Opposition slams Budget 'austerity and cuts'

Otago Daily Times

22-05-2025

By Russell Palmer of RNZ
Austerity and cuts are the themes the opposition is focusing on in its attacks on the government's Budget, with the Prime Minister focusing his own energies on hitting back at the Greens.
The Budget makes about $5.3 billion in savings each year for the next four years - about half of that from the pay equity changes - with about $6.7b in new spending going largely to health, education, law and order and defence.
It also claws back money by halving government KiwiSaver contributions, tightening welfare for 18-19 year olds, and fully means-testing the Best Start childcare payment.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis denied it was an austerity budget, saying it was instead "responsible".
But Labour criticised it as a "masterclass in making the wrong decisions for New Zealanders", saying the government was taking $11b from lifting women's pay, stealing $66,000 from young people's retirement savings, and putting those savings towards landlords, multinationals and tobacco companies.
"With the cost-of-living pressure reaching crisis point, this government is offering some families a measly $7 a week," Opposition leader Chris Hipkins said. "That won't even buy a block of butter.
"Last Budget, Nicola Willis made a choice to borrow $12 billion for tax cuts, which haven't delivered for Kiwis. It's time she took some responsibility... she is choosing austerity to make up for her poor fiscal management." 'The budget that left women out'
Hipkins' speech in Parliament particularly targeted the government's pay-equity changes, saying Willis' pre-budget statements got it half right - that it was a "scramble without the lollies".
"This is the Budget that will be remembered as the Budget that left women out," he said, to cries of 'shame' from fellow opposition MPs. "This is the Budget that said to working Kiwi women they are worth less,"
Labour Finance Spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said, despite all the promises, Kiwis were still going backwards.
"Some families will no longer get Best Start, which helps families buy a can of formula and a box of nappies each week. On top of that, 61,000 families will now be worse [off] by an average of $43 per fortnight.
"Rates and insurance have gone up, energy prices are high. People aren't getting the support they were promised with childcare.
"Unemployment is scheduled to rise. Thousands of people have lost their jobs under National and are choosing to head overseas."
The PSA Worker's Union was also scathing, calling it a "wage theft budget" that would take more than $12 billion from women.
National secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said it exposed the government's naked theft of wages from thousands of underpaid women to pay for tax cuts for landlords.
It was a budget paid for by taking $60 million a week from people like care and support workers among others, she said.
Fitzsimons called on the government to sit down with workers, unions, employers and pay equity experts in a proper select committee process and come up with a new framework. 'Backward step for Aotearoa'
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spent the first eight and a-half minutes of his speech attacking the opposition, particularly the Greens' alternative Budget proposals and Hipkins' response to it.
"Mr Speaker, hasn't it been a shambolic year for the Labour Party, hasn't it?," he began. "Did he actually rule out the wealth tax?
"Did he rule out the inheritance tax? Did he rule out the trust tax, did he take that off the table?
"No, and could he rule out an income tax raid that sees nurses being worse off under a Labour-Green budget? No, he didn't do that either."
Luxon later said the 2025 Budget got the basics right and put the country back on the path to surplus, but continued attacking the opposition, while talking up his own government's actions.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick criticised that in her own speech.
"Isn't it telling that, in the Prime Minister's speech, he spent the majority of his time talking about our Green Budget and not his own," she said.
The Greens said the government's approach represented a significant step backwards for Aotearoa, adding fuel to the climate and inequality fires.
"Resilient energy supply means investing in distributed renewable energy, not burning public money to subsidise new gas fields and fossil fuel executive profits," Swarbrick said.
"Somehow even more bewildering, these very moves could compromise our Free Trade Agreements with the UK and EU. So much for 'responsible economic managers'.
Co-leader Marama Davidson said the Budget was bad news for people and planet.
"A Green government will do things differently," she said. "Instead of opening gas fields in the middle of the climate crisis, pushing people into poverty and punishing them for it, we will rapidly reduce emissions, reduce the cost of living and improve our quality of life." Focus on essential services - ACT
In a statement, ACT's David Seymour said the Budget saved money to invest in essential services.
"ACT would support leaner spending still, but our influence has ensured this Budget grows government at less than half the rate of inflation," he said.
"When the government's share of spending reduces, there is more left for everyone else and future generations aren't irresponsibly saddled with debt. Above all, this is a Budget that understands wage growth doesn't come from the bureaucracy or court cases - it comes from economic growth."
He pointed to funding for his Regulatory Standards Bill, the 20% capital expensing policy and the pay equity changes as ACT wins.
"Brooke van Velden's work, along with smaller savings throughout the Budget, has made investment in basic services possible. A significant uplift in defence capability, better attendance services, after-hours healthcare, faster courts, stronger youth justice facilities and a shift from three-month to 12-month prescriptions have all been made possible.
"Of course, there are many other savings. The reduction in RNZ funding should focus the organisation on high-quality news, the way its competitors are forced to do in challenging times for the industry.
"In cutting waste and prioritising spending to enable growth, Budget 2025 does not go as far as ACT would like, but it does go further than it would without ACT."