Someone said to me the other day, Oh, you know, shouldn't you We be doing retaliatory tariffs, and you know it's a bit like throwing a ping pong ball and an elephant, isn't it. Hey, Look, I'd love to be generous and spray the money down around. That would make my job a lot easier, to be honest, But I'm
very aware of the context in which we're operating. I'm thinking very hard about in an environment of instability, what are the policies the government can pursue to give our local businesses and entrepreneurs the nudge that says be confident about investing.
Cureder. Welcome to shed Lunch, brought to you by Shes's. My name is Leighton Roberts, and today I'm joined by the Minister of Finance, Nikola Willis. More than just managing the country's purse string, the Minister has also been charged with growing New Zealand's economy. She does this as Minister
for Economic Growth. So in this episode we dig into the impact of the US tariffs and post on New Zealand, the leavers, the government will be pulling to stimulate growth, and what Kiwis can expel from the upcoming budget out later this month. Before we get started, here's some important information.
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor. We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest. Everything you're about to see and here is current at the time of recording.
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Miss Willis.
Hey, look great to be here. I'm not particularly vain, but it is raining hard and well income days find that's the hair situation.
Look fantastic, but outside is miserbral, so I'll definitely confirm that. Look, let's get straight into a New Zealand economy and the position that we're in at the moment. There are signs now that possibly we're through the worst of it, starting to see an upswing through twenty twenty five, and I'm just really interested in your thoughts on this at the moment.
Yeah, Look, New Zealand's come through such a tough time, haven't we. Because post COVID we have very high inflation, very high interest rates that slowed things down in the economy. There's a lot of pain for businesses but also for households who are still dealing with that higher cost base that we've come through, but the road out is looking
really good. And I know that everyone is focused rightly on global instability and what's happening in the world post Trump's tariff announcements, and yeah, that's a headwind for New Zealand, but we are on the growth trajectory. We will be growing faster over the next few months than we have over the past few months, and next year we're forecast to be growing even faster. So this is a time of opportunity for New Zealanders and I think we have a lot to be feeling positive about in this economy.
Yeah.
Great. I always thinking about the last year. We heard a lot about the sort of survived to twenty five, and then that became thrive and twenty five and then now I'm wondering if we're still there or for we're thinking like it's sort of pick up six and twenty six. But I'm just wondering we think we are timing wise coming into the next year.
Look, I think where we are as we are going to be out the worst of it, and we are now on the bit where the thriving starts to happen. But I'm also really conscious that when people see that instability internationally, they factor that in here at home. And so when I'm thinking about what does the government need to do in this moment to make sure that the potential for really rapidly accelerating growth actually over the next twelve and twenty four months, that that potential is fulfilled.
Our job, I think, is to make sure that we're putting in place policies and actions that give people confidence, in particular to invest because what you're seeing internationally as people are pausing on the investment, New Zealand should position ourselves as a safe haven for investment. We have stable democracy, stable institutions, stable regulatory framework, a government that's fundamentally pro growth, pro trade, pro international investment, and all of those things
position us well. We also have a constellation of trade agreements. We've always been the warriors out there fighting for export markets, and so on that context, I think that if I was an international thinking where do I want to plant my money, who do I want to be doing business with, I'd be looking to New Zealand, and we have an opportunity to lean into that.
Yeah, small sample size here, but made me think we've actually had some quite random emails come our way for opportunity to trade the US market, but through a business that's not in the US, so like sort of these random opportunities and that might come from different countries, particularly on the export space for a technology company like US, but opportunities have never come from where you think going to.
And I am hearing stories like that. I was speaking with someone from Garage Project, you know, boutique beer maker here and.
Will there was botique beer, yeah, and.
Great business and they said, look, they've just had one of the largest orders they've ever had in from China, who of course contemplating the reality that American craft beer might not be such a great proposition anymore. So there will be those niche opportunities and more sensitive though, because there'll also be those exporters who are impacted.
Yep, yep completely. I mean, we've got straight into it, so we might as well cover it a little bit deeper. But it's somewhat of a political curve for what I'd imagine, which is the Trump's tariffs and very much to talk everywhere, been posed here in New Zealand on more or less every country. What do you think the actual impacts of this and looking like what's in your map and radar at the moment for dealing with these Yeah.
Look, I think to some extent he did campaign on it, so we knew it was coming, and actually to some extent we what sort.
Of number did you have in your mind?
Well, I chose not to have a number. I mean, it's not a predictable man, is he. I think the key thing right now is the uncertainty, because what happened on day one is different from what's now unfolding, and we can expect there will be changes in the US policy position, and likely the China policy position and that of other countries over the next few weeks and months.
And I think that uncertainty, as much as anything else, is what's making it really difficult globally, because what you're seeing businesses and investors doing is just saying, hold up, hold up, let's pause until we know what the lie of the land is. So by consensus, economists internationally are saying, come what May, there's going to be slower growth across the world. That always has an impact on New Zealand.
Because we're an open trading economy. Our treasury is forecasting that the growth that we were predicting back in December will now be lower than we had thought, but it's still growth is just not going to be as fast as we were hoping it would be, and that's because we will be buffeted by these ones that are coming internationally. So when we grow slower, obviously that's harder in terms
of job creation and income creation. But fundamentally I always have to worry about it too, because I'm the bean counter in the government, and less growth means less revenue. Less revenue makes it harder for me to balance the books and make all the investments that we need to make as a country. So we see our job as really keeping a steady course, making sure we are doing the investments needed, whether it's health, education, you know, the
defense force, which is becoming increasingly strategically important. And we can do that by being careful about how we prioritize. But fundamentally, the best way for me to make our
books healthier is to get that growth trajectory faster. So I'm thinking very hard about in an environment of instability, what are the policies that government can pursue to give our local businesses and entrepreneurs the nudge that says, be confident about investing, be confident about taking on the next market, taking the next step, so that.
The uncertainty, you know, it's always uncertain really right, if you look back on history, we've never really been great forecasters. It's not a fantastic human trait.
But any one who watches the weather forecast knows that completely.
And you know, we have a bit of a front row seat to a lot of it, because markets tend to reflect how people are feeling, and people don't like uncertainty, and therefore markets don't and in their place, sir. And then I was just I literally just read the article from President Trump giving his one hundred day speech and saying that he wants to be the pope. All right, ye that specifically that would be the best job. All right, Well, I'm just not going to take a guess on that anymore.
But what he did say was that he's only just getting started, and that sort of made me think, wow, if this is just getting started. But so, how as a government you do forecast and plan to that, and what sort of mitigations you're putting in place towards this? Given we can be reasonably one thing, we can be quite confident on is that the uncertainty will continue.
Yeah, So there's a couple of things first in terms of the forecasts of what the global trajectory will look like and therefore what it looks like at home to some extent that stays outside of our control, because what he does won't be influenced by what we do. Someone said to me the other day, Oh, you know, shouldn't you we be doing retaliatory tariffs, and you know, it's a bit like throwing a ping pong ball and an elephant, isn't it.
And that's not.
All that will do is harm consumers here at home who will end up paying higher prices and business is here at home. So instead, what we're thinking about as to things, first of all, providing some stability in our own for school settings, making sure that we're still on track to get back to balanced books as a country, because you can appreciate that when there's global market volatility.
Lenders on whom New Zealand is very dependent, we're currently every Thursday afternoon, New Zealand issues around five hundred million dollars worth of bonds. We need to look like a good place to be lending to and investing so we've made adjustments to our own position to make sure that we're still on track to get back into balanced books territory. We think that's quite important right now. The second thing is just being clear that our exporters are going to
need us. So in the first instance, we have established hotlines websites through the Ministry of Foreign Afairs and Trade and through MZTE to make sure exporters can get the information they need about what's a quickly changed environment. We've got a thousand companies that we work really closely with through MZTE, who we've been running seminars and really intense support for, and we're going to keep that going. We need to make sure that export is trying to get
information can get it. That's going to be really important over the next little while. And then fundamentally strategically, New Zealand has always been a country that has pushed for a rules based trading system where countries trade with each other, and we want to keep that role in the world, so that means forging new free trade agreements is more
important than ever. You saw the Prime Minister kick off the beginning of the year with a new arrangement with the United Arab Emirates, so really pushing into those Middle East markets. We've opened trade negotiations with India which are continuing to progress well despite global turmoil, and I think this is actually a time to double down on the trade agreements we do have and make sure that we're a good partner because that's how our exporters get access for their products.
Over the last this uncertainty of the last two weeks has driven some of the highest training volumes we've actually seen on the platform, which again investing reflects people's confidence in the future. And so I think whilst is key, we do tend to be quite good in conversation having the negative part of it, like it's a nice way just to have a bit of a winge with friends and stuff like that, but how we act on mass behind that can be quite different totally.
Look that the A and Z Business Confidence Survey came out today and instantly sort of stood out to me was while people were generally less confident about the economy than they were pre Trump, at the same time, some of them were more confident about the conditions for their own business. They were reporting high levels of confidence for their business than they were for the economy as a whole, but of course all the economy is is each individual
business added together. And so that gives me heart that individual businesses are still confident about what the next few months looks like for them. Yeah, I feel a part of my job, the responsibility I have is to be optimis stick and to remind people of the good things going on because you know, for all of their own reasons, our mainstream media will often emphasize conflict or crime or negative things, and you don't often see stories of By the way, did you know that this new business is
doing amazing stuff? Did you know that the Hawthorn Institute is coming up with world leading scientific breakthroughs into algay and seaweed with Nesley is their major major research partner because they think they're the best in the world that creating protein from the sea, Like, did we hear about that? And I get to see these success stories all the time. You know it picks peanut butter. I was there the
other day. There's a little business that started with a fifty five year old who decided to make peanut butter in a concrete mixer for the market, and he is now making twenty five thousand jars of peanut butter a day. So we need to tell these stories about ourselves because we're awesome. I've just been at the Fintech Festival meeting all these people who are taking a risk to run
a new financial business because they see opportunity. And I see that opportunity, and I think we should talk ourselves into that and not into the things that are hard. Yes, there are challenges, of course there are, but let's also highlight the positive.
Coming back to these geo political situations where all as businesses trying to make changes to our business and thinking about that. You've made some early announcements on the budget and just interested to hear how much of this change, which has come very quickly over the last couple of weeks, is playing into your thinking there and what New Zealanders should start to expect for the budget in a month or so.
Yeah. Well, look, I feel quite a solemn durty in this job to deliver responsible budgets because hey, look, I'd love to be generous and spray the money down around. That would make my job a lot easier, to be honest, But I'm very aware of the context in which we're operating, which is that New Zealand rightly took on debt during COVID.
We can have a debate about whether we took on too much, but we now have dead at levels not seen since the mid nineteen nineties, for context, where at forty two percent government debt to the size of our economy. Historically it's hovered between five and twenty five percent.
Now the probably what do you think is like a good level? Now what we'll we I'd.
Like us to see come back down to forty and then hover between twenty and forty over time, depending on where we are in the side.
Because we're still low globally, Is that right?
Yeah, we are, and we should borrow for investments that are going to drive our future productivity. Absolutely on board for that. The problem that we always need to be aware of is that if something major happens, you know, big earthquake, big biosecurity incursion, we're then going to have to go out to the world and borrow a lot more. And there's a ceiling. Yeah, that's right, And there's a ceiling at which we don't look as good as proposition.
And so it's about having enough headroom that when that big event comes, we can borrow without getting into it's basically I worry about the death spiral of a really high interest bill on our debt. So, for context, right now, spill is nine billion dollars a year on our debt, up from hovering just around three previously. Nine billion hard number to understand because it's so big. That is more than the amount of funding we put into the defense force,
the prison service, the police and customs combined. All of that's just context for the fact that I then say the next thing, which is that right now we are borrowing to pay for the grocery so we're not just borrowing for assets. We're borrowing for our day to day spending. There's a thirteen billion dollar deficit this year between what we as a government are taking in in revenue and other earnings and what we're spending to keep the economy going.
That's the right thing to do, because New Zealanders need stability and their welfare supports and the funding for our schools and hospitals. It just can't go on forever. Now I've taken the gradual approach. Some people would say sort that out immediately. I think that would create a lot of pain for people, and it would actually create instability in the economy. So we've set a that says we will get the books back and balance by twenty twenty nine.
We think that's reasonable period of time to narrow that gap between what we spend and earn, and that will allow us to start paying down debt. Now, because of the Trump stuff, the forecasts I've been receiving told me you're now going to be off track to meet that goal of getting the books back and balance unless you make for change.
The interest rate's been held up because of what listen, new uncertainty or what is it that's driving Well.
It's basically that because growth will be lower, we're forecasts to be taking in less revenue, which has two effects. One the deficit grows larger now and two we then have to borrow more, which then creates a larger cost
there in terms of interest. So those effects on the books mean in the absence of any reaction, I'd be literally presenting a forecast to New Zealand that showed no path to balanced books, and I don't think that's feasible, both in terms of international lending but also in terms of what's responsible. So we've said, look, we were planning that our kind of our allowance, if you want to call it, that would be two point four billion in the coming for school year. Actually, we've gone and looked
really hard. We've found some more stuff we can reprioritize. We've juggled around the other tens of billions of government spending that we do, and that collectively means that we will only need an allowance of one point three billion, so a bit less, and that as to effects one, it just means that we're borrowing less than the short
term than we would otherwise be doing. But it's doable because with the reprioritization, I can still look everyone in the eye and say we've got enough to make the investments we clearly need in our health services, that we clearly need, in our schools, that we clearly need in our defense force, in law and order. Also got enough room to make a few modest measures to support businesses to grow, which is going to be really important over
this period. So I've made room for that, and I've made room for some very modest, targeted cost of loving measures, so I can do all of that and spend less. So that's the right thing to do. I'll still be spending more next year than this year. I mean, this is the context, right, it's just about how much more we're spending next year.
Actually, I hadn't actually observed that.
Yeah, we'll be spending more next year and the year after that and the year after that. So the trend is always up because things like super anuation.
Lie.
Yeah, the trend is always up. Yeah, that's right, things like superinnuation. That bill just grows by baliance over the next few years, you know, So we will be spending more, but it's just a question of how steep that spending more line is.
The defense size of the defense spend. Has that been a bit of surprise to you, like it was that presumably when you were going through the election process that probably wasn't.
Yeah, it's definitely become much more of a top of mind consumed for everyone in the world. I think we've all observed that the strategic environment is far less stable than it was, and New Zealand really has to look at it through two lens. One, we have really solemn commitment to our Pacific partners, who, to quite an extent, you know, our Pacific family, rely on us to be the ones that are survailing their ocean space to be
there if there's a disaster and they need help. So that matters, and it's become clear that our defense force, without a lot more investment, is going to have reduced
capability to do those things. The second part of it is we need to be a good partner, you know, particularly to Australia who our only ally, but also the other countries who realistically we defend on, We depend on, defend on you depend on to not only defend us if we need defending, but also to defend the values that we collectively as a world share, and so you
know right now that's playing out in Ukraine. New Zealand is helping by training troops and at the same time we want to keep being able to do those.
Things alongside the country's per strings or being counter I think you put it before. You'll now also have the economic growth portfolio, so the Minister of Economic Growth as well. So I'm just interested. You know, it seems to me like they could quite easily contradict a little bit, whilst there's also a lot of alignment. But I'm interested in how you see those portfolios as being different, and then how you manage those differences.
Yeah, Well, I'm really pleased that they're sitting with me together because one of the frustrations I had when I became Minister of Finance was I would spend quite a lot of time have quite lengthy conversations with my officials at the Treasury about ten million dollars here that we could make in savings or twenty million dollars an efficiency that we could do here. Those conversations are important, but the most important thing is what are we doing to
earn more? Because when you earn more, your choices are easier, and so I wanted much more of a focus on growth, on what the government's role is in making sure that actually businesses are investing, our creating jobs are growing faster, and the government has a huge role and it goes across basically everything we do if you think about it, from how we educate people and upskill them, what we're doing with research and science, the regulatory and competitive settings
that we set for businesses, how we support trade and international investment, what we do in terms of infrastructure that businesses rely on. So it spans a huge amount of work, But ministers get into their own little silo working on their thing, and what I wanted to ensure them what the Prime Minister wanted to ensure is that in all we do, we are still focused on will this help
the boat go faster? Will this support growth? And let's really focus our gender in on that because New Zealand needs growth for everyone to have the living standards we desire over these next few years.
Does that change who you like engaging with very much on a day to day like you sort of Treasury seem to me more about the sort of accounting side of it, I suppose.
And then.
And for the people who support you and your team, does it they sort of wear jill hats as well?
Like?
How does that work in a practical I.
Want to be kind to my folk at the Treasury. That's still very important to me and what we do is very important, but there it has changed. So I've had this amazing experience, which is that I have been visiting businesses around the country and just literally getting in on their factory floors talking to them about what they want to see the government focused on from a growth perspective,
and I have absolutely loved that. Whether it's going to see the guys who started here in Wellington and are now making electric bikes that they send all over the world, whether it's going and visiting the small small startups who are thinking about our food industry and where they can take it next, whether it's going and visiting a dairy farmer who now is feeling pretty happy about the world.
Those business conversations are where a government policy gets real because instead of it being theoretical, it's look, this is the one thing that if you guys could change that rule, it would help. And I've got my officials right there with me, and they're empowered through my Economic Growth portfolio to go and talk to the relevant government agency and say, the Ministry of Economic Growth is really concerned about it. Can we fix it? And we can a lot of
the time. So that's hugely empowering and I love it for you.
Personally, do you feel like there's a I guess hierarchy of the jobs aside? Do you feel like you skew towards a sort of front wheel on that and your own thinking between the two portfolios?
For me, as I said earlier, I'm an optimist. I'm a positive mindset person and so that's the part of my job that really spins my wheels in terms of getting me excited about the future. I view the finance role as having some really critical enablers. You know, if we don't have stable inflation, interest rates are soaring, it's very hard to get growth, and so good fiscal economic
management really matters. But I view it, almost particularly in this moment in time, as a role where it's a responsibility, it's a duty, whereas the growth role as much more about possibility and free wheeling. And so I get to indulge that side of myself.
Nice. So it she's like the whole purpose of our business to create financial impartment for everyone. So we do a huge amount of thought of this, and we also do a lot of serving. And one of the things we've noticed, and I'll take any opportunity I can speak with someone in covenment about it, but is the key receiver settings and our surveys, for example, for the first time showing appetite for our customers anyway to take a hit today for something into the future. A couple of
questions here. Firstly, anything you think on that about the sentiment of New Zealanders, which would be wider than our customer base, who would more be more likely to follow this closely, but then also any plans for the government with a save a space specifically.
Yeah. Look, I'm just going to first so very happy to talk about keep we save it. Delighted too, But first it's going to pick up on that point around financial empowerment, because one of the things that I've observed is the often quite large gap between New Zealanders who have really great financial literacy and knowledge and understand compounding interest rates, asset growth, dividends, returns, and those people can
then make really great financial decisions. And I'm sure a lot of them are on your platform and are excited about Chazy's. At the other end, there are some people who are smart people. They're great people, but they went brought up with those skills. It's not part of their daily job, it's not part of their language. And I worry about that gap because I truly believe that when you have financial knowledge, you can make choices that secure
your future and your living standards. So I'm delighted. I just have to say it on your show today that the government has just announced that we are putting financial literacy into all schools. Is a compulsory part of the curriculum. Yeah, compulsory part of the curriculum and quite exciting because what we've done is we've said everyone has to do it up to year ten as part of the Social Studies curriculum. Fairly teachers are going to say what resources am I
meant to use? So we've done a peer up with the Retirement Commission where they're providing a number of different resources on their platform that link to different parts of the curriculum, and I hope to see the people supporting that increase over time, so everything from banker to sorted. I know Chesy's does some work in this area, so I'd love to see you involved on the platform. And that means that teachers have the tools they need to
teach this stuff. And that's what we need to see because the set ways to keipisaver, which is I think as soon as people go on to that sordid website and put the numbers in and see what happens when you make a higher rate of contribution and see how much that can grow your asset base at retirement, then their minds really start to wear over and they start to think, oh gosh, this is the compounding effect if I save just a little bit more now can have
a massive impact on my quality of life when I'm older. Exciting thing about key we Saver, I think, and it's part of the scheme that some people criticize but I celebrate, is that it's not just about retirement. There's a whole cohort of people who use it now to save for their first time because let's be honest, not everyone when they first enter the workforce is going to prioritize what's happening when they're sixty five. But a lot of people are entering key we Saver thinking about how do I
save for that first home? And it's a great tool for enabling that. So I'm a supporter of Kei Saver. I want to see people's key we Saver balances grow and I will have more to say about it in future.
Cool. Well hold that thought even Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been working away on it. I've been taking a lot of advice and hopefully when I'll be back on the podcast talking about it.
So you also have a portfolio called Social Investment, Yeah, which many listeners might not be too familiar with, but.
It's a prime Minister refers to it as your passion project.
Right, So Firstly, why is it called social investment? And secondly, how are you applying this new lens to affect how you're leading the portfolios or your decisions that you're making across the responsibilities that you have.
So fundamentally, the way I think about social investment rather than people use the phrase social welfare or social development to describe the things that we rightly do as a society to support people in need. The better thing is if we make interventions and changes that stop the need that we actually don't want people to have to be
dependent on government support and services into the future. We'd much prefer them to have the issues and challenges in their life resolved so that they can actually have independence and choices. And I think of this through the lens of an individual about how badly government does that sometimes. I gave a speech last year about Jack. I want you to imagine Jack. He's a young guy. He's living in a house where there's family violence at home, there's
never really very much money. He stops going to school, he gets in trouble with the law. Like there are people like Jack out there, and it's very sad. Now in Jack's life, the government is ever present. He is probably engaging with the police. He's probably had a social welfare worker. He's had someone from ordering a tamariki come into his life. He's probably engaged with the local truancy service.
There's probably multiple community groups who have been contracted by government to provide support to at risk youth like him. There's people who are there to try and get him into a job. There's lots of people and lots of money going at Jack, but it ain't joined up and it's not fundamentally breaking the cycle for him. So the opportunity for government is to say, how can we better
use our dollars to make Jack's life actually better? And my philosophical view, having worked in this area for a long time and looked across the community, is often the people who will make the biggest difference from Jack, for Jack will be directly from his community, or it will be a local non government provider that have been working
in that community for a very long time. When you talk to those providers, they get often six seven, eight, thirteen twenty one contracts from government, but it's impossible for them because the contracts are focused on how many meetings do you have, how many boxes have you ticked. They're getting audited across all the contracts, and they say to us, could you treat us like an investment. Could you come to us and say these are the outcomes we want for Jack and the people like him, and then give
us the space to innovate and do it properly. And with the modern world of data, we can now do that because we can track the progress that making. So instead of old fashion multiple overlapping contracts, let's have one contract and let's contract for outcomes. That's what social investment's about. I went on a very long spiell.
Didn't they contract for outcome? You came to get back together, like is there a place for private capital play in your thinking on this or is it just how you're sort of managing from them?
Yeah? Look there is in a few ways. I mean. The first is that we have a big philanthropic sector in New Zealand and there are real opportunities for us to partner. Is government better with that sector to both share the information we often have so that they know both where the need is but also where investments can make are making a big difference. Sometimes philanthropists are better
at doing the risky innovative things than we are. But then they come up with something that they say, this is really working like it is fundamentally a great investment, and they want us to take it over so they can fund the next innovative thing. And that's sometimes going to make sense. But the other thing is, you know, social bonds and those opportunities they can stand cap and
I'm interested in continuing to explore them. The challenge is always proving that you're going to get a better outcome that way than contracting with a provider who already exists directly. So working through that policy challenge is something that I'm taking advice on.
So Lastly, a big driver for economic activity is confidence. We've touched a little bit on that at the moment, but confidence by business system vests consumers to spend flow into each other a little bit. So with regards to New Zealand economic sentiment, and my hope and my assumption is that it will have approved and improved in twelve months time, just intersting in what you think will have been the main driver for that. When we look back over the previous.
Twelve months, it'll be people like you, Layton, It'll be people like the people.
Who listen, there's a lot of weight on my shoulders, but I'll take it lock.
But truly it will be It won't be that government did this, think it will be individual businesses. Individual New Zealander is saying, actually, right now, this is the time I'm going to take another loan. I'm going to invest in this idea that I've had. I'm going to take this business. I'm going to expand it to a new market. I am going to hire that new workforce to pursue that new innovation. I am going to invest some money in R and D that I reckon is going to
pay off. I'm going to do the next thing. And so I genuinely think for this economy to have more confidence than twelve months, we need to see momentum build now by having individual firms, sectors, entrepreneurs saying let's actually make the investment now to do that thing we know could be brilliant. And there are so many things out there that could be brilliant. So I want people investing and doing it. And obviously every business will make its
own decisions. But when you do that, that is literally where economic growth and confidence comes from.
Nice completely such a mindset thing.
So everyone listening to do it invest.
So before we go, because we're like, firstly, appreciate, really appreciate your time for sharing with us and unvestas today and this access is another great thing about New Zealand. So that's very much appreciated. But Budget days coming up has some strange rituals associated with it. We've been told that Sybil English used to eat a pie on budget Day. We were just wondering if you had any particular snack of choice.
To because Grant Robertson used to have sausage rolls. So yeah, that's the whole thing. It's like food related. Yeah. So last year, what I had my kids do was bake cookies for me and the Prime Minister so we could have a little kind of morning tea coffee together. And that was a really lovely thing actually, because my kids came to watch the budget and they had some reflections on my discussions of the ober garlic surplus, but mostly
they were reflected. Prime Minister really liked their biscuits. So they have been thinking about what the next batch are going to be for a year now, so I'm expecting they're going to be pretty good. So that's one tradition, and then I guess the other tradition that I really like is obviously budgets, Like any great endeavor, involve hundreds,
if not thousands, of people working extremely hard. And I'm lucky that I work with some of the most talented, wonderful, earnest, hardworking people, and so on budget night, a small group of them come together and we raise a glass to celebrate the job done. So I'm looking forward to that great.
Well be so luck Thank you, thank you, thanks everyone for tuning in. You can watch Shared Lunch on YouTube, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a rating in a comment about what you'd like to hear about next. Enjoy the rest of your week.