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Chapter 1: What are the highlights of the NZ Budget 2026?
We are back in your life and today we're talking about the 2026 budget. There's quite a lot to go through. My best mate, Mikey V, still has the man glue. So I got my casual acquaintance, Matthew Harris, in the room. Matt, I think the finance minister, Nicola Willis, talked for about 40 minutes in the house about her budget.
What'd you think? Look, I liked the budget and what a contrast from what happened in Australia. I think it's the perfect time for a no-frills, sensible approach. There's a couple of things I really like. When inflation is running through an economy, there's kind of a few levers that the government pulls.
monetary policy so increasing interest rates and i don't think anyone wants to see that in the moment um there is taxing people more and after what we've just seen in australia i don't think that would be very popular in new zealand and my opinion is pretty clear you can't tax the country into prosperity we don't need any more taxes you know what one of the other levers is austerity measures spend less uh and i like to see it fundamentals
Yeah, when was the last time a government came out and said we're going to spend less? Nicola Willis stated herself, the economy is derailed but not destroyed, mainly talking about kind of, I guess, with the US-Iran conflict where they think things would happen. Do you agree with that?
Yeah, I do. I think we're definitely... not in a strong economy, but it's not over yet. Yeah. And the economy is never destroyed.
So I don't think that's a bit of an exaggeration. It would have to be Greece, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Somewhere like that. Yeah. And then obviously PM Scuxy Luxy, he called it a grown up budget. Willis called it responsible fiscal repair. They're all the right terms, aren't they?
Yeah, I think so. I don't know. This grown-up budget. Aren't all budgets grown-up budgets? I don't think the kids care about the budgets.
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Chapter 2: How does the government plan to address inflation and spending?
See, controversial opinion. I don't love this. I get the concept and banks, I think I've said before actually somewhere along the line there's got to be a review on the profit of banks because banks should make super profits when we have a super economy but it should be the other way around when we don't. It doesn't seem to be that way. So who's paying and it's the New Zealanders. Yeah.
But I believe in free market. A free market economy functions when businesses can do what they like under the regulatory framework of the government. Taxation is the penalty for doing business. So those banks are going to be paying tax. but they now also have to fund a levy for the policing of their own activities. And I just think it goes slightly against the whole concept of a free market.
And I think in general, we want less government, not more government. And that's why I don't love it. But having said that, if anyone can afford to pay, it's the banks.
Yeah, I think they did like $7.1 billion of profit last year. I do agree generally with your point, and a lot of people in the comment section will not like it. Yeah, come at me. Yeah, the point of paying tax,
yeah is that uh these things are all paid for and just another tax on top of the tax yeah yeah and i just think um complexity is a barrier to scale and everything and it's like if we want an economy that's going to function well and grow it's like it's got to be less complex than it is uh one thing that's interesting is if you were going to do it why didn't they do more yeah it's a
Seems a bit low, doesn't it? What did you say profit was? $7.1 billion? Yeah, $50 million is nothing. Nothing. It's 1%. It means something for us, but not for them. Yeah.
So, I mean, like, I mean, interesting, but it'll seem like ACT, the national one to do more, ACT pulled it back a little bit.
And you know what it is with these things, right? It sets the platform for successive governments to do more. And I don't mind that either. Yeah. If you ease something in and it leaves the door open to do more later. Yep.
A couple of other ones are interesting. FBT, company cars just got a little bit simpler. Talk to us about that, Matt.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the new banking levy?
Petrol is one of those things that I didn't see coming this year, to be honest. And it has a huge effect on an economy because everyone drives to work. And if they don't drive to work, they take public transport, which uses petrol, all our freight, all our food, all our goods.
And if you think about like how much stuff's flying around New Zealand coming from ASOS, Amazon, Trade Me, you know, fuels omnipresent everything that we do. And I think the government have an obligation to keep that under control.
The big one that I'm probably most interested in is infrastructure that we talk about a lot on the podcast. It is seen as like good debt. Why don't we do more of it, create more jobs? And that is what they have done there. Yeah. Let's talk about those. So this is where the government is really putting their money where their mouth is, and there's a job number attached to it that's hard to ignore.
Will has stated that 4,500 jobs supported for every $1 billion spent on infrastructure. That's about 25,000 jobs. The three key projects that they're going after, like the Waikato Expressway, for $1.77 billion. From memory, they already have dealt with the properties around the area. It's all consented, so a lot of it's good to go.
A billion on the KiwiRail network investment from 2027 to 2030, and a rail infrastructure renewal that Winnie's quite interested in.
Yeah, I love it. My fiancée, Emma Louise, is Irish, from the Republic. That's important, I think, for them. When you go to Ireland, you can drive long distances between reasonably small cities and towns far more easily than you can go anywhere in New Zealand. They have big expressways, traffic flows.
Clearly, a lot of money's been spent on infrastructure in that country, and that country is a country that is basically of equal size to New Zealand, both geographically and population-wise. Not GDP, though. Not GDP. They have a rock star economy at the moment and there's some things that they did that New Zealand maybe could look at, luring overseas companies at lower corporation taxes.
But the point is infrastructure makes a country move. The more that we have of it, the better a country we can become. Absolutely number one pick in the budget was that.
Yeah. And I guess like talking to people in like the engineering space, quite interesting. They said it was more than they thought it would be. But if it was a lot more, it still would have like, there's still a lot more demand out there to do a lot more. So I think it's a good step in the right direction, but it's not like knock your socks off.
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