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Speaker 1: Finance Minister Nichola Willis is defending her spending habits after

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Speaker 1: Treasury pointed out that five years on from the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the pandemic, spending is still close to its pandemic

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Speaker 1: era peak. Nikola Willis old Ryan Bridge on early edition

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Speaker 1: this morning that her government will not repeat you into

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Speaker 1: Ardurn's mistakes.

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Speaker 2: Cross our Fair's two budgets. We have already delivered forty

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Speaker 2: four billion dollars worth of savings. Now it is correct

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Speaker 2: that we have put a lot of those savings back

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Speaker 2: into the system into education.

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Speaker 1: I think government's still just as big, right.

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Speaker 2: No, it is not just as big.

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Speaker 1: And Ruth Richardson is the former Finance minister and current

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Speaker 1: chair of the Taxpayers.

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Speaker 3: Union with us evening, Ruth, good evening.

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Speaker 1: You don't agree with Nichola, do you?

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Speaker 3: No? I do not. And she needs to face up

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Speaker 3: to what Treasury is killing her. This report is one

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Speaker 3: of home truths and hard decisions. Treasury is saying to

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Speaker 3: her from the rooftop, shouting firefire. A fiscal position is

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Speaker 3: not sustainable. We face greater pressure on the fiscal position

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Speaker 3: than we have in the last twenty years. Higher starting

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Speaker 3: debt levels, less favorable interest rates and growth trends, long

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Speaker 3: term for school pressures such as population aging and climate change,

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Speaker 3: and demands on government service provision and public investment. Now

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Speaker 3: they bottom line is they say successive governments must deliver

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Speaker 3: operating surpluses, maintain borrowing capacity, prioritize high value capital projects,

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Speaker 3: and lift economic growth to rebuild our fiscal sustainability. We're

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Speaker 3: doing none of those things.

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Speaker 1: What would you do if you were in her position?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think it's pretty clear she's got to do

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Speaker 3: three things. First of all, she has to take stock

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Speaker 3: of the public expenditure freight train. She says she's saved

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Speaker 3: all that about of made. She just plowed it back in.

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Speaker 3: That's spending by any other name. I think that Nikola

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Speaker 3: needs to do in Erica, Erica gets top marks. She

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Speaker 3: shine what it takes to get your hands around a

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Speaker 3: problem and deal with it at a fundamental level. I

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Speaker 3: think Nichola should follow suit. So instead of worrying about

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Speaker 3: the price of butter, she should be worrying about debt

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Speaker 3: and deficits. Start running some surpluses, and look at the

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Speaker 3: way in which she can immediately pay down debt and

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Speaker 3: deal then to the environment in which we're going to

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Speaker 3: get some decent growth, which we don't have.

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Speaker 1: I agree with everything that you have said, Ruth, but

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Speaker 1: what I want to know is why doesn't Nicholas a

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Speaker 1: smart woman? Why doesn't she do it? Is she out

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Speaker 1: of depth in finance or is she simply making some

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Speaker 1: calculated choices to get re elected.

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Speaker 3: Well, the Treasury is very clear about what the choices

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Speaker 3: are that you have to make, and when you're them

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Speaker 3: in a store of finance, you've got to be the

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Speaker 3: hard man and you've got to take the decisions. You

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Speaker 3: should be the one that's saying to the cabinet, right,

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Speaker 3: we need to take stock here. You know, it's the

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Speaker 3: economy stupid. They are drowning electorally. So what they're doing

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Speaker 3: now tiptoeing around the problems not working electorally, so they

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Speaker 3: might as well start dealing with them at the economic level.

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Speaker 3: And at the economic level, the choices are very clear. Indeed,

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Speaker 3: we're spending too much, our debt is too high, our

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Speaker 3: growth is too low, and when we face all the

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Speaker 3: headwinds that we do internationally, we are not in good

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Speaker 3: shape as a country to be. We're vulnerable and we

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Speaker 3: have to take stock. As I say that Nicholas should

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Speaker 3: do in Erica.

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Speaker 1: Yep, I agree with you. Okay, what do you make

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Speaker 1: though of the argument that you have to be countercyclical? Right,

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Speaker 1: so if we're in recession as we are, then the

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Speaker 1: government has to spend.

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Speaker 3: No, I don't agree with that. They go through this

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Speaker 3: argument of what's pro cyclical and countercyclical. We had two episodes.

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Speaker 3: I was part of one. The economy had been in recession.

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Speaker 3: I knew that what we needed to do to get

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Speaker 3: growth was dramatically control public spending, free up the economy,

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Speaker 3: and within short order we had the most dramatic reduction

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Speaker 3: of debt and growth in jobs and in the economy.

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Speaker 3: On the contrary, Robertson and Crewe, they decided they'd be

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Speaker 3: pro sixtical and they would spend and splurge, an explosion

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Speaker 3: of public money at the very time when the economy

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Speaker 3: didn't want it. And what have we got as a

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Speaker 3: legacy low growth, high debt, and a hangover. Now that's

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Speaker 3: all history. We've got to deal with the situation we

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Speaker 3: face now, the worst fiscal position for twenty years. That

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Speaker 3: has to be dealt with now. Now people will say

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Speaker 3: it's the economy stupid. I would, but then Nikola would say, well,

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Speaker 3: it's the electoral system stupid. But as I read it,

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Speaker 3: the leaders of the ACT Party, the leaders of New

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Speaker 3: Zealand first the Deputy Finance Minister Christ Biship, they are

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Speaker 3: all singing from the same song sheet, which is hey,

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Speaker 3: Christ of a leux and Nikola willis we've got to

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Speaker 3: get our hands around this, show the country we mean

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Speaker 3: to face up to the problem and deal with it.

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Speaker 1: Ruth, thank you very much for the expertise appreciated. That's

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Speaker 1: Ruth Richardson, former Finance Minister, currently of the Taxpayers Union.

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