Food banks pray for Budget help before July 1

Food banks have pleaded for renewed funding in Budget 2025 so they can keep providing food parcels for up to 600,000 New Zealanders living in food poverty beyond July 1. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

The six key news items from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, May 22 are:

1. The Auckland City Mission and the Salvation Army have pleaded in a joint letter for the Government to extend funding for their food banks in today’s Budget beyond July 1. See more in The Lead below and in quote of the day below.

2. The Government is foreshadowing a Budget at 2pm today that uses more spending cuts in order to achieve a surplus by 2028/29. This is all to stop Government debt rising above an arbitrary ceiling of 50% of GDP, which Treasury and Nicola Willis are much more focused on than ratings agencies and the pension funds that buy the Government’s bonds. See more below.

3. The trouble for the economy is the Government is tightening fiscal policy in a pro-cyclical way that is set to send the economy back into a double-dip recession. See more in charts of the day and number of the day below.

4. While the Government continues to soft-pedal on plans for new hospitals, new waiting list figures obtained by Stuff’s Nicholas Jones show extensive delays for heart surgeries. See more below in today’s Pick’n’Mix.

5. Two schools in Wellington are closing, partly because young working families have left the country. See more in today’s Pick’n’Mix.

6. Mihingarangi Forbes has done detailed investigative report on ACT’s influences and backers via Mata reports. See more in video of the day below.

There’s more analysis below the paywall fold and in my daily podcast above for paying subscribers.¹

Six key things to know on Thursday, May 22

The lead: Food banks pray for Budget relief from July 1