May 4, 2025 • 10 mins
Act party leader David Seymour says the size of New Zealand's government is too big - and there are too many ministerial positions, including some ministers with multiple portfolios.
So what does Prime Minister Christopher Luxon make of the suggestion some ministerial positions should be cut?
Also, we're just weeks away from Finance Minister Nicola Willis unveiling this year's budget. What can we expect over the coming weeks?
Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls joined Nick Mills for the Beehive Buzz.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk said B direct from News Talks Edb's
team that Dolomance the bee Hive Buzz, high Buzz.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Join us for the bee Hive Buzz as News Stalks
B Political editor Jason Walls back from his honeymoon, jas,
how you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm doing well, Nick, Better for talking to you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thanks for taking time out of your very busy schedule
to talk to us. I want to start by asking
you about David Seymour as calling. We talked about it
on the show last week and had a lot of
positive feedback about it for fewer ministers. Have you heard
what Christopher Luxen thinks of this idea?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, I mean it was always going to come back
to the prime minister, wasn't it. You've got somebody who's
soon to be the deputy prime minister saying that some
of his cabinet colleagues should have their portfolios acts and
when you look at it, I mean there is an awful,
awful lot of government ministers and portfolios and department I
mean he called them. David Seymour. He said the ministerial
lineup was bloated. And full of meaningless titles. He said,
(01:11):
currently we have eighty two ministerial portfolios held by twenty
eight ministers and under them we have forty one separate
government departments. So you can see on the side the
surface of it what he's talking about, and he says
something needs to change. Quote Sure, that might put me
and a few of my colleagues out of the job,
but if that's the price of it, it's worth it.
(01:32):
So he said that to the Taaronga Business Chamber last week. Now,
Luxon was asked about this this morning and here's what
he told Mike Costing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Well, Nah, I think I think actually it's about delivery
of that public service and so I'm very comfortable with
what the setup is, but I'm uncomfortable with the performance
we're getting out of the public service, and i want more.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And he spent a lot of time sort of shifting
the blame from ministers to the ministries and he said
that that's where the problem lies in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
And so for me, it's not about the number of ministers.
It's actually about the size of the ministries that are
supporting those ministers and more importantly, the effectiveness of them.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
So it remains to be seen what actually happens. I mean,
you know, politicians do talk about things and then nothing
happens along the way. But this isn't the first time
that the likes of the Prime Minister or some senior
ministers have been talking about the ministries within government. So
I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see at
least some of them being paired down, if not getting
(02:27):
the chop all together.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You see, Jason, My view was that the minister's had
too much, too many ministries under their portfolios. I think
that we used Chriss as the hot headline or you
know of the story that we did, and he's got
five different ministries on it. I mean, how can one
cabinet minister look after so much? Isn't that an issue?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Well? I think you are completely right, and you only
have to look at somebody like Simeon Brown, who's basically
his focus is health.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
He might he might have a couple of other small, little,
smaller portfolios, but he is basically the Prime Minister said
health is a massive meth of issue. We're going to
give it to you in its entirety, and that's what
you need to be in charge of and there's a
case to be made for other things as well. I mean, listen,
you don't need the Minister of racing for example. I mean,
I know that's not going to be music to Winston's ear.
(03:18):
That should be into sport. Do we actually need a
minister for sport? Why don't we just let people play
sport without having a minister stand there and say good
job for winning or bad job for losing or whatever
it is the Minister of sports? Does I mean ethnic communities?
Do we need an ethnic communities minister? Could that just
be folded into something else as well? So a lot of.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Hunting and fishing, hunting and fishing.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You know why if we got hunting and fishing and
then we've got agriculture as well, and then we've got forestry.
You know a lot of people might look at this
and just say it's it's basically busy work for a
lot of ministers, which you know they'll argue it probably isn't.
There's a lot to do there, But honestly a lot
of these things just just just have a focus on
the big ones.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You know. On Friday Faceoff, we had the discussion whether
we needed to have a ministry for women. And now
I have come out pretty strongly about this because I
know a certain woman in my life feels affronted by
the fact that there's a ministry for women. Now I
reckon on Friday night when I work, more people came
up and supported my view, and then most things I
(04:16):
say on the show, do we need a ministry for
women in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Well, I think it's all about outcomes, right, And if
you could look at something like the Ministry for Women
and say that there are actually some really good outcomes
that are being made directly because of this ministry, there
could be a case to be made for it. But
look at things like quite obvious as the gender pay gap,
I mean in New Zealand that stayed relatively stagnant the
entire time we've had a ministry for women. So you
could look at that and say, well, you're actually not
(04:43):
up to scratch.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
There.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
There might be some really good work that they do
behind the scenes, but is it good enough to say
that that shouldn't be folded into something else and it
can actually have I'm almost ironically a little bit more
attention with less government oversight.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Okay, Ossie election now you would have been stuck to
your TV or night and you would have been watching
it because you're that called nerd in the nicest positible way.
Do you know where the Luxeon's actually talked to Elbow?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
We do. Haven't listened to what he told Husking this morning.
Yes I did.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I had a great chat with him yesterday morning. The
voice was very hoarse. I think he's probably still in
his pajamas, but he was obviously feeling pretty good after
a pretty emphatic win.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And it makes sense. You know, Australia is our only
formal ally, so we want to be getting that congratulations
in pretty quickly. And I mean it was a huge result,
wasn't it. Labor won enough seats to rule as a
majority government and basically look at Ardur in twenty twenty
and you've got something similar across the ditch with Alberanizi.
And meanwhile, not only did Labor win really big, the
(05:46):
Liberals lost really big. In fact, it's leader Peter Dutton
lost his seat, the one that he's held since two
thousand and one. So some really really big moves over there.
So it makes sense that Luson's getting in early, despite
the fact that like Albo and Luckson shouldn't be good friends,
you know, left versus right. Luson actually seen seems like
(06:06):
good meets with Albanisi. Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Actually, even though we're different political parties, I guess the
center might be slightly different in both countries. But actually,
you know, Key got on very well with Gillard and
actually that some of the best collaborations at a personal
level have been, you know, from leaders in different parties.
Albanesi I knew before I came to politics, and so yeah,
we've got a great friendship actually.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Which is a stark difference between the lakes of You
remember just Sinto Ardern and Scomo, they famously didn't see
eye to I. In fact, just and Ardern called them
out during that famous press conference with the backdrop of
the Sydney Harbor Bridge or the Sydney Opera House rather
in the background. So yeah, I think to be a
prime minister you need to be able to get along
(06:47):
with people from different political stripes and that's exactly what
we're seeing happening here.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Karen McNaughty was in the audience at the celebration. Talbot
Mills were Now you know, we found out we knew
that they were being involved with the Labor Party in Australia.
What is that? What does it bring back to New Zealand.
What do you think we can New Zealand's going to
take out of this election? If anything?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Oh well, I hate to use the word learnings, but
there will be and I'm not going to do it. Actually,
there will be a lot that the Labor Party has
learned from watching the Aussie election, and there'll be, frankly,
quite a lot that the Nats have learned as well,
because you look at it and what it was was
an emphatic vote for not change. And I know that
doesn't sound particularly exciting, but people are happy with the
(07:33):
current direction. I mean, that's a clear mandate from the
Labor government over there. And it'll be quite good for
this government, the National government or the National led government,
because they will say, well, we need to stick to
the basics and not do all sorts of tangential things
on the outside. But also for the Labor Party to
say that they need to be doing that as well.
Forget some of the noise and the nonsense that people
(07:54):
don't care about. Stick to the basics.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Okay, we're three weeks in county to budget. Now. In
my heyday when I was your when I was your age,
budget we're a big deal. We got in fun about
TVs and we had Pete ser they were a big deal.
There's nothing new that's going to come out of this
budget because we hear it every bloody day from now
to budget day.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah. I mean, you make a good point in the
way that the budgets have changed over the years. I mean,
what quite often happens is they're very very media managed
now when we get what's called pre budget announcements before
the budget, which is things that they want lots of
good publicity on ahead of the day, and then the
day itself you get the big announcements, and then they've
started doing this ridiculous thing that I hate called the
(08:36):
post budget announcements where they re highlight things that were
in the budget that we might have missed. So you're right,
people don't sit around and watch it the way that
they used to before. But you get more information out
of the budget now because of the way that it's done.
So it's sort of peaks and troughs, and we're not
too far away now. The twenty second of May is
the big day, and we're all looking at how the
(08:58):
money is going to be spent. Nikola Willis announced that
the operating allowance, that is the amount of new money
being added to this budget, went from four point two
also two point four billion to one point three billion.
Now it sounds like a lot of money, but in
the scheme of things compared to other governments, it's a
fraction of what, for example, Grant Robinson was doing when
(09:18):
he was Finance minister. So where is this money going
to come from to pay for everything that we need
to plus having such a weak the thin operating allowance.
And here's what Luxon said this morning when he was
challenged on this, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I can tell you it does add up, and it's
within our fiscal track and so I appreciate. You know,
people have lots of questions about how we're going to
fund us and do that that will be.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Revealed and yes, we do have a lot of questions
about how it's gonna be funded and a lot of
things like that. But he keeps telling us it's all
gonna make sense, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So it all makes sense. And what you're going to
see as a budget that is actually saying yep, We
know we're in tough and uncertain times, but we have
turned the corner and actually things are getting better.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So no details yet. If I were to speculate, I mean,
there needs to be some really big ticket cuts.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Here, Jason.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
They can't.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Jason, I've got to go, but I love talking to you.
Thank you for your talk. And I know that you're
only in interested in the lock up and the sausage
rolls that come out of budget because you're gonna have
all the information before it all comes out. But thanks,
welcome back. Great to have you back, Jason Wolves There
news Talks there be political editor on our show.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Listen live
to news Talks. There'd be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk said B direct from News Talks Edb's
team that Dolomance the bee Hive Buzz, high Buzz.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Join us for the bee Hive Buzz as News Stalks
B Political editor Jason Walls back from his honeymoon, jas,
how you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm doing well, Nick, Better for talking to you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thanks for taking time out of your very busy schedule
to talk to us. I want to start by asking
you about David Seymour as calling. We talked about it
on the show last week and had a lot of
positive feedback about it for fewer ministers. Have you heard
what Christopher Luxen thinks of this idea?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, I mean it was always going to come back
to the prime minister, wasn't it. You've got somebody who's
soon to be the deputy prime minister saying that some
of his cabinet colleagues should have their portfolios acts and
when you look at it, I mean there is an awful,
awful lot of government ministers and portfolios and department I
mean he called them. David Seymour. He said the ministerial
lineup was bloated. And full of meaningless titles. He said,
(01:11):
currently we have eighty two ministerial portfolios held by twenty
eight ministers and under them we have forty one separate
government departments. So you can see on the side the
surface of it what he's talking about, and he says
something needs to change. Quote Sure, that might put me
and a few of my colleagues out of the job,
but if that's the price of it, it's worth it.
(01:32):
So he said that to the Taaronga Business Chamber last week. Now,
Luxon was asked about this this morning and here's what
he told Mike Costing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Well, Nah, I think I think actually it's about delivery
of that public service and so I'm very comfortable with
what the setup is, but I'm uncomfortable with the performance
we're getting out of the public service, and i want more.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And he spent a lot of time sort of shifting
the blame from ministers to the ministries and he said
that that's where the problem lies in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
And so for me, it's not about the number of ministers.
It's actually about the size of the ministries that are
supporting those ministers and more importantly, the effectiveness of them.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
So it remains to be seen what actually happens. I mean,
you know, politicians do talk about things and then nothing
happens along the way. But this isn't the first time
that the likes of the Prime Minister or some senior
ministers have been talking about the ministries within government. So
I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see at
least some of them being paired down, if not getting
(02:27):
the chop all together.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You see, Jason, My view was that the minister's had
too much, too many ministries under their portfolios. I think
that we used Chriss as the hot headline or you
know of the story that we did, and he's got
five different ministries on it. I mean, how can one
cabinet minister look after so much? Isn't that an issue?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Well? I think you are completely right, and you only
have to look at somebody like Simeon Brown, who's basically
his focus is health.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
He might he might have a couple of other small, little,
smaller portfolios, but he is basically the Prime Minister said
health is a massive meth of issue. We're going to
give it to you in its entirety, and that's what
you need to be in charge of and there's a
case to be made for other things as well. I mean, listen,
you don't need the Minister of racing for example. I mean,
I know that's not going to be music to Winston's ear.
(03:18):
That should be into sport. Do we actually need a
minister for sport? Why don't we just let people play
sport without having a minister stand there and say good
job for winning or bad job for losing or whatever
it is the Minister of sports? Does I mean ethnic communities?
Do we need an ethnic communities minister? Could that just
be folded into something else as well? So a lot of.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Hunting and fishing, hunting and fishing.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You know why if we got hunting and fishing and
then we've got agriculture as well, and then we've got forestry.
You know a lot of people might look at this
and just say it's it's basically busy work for a
lot of ministers, which you know they'll argue it probably isn't.
There's a lot to do there, But honestly a lot
of these things just just just have a focus on
the big ones.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You know. On Friday Faceoff, we had the discussion whether
we needed to have a ministry for women. And now
I have come out pretty strongly about this because I
know a certain woman in my life feels affronted by
the fact that there's a ministry for women. Now I
reckon on Friday night when I work, more people came
up and supported my view, and then most things I
(04:16):
say on the show, do we need a ministry for
women in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Well, I think it's all about outcomes, right, And if
you could look at something like the Ministry for Women
and say that there are actually some really good outcomes
that are being made directly because of this ministry, there
could be a case to be made for it. But
look at things like quite obvious as the gender pay gap,
I mean in New Zealand that stayed relatively stagnant the
entire time we've had a ministry for women. So you
could look at that and say, well, you're actually not
(04:43):
up to scratch.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
There.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
There might be some really good work that they do
behind the scenes, but is it good enough to say
that that shouldn't be folded into something else and it
can actually have I'm almost ironically a little bit more
attention with less government oversight.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Okay, Ossie election now you would have been stuck to
your TV or night and you would have been watching
it because you're that called nerd in the nicest positible way.
Do you know where the Luxeon's actually talked to Elbow?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
We do. Haven't listened to what he told Husking this morning.
Yes I did.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I had a great chat with him yesterday morning. The
voice was very hoarse. I think he's probably still in
his pajamas, but he was obviously feeling pretty good after
a pretty emphatic win.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And it makes sense. You know, Australia is our only
formal ally, so we want to be getting that congratulations
in pretty quickly. And I mean it was a huge result,
wasn't it. Labor won enough seats to rule as a
majority government and basically look at Ardur in twenty twenty
and you've got something similar across the ditch with Alberanizi.
And meanwhile, not only did Labor win really big, the
(05:46):
Liberals lost really big. In fact, it's leader Peter Dutton
lost his seat, the one that he's held since two
thousand and one. So some really really big moves over there.
So it makes sense that Luson's getting in early, despite
the fact that like Albo and Luckson shouldn't be good friends,
you know, left versus right. Luson actually seen seems like
(06:06):
good meets with Albanisi. Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Actually, even though we're different political parties, I guess the
center might be slightly different in both countries. But actually,
you know, Key got on very well with Gillard and
actually that some of the best collaborations at a personal
level have been, you know, from leaders in different parties.
Albanesi I knew before I came to politics, and so yeah,
we've got a great friendship actually.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Which is a stark difference between the lakes of You
remember just Sinto Ardern and Scomo, they famously didn't see
eye to I. In fact, just and Ardern called them
out during that famous press conference with the backdrop of
the Sydney Harbor Bridge or the Sydney Opera House rather
in the background. So yeah, I think to be a
prime minister you need to be able to get along
(06:47):
with people from different political stripes and that's exactly what
we're seeing happening here.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Karen McNaughty was in the audience at the celebration. Talbot
Mills were Now you know, we found out we knew
that they were being involved with the Labor Party in Australia.
What is that? What does it bring back to New Zealand.
What do you think we can New Zealand's going to
take out of this election? If anything?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Oh well, I hate to use the word learnings, but
there will be and I'm not going to do it. Actually,
there will be a lot that the Labor Party has
learned from watching the Aussie election, and there'll be, frankly,
quite a lot that the Nats have learned as well,
because you look at it and what it was was
an emphatic vote for not change. And I know that
doesn't sound particularly exciting, but people are happy with the
(07:33):
current direction. I mean, that's a clear mandate from the
Labor government over there. And it'll be quite good for
this government, the National government or the National led government,
because they will say, well, we need to stick to
the basics and not do all sorts of tangential things
on the outside. But also for the Labor Party to
say that they need to be doing that as well.
Forget some of the noise and the nonsense that people
(07:54):
don't care about. Stick to the basics.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Okay, we're three weeks in county to budget. Now. In
my heyday when I was your when I was your age,
budget we're a big deal. We got in fun about
TVs and we had Pete ser they were a big deal.
There's nothing new that's going to come out of this
budget because we hear it every bloody day from now
to budget day.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah. I mean, you make a good point in the
way that the budgets have changed over the years. I mean,
what quite often happens is they're very very media managed
now when we get what's called pre budget announcements before
the budget, which is things that they want lots of
good publicity on ahead of the day, and then the
day itself you get the big announcements, and then they've
started doing this ridiculous thing that I hate called the
(08:36):
post budget announcements where they re highlight things that were
in the budget that we might have missed. So you're right,
people don't sit around and watch it the way that
they used to before. But you get more information out
of the budget now because of the way that it's done.
So it's sort of peaks and troughs, and we're not
too far away now. The twenty second of May is
the big day, and we're all looking at how the
(08:58):
money is going to be spent. Nikola Willis announced that
the operating allowance, that is the amount of new money
being added to this budget, went from four point two
also two point four billion to one point three billion.
Now it sounds like a lot of money, but in
the scheme of things compared to other governments, it's a
fraction of what, for example, Grant Robinson was doing when
(09:18):
he was Finance minister. So where is this money going
to come from to pay for everything that we need
to plus having such a weak the thin operating allowance.
And here's what Luxon said this morning when he was
challenged on this, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I can tell you it does add up, and it's
within our fiscal track and so I appreciate. You know,
people have lots of questions about how we're going to
fund us and do that that will be.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Revealed and yes, we do have a lot of questions
about how it's gonna be funded and a lot of
things like that. But he keeps telling us it's all
gonna make sense, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So it all makes sense. And what you're going to
see as a budget that is actually saying yep, We
know we're in tough and uncertain times, but we have
turned the corner and actually things are getting better.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So no details yet. If I were to speculate, I mean,
there needs to be some really big ticket cuts.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Here, Jason.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
They can't.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Jason, I've got to go, but I love talking to you.
Thank you for your talk. And I know that you're
only in interested in the lock up and the sausage
rolls that come out of budget because you're gonna have
all the information before it all comes out. But thanks,
welcome back. Great to have you back, Jason Wolves There
news Talks there be political editor on our show.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Listen live
to news Talks. There'd be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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