Slamming the Greens’ newly released “Green Budget,” Seymour said it was “fiscal fantasyland that made a strong case for teaching financial literacy in schools.”
“The Greens want to blow out national debt to 54 percent of GDP,” Seymour said. “Anyone with a mortgage understands that when you’re deep in debt, you spend so much on interest that you can’t cover the essentials. We’re already burning through nearly $9 billion a year just to service government debt — and now they want to add another $40 billion.”
Seymour warned that the cost of the Greens’ promises would fall on the shoulders of young New Zealanders, “children that aren’t even born yet,” and pointed to tax increases targeting income earners, asset holders, and business owners as further signs the plan is out of touch with economic reality.
“Anyone with the financial sense the Greens lack would simply take their career, their business, and their money overseas,” he said. “This isn’t policy — it’s punishment for success, wrapped in fantasy.”
He dismissed the Greens’ proposal to tax private jets as symbolic theatre, saying it reflected an “eat-the-rich” mentality that offers no serious plan for growing New Zealand’s economy. “They want to divide what we already have, rather than generate more. It all adds up to a poorer, more miserable New Zealand.”
While ACT painted the plan as economically disastrous, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the current model of public funding had failed families and communities, especially in areas like early childhood education and healthcare. Under the party’s plan, ECE fees would be capped at $10 a day initially, with full free early childhood education delivered by 2029.
To pay for the reen’s Budget, the party would include a wealth tax, a private jet tax, end interest deductibility for landlords, restore the 10 year ‘bright-line’ test, double minerals royalties and changes to ACC levies.
The plan would see net debt climb from 45 percent of GDP to above 53 percent by the 2028/29 financial year.
Davidson said too much taxpayer money had gone into subsidising for-profit providers, while families continued to pay exorbitant fees and teachers were underpaid. “This is what ECE can look like when we put our kids first and push aside corporate greed,” she said.
In healthcare, the Greens are proposing to make GP and nurse visits free for all New Zealanders, starting with the areas of highest need.
Davidson argued that successive governments had allowed the primary care system to deteriorate, with thousands of people now unable to afford basic care and hospitals overwhelmed as a result.
She said the plan would create new public clinics, grow the health workforce, and fund mobile health units to reach rural and underserved communities. “Healthcare isn’t a luxury — it’s a human right,” she said. “No one should have to choose between getting help and paying the bills.”
The Budget also includes sweeping commitments to Māori-led solutions, including a revival of the Māori Health Authority, land return policies, kaupapa Māori suicide prevention, and affordable housing built on whenua Māori.
Green MP Hūhana Lyndon said the plan stood in direct opposition to what she called the current Government’s “relentless undoing” of Māori progress. “Te Tiriti o Waitangi isn’t just a document — it’s a promise of protection, of partnership, and of justice. That’s what we’re standing for,” she said.
Broadcaster Chris Lynch is an award winning journalist who also produces Christchurch news and video content for domestic and international companies. This article was originally published by Chris Lynch Media and is published here with kind permission.
Seymour warned that the cost of the Greens’ promises would fall on the shoulders of young New Zealanders, “children that aren’t even born yet,” and pointed to tax increases targeting income earners, asset holders, and business owners as further signs the plan is out of touch with economic reality.
“Anyone with the financial sense the Greens lack would simply take their career, their business, and their money overseas,” he said. “This isn’t policy — it’s punishment for success, wrapped in fantasy.”
He dismissed the Greens’ proposal to tax private jets as symbolic theatre, saying it reflected an “eat-the-rich” mentality that offers no serious plan for growing New Zealand’s economy. “They want to divide what we already have, rather than generate more. It all adds up to a poorer, more miserable New Zealand.”
While ACT painted the plan as economically disastrous, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the current model of public funding had failed families and communities, especially in areas like early childhood education and healthcare. Under the party’s plan, ECE fees would be capped at $10 a day initially, with full free early childhood education delivered by 2029.
To pay for the reen’s Budget, the party would include a wealth tax, a private jet tax, end interest deductibility for landlords, restore the 10 year ‘bright-line’ test, double minerals royalties and changes to ACC levies.
The plan would see net debt climb from 45 percent of GDP to above 53 percent by the 2028/29 financial year.
Davidson said too much taxpayer money had gone into subsidising for-profit providers, while families continued to pay exorbitant fees and teachers were underpaid. “This is what ECE can look like when we put our kids first and push aside corporate greed,” she said.
In healthcare, the Greens are proposing to make GP and nurse visits free for all New Zealanders, starting with the areas of highest need.
Davidson argued that successive governments had allowed the primary care system to deteriorate, with thousands of people now unable to afford basic care and hospitals overwhelmed as a result.
She said the plan would create new public clinics, grow the health workforce, and fund mobile health units to reach rural and underserved communities. “Healthcare isn’t a luxury — it’s a human right,” she said. “No one should have to choose between getting help and paying the bills.”
The Budget also includes sweeping commitments to Māori-led solutions, including a revival of the Māori Health Authority, land return policies, kaupapa Māori suicide prevention, and affordable housing built on whenua Māori.
Green MP Hūhana Lyndon said the plan stood in direct opposition to what she called the current Government’s “relentless undoing” of Māori progress. “Te Tiriti o Waitangi isn’t just a document — it’s a promise of protection, of partnership, and of justice. That’s what we’re standing for,” she said.
Broadcaster Chris Lynch is an award winning journalist who also produces Christchurch news and video content for domestic and international companies. This article was originally published by Chris Lynch Media and is published here with kind permission.
3 comments:
It is extraordinary in this day & age that anyone can propose a modern form of the Great Leap Forward & think it is good economic & social policy. How does this idiocy & idealism survive into adulthood? Where does this bubble exist? Do they not have mortgages, pay bills, buy food? Know others who do?
You need a thriving capitalist economy to finance quality govt services in areas such as healthcare, education, aged care, etc. What the like of the Reds, woops I mean Greens, don't understand is that killing the goose that lays the golden eggs means you get no golden eggs for supporting those services. Socialist countries can't deliver on the promises because they strangle the capitalist economy.
You do have to hand it to the Green Party. And then you have to politely ask for your hand back, because frankly, they’re probably going to tax it.
what truly stood out in the green budget was not what they put in — the usual long-suffering billionaires, the punitive assault on the nation’s nine private jets, the tax rates that spiral upward like a house plant seeking the last photon of economic logic — no, what stood out was what was left out.
Yes, in a document that included dental for all, wealth taxes, and the economic equivalent of rubbing a crystal and hoping for surplus, somehow there was no mention — none! — of the Green Party’s more esoteric boutique offerings.
Julie Anne Genter, for instance, must surely be sobbing into her sustainably-sourced pannier bag. Not a single line about banning private cars, tripling EV subsidies, or the dream of turning every motorway into a permaculture garden with dedicated kombucha lanes. It’s as though Chloe and Marama just… forgot her. Which is brave, given she once tried to cycle into Parliament mid-contractions just to make a point about urban density.
Tamatha Paul, meanwhile, has spent months loudly manifesting a world where the police are defunded, presumably replaced by a healing circle and a well-curated Spotify playlist. Not a whisper. Not even a token nod to reallocating resources from tasers to more in-depth cultural reports. Has she been ghosted by her own caucus? How very centrist of them.
And then there’s Ben Doyle, whose raison d’être appears to be ensuring children never encounter a fixed category of anything again — not gender, not biology, not even the school bell. Alas, no fresh funds for “gender affirming chalk” or intersectional lunchboxes in this year’s fantasy accounting. The silence is deafening — or perhaps, as Ben might put it, “silence is a construct and therefore a site of liberation.”
The omission of these pet projects raises uncomfortable questions. Have the Greens realised their greatest electoral threat is not climate denial, but being taken seriously? Are they trying, for once, to look like a party that could actually operate a spreadsheet without bursting into tears and composting it?
Still, one must admire their commitment to not saying the quiet bits out loud. They’ve mastered the art of putting forward just enough economic dream-sequence to titillate the faithful, while discreetly sweeping the more exotic manifesto debris under a black and white tablecloth.
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