Budget 2019

Blackbird Ventures’ Sam Wong and Tip Piumsomboon are moving to New Zealand to open a local office. (Photo: Blackbird Ventures.)

2nd August, 2019

The Blackbird has landed: the investment firm giving hope to Kiwi startups

Longed for stirrings in the local investment sector are a positive sign that New Zealand businesses may be able to keep calling Aotearoa home.

Why the Treasury non-hack may still have been illegal

12th June, 2019

Why the Treasury non-hack may still have been illegal

Just because Budget 2019 was technically accessible doesn't mean it was legally fair game for National, writes AUT law professor Kris Gledhill.

By Kris Gledhill

Politics podcast: Lifehacking the wellbeing budget

Politics podcast: Lifehacking the wellbeing budget

Toby, Annabelle and Ben present a special, transformational collectors' edition in Gone By Lunchtime #50.

By Gone by Lunchtime

A broadcast for iPods

Where you’re getting the Treasury budget data breach story all wrong

Where you’re getting the Treasury budget data breach story all wrong

The process by which information from the Treasury website was extracted has been the subject of much speculation, and a lot of confusion

By Alexander Stronach

Mt Eden Prison in Auckland. (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

The biggest housing investment in the ‘wellbeing budget’? Prison cells

Our housing crisis is intimately linked to our prison overcrowding crisis.

By Ti Lamusse and Vanessa Cole

‘A beacon for the world’: What foreign media is saying about the Budget

‘A beacon for the world’: What foreign media is saying about the Budget

Wouldn't it be nice to live in the New Zealand depicted in Guardian headlines?

James Shaw, Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters ahead of Budget 2019 (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The Wellbeing Budget and what it means for mental health

Recognising that mental health is affected by the environment we live means we can focus on getting the fence built at the top of the cliff rather than the therapist at the bottom.

By Olivia Wills

Grant Robertson embraces Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after delivering the 2019 budget presentation at Parliament (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The well-meaning budget

Labour's debut wellbeing budget is a solid jump to the social spending left but could hardly be described as transformational.

James Shaw, Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters ahead of Budget 2019 (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Wellbeing Budget 2019: The great Spinoff hot-take roundtable

The stakes are high for Grant Robertson's much heralded Wellbeing Budget in the year delivery. What are the expert verdicts?

The Wellbeing Budget: taking aim, but without targets

The Wellbeing Budget: taking aim, but without targets

The commitments in today's budget are to be welcomed, but they could use some better defined targets to focus ambitions

By Arthur Grimes

Finance minister Grant Robertson and his Wellbeing Budget in 2019

Budget 2019 at a glance: boost for beneficiaries, vulnerable children, mental health

Budget 2019: Fresh from the parliamentary budget lockup, Spinoff business editor Maria Slade summarises the funding announcements from Labour's first Wellbeing Budget.

The Labour/Greens coalition campaigned on bringing in the Budget Responsibility Rules. (Photo: Getty).

Labour’s rules for responsible spending and how it’s changing them

What are the Ardern government’s much-talked about Budget Responsibility Rules, and why doesn't it have to stick to them?

Sharing $85 billion isn’t an easy task (image: Toby Morris).

The tax empathy gap: Why Kiwis don’t want others to have a share

Unless we can find some way of taxing wealth as well as incomes, New Zealand is headed for an intergenerational economic meltdown.

By Murray Brewer

W is for Wellbeing: An alphabetical guide to the 2019 Budget

W is for Wellbeing: An alphabetical guide to the 2019 Budget

The 2019 Budget is coming out this Thursday, and with it a whole bunch of impenetrable jargon.

Obligatory hacking stock photograph

Budget hacking scandal: About time Treasury told us what actually happened

A brief technical explanation about what the 'hack' amounted to would be a lot more useful than all the bluster and nebulous waffle we’ve heard so far

By Danyl Mclauchlan

Contributing writer

Grant Robertson and Simon Bridges

Budget hacking scandal: what the hell just happened?

As Treasury says it’s registered thousands of attempts to hack its secure site and Simon Bridges accuses Grant Robertson of maliciously lying, the wellbeing budget is about to become the hell-fleeing budget for someone

By Toby Manhire

Editor-at-large

Is tax the best way to balance social equity? (Image: Toby Morris)

We need to completely rethink what ‘fairness’ means when it comes to tax

Should the collection of taxes be the point at which we talk about fairness, or should fairness be part of a completely different conversation?

By Oksana Simonoff

Amy Adams, photographed on April 24, 2017 in Turkey. (Photo by Ali Atmaca/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Amy Adams: The budget needs to focus on substance, not just branding

Opposition finance spokesperson Amy Adams on the rhetoric behind the first wellbeing budget, coming later this week.

There is often a sense of distrust among groups like charities and social enterprises towards the government (image: Toby Morris).

What the Wellbeing Budget needs to succeed: trust, support and understanding

Now that we know what the Wellbeing Budget is, the question is how we can create the right political and social environment to support it, says Grant Thornton’s Barry Baker.

Department of Internal Affairs estimates one in five New Zealanders experiences digital exclusion (Image: Toby Morris)

The digital divide is creating two New Zealands. The budget must help bridge it

If the wellbeing budget is going to do something about the long-term productivity of the country, it must address the growing gap between digital haves and have-nots, writes Grant Thornton’s Helen Fortune.

By Helen Fortune