Newstalk ZB
Schools, hospitals and the motorists of Waikato are the winners of Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ final budget of this term, with major losers including banks, which will face an additional tax worth $209 million. The Budget included no direct fuel crisis relief for households, although there is additional relief for some services that are exposed to high fuel costs, including increases in milage rates, which were previously announced. The Government has given itself a $450m contingency fund for fuel-related costs in the future. “I want New Zealanders to have the confidence that the Government has the resources to respond,” Willis said as she announced the Budget, attacking calls for cost of living relief as a “sugar hit”. Finance Minister Nicola Willis presenting the 2026 Budget. Photo / Mark Mitchell “Sugar hits don’t work, they only make it more painful in the long run,” she said. The biggest winner of all may be the Government itself, which, against expectation, has managed to present a Budget that charts a path back to a $2.6 billion surplus by 2028/29. Willis, arriving to unveil the Budget at 11.59am, greeted reporters with the line, “I’d expected to say good afternoon, but I’m here a little early - like the surplus”. Health and education spending Education Minister Erica Stanford has won $309.6m from the Budget to build roughly 232 new classrooms for 4714 students in both English and Māori medium education. There is also $160m for school property maintenance and $160.4m over four years in increased funding for their daily operations. Up to 10 schools will be redeveloped with the funding. Health Minister Simeon Brown has kept to a 2024 commitment to increase core health spending by $5.5b over four years - a sum announced back in 2024. Pharmac will get $54m to fund cost blowouts and to buy new medicines. Total health spending will rise to $34.2b in the next fiscal year. The Government has also announced a redevelopment of part of Whangarei Hospital to deliver a 158-bed ward tower in late 2031. Education Minister Erica Stanford. Photo / Mark Mitchell The Government funded the next stage of redeveloping regional hospitals in Tauranga, Palmerston North and Hawke’s Bay. The cost of those redevelopments is commercially sensitive and has not been released. Multi-year health cost pressure funding ends in the current Budget. Willis promised she would announce further health funding, including “many billions more” ahead of next year’s Budget. The Budget included funding to lower the eligibility age for free bowel screening from 58 to 56. Brown said 200,000 New Zealanders would benefit from the change. The change will cost $45.6m over four years. Coalition tensions on super bubble to surface Willis leaned heavily into campaign mode when taking questions after she announced the Budget, launching a broadside on NZ First and Labour’s policy of not changing superannuation. She presented a slideshow on the ballooning costs of superannuation, which will hit $31.2b in 2030. Referring to National’s pledge to lift the super age, Willis said, “I believe that in the absence of doing anything about our settings for the future we will be committing a huge act against intergenerational equity”. Willis said that doing nothing about superannuation was effectively a pledge to have higher taxes and lower super payments in the future. She said parties that did nothing on superannuation reform were “prepared to rob everyone in this country under the age of 50. I plan to reject that approach”. NZ First Deputy Leader Shane Jones, sitting close to Willis said he would “defer” superannuation comment to his “rangatira”, Winston Peters.Act Leader David Seymour, responding to the same question said that “things have to change” and that the “winds of change are blowing”. SuperGold gets facelift Peters managed to get a significant win for superannuitants. The Budget includes funding to allow the more than 900,000 New Zealanders over 65 to upgrade to...
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