Mini-Budget to set scene for year ahead

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

New Zealand’s Parliamentarians will be looking forward to their Christmas break after the rigours and ruction of the election, and an intensive start by the new Government.

In something of a grand reveal and scene-setter for the year ahead, Minister of Finance Nicola Willis will release a mini-Budget on Wednesday which she says will show that the outgoing government has left the country in a worse position than was originally thought.

As well as the argy-bargy over this, the other big expectation will be over what indications she gives for how the new Government proposes to fund the tax cuts it is going to deliver.

The original plan involved an estimated $740 million a year in revenue from a foreign buyer tax on the purchase of houses worth over $2m. Independent economists said it would not raise anything like this figure, and in any case New Zealand First vetoed that option — leaving Willis less wriggle room.

The mini-Budget will also cover unemployment, GDP, inflation and the outlook for trade.

The new Government has already taken the axe to some of its favourite bete noires including the clean car discount — or ute tax as it was known — and fair pay agreements. Then at the weekend it was announced that the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme was not being funded by the Government. Rest assured the list will not end there.

Although she is not alone in the making of these decisions, Willis is already shaping as a transformational Minister of Finance along the likes of Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas — although it is to be hoped that her policies do not suffer the same long-term criticism.

There was a sad note to the weekend for Gisborne people with the death of photographer Peter Bush, who spent time on this paper as its first photographer in the 1950s.

“Bushie” had amazing energy and would never let anything get in the way of a good picture.

His commitment was an inspiration to the young reporters who worked with him, including myself. He went on to become probably rugby’s greatest photographer, among other things, but he will be remembered here with affection and admiration.

The new Government has certainly earned its salt in the early days of the new coalition, following on from the pressures of three weeks of negotiations, and the MPs can claim for once that their break is justified.

For the rest of us this is the last full working week before the holiday season kicks in. After what seemed like the first real Gisborne summer weekend for an eternity, there is the prospect of some more high temperatures for the rest of this week.