Cutting even deeper against the grain

Nicola Willis continues to compare the economy to a household needing to tighten its belt to survive. Photo: Getty Images

The key long stories short in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, April 29 are:

1. Nicola Willis today announced a cut in the Government’s new spending allowance for the 2025/26 year to the tightest level in real, per capita terms since Bill English’s ‘zero’ Budget of 2012. See more detail below.

2. The great conservative backlash of 2022 in the wake of anti-vax and anti-mandate protests at Parliament that swept conservatives into councils in most cities except Wellington in the elections of that year, has finally claimed Wellington’s Green Mayor Tory Whanau.

3. Whanau announced overnight she would not contest the mayoralty again, saying she didn’t want to split the vote with confirmed Labour candidate Andrew Little.

4. Soon-to-be Deputy PM David Seymour has rejected the advice of his own Ministry for Regulation that there was little to be gained from reducing capital requirements for banks. See more in Pick ‘n’ Mix Six below

5. Container shipping bookings from China to the United States have crashed more than 40% in the last week from the same period a year ago, as the ongoing effective trade embargo imposed by tit-for-tat tariffs of over 125% decimate trade.¹ See more in graphic of the day below

6. In hopeful news for faster and cheaper house-building, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has announced an opt-in self-certification scheme, which will allow approved building firms, plumbers, and drainlayers to sign off their own work.

There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes from paying subscribers, we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing, although we’d love it if you subscribed to join The Kākā’s community and support making this journalism public. Students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz or .school.nz emails are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Our special offers right now are: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.

Tightest budget allowance since 2012’s ‘zero’ Budget