Heather du Plessis-Allan: Can Nicola Willis pull off her no new money budget?

If Nicola Willis can pull this Budget off, it'll be impressive, because she has written a budget, by the looks of things, that is so tight, there is basically no new money.

If you haven’t caught up on this, Nicola Willis gave a speech this morning in which she announced she was cutting back her new spending in this budget hugely.

Her plan originally was to give herself $2.4 billion extra new money to spend. She’s just announced she’s cutting that basically in half to $1.3 billion.

The last time a finance minister had that little to play with was Bill English in 2015 who gave himself only 1 billion in extra money that year.

But it gets even better – because all of that money is already spoken for, last years budget promised this year’s budget would spend an extra $1.4 billion on health. Which basically means her $1.3 billion in new spending is already gone on that $1.4 billion health promise ... and she still has to find $100 million to make up the difference.

AND ... she’s got to find another $150 million for the 26 new cancer drugs that were promised halfway through last year.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If Nikola Willis can pull this budget off, I'll tell
you what, it's going to be impressive, because she's written
a budget by the looks of things that are so tight.
There is basically no new money. Now, if you haven't
caught up on this, Nickola Willis gave a speech this
morning in which she announced that she was going to
cut back her new spending in this budget hugely so.
Her original plan was to give herself two point four
billion dollars extra this is new money to be able

(00:22):
to spend this budget. Now she has just announced today
she's basically going to cut that in half. It's going
to go from two point four billion down to one
point three billion. Now, the last time a finance minister
had that little to play with was all the way
back in twenty fifteen, when Bill English only gave himself
one billion dollars new spending that year. But gets even
tighter than that because all of that money is already

(00:44):
spoken for last year's budget. I don't know if you
remember this, but last year's budget promised that this year's
budget would spend an extra one point four billion dollars
on health, which basically means that her one point three
billion dollars in new spending is already gone on that
one point four billion dollar health promise. And then on
top of that, she still has to find one hundred
million dollars in an extra spending just to make up

(01:04):
the difference, right, But not only that, she also has
to find another one hundred and fifty million dollars because
do you remember, middleway through last year they announced twenty
six new cancer drugs amongst various other drugs, and they
had to find them money for it and would come
in this budget. So that's another one hundred and fifty
million dollars. So what that means is she's actually got
no new spending, there is no extra money. In fact,

(01:26):
she is in the deficit. Add those two together, she's
got to go out and find two hundred and fifty
million dollars just to square things up. And you know
where she's going to find that, don't you. She is
going to find that by cutting public spending and other places,
which I'm stoked about because you do not need me
to tell you that the public service has got bloated
and that the spending of tax payer money by central
government happens way too easily, especially after Grant Robertson's Free

(01:49):
for All for years, And basically what I think is
going through spending with a fine toothcomb and cutting what
isn't necessary or what isn't good is actually not a
bad thing. It is just good fiscal discipline to do
that from time to time in the country will be
better off for it. So I, for one and pleased
that we will not for once be going to this
year's budget wondering what we're all going to get out
of the lolly scramble. Instead, we're going to be wondering

(02:11):
how much has been cut and from where which is
a good thing?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
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