Source: Workers First Union
Today’s Budget 2026 is a “misery Budget”, according to Workers First Union, with students, women, public servants, people with disabilities and our natural environment paying for the Government’s election-year desperation just to maintain the status quo.
“This is an austerity Budget from an austerity Government, and it does not meaningfully address any of the challenges ahead of us – it’s just about keeping New Zealand on life support,” said Dennis Maga, Workers First General Secretary.
Mr Maga said that cuts to fees-free study and tertiary subsidies, the loss of thousands of public servants’ jobs, rent hikes for social housing tenants, the ongoing denial of pay equity for women, and cuts to transport subsidies for disabled people showed that the Government was making New Zealanders pay for their economic mismanagement and inability to create a fairer tax system.
“Any projected surplus will be built from the misery of those who can’t afford to sacrifice any more during a cost-of-living crisis that this Government fuels and maintains,” said Mr Maga.
“They’re like dodgy landlords who add a fresh coat of paint and a second-hand grey carpet onto a mouldy, crumbling house whose foundations are slipping off the edge of a cliff.”
“Meanwhile, we’re all paying for MPs to take accommodation supplements for their second houses and funding more military, prisons and roads.”
“Additional funding for health and education is not enough, is too late, and comes after years of deliberate underfunding.”
Mr Maga said that even new ambulance funding announced by the Government on Friday last week masked an urgent crisis in emergency services and was not a sufficient or serious solution.
Workers First and CICTAR’s new “Emergency!” ambulance report highlighted that fully funding New Zealand’s ambulance services would cost at least $50 million per year at current service levels, and even halving the vast Trans-Tasman pay gap for ambulance officers would cost at least another $69 million per year. Instead, Budget 2026 confirms an extra $8.75 million per year over four years following a rushed pre-announcement that hides the true reality of the problems our emergency services must urgently confront.
“Luxon, Peters, Willis and Seymour lead a government that is hallucinating as badly as the AI tools they intend to replace 9,000 public servants with,” said Mr Maga.
“We desperately need the Opposition to now step up and show us that there is a better way, or New Zealand’s downward spiral will accelerate.”