Finance Minister Willis wants her NZ Budgets to be "lolly scrambles", just not in 2025. Her Pre-Budget Speech is Out-of-Touch Wellington Jokey Silliness.

For some light relief and comedy, take a look at Finance Minister Willis Pre-Budget Speech. She sets up her party clown theme by saying, "For today though, I’m going to switch out of my Economic Growth hat and into my Minister of Finance hat and focus my remarks on this year’s Budget". What's with these hats? Shouldn't a Finance Minister have a single goal - to design economic policies to raise aggregate welfare in the nation? Is she saying her other "hat" conflicts with that aim? But wait. It turns out that the theme of her Speech is, "I can confirm today there will be no lolly scramble in Budget 2025". So are government budgets in NZ typically lolly scrambles, where politicians commandeer Kiwis hard earned dollars and throw them to their mates? Since times are tough, has that tradition been put on hold this year? She says "according to the latest numbers I've seen, this smaller operating allowance means we will continue to forecast a surplus in 2029". According to the latest NZ Treasury and IMF figures I've seen, NZ has one of the largest budget deficits in the developed world and is forecast to have exploding public debt levels kicking in around 2030.

We know Willis' gig now. She's doing the bidding to push up the cost-of-living on behalf of the Big Banks, Big Supermarkets, Air NZ, Big Construction, and Big Energy. She's helping the Big Banks loosen the capital requirements that they don't like so next time they get in trouble they will come running to the tax-payer for a bail-out; she approves of stripping the rights of Bank customers to sue for overcharging by making legislation retrospective; she sat on the NZ Initiative Board, which has representatives of both Foodstuffs and Woolworths on it; and she is the 51% public owner representative of Air NZ that is doing rip-off monopoly pricing on domestic routes. Her entire Pre Budget 2025 Speech could have been written by Former Finance Minister Bill English. In fact, I believe that the speech writer was in fact Bill English's speech writer. Its a different world since back then. Willis is an economic dinosaur.

National and Labour have created a Fiscal Crisis in NZ. There's only one way out. Here it is, in joint work with former Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas

The Worst Finance Minister Ever, Labour's Grant Robertson, and now the new one who is competing for that title, Nicola Willis, have jointly created a fiscal crisis in NZ. We currently have one of the worst primary fiscal deficits in the developed world (which is government spending minus tax revenues, excluding interest costs). In the face of an ageing population, NZ's public debt will start rapidly increasing above its high post-pandemic levels, starting in 2030, as confirmed by the IMF. Fellow Blogger Michael Reddell compiled this graph:

Our current Finance Minister has only one plan, which isn't a plan: cross her fingers & pray for economic growth to pick up. However, NZ is now one of the most stagnant economies in the world. And with high uncertainty regards tariffs, there is no bet that our economy will take off anytime soon. To solve NZ's fiscal, health-care & retirement problems, I have a plan. My sidekick, who's good with numbers and doing government budgets, since he wrote five in his time, Sir Roger Douglas, Finance Minister from 1984 to 1988, has done the math. (He won't like me describing him in those terms, since thinks of himself more as my boss). There are no holes in our budget, unlike the ones of Former Finance Minister Robertson and the current one, Willis. Whatever your views about ours, it works & makes Kiwis better off. There may be parts with which you disagree with - but its a plan - and neither Labour nor National have one of their own. It is forthcoming in our domestic journal, NZ Economic Papers:

Savings_not_Taxation_ NZ_Econ_Papers_2025.pdf

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