<[link removed]>Hi Friend,

I know what a genuine fiscal reckoning looks like. I lived it, and it's not pretty.

My 1991 'Mother of All Budgets' was not ideological zeal. It was an unavoidable response to years of fiscal drift, mounting debt, and a refusal by successive governments to act early enough. The decisions were painful precisely because they were delayed – the very essence of what we’re seeing today with the Robertson/Willis approach.

And while Nicola Willis is trying to create a straw man argument that her approach is in the 'reasonable middle', in practice it represents a continuation of Grant Robertson’s model: borrowing today, deferring discipline, and pushing surplus projections further into the future.

That is not a middle ground. It is the same approach, rebranded.

A middle ground would be what Sir Bill English delivered with zero-budgets, but so far Nicola Willis has totally rejected it.


In a few hours, the real test will come. Under my Fiscal Responsibility Act the Government is required to fully open the books.

If the surplus has been delayed, yet again, it will demonstrate exactly the problem.

The Robertson–Willis approach of fudging and kicking the can down the road increases the likelihood New Zealand will require shock therapy within the next five to ten years.

Let me be clear: that outcome would be disastrous – and entirely avoidable.

No one wants another crisis-driven adjustment. But those become inevitable when politicians refuse to confront fiscal reality while choices are still manageable.

Friend, continued deficits and rising debt are not abstract accounting issues, but warning signs for our kids and grandkids' living standards and prosperity. Ignore them at your peril.

Discipline by design is always preferable to austerity by crisis. If we fail to act, another reckoning will not just be possible – it will be inevitable.

Yesterday, The Post published my opinion piece about why the Taxpayers' Union is so concerned, and why we launched our Nicola's Fudge <[link removed]> campaign. The full piece is here and copied at the end of this email <[link removed]>.

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It is with a heavy heart the Taxpayers' Union has to be so vocal to sound the alarm. But our messages are no different to what the Government's own advisers have been saying: despite all the talk, no fiscal consolidation has yet occurred.

The Government constantly talks about being "on a path to surplus" – yet today is poised to push back the surplus by another year, the third time in just two years in office.

If that's a 'pathway to surplus' they're walking the wrong way down it.

So rather than play into the Minister's strategy to distract and deflect by orchestrating a squabble about a debate, this afternoon we'll let the numbers do the talking.

Thank you for your support.


Hon. Ruth Richardson
Board Chair
New Zealand Taxpayers' Union

***

Why We Launched Nicola’s Fudge — And Why the ‘Middle Way’ Is a Dangerous Illusion

Opinion Piece by Hon. Ruth Richardson (published in The Post 15 December 2025)

I know what a genuine fiscal reckoning looks like. I lived it.

In 1990, New Zealand faced a reality so grim that the country had no choice but to confront it head-on. The Mother of All Budgets was not ideological theatre. It was not political branding. It was an unavoidable response to years of fiscal drift, mounting debt, and a refusal by successive governments to act early enough. The decisions were painful precisely because they were delayed.

That history matters today, because we are drifting again.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis now frames her approach as a sensible “middle way”: not Grant Robertson’s reckless borrowing, she says, and not another Mother of All Budgets either. It is a comforting narrative. It sounds pragmatic. It reassures voters who understandably want stability without upheaval.

But it is also dangerously misleading.

This is why the Taxpayers’ Union launched the Nicola’s Fudge campaign.

The truth is that what we are witnessing is not a clean break from the past, but a continuation of it. Call it the Robertson-Willis approach if you like, a model built on borrowing today, deferring discipline until tomorrow, and projecting savings that never quite arrive. Kicking the can down the road is precisely the approach that accelerates countries towards fiscal crisis while projecting to the public that moderation is being exercised.

Let me be clear: nobody wants another Mother of All Budgets. The Taxpayers’ Union does not want another Mother of All Budgets. I certainly do not want any future government forced into the position Jim Bolger and I faced, where the choices were stark because the runway had run out.

That is why I find it disappointing, and frankly unserious, that the Minister has implied in her challenge to debate me this week that Jim Bolger and I somehow harboured a preference for hardship or human misery. That caricature misunderstands, or chooses to misrepresent, the situation we faced. The Mother of All Budgets was not driven by indifference or ideology. It was the result of confronting fiscal reality after years of delay. When governments refuse to act early, the options narrow and the eventual adjustment becomes far harsher. The real cruelty lies in pretending otherwise.

This line of attack also does a disservice to the National Party itself. It dismisses the very real achievements of a National Government that was forced to clean up after Labour’s fiscal recklessness and restore credibility to the public finances. Those decisions were difficult and unpopular, but they laid the foundations for recovery. To now reduce that period to a morality tale about callousness is to show a troubling naivety about history and an unwillingness to learn from it.

Avoiding another Mother of All Budgets does not mean we must not ignore the warning signs. Under the current Government, the Budget surplus continues to be pushed out. Borrowing remains at levels that would once have triggered alarm bells across the political spectrum. Bureaucracy remains bloated. Deficits, at least on the usual measure, persist indefinitely. Debt compounds. And yet we are told this represents restraint.

It does not.

History teaches us something uncomfortable but vital: the time to act is before the crisis, not after. Every year that governments rely on borrowing to mask structural imbalances, the eventual correction becomes harsher. The Mother of All Budgets did not emerge from zeal. It emerged from delay.

That is the risk we face today.

The Nicola’s Fudge campaign is not about nostalgia, nor about relitigating the past. It is about preventing the future from repeating it. When politicians sell fiscal sweet talk, projecting discipline while practising indulgence, they lull the country into complacency. Sugar-coated budgets feel painless at first. The crash comes later.

This is why the idea of a “sensible middle” must be challenged. The real spectrum is not between Grant Robertson and the Mother of All Budgets, with today’s Government safely nestled between. The real spectrum is between continuing the Robertson-Willis approach of borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, and confronting reality now, while choices remain manageable.

The Taxpayers’ Union’s position sits firmly in that responsible centre. Not austerity by crisis, but discipline by design. Not slashing in panic, but correcting course early. That means stopping the growth in spending now, eliminating deficits, halting the accumulation of debt, and beginning the long task of restoring resilience to the public finances.

If we fail to do this and continue down the current path, mark my words: another Mother of All Budgets will not just be on the cards, it will be inevitable. Perhaps not in 2027. But certainly by the end of the decade.

And by then, it will be too late to pretend we were not warned.

Nicola’s Fudge exists to say what polite politics will not: fiscal reality cannot be spun away forever. The sooner we abandon comforting illusions and act decisively, the better chance New Zealand has of avoiding the reckoning I once had to deliver, and hope never to see again.

Ruth Richardson is a former Minister of Finance and Chairs the Board of the Taxpayers’ Union.

New Zealand Taxpayers' Union Inc. · 117 Lambton Quay, Level 4, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
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