{"id":463181,"date":"2026-06-06T00:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463181\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T00:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:12:09","slug":"why-a-boring-budget-is-exactly-what-new-zealand-needed-bruce-cotterill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463181\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a boring Budget is exactly what New\u202fZealand needed – Bruce Cotterill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few months, ministers have started to deliver for the country. Their response to the fuel crisis has been constructively managed. There\u2019s more visibility around the Reserve Bank<\/a>, and inflation is being better managed<\/a>. They have delivered a long-awaited trade agreement with the world\u2019s most populous nation. It\u2019s not perfect, but nothing is.<\/p>\n

And then, last week, we heard the Finance Minister deliver her third Budget. Her two years in the role are starting to show, and it struck me as her first Budget that started to acknowledge how tough we have it. There were no flashy announcements, and nor was there an election-year \u201cbribe fest\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite the cash box being empty, there was room for more money for health, including funding for longer postnatal stays and broader bowel cancer screening. Funding for badly needed and long overdue infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, roads and rail, was tabled. It wasn\u2019t enough. It never is. But it feels like we\u2019re starting to put what few dollars we have into the right places.<\/p>\n

As we should expect after the largesse of the last decade, there were some tough decisions too. The headline grabber was the public service job cuts, targeted at nearly 9000. It\u2019s roughly half of the numbers added to the public service by the last Government. Despite some rhetoric early in the current Government term, it\u2019s the first time our current leaders have faced up to addressing our central government cost base in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n

The Finance Minister called it a responsible Budget. My word would be boring. But boring in a good way. A Budget that shows an eventual surplus, just a little bit earlier than we thought.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t take long for the serial complainers to condemn the Budget and for the whingers and grizzlers to come out in force. Some of them were complaining before the Budget was even read.<\/p>\n

As you might expect, the Public Service Association, the trade union for government workers, called it a \u201cblack Budget for public servants\u201d and charged the Government with \u201ccutting public services to the bone\u201d. Somehow, it even managed to apply the phrase \u201ca wilful act of destruction\u201d. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything like that.<\/p>\n

Opposition leaders trotted out the tired old line about the Government giving tax breaks to its wealthy mates, a reference to the 2024 Budget decisions to reinstate interest deductibility for people with mortgages on rental properties, which had been taken away by the previous Government, and the movement of tax thresholds, the greatest positive impact of which was for those earning less than $53,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, iwi leaders were next out of the blocks, calling the Budget \u201ceconomic apartheid\u201d. They went on to say that the lack of policy to help their people into work reflected a Government that had \u201cturned its back on M\u0101ori\u201d. Right.<\/p>\n

Despite there being more money for trades and apprentices, the news networks managed to find people complaining about the distances people had to travel to get to trade academies! Give me a break. They might not have noticed that not every town has a university either.<\/p>\n

Even the country\u2019s pre-eminent music awards delivered a rebuke. Despite the state of the world, and our appalling defence spending record over the past 20 years, for some reason musicians thought fit to suggest that defence spending was less important than music. They talked about help being needed for young artists who are struggling.<\/p>\n

Well, hang on a minute. There are young construction workers struggling too. And young baristas. And let\u2019s not forget those working in tourism, who haven\u2019t recovered after six years of economic freeze.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a thought. If I decided I wanted to play the guitar and sing for a living, perhaps \u201cmaking a living\u201d should be a part of the brief. In what world do we do whatever we want in the hope that, if it doesn\u2019t work out, the Government will top us up?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get a bit of perspective here. It hasn\u2019t exactly been a cakewalk for the rest of us over the last five years either. Try telling a small business owner or a hospitality operator how tough your life is. After years of Covid-era disruption, recession and now, through no fault of our own, a fuel crisis, these are the people who, quite understandably, might have been looking for a leg up from the Budget. But for the most part there wasn\u2019t one. Because we can\u2019t afford it. But when we can, I\u2019d prefer to see these people at the front of the queue.<\/p>\n

After all, these people, particularly those with small businesses, have their houses, their kids\u2019 futures and in many cases their own mental health on the line, and it\u2019s not getting any easier. But they turn up each day, and do the best that they can, in the hope that, one day, the light will shine brighter.<\/p>\n

I spoke to a hospitality owner-operator just before the Budget. He told me that business had fallen off a cliff since fuel prices took off. His is a substantial business, and he told me he was making $20,000 a week before the fuel crisis hit. Since then, he\u2019s been losing $30,000 a week.<\/p>\n

The reality is that New Zealand catches a cold when the world gets a sniffle.<\/p>\n

\"OvervaluedOvervalued and stretched asset prices leave markets vulnerable, says Bruce Cotterill. Photo \/ Michael Nagle \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Early this year, it felt like we were starting to crawl out of the hole. But another war, a fuel crisis and trade blockages are pushing us back.<\/p>\n

That world isn\u2019t showing any signs of turning things around. Globally, overvalued financial markets risk collapse with private debt at record levels and loss-making startups valued in the billions, not because of investment value but because of speculation. Another \u201creset\u201d seems imminent and, again, we will be impacted.<\/p>\n

So a cautious Government is a sensible Government in the current environment. A boring Budget is a good Budget. My only wish is that we had gone further.<\/p>\n

The cost of running the country is still too high. I bear no ill will towards our public servants, but even after 9000 job losses we\u2019ll still have thousands more than eight years ago. Do we really need all those people?<\/p>\n

Incidentally, as we\u2019re considering reducing the number of government bureaucrats, perhaps we could get stuck into the number of MPs as well. Why couldn\u2019t we get by with 50 MPs with responsibility for electorates and 30 so-called list MPs, with targeted skills that might not be attracted to electorate roles. <\/p>\n

An electorate MP will give you someone who represents an area. A list MP might give you expertise in engineering infrastructure, environmental matters, or even education or healthcare. Our Parliament has too many people but too few experts, too few highly capable individuals with experience in building and growing cities, organisations, and people.<\/p>\n

And while we\u2019re cutting the gravy trains, I\u2019d suggest it\u2019s time to take a closer look at our commitment to some of the climate spending. Last week, a new paper from the CMIP climate\u2011modelling process suggested the highest\u2011emissions scenario used in some IPCC assessments may be less plausible, a shift some commentators have interpreted as a scaling back of extreme projections. Even former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, once a prominent advocate for the climate action movement, has called for the UK to abandon Net Zero.<\/p>\n

We could do the same. At last count, in 2021, we were responsible for 0.17 of 1% of global greenhouse emissions. We\u2019re not in the world\u2019s top 50 emitters. China, India and the United States contribute more than 50% of emissions. Until they start doing something about that, we\u2019re not going to make one bit of difference to the global position. It\u2019s not even a climate argument any more. It\u2019s a financial affordability and logic argument. So why bother?<\/p>\n

I commend the Government for eliminating the election-year lolly scramble from its political agenda and presenting us with a boring Budget that acknowledges our problems and seeks to do something about them.<\/p>\n

But I also think we could go further. We will never be without the whingers and whiners. But they are the minority. Let\u2019s do what\u2019s best for everyone else.<\/p>\n

Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don\u2019t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee. www.brucecotterill.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter<\/a> \u2013 a weekly round-up of our best commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past few months, ministers have started to deliver for the country. Their response to the fuel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49264,795,11357,71728,20385,8493,71,5593,51500,185,302,5511,4462,5812,53404,23362,13631,111,43,139,69,384,3109,142398,199,165,7563,6923,4276,102],"class_list":["post-463181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-boring","tag-bruce","tag-budget","tag-constantly","tag-cotterill","tag-exactly","tag-from","tag-funny","tag-happy","tag-is","tag-its","tag-just","tag-lot","tag-make","tag-meanwhile","tag-needed","tag-never","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-public","tag-purse","tag-take","tag-their","tag-those","tag-what","tag-why","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}