Finance Minister Nicola Willis speaks to media a few days before the coalition Government’s first Budget. Video / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis have spoken to media at a post-Cabinet press conference just a few days before the coalition Government’s first Budget.
It comes after the pair, in their first joint interviews, promised to provide some “good” surprises and “bold moves” in the Budget, announced on Thursday, in spite of grim economic forecasts and committing to deliver tax cuts without borrowing and without increasing inflation.
Willis has described it as a Budget that is neither a spend-up nor austerity – but one that charted the middle course.
She pointed to forecasts she says are getting worse and worse, to the structural deficit, the funding pressures on core public services such as education and health, rising debt and the date for a return to surplus disappearing further and further over the horizon in forecasts.
“When you look through history and see other situations where an incoming Government has had to deal with that much all at once, sometimes there can be a desire to act really dramatically,” Willis told the Herald in her and Luxon’s interview.
“The approach we are taking is to say, ‘these are the problems’. We don’t solve them all in the first Budget. But we have to show people there is a path out of the mess, it is credible and we can deliver on it. That’s what we are doing.”
However, Willis was confident her first Budget would be bold and surprising.
Luxon said it would feature “tough choices and bold decisions”.
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
