WHY 2025 BUDGET IS SO WELCOME

Finance Minister Nicola Willis

A lot of people are talking about how small this Budget seems — with only $1.3 billion in new spending, it's the smallest in decades. But that misses the bigger picture. When you add up all the actual decisions, like changes to tax credits and more money for learning support, the government is really spending about $6.7 billion a year. That’s a huge amount — possibly even more than what Labour spent in some of their recent budgets.

What’s different this time is where the money is coming from. About $4.8 billion was found by cutting spending in other areas and redirecting it. Around $600 million is from new fees or charges, and only $1.3 billion is borrowed. That’s a big change from the last Labour Government, where Grant Robertson borrowed more to pay for new spending - and what's more it was the lack of accountability that drove hugely wasteful spending that actually achieved very little.

Personally, I much prefer paying for priorities by cutting wasteful spending rather than by borrowing huge amounts of money.

THE HISTORY OF NORWAY’S STATIOL & LESSONS FOR NEW ZEALAND

Five decades of progress

Statoil, the Norwegian State petroleum company, was formed by a decision of the Norwegian parliament to be the government’s commercial instrument in the development of the oil and gas industry in Norway. Five decades later, this company has become the largest supplier of energy to Europe, a world-leading offshore operator, the largest oil and gas operator in Norway, and an international pioneer in renewables and low-carbon solutions. In 2018, they changed their name to Equinor.

Equinor ASA was listed in 2001, with a 67% majority stake owned by the Norwegian State. Today, it is a diverse company with a long-term strategy and development as a broad energy company in addition to reflecting their evolution and identity as a company for the generations to come. They have an ambition to be a leading company in the energy transition and to become a net-zero company by 2050, including emissions from production to final energy consumption. Today, they are evolving into a broad energy major, with a significant and growing renewables business.

There is an excellent lesson here for an opportunity that has long been available for New Zealand. Several Asian countries have used this model to grow their natural wealth, and New Zealand can’t afford to miss this opportunity any longer. This is a no-brainer and could easily be funded by the same of 100% government owned Pāmu (Landcorp Farming Limited).

 Pāmu has huge assets (149,000 hectares of valuable land – including 84 individual farms) that continues to provide a very sub-optimal revenue stream to central government. Some say that this land is being held for “Treaty settlements”. I say sell it to fund a “Statiol” type wealth fund, so that all New Zealanders benefit.

Pāmu reported a $26 million Net Loss after Tax in 2024. There is no case to retain Pāmu’s farming enterprise. The Net Equity of $1.6 billion available needs addressing – and Oil & Gas seems a much better bet to me.

Huge success for "OnDemand" Bus Service

We've done it. 20,000 passengers in our "OnDemand" small ev buses in the first six months.

To compare, the previous "Big Bus" 51 route through Pyes Pa figures for the previous six months was only 2118. This is the same area than is now serviced by the "OnDemand" service.

The "OnDemand" service is moving 10 times the number of passengers when compared to what the big buses carried - and the big buses ran 3 big buses and the 12-15 seaters have 4 small buses servicing this route.

The is a huge success - and all credit to the BOP Regional Council Transport staff. They are the ones that operationalised the service. Councillors didn't tell them "how to do it"... we said - "Just do it".