Worth a quick look at the current Govt financial year (to June 2026). Labour scheduled in a chunky operating surplus this year (fantasy forecast). Treasury have up-doomed their forecasts as the prolonged downturn sends revenue well below operating costs. They might be right. [Ends]

A key reason that cutting spending into a downturn is a shit strategy is that it contributes to a tanking tax take - creating a doom loop of spending cuts and revised targets as Govt tries to hit it's operating balance target. [7/n]

What the 2024 and 2025 data shows is that Govts pulled around $10bn of investment in an obvious recessionary period. Even the ghouls would predict that this would cause a prolonged downturn - particularly given how high and long RBNZ held interest rates up. [6/n]

... the economy was tanking and Treasury were panicked into forecasting an operating deficit of over $8bn. Govt merrily chopped & delayed spending to constrain near-term debt forecasts. When the accounts were done, the capital deficit spend was down a chunky $6.4bn on Budget 24 forecast. [5/n]

Now, having stalled the economy proper by choking off investment (aided ably by RBNZ), how did the coalition handle 2025? Well, May 2024 forecasts for year ending June 2025 were for $19bn of net capital spending and a sliver of an operating surplus. Seven months later... [4/n]

What Labour should have known (it was obvs) is that they were tightening into a downturn. The coalition then doubled-down and had even less excuse given the number of lights flashing red. Worth noting that operating deficit (blue) was not actually as bad as predicted a few months before. [3/n]

By mid-2023, Labour were running scared of inflation and related attacks from ghouls. So, by the pre-election update we'd already seen about $4bn of capital spending (net) dropped or pushed back. The coalition pushed harder and the final data showed net capital spend down by $8bn at $16.1bn [2/n]

Finally had time to dive into last week's budget data and update previous work on deficit spending forecasts vs actuals. Let's start with year ending June 2024. Grant's last budget in May 2023 forecast a whopping $30bn of deficit spending (op+cap) - but this fell to $22.2bn by Dec 24. Why? [🧵 1/n]

💖 MELIA 💖 Please read her bio below and repost. This beautiful, sweet, loving, dog needs a home. With the right person she will thrive. Training is funded. Shes captured so many hearts, just needs that 1 special human. She will be so loyal to you. Adopt her ⬇️ www.petplace.com/pet-adoption...

I know it’s click bait but, knowing people who quite literally cannot access a home in this country, and others who are deciding every week between paying for food, rent or power, and still more being targeted by this government’s policy with no end in sight, “cursed” doesn’t begin to describe 2025.

took this pic of a lil joey a few years back in Tasmania, Australia

In today’s Weekend Herald

#nzpol NBR reports the Min. of Finance saying a "Stronger economy will help the Government’s books". nbr.co.nz/politics/str... The chart (from @labourcartel.bsky.social) might explain the government's current situation. Something happened in late 2023, and things have gotten worse since.

May 2026 is so far away, not fair! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfNL...

The Post - Where something that wasn't news in 2022, is somehow news in 2025. Instead of outlets reporting the news, these days they're trying to make it. #nzpol

This is just getting pathetic

It’s like, stop using me for rage bait. How this paper will survive when I’ve left the country is beyond me 🥴

They just aren’t very good at governance are they?

We have to get rid of them at the next election. The countryside will be in ruins if they get a second term. #nzpol

#nzpol ⬇️🧐⬇️

I am absolutely gutted to hear some douchebag(s) has gone through my crowdfunding rewards and targeted at least one person at their workplace for offering a reward to support me. That is absolutely stink. Imagine being that nasty and petty. It’s the yin to today’s #SecretSantaAoNZ yang.

I’m going mad watching a Japanese programme that insists on calling kiwifruit “kiwis” 😩 Of course I blame the Americans 😒

Goddamit covid. My covid tests said negative so I went and bought one of these. That line went bright red straight away. I knew this wasn’t a normal cold!!

#nzpol Just catching up with the HYEFU data today - but the data looks grim pretty much across the board. One data point stood out to me - the economy will be cumulatively $28.3bn smaller at the next election than predicted by Treasury at the last election.

#nzpol HYEFU data today showed that unemployment is forecast to stay much higher than forecast by Treasury at the last election. There will be 76,000 more people on jobseekers by 2027. Wages going up by less every year than forecast at the last election.

#nzpol HYEFU shows that the OBEGAL deficit is no longer in the same postcode as the National Party Fiscal Plan. We never get close to the surplus being promised - to the tune of -$48bn across the period to 2027/28

At no point in time in the book do I give a debt-to-GDP limit recommendation - I just point out the Treasury analysis and other interpretations. Could Nicola Willis please correct the record?

The book states:

#nzpol In the house today, Nicola Willis said that in my recent book I thought the debt limit for the government should be 80-90% of GDP. As is clear in the book - that is the Treasury's position, not mine. See P.14 of www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/defaul...

This data shows there is no plan to deliver growth. The government is looking at more cuts at the next Budget. We have record numbers of Kiwis on benefits. Its time for a different economic approach - before working people and their families face another year of drift and decline

The economy is flatlining, and claims of 2025 being the year of growth aren't being realised. Growth is in unemployment, & numbers of New Zealanders leaving the country. September per capita GDP has fallen for 2 years - $1,593 worse than it was at the start of this government

Across the economy, annual declines in output were found in over half of all the sectors. Construction fell 8.5% this year. Mining is down 7.7% this year. IT & telecommunications are down 3.1%. Manufacturing is down 2.3%. Overall, the economy fell 0.5% this year

The data shows the benefits of any growth has been very unequally distributed. Compensation of employees grew by 0.9% over the year to September. But the broad measure of profits grew by 7.2%. If there is a twin-track economy, workers and working people are on the losing track

#nzpol Data released today shows that for all the talk of green shoots, the economy hasn’t grown at all in 2 years. Unemployment is up, & the cost of living is still rising for middle and low-income New Zealanders. The GDP increase today simply balances out the fall previously. A Thread

#BHN we've close to doubled out listener/follower base in 2025 #66270 Bring on 2026 baby! #nzpol #nzpolitics

Found some rather more professional words to express my sweary thoughts on millionaire men utterly ignoring all the unpaid work many women and carers do over the holiday period. open.substack.com/pub/drbex/p/...

Who the hell does Luxon think is cleaning public hospitals, public toilets, swimming pools over the holidays? Who is driving the buses, manning hospital wards, working in supermarkets. NZ is kept fed, clean, alive, safe and moving by essential workers many who aren’t paid a Living Wage. #nzpol

Take care out there Ōtepoti

imagine complaining about convenience how embarrassing for this dweeb

#nzpol Govt is gambling with our lives! Govt doubles-down on risking lives on dilapidated Cook Strait ferries by stopping acquistion of an emergency seagoing tug and limiting Wellington water police hours to 9am to 6pm.👀👀 Enjoy your holiday season ferry rides folks! www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Yep.

When the most toxic finance minister in a generation isn’t toxic enough for the most toxic finance minister ever.

#nzpol 💪🫶👏

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/... #NZPol

All-stages urgency for the regime's RMA consent extension and gutting of climate change targets, plus they're doing a bunch of other stuff, including fixing their own fuxkups on the bill to increase the number of judges.

The latter is fucking hilarious. They rammed it through its second reading and committee stages under urgency 2 weeks ago, then realised they'd fucked up, so had to stop (they were planning to just pass it). Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.

BONKERS! The Luxon Govt’s rewrite of the RMA laws allows companies to claim financial compensation (from taxpayers) when councils introduce rules to limit pollution or protect the environment. Let that sink in. #NZPOL

Sat down in the Gallery today and realised I was sitting next to Samuel Leason, so I suspected that something was planned to happen during Question Time.✊ #FreePalestine #OneTermGovernment #nzpol

Hello fellow patriots Did you know that at 3.30pm today the govt is introducing an “undisclosed bill” which, as the title suggests, means no one knows what it is. The opposition needs to prepare for a bill that they haven’t been told about…can someone tell me how that is democratic?