David Seymour: Acting Prime Minister says they're starting work on Budget 2025

More savings on the horizon as prep begins for Budget 2025. 

This year's Budget came into effect just this month, but Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has confirmed the Government has already started work on the next.  

Seymour says $3 billion a year is needed just to stand still.  

He told Mike Hosking the Government doesn't know what other surprises will come along. 

He says, for example, New Zealand's allies want us to spend more on defence, and he personally agrees we should. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
While we wait for Adream to work out what is
next and when David Seymore is wasting no time and
his role is acting Prime Minister this week to tell
us that budget twenty twenty five is well underway despite
the fact we've only just got past twenty twenty four
couple of weeks back. David Seymore's with us Morning Morning mate.
The fact you're working on next year's budget having just
got past this year's budget. Is this part of the
reminder that this year it wasn't a one off in

(00:21):
terms of savings and cuts and there's more where that
came from.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, I've heard Nikola Willis say something like you're not
going to fix six years of trouble in one budget.
And if you just look at the basic numbers, the
government spending about one hundred and forty billion. We've said
that we're committed to only increasing by two point four
billion a year. Now, that's about one point seven percent.

(00:45):
You're going to see inflation that you know, probably about
two in the long term. Then if you get population
growth of nearly two percent like we've had recently, well
that's a four percent increase to stay stay still. But
we're only allowing point seven. So already you've got to
get a couple of percent efficiency each year, and a

(01:07):
couple of percent means that you've got to find three
billion of savings each year just to stand still. But
in reality, we know that surprises come along. Who knows
our allies seem to want us to spend more on defense,
for example, I personally think we should, and who knows
what other pressures will come across. But just as a
starting point, you've got to save several billion a year

(01:29):
just to keep doing what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So you're saying, you your quoted are saying we will
see better savings. Is that better or bigger? And how
much bigger do they get before people go to tell
you what this is too far, too much and that
becomes political.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, just put it in a bit of context. Grant Robertson,
who doesn't exactly have a reputation for being a big saver.
He keeps government spending at about twenty eight to twenty
nine percent of GDP pre COVID. Now you know, thirty
two thirty three, aiming to get down to thirty one

(02:04):
in the next few years. So on our current trajectory,
we're still going to be bigger spenders than pre COVID Robertson,
I'd certainly like to be ambitious to say, look, maybe
we can actually save a bit more and get a
bit closer to that standard. That's going to mean instead

(02:24):
of just saying, look we're going to take a haircut
of six or seven percent of every department, let's do
some deep dives and start asking, well, how can we
actually go back to first principles? If we weren't already
doing this, would we start it today and what would
be the basis for that? But as I said yesterday,
all of this is kind of you know, we've just

(02:45):
started the twenty five budget with a few preliminary meetings
and all of that still up in the year. None
of it's none of it's certain at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
All right, appreciate time Acting Prime Minister David Seymour this morning.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
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