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11:55 am, December 19th, 2025 - 6 comments
Categories: Media, nicola willis, spin, taxpayers union, uncategorized -
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The Taxpayer’s Union campaign against Nicola Willis’s Socialist handling of the economy, complete with novelty fudge has crashed unceremoniously.
Its sponsors have clearly spoken.
Facing dwindling polling numbers and surging support for Labour the last think the right needs is an increasingly marginalised National Party.
Ruth Richardson, replete with strongly worded slogans which boil down to debt bad tax cut good talked the big talk for a while. But Richardson eventually showed that she had no sense of irony by saying she would not take part in a circus or sideshow., Which makes you wonder about all the fudge.
Nicola Willis was happy to put aside her daytime job, making sure the country’s economy was recovering, so that she could engage in a publicity stunt.
Radio New Zealand has the background:
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.”
Willis’s comment about human misery is unusual. It seems that the Government’s priority has to been to ameliorate the misery felt by landlords and the shareholders of tobacco companies.
I admire the right’s ability to instil discipline on their puppet organisations. Expect more of these stunts next year however.
I heard that Chloe has offered to take Richardson's place – but that sure as hell won't be accepted.
The CoC will not want to provide the Greens a platform to talk about their more humane and sensible policies!
Oh dear, the poor old MSM will now have to find something else to fill all those column inches they were hoping not to have to find serious content for.
And I thought only boys waived thier willies about
Much Ado about Nothing is not about willies, bwaghorn. "Nothing" is Elizabethan slang for where willies will to go….. so Will Shakespeare wrote a play with a secondary meaning that very well will apply to this modern context.
Yes… Nicola actually caring about policies 'causing human misery.' I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry or give up completely when I heard that.
Although to date, she has caused us slightly less misery than Richardson did. But only slightly.
Damnable cowardice.
Cullen or Anderton or Robertson would roll their sleeves and take it to anyone.
Willis is a failure. She is failing all of us