Source: Radio New Zealand
Current Finance Minister Nicola Willis and former minister Ruth Richardson. RNZ/Reece Baker/Supplied
The debate between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Taxpayers Union chair Ruth Richardson seems unlikely to go ahead, with Richardson saying she won’t be part of a “circus or sideshow”.
Willis last week challenged Richardson – the former National Party finance minister who championed the so-called “Mother of all Budgets” – to a debate “any time, anywhere”.
Initially laughing off the request, Richardson agreed – but the pair have been unable to settle on a time, a location or a host.
Willis directly criticised the Taxpayers Union’s rhetoric at the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update opening of the books on Wednesday, coming armed with a copy of the group’s proposed solutions which she said would deliver “human misery”.
She said she was still up for the debate and would be available Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, and did not care who the moderator was.
However, in a statement later in the afternoon, Richardson said instead of a good-faith roundtable discussion in a Wellington Studio, Willis had pushed for an event at Parliament chaired by Winston Peters, which would be “a circus”.
“In the face of the level of fiscal failure revealed today, it is clear why she wanted such a distraction,” Richardson said. “The outlook delivered today is the worst in 30 years. It gets lost in the billions, but no one was expecting the books to be anywhere near this bad.
“The debate was supposed to be about whether there is a credible pathway back to surplus; today’s numbers show there clearly isn’t one. Over the last two years, Minister Willis has pushed back surplus another three years. If there is a so-called ‘path to surplus’, Willis is walking the wrong way.”
She appeared to pull out of the debate entirely, saying: “I will not be party to a circus or a sideshow designed to distract from fiscal failure.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
