Taxpayer Update: Debt Clock on Campus ⏰ | Pay equity 👩 | What the media's not telling you? 🤫

As the "Hīkoi" for Balanced Budgets continues rolling through the South Island, our research team has been delving right into Budget 2025 preparations. 

The Debt Clock goes to Uni 🎓

We knew the Debt Clock would turn heads, now it’s earning tutorial time!

This week, at Victoria University of Wellington, a tax tutorial kicked off not with the usual dry case study on IRD, but with a full-on display of our glorious Debt Clock!

The lecturer read out the latest eye-watering number (yep, it’s still going up), explained that the debt clock wasn’t a government initiative (heaven forbid they acknowledge the debt they’ve racked up), and then gave his students a helpful disclaimer: “[the Taxpayers’ Union] are not very politically central… they sit very far to the right.”

We have to wonder whether this tutorial came with a trigger warning for those afraid of anything slightly to the right of Karl Marx...

We hope you’re as thrilled as we are that our Debt Clock is being used to teach students about government overspending, even if it comes with an ideological side-eye 

Tick tock, Nicola ⏰

While our work continues to inspire uni lecturers, Levi and the interns are motoring with the hīkoi Debt Clock up the West Coast of the South Island, before making it's way back to Wellington to be in place for Budget Day. Details are here.

🚨 Rolling through the South Island 

The Debt Clock has officially travelled the length of New Zealand, from Kerikeri in Northland to Bluff in the South Island. That's 1300km - or, to put it another way, 1km for every $146 MILLION currently owed in debt by this country.

We even met some future taxpayers on the road. Remember, it's not us who will be paying for Willis's failure to bring down the debt - it's them 👇

But we're not finished yet.

👉 See the remaining South Island stops here

Debunking the Pay Equity porkies 🐷

If you've been watching the news lately, you’d think the Government just declared war on women.

But as usual, the truth is a bit more complicated — and it’s being buried under a mountain of media spin, union outrage, and left-wing talking points.

Let’s cut through it 🪓

No, women aren’t losing their right to fair pay.

The law still allows claims between employers — if, say, two people doing the same job at the same organisation are being paid differently based on gender, they can still take a pay equity case. And we’d be the first to call it out if that right was taken away.

What the Government is changing is a process that’s been warped beyond recognition. At the moment, public sector unions are using it to hike public sector pay by comparing jobs that aren’t even remotely alike — matching up librarians with engineers, or corrections officers with admin staff, purely because of gender ratios in different sectors.

It’s ideological. It’s nonsense. And it’s costing taxpayers billions.

The real agenda? Backdoor pay rises for the already-overpaid public sector 🚪

The public sector already earns $10 more an hour on average than workers outside the Beehive bubble. But the unions saw a loophole in the current rules and rammed a truck through it.

That’s why this reform matters. Treasury warned that if the old law remained in place, it could add billions more every year in pay claims — money we simply don’t have when the Government is still borrowing $47 million a day.

So what’s the media not telling you? 🤫

They’re trying to paint this as a rollback of women's rights — but what they’re not reporting is that this new system still allows genuine pay equity cases, and in fact tightens the law to make sure comparisons are fair, not fanciful.

The New Zealand Herald, Stuff, and RNZ have all breathlessly reported the what, but barely whispered the why. No context, no scrutiny, just a PR job for the union movement.

And they’re conveniently ignoring the fact that the last Government knew this system was a fiscal time bomb — they just didn’t have the guts to fix it.

We didn’t give Nicola Willis a free pass either.

The new Government made a mistake by ramming this law through under urgency. As I said on NewstalkZB with Kerre Woodham, this should’ve gone to a select committee so the public could have their say.

That's half of why the Government's lost the comms battle on this - it's good policy but bad process.

But Bottom line? This is a win for sanity and taxpayers. And we’re not afraid to cut through the media spin — even if it upsets a few Twitter activists along the way.

Full Capital Expensing: Axing the Tax on Investment 🚜

This week our team was digging back into one of our favourite topics - the Full Capital Expensing policy that gives businesses their cash back sooner, so they can reinvest. Because, as you know, businesses know how best to invest for growth - not the government.

Watch Alex explain in less than 60 seconds(ish) what this policy is, why we're championing it - and why it's best for business 👇

Government’s $100 Million Gamble: Taxpayers Left Holding the Cards 🃏🎰

In their pre-announcements for Budget 2025, the Government appears to have decided to double down on corporate welfare by injecting an additional $100 million into the Elevate NZ Venture Fund.

The way to grow the economy isn’t just to tax more, spend more, and try to pick winners?

If venture capitalists want to gamble with their own money then that's fine - in fact, we celebrate that people put their own money on the line to boost our economy. What we object to is the government deciding to use our money to gamble in such a risky manner.

Corporate welfare might make for a good photo op, but $100 million of taxpayers’ cash is a steep price for a splash in the papers.

This move comes despite the country already borrowing more than $47 million every single day. Let's stop playing roulette with taxpayers' money.

Listen to my discussion with Heather du Plessis-Allan last night to find out more about why we oppose this latest example of the government getting their spending priorities wrong.

Who pays $125 million for new Council offices!? 🤬

And let's talk about local government waste - something Tauranga City Council seems to have a sense of.

Turns out, they've signed the lease for a new office, costing $91.9 million!

That's not all - a further $33.5 million has been budgeted for an interior fit out, complete with $470,000 for coffee machines. That's $125 million towards the new offices!

While basic city services fall by the wayside, we thought such extravagant spending was completely outrageous - and called on Council to get back to the basics; fix the roads, clear the drains, and stop behaving like they need offices fit for a Fortune 500 company!

Tauranga doesn’t need luxury Council headquarters—it needs accountability.

NEW Taxpayer Talk with Peter Williams: Exposing inefficiencies in our building sector with David Baker 🎙️

This week Peter Williams is joined by social media sensation David Baker, from Rapid QS.

David is a quantity surveyor by trade, specialising in pricing residential buildings - and has spent the last year blowing the whistle on why so many public housing and infrastructure projects cost so much.

David also raising growing concern with agencies being unable to explain why the costs are so high, starting a wide-ranging social media campaign to expose these costs and inefficiencies within the industry.

You can listen to the episode on our website, or on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, iHeart Radio and all other good podcast apps.

Thanks for your support,

James Ross Policy & Public Affairs Manager New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union

 

In the Media: