GUEST BLOG: Tadhg Stopford – Lies of Willis & Treasury : Budget 25
Nicola Willis’s economic policy is not just cruel.
It is unlawful in spirit, negligent in practice, and treasonous in consequence.
This is no longer a political disagreement.
It is a case of fiduciary breach, maladministration, and coordinated public harm.
Let’s walk through how and why.
What Is Fiduciary Duty in Public Office?
Public office is not a slogan. It is a sacred trust — a legal and moral duty to act:
In good faith
With competence
And in the public interest, not in service of partisan ideology or foreign profiteers
As Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis is entrusted with the wellbeing of every New Zealander — from infrastructure and fiscal stability to education, healthcare, and housing. She is a guardian of the future.
But she has violated that trust on multiple counts.
Therefore, We Believe There Are Grounds for Political and Legal Censure
Budget 2025 is not just a bad budget.
It is a continuation of Willis’s strategically negligent pattern, including:
Failure to regulate the banking oligopoly while sitting on the Finance and Expenditure Committee
Protecting $5B+ in annual profits for Australian-owned banks, while slashing Kiwi services
Refusing to consider sovereign credit issuance, despite New Zealand being a sovereign currency issuer
Maintaining inflation distortion by excluding housing from CPI
Cutting Reserve Bank funding by 25%, weakening monetary independence
Defunding social protections, including halting 33 pay equity claims
Gutting KiwiSaver support while offering landlord tax relief and film rebates
This isn’t “tightening the belt.”
It’s slitting the throat of the nation — to feed capital and foreign banks.
It’s Treason.
Or, More Specifically,
It’s Maladministration and Breach of Duty
It most certainly is *not public service*
It is textbook maladministration under the Ombudsman Act 1975, which includes:
Unreasonable decision-making
Omission or failure to act
Improper, biased, or bad faith actions
Ignoring relevant information
Willis ticks every box.
She ignores basic monetary reality, acknowledged by both the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, that banks create money when they lend — money she claims “doesn’t exist” for the public good
She refuses to explore sovereign credit as a legitimate, lawful option
She allows systemic profiteering by foreign banks, while New Zealanders hold over $400 billion in private debt
She perpetuates a statistical fiction by excluding housing from the CPI, which hides real-world cost of living and distorts fiscal policy
This is not ignorance.
It is betrayal, and Ministers have been sacked for far less
New Zealand has dismissed Ministers for:
Undisclosed conflicts (Judith Collins)
Hidden meetings (Clare Curran)
Donation investigations (Winston Peters)
Yet Willis remains unchallenged after:
Deliberate misrepresentation of fiscal options
Shielding of foreign interests
Dismantling of public equity and capacity
And She’s Not Alone – The Treachery of Treasury Suggests a Gang.
The failure is not hers alone.
It is institutional — and the New Zealand Treasury shares the guilt.
According to its own Stewardship Report (2022), Treasury’s role is
This includes:
- Accurate fiscal advice
- Truthful data
- Intergenerational equity
- Systemic integrity
Yet, despite this, Treasury has:
- Enabled false household-budget analogies
- Sanctioned CPI distortion by excluding housing
- Suppressed discussion of sovereign credit tools
Endorsed cuts that violate stewardship obligations
Stood silent while the nation was hollowed out and sold
*This is not stewardship*.
It is collusion with economic imperialism.
It’s Time to Get Off the Couch
This is no longer about parties.
It is about law, truth, and the public good.
What We Demand
First, A Formal Legal Review
Judicial review of Budget 2025 for breach of duty under the Public Finance Act 1989
An Ombudsman complaint for maladministration and systemic bias
Second, A Public Inquiry
Into political capture, false economic narratives, and Treasury complicity
Third, A People’s Budget
Based on monetary truth, national capacity, and economic sovereignty
Because this is not mere neglect.
It is a morally, intellectually, and economically corrupt campaign against the nation.
It is a war — and the time to meet it with lawful, organized resistance has come.
Or are you a citizen who believes Godzone can be greater than a pillage-pot for corporate finance?
Willis has had her say.
Now we, the people, will have ours.
Let’s reclaim sovereign finance. Let’s rebuild the wealth of our nation.
Each one teach one.
Learn and share.
Let’s reclaim the force of funding progress.
Let’s improve things.
Tadhg Stopford is a Historian and Teacher. Join him at www.thehempfoundation.org.nz
Willis is implementing ACT and NZ Initiative economic policies……period. NACT are now the political wing of The New Zealand Initiative (the old Business Roundtable) – a member of the Atlas Network. They are implementing a corporatocracy as fast as they can (while they are in Government) and will be pouring money into their propaganda network to convince the public that it is good for them.
This is the only time I have ever seen anyone mention the removal of the majority of housing costs from the CPI, other than myself.
The significance of this one act of maladministration alone should have been seen as an act of war when Bolger and Shipley removed the cost of existing houses, the cost of land, and the cost of servicing a mortgage from the CPI in the 1990s.
Bolger is still having nightmares about what he did. And for very good reason.
That single move meant the CPI was understated, which meant that interest rates were much lower than they should have been, which meant mortgages were cheaper, so people could pay more for property, which meant prices went up more than was reasonable, which meant more people wanted to buy property, which meant the ponzi was put in place. And no chance of the CPI increasing to recognise rising property prices and so nothing to stop houses becoming unaffordable. The biggest scam in NZ history, alongside the ability of private banks to create money from nothing.
And, on top of this, blue collar wages tend to be tied to CPI, which means wage increases were never enough to cover the ever increasing true cost of living, which mean real wages have been falling for the last 30 years.
And all of this is by design, not accident. Studies have shown if the CPI was measured the same way as in 1980, it would be double what is now reported. We would have decent wages, affordable housing, and a more equitable society if not for the collusion of the National Party with corporate interests. And the fact Labour never fixed this makes them complicit in the fraud.
Brilliant article.
Sure is spot on point.
Ministers don’t decide the composition of the CPI. That is the job of the Chief Statistican.
The reason being that this is a decision that should be independent of politics.
Just to add, my understanding is the Chief Statistician sees residential rental prices as being a more accurate way of determining the annual CPI, rather than the increase in value of capital assets, such as land and buildings. In short the CPI is largely a measure of consumables rather than of capital assets.
This is not true Wayne.
Which is hardly surprising.
The decision was made by the CPI advisory Committee which is appointed by, let me see, the Minister of Statistics.
It is quite clearly a political decision as no independent body would come up with such nonsense.
It is also interesting that the explanation for this is dated 3 Oct 2022, quite some time after the event. I imagine it was kept fairly quite until Shamubeel actually mentioned it in one of his columns after a little nudge from me.
You hit the nail on the head Rangi…many times…well stated!!
Awesome article, It is so refreshing to read a NZ commentator who understands the fiat currency monetary system and questions why this is not explained to people.
Why is the reality of this system not widely understood or highlighted by those that do understand it – such as the RBNZ and Treasury? My answer to that question is ‘artificial scarcity’ – this pretend and administered scarcity is necessary to protect the profitability of private capital. Something that all governments prioritize above all else.
This is most explicit in the energy and housing sectors in NZ.
ARE YOUstanding for government at the next election .Taranaki -King country needs a decent candidate .At the moment we are stuck with the crook Barb Kruiger who has been here since Jim bolger .
“Why is the reality of this system not widely understood or highlighted by those that do understand it – such as the RBNZ and Treasury?”
The Willis government is including ‘financial literacy’ in the school curriculum. Nine to one, the purpose is to convince school kids to become financially illiterate and believe the “government budgets like a household” and “banks lend out savers’ bank deposits”.
This is admittedly well meaning.