Finance Minister Nicola Willis forecasts an earlier-than-expected return to surplus in an unsurprisingly no-frills budget.
- Professor of Economics, University of Waikato
The NZ Super Fund is the world’s top performing sovereign wealth fund. Increasing government contributions would be the best way to tackle a looming pension crisis.
As expected, Budget 2025 held few surprises, with spending aimed at promoting future growth rather than fixing more immediate problems.
There’s no crystal ball when it comes to the future of New Zealand’s economy. But to understand the upcoming budget, people need to understand why forecasting is so hard.
Incremental and pragmatic, New Zealand’s fifth Wellbeing Budget tries to balance cost-of-living support with huge long-term investment challenges – all without frightening the inflation horses.
Businesses’ profit-seeking is an easy scapegoat for inflation. But a recent report from Treasury challenges this assumption.
Some commentary suggests a causal relationship between hiking interest rates and unemployment increasing. It’s not quite that simple, but the days of record high employment are probably numbered.
New Zealand has reached the lowest unemployment rate in decades but low wage workers may still struggle to negotiate an increase in wages.
Our experts weigh up the winners and losers in a budget that had to balance an immediate cost-of-living crisis with long-term ambitions for health and climate change.
If we want a liveable future for our grandchildren is it ethical to reduce the number of people being born into that world?
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