10 key reads on Buget 2025

The Spinoff

22-05-2025

Nobody has time to read everything that's been written on the budget, so Catherine McGregor has a round-up of some of the most interesting takes, in today's extract from The Bulletin.
The true blue, bitsy, no BS, growth budget
For Jenée Tibshraeny at the Herald, it was both the 'reality bites budget' and the 'true blue budget'. For Lloyd Burr at Stuff, the 'bitsy budget'. Nicola Willis called it a 'no BS budget', while the Greens said it was a 'growth (in poverty) budget. Officially, of course, it was the Growth Budget, and the tsunami of media analysis that followed its release focused largely on whether it delivered on that promise – and what will be sacrificed to boost the government's high-growth dream.
To help you make sense of it all, I've picked out some interesting reads to give you a sense of the overall picture. If you're just interested in finding out where exactly the budget was spent and slashed, check out Joel MacManus and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith's missive from the budget-day lockup, Gabi Lardies' guide to the budget for people who hate the budget. We also have Frances Cook's reaction to the KiwiSaver shakeup (spoiler: she doesn't love it).
Here are 10 more stories, from The Spinoff and elsewhere, that caught my eye.
Media winners and losers
If you just want to read sector experts on what the budget means for their field, look no further than our annual hot take roundtable. Among the contributors is The Spinoff's Duncan Greive, who says RNZ's loss of $4.6m a year in funding makes it the media sector's biggest loser. 'It's a chunky sum, equivalent to 7% of its budget, but on some level it might be relieved it wasn't considerably worse, given that it received a $26m annual boost in 2023,' says Greive.
Meanwhile the screen production sector got a pre-announced $577m rebate boost. 'Some proportion of this will inevitably be taken up by streaming giants, who also will have been pleased to discover that the threat of a 3% digital services tax quietly vanished this week,' writes Greive. 'While understandable given the continued belligerence on trade from the White House, it does tend to make local businesses feel like chumps for playing the last game, where you pay tax and employ people.'
Lockup scran, reviewed
It wouldn't be Budget Day without a thorough taste test of the food on offer at the lockup, the phone-free zone where journalists and other interested parties get to read the budget before it's released. This year The Spinoff's parliamentary team, Joel MacManus and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith, did the honours, adding a fiscal-friendly twist to their food reviews: The lettuce in the egg salad sandwich was 'an unnecessary inclusion like counting ACC revenue in Obegal ', while the sausage roll was 'rich, like the people who are no longer eligible for government KiwiSaver contributions'.
Bad news for the poorest among us
Remember Jacinda Ardern's child poverty pledge? Max Rashbrooke does, and notes that while the Labour government's progress on the goal admittedly stalled, 'National's target is literally to do nothing: to maintain the current 12% of children living in poverty for ever and ever, amen.'
His analysis, published in The Spinoff this morning, argues that this is a go-slow budget, unless you happen to be a business or high-income earner. 'Despite the growing calls on the state – to tackle poverty, to address the effects of climate change, and to care for an ageing population – Willis is determined to shrink government spending as a proportion of GDP from 33% to 31%. A diminishing share of our annual income will be spent on solving collective problems.'
MPs on a sugar high
Parliamentary sketch writer Joel MacManus is interested in much more than just food, I swear, but it was his passages describing MPs' snacking habits that stood out to me in today's Echo Chamber column on the House budget debate.
'Mark Mitchell had a packet of M&Ms on his desk and looked very pleased about it. He ate them methodically, one at a time, every three seconds, like a pendulum of candy-coated chocolate. He offered them to Todd McClay and Scott Simpson, each time with a cheeky grin as if to say 'haha, look at me, I'm eating M&Ms in parliament'. Andy Foster and Jamie Arbuckle shared some Mackintosh's Toffees (an on-brand lolly for New Zealand First). Winston Peters scrolled through a group chat that seemed to be entirely people sending context-free GIFs.'
Another recession?
It's not actually something to read, but the now-traditional Gone By Lunchtime x When the Facts Change budget special is always a great listen. Toby Manhire and Bernard Hickey discuss the main takeaways from the budget, including whether Willis has done enough to rev up the New Zealand economy – or as Hickey calls it (altogether now), 'a housing market with bits tacked on'.
Hickey doesn't sound at all optimistic. 'This budget doesn't solve [the government's] problems, it isn't a growth budget, and risks driving the economy into a double dip recession.' OK then.
Business gets an Investment Boost
Over on BusinessDesk (paywalled), Patrick Smellie is a bit more positive about the economic impact of Investment Boost, 'the growth centrepiece of the Government's growth Budget'. The accelerated depreciation regime, which will allow businesses to deduct 20% of the cost of new capital equipment in the year of purchase, will boost GDP by 1% over the next two decades, with 0.4% of that impact forecast to occur in the next four years, according to Treasury forecasts.
The policy 'has undoubtedly just made recession-weary, cautious business owners more likely to make a capital investment,' Smellie writes. 'Low capital-intensity and poor uptake of advanced technology are key reasons for New Zealand's abysmal productivity performance, so this initiative makes sense both as a short term mood-lifter and a medium term spur to better commercial and economic performance.'
The science community responds
As Newsroom's Fox Meyer explains, in the science sector, 'half of the savings found by cancelling research funds and institutes will be spent setting up an office to attract foreign science [business ventures] and an office to oversee a deregulated gene tech space.' The Science Media Centre has gathered responses to the budget announcement from academics across the country. A group of science educators from AUT, Auckland University and Massey sum up the predominant feeling of dismay:
'With this budget the government has gone further down the path that sees research, science and technology only in terms of contributing to economic growth. It is an outdated fantasy that scientists in their laboratories are intently working on new inventions that can be commercialised to reap enormous profits, yet this seems to be the thinking behind the Vote Business, Science and Innovation.'
'Grin and bear it'
In Newsroom, Laura Walter also has food on the mind, writing that 'everyday Kiwis … have been thrown merely crumbs, while the Government clips their meal ticket in the hope of achieving long-term economic growth'.
She goes on: 'NZ First leader Winston Peters has recently taken to quoting the song lyrics by Shane Newton: 'Hang on, help is on its way' – usually in reference to the Cook Strait ferries. Those hoping for some more help in the short term will be disappointed by this year's Budget.
'But Willis is steadfast in her belief in the long-term-growth approach. Any short-term relief that could be handed out already has been. Everyone else will have to grin and bear it, as the idea of 'survive to '25' disappears into the rearview mirror.'
A re-election warning
Writing in The Post (paywalled), Janet Wilson hits some similar themes, but with a lot more intensity. 'Willis' contention in the media lockup that this Budget would benefit working families is the kind of bald-faced poppycock that all politicians indulge in when trying to get their policies over the line. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.'
And Wilson has a warning for the government: 'The books may have been balanced, but at a price for a coalition that will soon consider its electoral chances in 2026. Because Budget 2025 has created a determined voting bloc of anti-Right protesters, as the hundreds of protesters who gathered in front of Parliament during the Budget announcement attest.'
Department store closure casts a pall
Dita de Boni's piece in The Post (paywalled) on the closure of Smith & Caughey came out a few hours before the budget, but it speaks to many of the same issues that other commentators addressed. With their closure announcement on Wednesday night, the department store's owners 'underlined an undeniable diminution of the New Zealand economy in the past few years that will take only the most deft and innovative economic management to turn around.
'The loss of such an icon of Auckland City is one more sign that a lack of confidence is not misplaced, and furthermore, that many people are paid so poorly that after mortgage/rent and groceries, they don't have the dough for fripperies. And even if they do, they're looking for bargains.
'Business and consumer not just confidence, but also aspiration, will play an important part in returning economic health to New Zealand. Here's hoping Budget 2025 will supply some.'