Live: Government releases ‘Growth Budget’
Thursday, 22 May 2025
Welcome to The Post’s rolling live coverage of Budget 2025, curated by Stewart Sowman-Lund. This story will be updated with the latest news, commentary and analysis from Parliament and beyond. Find our comprehensive wrap of the Budget here.
‘The government still believes that pay equity should be a right at law’ - Willis
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has expanded on the Government’s decision to amend the pay equity regime in order to save billions as part of its Growth Budget.
Speaking to The Post’s Luke Malpass in what was her final interview after a busy day, Willis said the Government still believed in pay equity and had put funds aside to allow women-dominated workforces to make claims.
“But what I think the numbers that we released today illustrate is that the pay equity regime that Labour set up had become incredibly loose and had departed from that solemn purpose, which was to correct sex discrimination,” the minister said.
“It had become a vehicle for a number of other bargaining claims which are perfectly legitimate but should be dealt with through normal collective bargaining and not through a pay equity process.
“And so those costs, when Labour first came into that legislation, they were meant to be just over $3.5 billion for the next four years. Well, today, we were able to say that we are going to make savings of just over $12 billion so that gives you a sense of how much those costs are blown out beyond what had been expected.”
ICYMI: Some of our best Budget reads
* Luke Malpass: Willis delivers more with less but fiscal risks remain
* Vernon Small: The key take-outs from Nicola Willis’ second budget
* $7 billion of extra borrowing, higher debt, wafer-thin surplus forecast for 2029
* $1.1 billion crackdown on crime with tranche of fresh initiatives
* Funding cut for RNZ, minister issues 'trust' challenge
Edmonds: ‘So incredibly disappointed’
Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds says today’s Budget is incredibly disappointing for women.
Speaking to The Post’s Luke Malpass moments ago, Edmonds said: “This is the budget that says that women are worth less. I'm disappointed for them.”
She continued: “Women have a huge contribution to our economy, and this Government has said we're going to save billions of dollars by cutting those pay equity claims and basically reinvesting it in other or reprioritising it… So incredibly disappointed.”
The Prime Minister speaks in the House
As Winston Peters looks on…
And what about the Waikato medical school?
A section of the Budget labelled “fiscal risks” includes National’s 2023 election pledge to build a new medical school in the Waikato.
“If progressed, the establishment of a new medical school has operating and capital fiscal impacts to the Crown,” the Budget documents noted.
What about school lunches?
The future of the school lunches programme is unclear, with funding into 2026 not specified in Budget 2025. The programme has been beset with issues, including the liquidation of one of its key contractors earlier this year.
The Budget debate is kicking off
With the release of the Budget at 2pm, the full parliamentary debate is in full swing. As is tradition, Finance Minister Nicola Willis spoke first.
She kicked off her speech by describing the Budget - which she informally labelled the “no B-S Budget” yesterday - as “responsible” and one that would secure New Zealand’s future.
Hipkins says ‘austerity’ Budget ignores women
Labour’s leader has slammed the coalition Government’s second Budget, labelling it “austerity” and accusing it of “stealing” from the retirement funds of children in reference to the changes to KiwiSaver.
He also reiterated his party’s opposition to the pay equity adjustments, saying $11 billion had been taken away from “lifting women’s pay” to make the Budget add up.
Hipkins dedicated the first five minutes of his speech in the House to criticising the Budget for leaving out women.
Pay equity cuts to save $2.7 billion per year
The element of Budget 2025 that clearly had the most scrutiny in the build-up to today was the decision to take an axe to the pay equity scheme, which resulted in the ending of a number of ongoing claims.
In fact, a protest of several thousand people has built on the parliamentary forecourt and provided an unwelcome soundtrack to Finance Minister Nicola Willis’s speech inside the Budget lock-up, lightly audible in the background as she spoke.
Read more on the protest here.
The pay equity decision was made because, according to the Government, the existing scheme was unworkable and increasingly unaffordable.
And now we have a figure. Willis confirmed the axing of the pay equity regime would save the country a whopping $2.7 billion a year, on average, totalling more than $12.8b.
She wouldn’t say how much had now been set aside for future settlements, saying it was commercially sensitive.
“We take seriously our roles as custodians of taxpayers’ money,” said Willis in her speech to the House this afternoon.
“The changes were made to ensure future settlements stick to correcting pay discrepancies that rise from sex-based discrimination, and not for other reasons.”
Willis said the funding saved from adjusting the pay equity scheme would allow the Government to “re-purpose” it for “priorities like health, education and law and order”.
Willis told reporters there were always “trade-offs” to be made when putting together a Budget, and without changes to pay equity it would not have been possible to make the same level of investment in areas like health and education.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders no-shows
The Budget debate is in full swing, with the requisite murmurings of “that’s right” from the Government benches, and grumblings from the Opposition, at everything Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. When Willis denied the Budget was “austerity”, a loud round of laughs erupted from the Labour Party which has described it precisely as that in a press release.
Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out that while the House is almost full - there are two notable empty seats. Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiti Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer are no-shows, despite the debate over their potential 21 day suspension being bumped until after Budget Day.
The rest of the party’s MPs turned up, but were late to arrive. When a vote on the Budget was called, and Te Pāti Māori was absent, Government MPs like David Seymour and Judith Collins could be seen looking shocked.
The Budget has been released
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has unveiled her second Budget, formally dubbed the Growth Budget, at Parliament this afternoon. You can find our full wrap of the key details here, and Luke Malpass’s analysis here.
In short, it includes:
* Changes to the KiwiSaver scheme which will, over the course of three years, see employee and employer contributions rise from a minimum of 3% to 4%.
* A new tax incentive dubbed “Investment Boost” that allows a business to immediately deduct 20% of the cost of a new asset from its taxable income.
* Twelve month prescriptions allowing Kiwis to access certain recurring medicines without the need for quarterly trips to the GP.
What happens in a lock-up?
While the Budget is now out in the world for everyone to see, a special group has had access to it since 10.30am this morning. Journalists, including a cohort from The Post, were able to pore over the hundreds of pages of Budget sensitive documents in a lock-up. That meant no access to the outside world for three-and-a-half hours while we dissected the key details. Also in the lock-up were analysts and economists, including from The Treasury.
Of course, you’re more interested in the less serious aspects of the Budget lock-up - and you’re right to be. Those inside banquet hall at Parliament were treated to a fine buffet of sandwiches, sushi (which is woke, at least according to David Seymour who described it as such when speaking about his school lunches revamp last year), and - of course - sausage rolls. What more could you want.
Hot off the press
Yesterday Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop travelled to the shores of Petone to watch the Budget rolling off the presses.