Two floating heads of Toby Manhire and Bernard Hickey in front of the cover of the 2025 Budget with a blue background and a "budget 2025" sticker

PoliticsMay 22, 2025

Gone By Lunchtime x When The Facts Change: A budget special

Two floating heads of Toby Manhire and Bernard Hickey in front of the cover of the 2025 Budget with a blue background and a "budget 2025" sticker

Bernard Hickey crunches the numbers in a special Gone By Lunchtime meets When the Facts Change crossover episode.

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In the year of growth, Nicola Willis has presented a growth budget. But does the Investment Boost initiative, which speeds up depreciation for businesses, promise the kind of growth that the economy needs? In this special Spinoff pod for budget day, Toby Manhire asks Bernard Hickey for his take on the headline changes, and whether or not David Seymour’s earlier commentary that his colleague Brooke van Velden had “saved the budget” through its controversial and hurried changes to the pay equiry scheme, has been proven true.

Plus: what are the cumulative impacts of the changes to KiwiSaver and Best Start, as compared to the SuperGold cohort? And how much did the global political and economic volatility influence the documents published today?

Politics