u/TomForCentral

Disclaimer: My name is Tom Roud and I am the current president of the Alliance Party. I am posting this here for transparency reasons.

Alliance Party candidates at a public meeting in Te Aro, 9 Aug 2026. Left to right: Joshua Harford, Victor Billot, Victoria Ale.

National’s “Budget Rules” Announce Nothing, Promise Less

The Alliance Party says National’s Budget Responsibility Rules simply repackage fiscal targets the Government has already published.

“All three goals are already on Treasury’s books,” Alliance leader Victor Billot says.

Budget 2026 forecasts an OBEGALx surplus in 2028/29 and core Crown spending falling to 30.3 percent of GDP by 2029/30.

Net core Crown debt is forecast to decline to 44.4 percent of GDP in 2029/30.

National has set no date for getting debt below 40 percent.

“A target with no date is not a rule. It is a vibe.”

Mr Billot says National has announced the shape of its campaign argument without publishing the policy choices needed to meet its targets.

“The Government has told us what the argument will be, then asked everyone else to publish their numbers first.”

National’s preferred surplus measure, OBEGALx, excludes ACC revenue and expenditure.

“Changing the headline measure does not improve the underlying position, repair infrastructure or staff a hospital.”

Mr Billot says pushing core Crown spending towards 30 percent of GDP, while the population ages and infrastructure costs mount, means cuts elsewhere, whatever language National uses.

“Sewage is running into our harbours. Wastewater plants are operating on expired consents. Hospitals are short-staffed and emergency departments are full. That backlog was created by forty years of governments treating spending restraint as an achievement in itself.”

He says costs do not disappear when they are squeezed out of the Crown accounts. They reappear as higher rates, prescription charges, road user charges, and repair bills that arrive later and larger.

“You can make the books look tidy by refusing to fix the pipe. The pipe still bursts.”

The rules also say nothing about employment or New Zealand’s productive capacity.

One of the National-led Government’s first legislative acts in December 2023 was removing maximum sustainable employment from the Reserve Bank’s objectives, leaving price stability as its sole monetary-policy objective.

The Alliance would restore the employment objective and add a mandate to support productive capacity. It would use financial regulation to discourage speculative lending and support manufacturing, clean technology and regional industry.

“A bank should find it cheaper to finance a factory than a fifth rental property. Fiscal rules alone will not fix incentives that favour speculation over production.”

Mr Billot says New Zealand’s fiscal debate must also address revenue.

“New Zealand has no comprehensive tax on wealth or capital gains. Instead, the system relies heavily on taxing wages and consumption.”

The Alliance is campaigning for a comprehensive wealth tax, capital gains tax and financial transactions tax to fund public ownership, state housing and infrastructure investment through KiwiWorks, a Ministry of Works for the 21st Century.

“We will not sign up to rules designed to make another round of cuts sound responsible.”

“Set a rule for reducing child poverty. Set a rule for cutting surgical waiting lists. Those numbers measure whether a government is doing its job.”

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2608/S00074/nationals-budget-rules-announce-nothing-promise-less.htm

Disclaimer: My name is Tom Roud and I am the current president of the Alliance Party. I am posting this here for transparency reasons.

Alliance Party candidates at a public meeting in Te Aro, 9 Aug 2026. Left to right: Joshua Harford, Victor Billot, Victoria Ale.

National’s “Budget Rules” Announce Nothing, Promise Less

The Alliance Party says National’s Budget Responsibility Rules simply repackage fiscal targets the Government has already published.

“All three goals are already on Treasury’s books,” Alliance leader Victor Billot says.

Budget 2026 forecasts an OBEGALx surplus in 2028/29 and core Crown spending falling to 30.3 percent of GDP by 2029/30.

Net core Crown debt is forecast to decline to 44.4 percent of GDP in 2029/30.

National has set no date for getting debt below 40 percent.

“A target with no date is not a rule. It is a vibe.”

Mr Billot says National has announced the shape of its campaign argument without publishing the policy choices needed to meet its targets.

“The Government has told us what the argument will be, then asked everyone else to publish their numbers first.”

National’s preferred surplus measure, OBEGALx, excludes ACC revenue and expenditure.

“Changing the headline measure does not improve the underlying position, repair infrastructure or staff a hospital.”

Mr Billot says pushing core Crown spending towards 30 percent of GDP, while the population ages and infrastructure costs mount, means cuts elsewhere, whatever language National uses.

“Sewage is running into our harbours. Wastewater plants are operating on expired consents. Hospitals are short-staffed and emergency departments are full. That backlog was created by forty years of governments treating spending restraint as an achievement in itself.”

He says costs do not disappear when they are squeezed out of the Crown accounts. They reappear as higher rates, prescription charges, road user charges, and repair bills that arrive later and larger.

“You can make the books look tidy by refusing to fix the pipe. The pipe still bursts.”

The rules also say nothing about employment or New Zealand’s productive capacity.

One of the National-led Government’s first legislative acts in December 2023 was removing maximum sustainable employment from the Reserve Bank’s objectives, leaving price stability as its sole monetary-policy objective.

The Alliance would restore the employment objective and add a mandate to support productive capacity. It would use financial regulation to discourage speculative lending and support manufacturing, clean technology and regional industry.

“A bank should find it cheaper to finance a factory than a fifth rental property. Fiscal rules alone will not fix incentives that favour speculation over production.”

Mr Billot says New Zealand’s fiscal debate must also address revenue.

“New Zealand has no comprehensive tax on wealth or capital gains. Instead, the system relies heavily on taxing wages and consumption.”

The Alliance is campaigning for a comprehensive wealth tax, capital gains tax and financial transactions tax to fund public ownership, state housing and infrastructure investment through KiwiWorks, a Ministry of Works for the 21st Century.

“We will not sign up to rules designed to make another round of cuts sound responsible.”

“Set a rule for reducing child poverty. Set a rule for cutting surgical waiting lists. Those numbers measure whether a government is doing its job.”

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2608/S00074/nationals-budget-rules-announce-nothing-promise-less.htm

Disclaimer: My name is Tom Roud and I am the current president of the Alliance Party. I am posting this here for transparency reasons.

Mental Health Reform Is Welcome: The Services To Deliver It Are Still Missing

The Alliance Party has welcomed the passing of the new Mental Health Bill but says the reform will fail the people it is meant to help unless the Government funds the workforce and services required to deliver it.

Alliance Party Health Spokesperson Ethan Gullery says the changes are genuinely good and long overdue.

“Ending seclusion for young people, keeping mothers and babies together, independent advocacy for patients. These are real improvements, and the people with lived experience who fought for them deserve the credit,” says Mr Gullery.

“But a right that no one can access is only a promise.”

Mr Gullery says the part the Government has been quiet about is that the new law does not come into force for two years, and that the delay is needed to give the workforce time to prepare.

“Prepare with what? You do not end seclusion by writing it into law. You end it by having enough trained staff on the ward to sit with a person in distress instead of shutting a door. That takes people, and people take funding.”

He says the funding announced does not match the scale of the new obligations. Budget 2026 provided 20 new inpatient mental health beds nationwide and 150 psychology assistant roles phased in over four years, against unmet mental health needs the Government itself puts at more than a quarter of adults and a third of children.

The Alliance says the same pattern runs through the mental health telehealth package the Government announced this week.

“A $10 million headline sounds significant until you read the breakdown,” says Mr Gullery.

“Lifeline is one of the best known crisis lines in the country. It went more than a decade without dedicated Government funding. It has now been handed enough to keep the lights on for a single year, and then it has to reapply.”

Mr Gullery says a package that lifts call capacity by around 15 percent is welcome, but does not meet the scale of the demand providers are reporting.

“Telehealth is where people turn first when they are in distress. But a helpline can only refer someone on to a service that actually exists. You can answer the phone faster and still have nowhere to send the person once they have asked for help.”

Mr Gullery says the through-line is consistent across every announcement.

“Stated access goes up. Targets go up. The funding for the services that actually meet the need is always the part left short. You cannot legislate a better mental health system and then decline to staff it.”

The Alliance is calling for a well-being-first funding model that resources the full mental health workforce to meet the standards the new law sets, and that measures success by care delivered rather than targets announced.

“The law is a better front door,” says Mr Gullery. “It still opens onto rooms no one has staffed. Build the rooms.”

Disclaimer: My name is Tom Roud and I am the current president of the Alliance Party. I am posting this here for transparency reasons.

The Alliance says the Labour Party's proposed Public Transport cap papers over structural issues, and ultimately fails to deliver for Kiwis.

The Alliance rejects the notion that Labour’s Public Transport fare cap is unaffordable, a “lolly scramble”, or any of the other accusations coming from the Coalition government.

Alliance Party transport spokesperson Kyle Turnbull identifies several weaknesses, however.

“On the surface, capping fares on public transport (PT) seems like a good idea. It will provide small relief for some working families, but overall it misses the point. It bakes in the assumption that without the revenue collected via fares, we could not operate these services”, Mr Turnbull says.

Currently, fares bring in about $342 million a year. The rest of the cost of running public transport is met by the public. Over the 2024-27 period the National Land Transport Fund has committed $1.86 billion to operating services, raised through fuel taxes and road user charges, and councils add more again through rates. Total public investment comes to approximately $3.7 billion.

“Fares cover only about a fifth of the cost of running the network. If fares are only a fifth of the bill, what are they actually for? Not paying for the system. The public already does that. What the fare really does is decide who gets to use the bus.”

Mr Turnbull says price points are used to manage demand, particularly of the inadequate public provision of goods and services.

“A person who thinks twice about the $3 fare is never the person who can comfortably afford it. It is the kid choosing between the bus and the walk in the dark, the gig worker figuring out if they can get to a shift, the parent counting coins before payday. We have built a system that is overwhelmingly public, then bolted a tollbooth onto the front of it whose main job is keeping the people who need it most from getting on,” says Mr Turnbull.

He says managing demand comes at a cost.

“The government has agreed to spend up to $1.3 billion on Motu Move, a new national ticketing system. It is expected to cost around $95 million a year across its operational life, against the $342 million it collects in revenue.”

“We are spending a fortune on the apparatus of saying no, and the best the Labour Party can offer is a bit of a subsidy on an inadequate system?”

The Alliance Party proposes that rather than subsidising faltering infrastructure we should be investing in and improving public services for ordinary Kiwis, says Mr Turnbull.

“A transport network that is reliable, fast, effective, and environmentally sound is something worth fighting for.”

“Fare free PT has been studied extensively, and we know it means increased users. That brings benefits to people from all walks of life: young adults can access more employment opportunities, grandparents can get around the city with their grandkids, local businesses benefit from better access to commercial areas, and those using personal vehicles or working in industries that require them compete with fewer other motorists on our roads,” says Mr Turnbull.

“We could do this tomorrow and eradicate the wasteful cost of compliance and fee-gathering entirely.”

The Alliance Party rejects managed decline as the only way forward, whether the grinning corporate version that says we’ll flog it off to the private sector and you'll pay more for it (National), or the charitable but unambitious promise to make unreliable public goods cheaper for some consumers (Labour).

“The Alliance is committed to bold policy and investment in our future. Our policy to establish KiwiWorks – a Ministry of Works for the 21st century – would invest significantly in public transport infrastructure while leveraging that investment to work towards full employment.”