Nicola Willis
speaker
1,507 appearances
29 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 6d ago
Nicola Willis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 29 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.
Appearances
Good morning, Mike.
Well, I've always said that those operating allowances I signal in advance are a ceiling, not a floor.
And so as we've been putting together the budget, we've always been aiming to spend as little new money as possible.
Everyone's aware a bunch of stuff came at us from sideways in the form of the fuel crisis, which has created extra pressures for the government in terms of our need to provide additional support to businesses.
low-income working families, the need to put buffers aside for the extra fuel costs across government.
But we have worked very hard as a group of ministers to identify, okay, in these tough times when the books could get a battering if we're not careful,
Let's make sure we're looking for savings in every government agency, every government department.
Ministers have done a good job and those savings have allowed us to supplement what we can invest so that we can meet the really important pressures in the health system, making sure we're still rebuilding our defence force.
the priorities that really matter.
And so ultimately, that's meant we've trimmed that operating allowance back to $2.1 billion, which makes real sense in a time when I think getting the books back in order is more important than ever.
We're in an uncertain world.
No one owes us a living.
And we can't just keep racking up debt on the credit card.
It means that we have to be very careful about the choices we make.
And gone are the days, I think, when political campaigns will be about what new spending program you can design to dish out more lolly in a creative way.
We're now in a time where the task for sensible leaders is to say, what are the investments required to drive the things that will support growth and
living standards and affordability into the future.
And that's why, of course, we've made that decision.
Actually, the fees-free program, it doesn't cut it in this new age.
It's not delivering results.
Showing 1261–1280 of 1,507 · page 64 of 76
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