{"id":476241,"date":"2026-06-14T02:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/476241\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T02:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:45:10","slug":"finance-minister-nicola-willis-holds-press-conference-at-parliament-on-state-of-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/476241\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Nicola Willis holds press conference at Parliament on state of the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FinanceFinance Minister Nicola Willis receiving a standing ovation from her colleagues after presenting Budget 2026 in the House. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere told Q&A with Jack Tame that his understanding was that the money<\/a> was going towards a Warkworth to Wellsford highway. <\/p>\n

Asked how he knew that, Utikere said: \u201cThat\u2019s my understanding, that\u2019s come through to us\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that is the case, then the Government what this money is actually for … why are they not sharing that, particularly when the Budget has just been released over two weeks ago?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is taxpayer\u2019s money we\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willis told Q&A with Jack Tame that Utikere was \u201cflat out wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe undisclosed pre-commitment in the Budget reflects a provision for a potential capital to operating forecast change that is subject to future decisions that may or may not eventuate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter with a focus on data journalism. She joined the Herald in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Nicola Willis receiving a standing ovation from her colleagues after presenting Budget 2026 in the House.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1443,11730,1975,4766,219,5903,246,1644,42,30942,22772,1452,1073,6722,43,20484,1118,90,193,24637,49541,6926,44970,13672,223,1961,40,38,41,39,792],"class_list":["post-476241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-about","tag-afternoon","tag-at","tag-conference","tag-economy","tag-election","tag-finance","tag-financial","tag-headlines","tag-heats","tag-holds","tag-issues","tag-media","tag-minister","tag-news","tag-nicola","tag-of","tag-on","tag-other","tag-parliament","tag-press","tag-season","tag-spoke","tag-state","tag-the","tag-this","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-willis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476241","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=476241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}