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Speaker 1: Look, I want to talk a little bit more about

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Speaker 1: Nikola Willis's type budget. Now, I haven't changed my position

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Speaker 1: from yesterday. I am still impressed at how little she's

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Speaker 1: giving herself to play with here in this one. But

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Speaker 1: the truth is, this doesn't really go far enough, does it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't go far enough at all. Because

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Speaker 1: understand this, that one point three billion dollars that she's

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Speaker 1: given herself and her operating allowance is new spending. As in,

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Speaker 1: what you need to do is take last year's budget

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Speaker 1: and now increase it by one point three billion dollars. Now,

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Speaker 1: for context, last budget, Nikola will has spent more money

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Speaker 1: than Grant Robertson ever did in any of his budget.

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Speaker 1: So take the biggest budget yet, Nikola Willis's one, and

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Speaker 1: now add another one point three billion dollars to it.

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Speaker 1: That's how big it's going to be. Now, Look, I

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Speaker 1: understand this is conventional politics. This is what happens every year.

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Speaker 1: The budget goes up every single year. The last time

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Speaker 1: it didn't. The last time we had a zero budget

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Speaker 1: was basically about fifteen years ago. Was Bill English's twenty

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Speaker 1: eleven budget, and he didn't add any more money than

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Speaker 1: he did the previous year he had a zero budget

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Speaker 1: because of course we'd have the earthquake. But what that

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Speaker 1: tells you is that it is possible, isn't it. It's

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Speaker 1: possible to not increase the spending. And I would argue

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Speaker 1: that is exactly what we should be doing at the moment,

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Speaker 1: because we are in big financial trouble as a country.

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Speaker 1: We are running structural deficits. Our structural deficit is around

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Speaker 1: the largest in the OECD. Now what that means is

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Speaker 1: that every single year, we are spending more money than

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Speaker 1: we make as a country. And this is every year.

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Speaker 1: This is even in years when the economy is running

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Speaker 1: red hot. We're still spending more money than we could

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Speaker 1: possibly make. If it was a household, we'd be talking

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Speaker 1: about a family spending more than they earn and then

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Speaker 1: running up that difference in credit cards every year, but

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Speaker 1: then also making the crazy decision to increase their spending

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Speaker 1: even though they're living off the credit card. That's what

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Speaker 1: we're doing now. I think we need to cut some

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Speaker 1: big things here. I don't want to be accused of

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Speaker 1: being a racist, so I'm reluctant to say publicly that

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Speaker 1: we should cut the ministry for Marti Development, or the

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Speaker 1: Ministry for Pacific Peoples. But I am a woman, and

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Speaker 1: I'm very happy to see us cut the Women's Ministry

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Speaker 1: because why on earth do we need that? What's it

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Speaker 1: doing to your life? Nothing? And then also why do

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Speaker 1: we have a ministry for the environment and also a

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Speaker 1: Department of Conservation. I feel like we can cut a

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Speaker 1: lot of these departments and save a whole lot of money.

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Speaker 1: I could go on. But if we don't get real,

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Speaker 1: and this is the real point here, if we don't

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Speaker 1: get real, and if we don't start running smaller budgets

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Speaker 1: where we spend within our means on the regular, something

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Speaker 1: we'll have to give in this country. And the thing

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Speaker 1: that every commentator out there seems to want to cut

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Speaker 1: is your pension because it is the most expensive thing

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Speaker 1: in this country apparently. Now, if I had a choice personally,

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Speaker 1: I would keep the pension, and I would cut nonsense

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Speaker 1: like the Women's Ministry and every other ministry we don't need,

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Speaker 1: and I would stop spending more every year than we

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Speaker 1: did in the last year, just because that's what we

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Speaker 1: do now. Like I say, I am impressed with what

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Speaker 1: Nikola Willis is doing. She's going further than I thought

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Speaker 1: that she would, but not far enough. If we're actually

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Speaker 1: going to fix this country's books. For more from Heather

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Speaker 1: Duplessy Allen Drive, Listen live to news talks. It'd be

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