Her Budget speech gave an early clue that adrenaline-raising announcements would be thin on the ground.
She was a fifth of the way through before finally getting to an actual announcement of any new spending — and even then it was only a passing reference to the general amount of infrastructure spending — before plunging back into more analysis of what she felt was a rosy set of government accounts.
Normally all the bells and whistles are heralded with superlatives and the boring bits with the numbers in are skipped over quickly in favour of the ‘‘good stuff’’ that might win votes.
This time the big announcements — what few there were — were well down the pecking order.
Instead, Ms Willis spent much of her time setting out the arguments that she and her government colleagues will take out on the road during the election campaign: that they are sensible, solid stewards of the New Zealand economy.
Exhibit A will be the prediction that the government’s books will return to surplus in 2028-29, a year earlier than previously forecast.
That is all very well, but being impressed by that requires forgetting that the date for returning to surplus had been pushed out in previous Willis Budgets.
The promised land of surplus will also require that the situation in the Middle East stabilises and fuel prices return to something akin to normal: United States President Donald Trump ordering fresh attacks on Iran just hours before Ms Willis’ speech did not bode well.
The extensive economic analysis in the Economic and Fiscal Update included several ‘‘fan’’ diagrams, extrapolating best and worst scenarios based on the whims of the unpredictable president of the United States. Some of these make deeply worrying reading and would atomise the gains from Ms Willis’ fiscal rectitude and rigorous cutting of the public service.
There was already a prevailing mood in New Zealand for economising and austerity, even before the fuel crisis emerged — think rates caps and demands for no spending on ‘‘nice to haves’’.
Budget 2026 taps into that zeitgeist with the previously announced paring back of public service positions and trimming of many departmental budgets.
Ms Willis stood before the House with her pockets turned out and moths flying out, pleading that the government did not have two bob to rub together and what it was able to spend its pennies on were solely the essentials.
There were grounds for such claims. The biggest growth areas for new spending were education and health — an increase in operational funding for schools and for elective procedures in hospitals are things few taxpayers will quibble about. And it will give government MPs in marginal seats something to campaign on.
But there was nothing akin to free public transport for under 13s, a Covid wage subsidy scheme, tax cuts or enhancements to the paid parental leave scheme — to use examples from previous election year Budgets.
The good folk of Cambridge, who are about to receive a $1.8 billion roading investment, may remember this as the ‘‘Waikato Expressway’’ Budget, but no-one else is going to.
This was not a Black Budget, a Mother of all Budgets or a Wellbeing Budget: it was a ‘‘meh’’ Budget — and that quite likely suits its author just fine.
In her Budget media statement Ms Willis spruiked Budget 2026 as one which invested in state highways, rail, hospitals, schools, social housing, courthouses, police stations and defence capability. Or, in other words, business as usual.
There was even a ‘‘BAU’’ feel to one of the more interesting announcements: $400 million worth of financial incentives for councils to encourage housing through paying for related costs like consenting — but not, they will regret, for things like water services.
There were a very few nice-to-haves in a Budget largely devoid of such fripperies.
The added funding to lower the eligibility age for bowel screening is a good thing, given many of those most vulnerable to contracting that form of cancer have a lower life expectancy.
And someone found some change down the back of the couch to fund more musical instruments in schools, which is not a huge expense but will repay itself in time if it fosters the talents of a future Lorde or Neil Finn.
But overall, this was a Budget which kept things ticking over; one which barely even bought the cloth for the government to suit its purse.
The parties in the governing coalition will be hoping that such thriftiness will impress voters more than something targeted directly at their hip pockets.
