Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I would argue Budget 2026 wasn't tight enough

Best of Business · May 28, 2026 · 2m · transcript

Well, you would have done well to heed Nicola Willis’s warnings ahead of this Budget that there would be no spend-up, because there is no spend-up.

There is no money for - well, there is money for the important stuff. You’ve got the schools and the classrooms, and the hospitals, and the Waikato Expressway, and Winston Peters’ pet projects.

But everywhere else, there is just no new money. It is tight.

Now, that is exactly how it should be. And in fact, I would say this still doesn’t go far enough.

For the third Nicola Willis Budget in a row, it isn’t tight enough because we haven’t even hit…