Seymour not wielding red pen for Budget 2026 cost savings

Friday, 21 November 2025

Associate Finance Minister David Seymour was sent in to help ministries cough up cash in the last Budget round. Pictured with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

Major cost-saving efforts are under way ahead of the Government’s third Budget, but the deputy prime minister - once central to the exercise - isn’t wielding the red pen.

Associate Finance Minister David Seymour confirmed he hasn’t been given a specific project in the cost savings drive to date and “maybe there'll be a different approach this year”. It comes after ministers accepted just under 4% of the savings he proposed for Budget 2025.

Last financial year, Seymour was dispatched to help ministries cough up cash, confident he could identify hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts.

He said he ultimately found $3 billion in potential savings - but ministers signed off only $115 million. In a proactively released document, he described the result as “disappointing”.

And despite playing a large part of the cost-saving push for the past two years, Seymour does not have a similar role this time around.

“At this point I don't have a specific project like the last two Budgets,” he told The Post.

“I think it's because, frankly, I did an enormous amount of work, and I'm proud of the savings that we made, but when I put up $3 billion of potential savings, and we get ministers to agree to $115 [m] back, then I think, right, maybe there'll be a different approach this year. Watch this space.”

He added he is still “ready to assist” the finance minister at a moment’s notice.

Willis, asked if she was more involved in cost-saving this year, said she has “always taken an oversight of financial matters”.

“I'm joined by a Cabinet who have a very strong collective desire to ensure that there is less wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, and that we maximise the value that we get from every dollar”.

She would not make any commitments about the level of savings being sought, “until Cabinet has had the opportunity to consider proposals and make decisions on them”.

Last Budget round, Seymour talked of the country staring “down the barrel of a $17b deficit”, and promised to leave “no stone unturned”.

He said the deficit still shaped his thinking.

“New Zealand has to get back to surplus, and it's only going to happen if we take proactive steps year after year to get more out of less.”

Budget 2024 required ministries to cut 6.5 - 7.5% from baseline spending, and Budget 2025 sought specific savings but without a headline target.

Seymour said the most effective path to savings would be to combine “big ticket items”, such as the $13b pay equity change, with “smaller adjustments, like the exercise I did last year, saved $115 million which, in some ways, is not a lot of money”.

“On the other hand, you say something like that, and then you have to check yourself and say, hang on, since when was $115 million a year not a lot of money?

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“You've got to stop doing things. You've got to keep doing things more efficiently. And you've got to look for those big policy changes as well.”

Despite not being specifically tasked to find Budget-wide savings, Seymour said “needless to say there's already really major efforts to make sure that every dollar is getting value and every dollar that's not getting value is stopped”.

“But I can't really say anything more specific than that, but also just make the point that I actually found $3 billion worth of spending that could be reduced. After writing to the minister's concern, we ended up saving $115 million. So it requires willpower from across the Government to make savings.”

“The worst thing we could do in an election year is waver from our determination to balance the budget and make New Zealand a fiscally responsible place again, because if the government doesn't manage its spending carefully, everyone else has to.”