{"id":476262,"date":"2026-06-14T03:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/476262\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T03:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:14:09","slug":"nationals-nicola-willis-attacks-labours-economic-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/476262\/","title":{"rendered":"National’s Nicola Willis attacks Labour’s economic plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis is calling out Labour for what she says is a $18.2 billion gap in their spending.<\/p>\n

At a press conference Willis called on Labour leader Chris Hipkins and the party’s senior MPs to explain the gap between its spending plans and revenue intentions.<\/p>\n

It comes as Labour announced it will cap public transport fares<\/a> at $20 a week in main centres and $10 everywhere else if elected.<\/p>\n

Willis criticised the move saying it was “yet another dubiously-costed policy”.<\/p>\n

“There is no magic money tree that can be plucked to pay for Labour’s election promises. The government’s books are in deficit.”<\/p>\n

\"Finance<\/p>\n

\nFinance Minister Nicola Willis. (File photo)
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Louis Dunham\n<\/p>\n

“What you’ll see is that even under conservative assumptions there is an $18.2 billion gap between Labour’s spending plans and its capital gains tax.<\/p>\n

“This is Labour’s $18 billion hidden bill for New Zealanders.”<\/p>\n

Willis said the economy was growing again, and unemployment and debt were forecast to fall.<\/p>\n

She said these “gains” had required a “disciplined approach” across budgets and Labour’s recent announcements showed they were not “fit for that task”.<\/p>\n

“Labour claimed this week that its proposal to cap public transport fares at $20 a week would save people an average of $1,200 a year for a total cost of $65 million a year.”<\/p>\n

“Well, as has been pointed out by some of your colleagues, that simply cannot be true. I am happy to give Mr Utikere a calculator to work this out. If he requires one, I’ll send it over.”<\/p>\n

Labour has been approached by RNZ for comment.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis is calling out Labour for what she says is a $18.2 billion gap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[48,138,47,219,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-476262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-audio","tag-business","tag-current-affairs","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476262","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=476262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}