More particularly, New Zealand’s core national debt had risen from $81 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2023 (the last quarter of the departed Labour Government’s term in office), to $170 billion at the end of Q3 2024, to $182 billion at the end of Q3 2025. The annual interest cost of NZ’s debt is about $10 billion. New Zealand’s debt will top $200 billion within the next few years (that’s $40,000 for every single man, woman and child in New Zealand). Nothing’s really changed, economically, since my Substack exactly two years ago:
