GUEST BLOG: Tadhg Stopford – Nicola Willis’s 2025 Budget is not merely austere.It is ideologically blind, historically ignorant, and economically servile

Nicola Willis’s 2025 Budget is not merely austere.It is ideologically blind, historically ignorant, and economically servile.

It is the kind of budget a captive colony delivers to its owners — not one a sovereign nation delivers to its people.

Where China and Singapore spend to build the future, New Zealand cuts to appease the past.Where others use sovereign money to activate dormant capacity, we pretend we must beg or bleed to get anything done.

This is not prudence.This is fiduciary betrayal — and a damagingly extractive tribute to a predatory class with no strategy beyond greed.

If we increased our productivity through investment, we could pay tribute and still be wealthy. But the finance sector is basically a cost centre for the nation. Yet we somehow count it in gdp.

Can we be smarter about this please? It’s just the correct, conservative, intelligent, moral, economically productive thing to do; and we can do it ourselves with the strategic use of sovereign money

What Is Sovereign Money, and Why Does It Matter?

In simple terms, sovereign money is money created by a nation for the public good — not borrowed at interest from private banks or foreign creditors.

It is how:

Lincoln funded the Civil War and saved the Union.

FDR built the New Deal, ending the Great Depression.

Japan rebuilt into an industrial superpower after WWII.

Singapore funds its infrastructure, education, and innovation — and stays rich.

China launches high-speed rail, entire cities, and strategic industries.

And in New Zealand?

It’s how John A. Lee funded our housing miracle.It’s how Fletchers was born.It’s how we became a wealthy nation in the first place.

And now?

We have our own Crown-owned bank, created precisely to lend money to ourselves — debt we own, interest we keep, capacity we grow.Ironically, using this bank to invest in ourselves increases our financial credibility — as the credit upgrade following our COVID response proved.

Even though we spent too much on asset inflation, the markets still rewarded us.Imagine if we had used that power to invest in real wealth — in health, housing, infrastructure, and sovereign capacity.

We are not poor.We are powerful.We simply forgot.

But Nicola Willis, like her predecessors and her rivals across the aisle, refuses to use sovereign credit for the public good.

Instead, she shackles us to private bank debt, imposes brutal constraints, and calls it “responsibility.”

It is not responsibility.It is servitude.

It may be corruption.

It is certainly not public service in line with fiduciary responsibility.

If we were shareholders, Im pretty sure we could fire her for the way she has privileged australian money changers over the nation. Suffocating our productivity leads to the opposite of wealth, you may not be surprised to know. Because production Is Prosperity — money Is the merely the medium.

Adam Smith understood this centuries ago:

“Wealth is not money. Wealth is production.”

Money is the magician’s apprentice — a servant.Real prosperity comes from what we grow, build, teach, heal, and invent.

And the most valuable forms of production are regenerative:

Clean energy

Public health

Ecological agriculture

Education

Culture

Infrastructure

These should not be left to the market.They are public goods — and must be subsidised.

Yeah, Adam Smith said that. The famous guy David Seymour pretends hes all about. Here’s a secret though, Adam Smith would be very unhappy to hear that David does that. Because David serves cartels and corporations, and private monopolies suffocate the free market. Thats why *Subsidy Is Not Socialism — It Is Sovereignty*

Education, healthcare, defense, energy, and food security are not “expenses.”They are the pillars of self-determination.

Their returns:

Compound over time

Reduce future costs

Protect national resilience

Enable productivity and dignity

To subsidize them is not charity.It is sovereign self-interest.

So, in short, Sovereign Money + Strategic Tax = Freedom with Guardrails

In a monetarily sovereign nation, taxes don’t fund spending — spending comes first.But taxation still matters deeply — to:

Curb inflation

Prevent elite capture

Rebalance the economy

Deter corruption and parasitism

“Tax the rich — not to raise revenue, but to stop them buying the country.”

Comparative Advantage Is a Useful Lie — in an Unfree World

In theory, it promotes mutual trade.

In practice?

Low-wage countries suppress labor and environmental protections to “win.”

High-finance countries weaponize hot capital to destabilize others.

Multinationals outmaneuver tax laws and shift profits globally.

Comparative advantage collapses when capital is free but labor is chained.

It works only with capital controls, shared rules, and fair play.Which we do not have.

Therefore, Ricardo, the father of comparative advantage, tells us that Strategic Champions Are National Insurance

If we do not nurture strategic sovereign industries, we become a raw material colony.

If we rely on imports for essentials, we are economically defenceless.

That’s why:

China has Made in China 2025

The US has CHIPS Act & IRA

Singapore invests heavily in R&D and public services

And New Zealand?

We sell our water

Borrow our money

Import our food

And let our innovators drown in red tape

It is not protectionism to invest in hemp, geothermal, food security, biotech, or software.It is economic survival — and sovereign strategy.

It is the holy grail of political economy, and it’s within our grasp.

It is also How We Outflank the Right

Pink, red, blue, and green, say they are “fiscally responsible” — but they refuse sovereign credit. They are so wrongheaded. They’ve drunk the rentier kool aid; or else they are selling it.

Pink, red and blue say they support “free markets” — but they engineer monopolies and suppress wages while failing to ensure security of wealth, strength, or resilience. Again, why? Are cartels and poverty the outcome off ‘free markets’ and ‘efficiency’? Well, if it’s the fraud and theft of neoliberalism; a vein of political thought that is corruption as policy; then yes, it is.

Did we ever vote for this?

No. We got shafted repeatedly in the 80-90s by governments who ignored the will of the people to damage our economy. That’s why we got MMP. But the mainstream policies of fraud built on lies never went away; we just got used to them. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water.  The abnormal has become normal.

But it’s getting very hot in here.

Pink, red and blue, say they protect “sovereignty”, but they sell the country to capital, cheap; and some aim to do worse – like the Regulatory Standards Bill, which will drop our pants like Rogernomics did. Leaving us ill prepared, unfunded, without a plan, resources, or recompense. A constitutional coffin is being crafted for us, the people of this nation.

The Legal and Moral Case for Change

The Truth-Based Legal Revolution contends:

Sovereignty begins with credit — not debt to banks, but credit for people.

National wealth is built through public investment, not private extraction.

Budgets must reflect constitutional duty, not ideological dogma.

History must be remembered — not memory-holed.

Truth is not optional — it is the beginning of justice.

Honestly? They’re bleeding us. It’s not cool.

Choose Sovereignty — or be a slave.

We do not lack money.We lack truth, courage, and leadership willing to use our sovereign tools.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in our people.It is whether we can afford the cost of not doing so.

History should guide us.

“A sovereign nation invests in itself. A colony sells itself off.”

I dont want to live in a nation of haves and have nots.

I want to live in a Sovereign nation.

Lets set the standard. But theres competition? So, lets learn from them, and history.

Then lets outcompete the market.

 

Tadhg Stopford is a Historian and Teacher. Join him at www.thehempfoundation.org.nz