Heather du Plessis-Allan: Nicola Willis needs to be braver and cut more

It's no surprise that Nicola Willis has pushed out surplus by another year. 

That now makes it three years in two years, as in she has delayed surplus by three years in just the space of the two years she’s been at the Finance Minister’s desk. 

Had she kept her pledge, the one she made about tidying up this country’s books when asking for our votes in 2023, we would be seeing a surplus next year. 

Now it’s 2029 at the earliest. 

Getting our books back in order is important if we don’t want our kids to pack up and leave for Australia when they’re old enough to. 

Nicola can blame everyone from Treasury to Trump if she wants, but she has not done enough to get us back to surplus. 

She has defended, and kept, Jacinda’s wasteful policy of paying for one free year for university students. The policy has been repeatedly criticised as a flop that doesn’t actually make anyone go to university. 

Cutting that would save us in the vicinity of $1 billion over four years. 

She has given welfare to households on more than $200,000 a year by giving them money for childcare. People on that kind of coin don’t need benefits. 

Cutting that would save $1 billion in a little over five years. 

She still hasn’t cut or income tested the Winter Energy Payment, which is going to people who are still in the workforce and being set aside for nice trips to Fiji. 

Cutting that would save $1 billion in less than two years. Trimming it would save less, but it would save something. 

She has cut 2000 public servants when Grant and Jacinda added 14,000. 

Be in no doubt - money is tight. 

But there is still a lot of waste that could be cut if Nicola Willis was brave enough. 

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