‘Weak’: Review finds Treasury not helping with ‘Going for Growth’ agenda
Tuesday, 30 June 2026
A review of Treasury has found the agency is “weak” in the area of economy-wide policy advice, and ministers are losing trust in it.
It specifically dinged the Government’s lead economic agency for not providing strong enough advice on the “Going for Growth agenda”.
Interviewees also criticised Treasury’s advice on ACC reform and the Interislander ferry replacement.
Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie commissioned the independent review from the Public Service Commission himself. It found Treasury was working well in some functions, such as the annual Budget process, but had not met expectations in others.
Read more:
This weakness was strong enough that ministers had become less confident in Treasury advice, it said.
“Contributory factors include Covid-related pressures, high turnover, evolving Ministerial priorities and changing expectations of the Treasury. This set in motion a self-reinforcing dynamic in which Ministers became less confident in the Treasury’s advice, the department’s influence across the system reduced, and the Treasury lost talented people, and collective confidence, becoming more risk averse and less ambitious,” the review found.
“As a result, the distance between the current state and what New Zealand needs from the Treasury increased materially.”
Treasury was rated as “developing” across two of its core functions - the Budget process and its wider role assessing spending in the public sector - but “weak” in “economic policy advice”.
Those interviewed for the review said Treasury was not providing the kind of overarching economic advice that was expected of it.
“A recurring theme was that the Treasury did not appear to be bringing enough practical thinking to the Government’s Going For Growth agenda,” the reviewers wrote.
“Some interviewees felt it had few concrete ideas to contribute, including on the ‘next big idea’, while others questioned whether its thinking remained too shaped by the economic orthodoxy developed internationally in the 1980s and 1990s much of which is still relevant but may no longer be sufficient.”
Treasury advice contributed significantly to the huge period of market-orientated reform in the 1980s and early 1990s, with its briefing to Roger Douglas upon his election in 1984 now seen as an emblematic document. Treasury still host a copy of that briefing online.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she agreed with the review’s findings that Treasury were not contributing enough big ideas.
“They are supporting the Going for Growth agenda, in which we've already progressed more than 100 initiatives to support greater growth and productivity across the New Zealand economy, but I think it is fair to say that the Ministry for Business has been leading the charge on the new ideas in that agenda, and I've challenged the Treasury to contribute more to the debate,” Willis said.
“They need to up their game, and they're committed to doing that.”
Willis said she agreed that the advice over the Interislander project had not been up to par.
“IREX was a project that was clearly derailed very early on, and there were massive cost blowouts and major problems with that project, and it was clear from the paper trail that the previous minister was looking for ways to extricate himself from it, and it's my view that Treasury could have provided more options sooner.”
Interviewees also criticised Treasury for not having a clear enough framework for advising governments in times of geopolitical instability.
“Supply chain vulnerability was used to illustrate the point, with oil supplies and health supplies cited as examples of where resilience can become a live economic issue.”
The interviewees also suggests Treasury had not sufficiently engaged with the private sector - including on the potential for it to participate in the health, transport, and energy sector.
Rennie welcomed the report in a statement, saying Treasury had to step its game up.
“Many of its findings and recommendations reflect work already under way across the organisation through our transformation programme. However, like any thorough review, it also challenges us to go further and faster and we will act on that.”
The review was led by professional directors David Smol and Jenn Bestwick.