NZCPR Newsletter: Budget Review

The Budget is done and dusted and on the face of it, National successfully delivered on its election promise to provide tax relief to New Zealanders by lowering tax thresholds.

Dr Eric Crampton: Entrenching Labour's big-spending approach to government

It would be ludicrous to describe Grant Robertson’s 2019 Wellbeing Budget as austere. Core government spending rose from around $27.50 of every $100 in economic activity to about $29 – a substantial increase.

Earlier this week, the Taxpayers Union showed that for every person who thought Budget 2019 did not spend enough, as a proportion of overall economic activity, more than three people thought it spent too much.

Clive Bibby: Winners and losers from the 2024 budget

For me, TV One’s Chief Political Reporter Maiki Sherman said it best when she made the comment - “The Government had no choice but to do what it has done given its limited options”.

This from a lady who couldn’t wait to suggest the Government was doomed after the publication of the first Political poll of the year. 

Peter Dunne: Governments and Budgets

Notwithstanding all the usual pre-Budget media hype it is worth remembering that Budgets seldom defeat governments. Game-changing Budgets – like Sir Roger Douglas’s 1984 Labour Budget or Ruth Richardson’s 1991 National “Mother of All Budgets” – which profoundly shook up the existing social and economic order, did not lead to their governments’ defeat at the next election.

Cam Slater: At Last, Taxpayers Get Some Tax Relief!

Nicola Willis has delivered and saved her job after promising tax cuts during the election or she would resign. For the first time in a decade, we finally have a government that is going to take less from our pockets.

NZCPR Newsletter: Budget Challenges

As the new Government puts the finishing touches to this month’s Budget, they will undoubtedly have had their hands full dealing with the economic mess that Labour created.

Not only was Labour a grossly incompetent manager of the economy, but they also set out to sabotage the new administration’s ability to balance the budget and deliver on their election promises.

Damien Grant: Nicola Willis isn’t going to balance the books by culling a few tea ladies

It’s nice to be Prime Minister. It is important to be the Minister of Finance, at least in New Zealand.

The British had Thatcherism, the Americans the Reagan Revolution. We had Rogernomics, followed by Ruthanasia and the Cullen Fund. The media focuses on the man of the hour, but it is on the padded shoulders of Nicola Willis that the future of Aotearoa rests.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: New Zealand's budget faces its biggest test since the 1980s

Spare a thought for New Zealand’s Finance Minister, Nicola Willis as she prepares to deliver her first Budget later this month. The economic circumstances she has inherited from her predecessor, Grant Robertson, are the worst any Kiwi finance minister has faced since the tumultuous days of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson in the 1980s and early 1990s.