Ani O'Brien: Nicola Willis is no Ruth Richardson and that’s the problem

Nicola Willis promised discipline. She promised to rein in spending, shrink the bloated public service, and put New Zealand’s economy “back on track” after Labour’s disastrous run. Instead, she has drifted. Spending remains high, the bureaucracy is still bloated, and taxpayers see little sign of the tough decisions we were promised.

The result? Labour, of all parties, is polling neck and neck with National, less than 13 months out from the election. That should be a political impossibility, given the wreckage they left behind. But it speaks to the central failure of National and its Finance Minister. Voters expected change, and what they got instead was continuity.

Labour added more than 14,000 new public servants in six years. Ministries like the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Enterprise, Ministry of Social Development, and Ministry of Education became sprawling empires, gobbling up billions for policy advisors, communications staff, and layers upon layers of management. Treasury ballooned, Kāinga Ora turned into a sinkhole of money and mismanagement, and countless “climate” and Te Tiriti units sprouted in every department, each producing glossy reports but little action.

And what has Willis done to change it? A few headline-grabbing restructures, followed by the same old bureaucratic game of restructure musical chairs. People made redundant on Monday were rehired on Tuesday into newly created “advisory” roles. The overall size of the machine has barely shifted.

Take Kāinga Ora. Labour poured tens of billions into a housing agency that can’t balance its own books, let alone house people effectively. It has more spin doctors than most ministries have policy staff. And yet Willis has kept it staggering on, despite warnings from Treasury itself that the agency is financially unsustainable.

Or look at the endless climate bureaucracy. Labour left behind over 200 separate climate-related roles scattered across government. Instead of consolidating and stripping back, Willis has allowed them to continue pumping out “roadmaps,” “transition plans,” and “engagement strategies” that change precisely nothing about our emissions trajectory, but cost millions in salaries and consultants’ fees. These are not marginal sums. They are symbols of a government that refuses to take the axe to wasteful spending.

Nicola Willis likes to remind the press that she is “not Ruth Richardson.” She seems terrified of being painted as “heartless” or “harsh.” But this fear is exactly the problem.

New Zealand doesn’t need a Finance Minister who wants to be liked by the Wellington commentariat. It needs one who will take on the entrenched public service machine and force it to shrink. Ruth Richardson was hated by many in her day and since, but she saved New Zealand from collapse. She had the courage to do what was necessary, not what was popular.

Willis, by contrast, is actively avoiding what could be her Ruth Richardson moment. She had the mandate. She had the timing. She had the opportunity to make real cuts and reset expectations. Instead, she choked.

It is not just armchair critics who are questioning Nicola Willis’s performance. Heavyweights of New Zealand’s economic and political world have already sounded the alarm. Sir Roger Douglas, the architect of the 1980s reforms, has been blunt: Willis “is not up to the job and is not levelling with the New Zealand public.” He and University of Auckland economics professor Robert MacCulloch argue that Willis is misleading voters with talk of a return to surplus, when Treasury’s own forecasts show ballooning deficits driven by pensions, health, and the long-term costs of an ageing population. MacCulloch has gone further, accusing Willis of “creative accounting” and warning that the country’s finances are being misrepresented. Their message is stark: without decisive action, New Zealand is headed toward bankruptcy.

From the right-wing policy think-tank world, the warnings are just as sharp. Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, has cautioned that Willis’s modest spending trims are nowhere near enough to stop fiscal drift, describing the Budget’s operating allowances as far too soft. Oliver Hartwich, the Initiative’s executive director, has compared today’s fiscal challenge to the 1980s, pointing to a “gaping structural budget deficit” and sluggish productivity. He has noted with concern that government spending under Willis remains higher as a share of GDP than it was under Grant Robertson, raising the uncomfortable question of whether National is simply entrenching Labour’s legacy.

The Taxpayers’ Union has been just as scathing. They accuse Willis of talking tough on spending while presiding over record-high outlays, effectively doubling down on “Grant Robertson economics.” They argue that instead of laser-focusing on wasteful agencies, Willis has been distracted by trivia and political positioning. In their words, the government should be “getting its fiscal house in order” rather than patting itself on the back for modest restraint that does little to dent the bloated state.

Taken together, these voices paint a picture of a Finance Minister who has squandered her mandate, fiddling at the edges while debt climbs, bureaucracy swells, and voters grow restless. When figures of this calibre are calling time on a sitting Finance Minister, it is no longer just commentary. It is a warning.

The uncomfortable truth is that if Nicola Willis cannot do the job, someone else must. And there is only one real alternative: Chris Bishop.

Bishop has already proven he can deliver. His work in Housing and Infrastructure has been disciplined, results-oriented, and clear. He is across the detail, he can explain policy in plain English, and he has earned public credibility. To be blunt, he is the National minister in this Cabinet who has shown the spine and skill to handle Finance. Naturally, there is no way the portfolio would be assigned to a coalition partner minister.

I am reluctant to see him moved from his existing portfolios as New Zealand desperately needs results in both Housing and Infrastructure, but if the Finance Minister’s job must be done properly, Bishop is the only credible choice.

New Zealanders are tightening their belts. Families are cutting back on groceries, mortgage holders are under crushing pressure, and small businesses are hanging by a thread. Against that backdrop, a Finance Minister who won’t cut spending is a liability.

The government is running out of time. Nicola Willis’s refusal to take Ruth Richardson style action risks turning 2026 into a bloodbath. Voters won’t reward timidity. They won’t re-elect a government that fiddled at the edges while the country slid backwards.

Willis can still turn this around, of course, by taking the axe to bloated agencies, cancelling vanity projects, and proving she is willing to be unpopular in the pursuit of economic sanity. But if she won’t, then the time has come to ask the hard question: is Nicola Willis the Finance Minister New Zealand needs, or is it time for Chris Bishop to step up?

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.