven-month delay shows gas ban repeal isn't PM's top priority
Comment: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had his talking points close to hand on Monday morning, when asked about an open letter from major industry groups arguing that New Zealand's energy market is broken. "The basic problem is that we don't have enough gas thanks to Labour screwing the scrum by banning oil and gas," he said on Morning Report, when asked why New Zealand was still in this situation. The number one solution to that was repealing the 2018 ban on new offshore exploration licences, which he promised would come this quarter.
