The Alliance
Budget 2026 Leader Response
Another chapter in managed decline.
The Coalition keeps the burden on working people. The Alliance says New Zealand can choose public services, public ownership, and an economy built for the common good.
The Alliance Party says today's Budget confirms the Coalition Government's goal is to keep the economic burden of the cost of living crisis on the working class majority.
A Budget for sorted politicians
Alliance Party leader Victor Billot says the Budget is a document created by “entitled, sorted politicians for their entitled, sorted friends.”
He says the Budget continues the “managed decline” of New Zealand as a developed, modern nation.
“New Zealanders can't pay their bills with a breathless string of cliches from the Finance Minister.”
Victor Billot, Alliance Party Leader
Mr Billot says that while everyday families are struggling with deep economic distress, the Government is laser focussed on ignoring their plight to look after its own narrow interests.
“Look at what the Government practices, not what they preach. At the same time as Ministers cut accommodation supplements for the most vulnerable, they are doubling down on their own perks.”
Public services are not a liability
Mr Billot says the Budget treats public services as a liability rather than a collective investment in the country's future.
Slashing thousands of public service roles is a dangerous degradation of state capability.
Military drones and weaponry are funded while hospitals face staffing crises and diagnosis delays.
The remaining fees-free university schemes are being dismantled, forcing future generations further into debt.
Mr Billot says the Alliance condemns the clear shift toward militarisation over human needs in the Budget, while hospitals face staffing crises, cancer patients encounter diagnosis delays, and many go without basic dental care.
The Alliance alternative
The Alliance Party maintains that a fair society must reject the artificial constraints of “fiscal discipline” that only ever seem to apply to the working class.
In response to this Budget, the Alliance presents a democratic socialist plan for an economy focussed on the common good, not well connected private interests.
- Tax wealth, not work, through a fair and progressive tax system.
- Fully fund universal, free healthcare and dental care.
- Remove fees at the point of use across physical, mental, and oral health.
- Return strategic infrastructure to public ownership and community control.
Own the essentials
“The Alliance also demands 100 percent public ownership of strategic infrastructure. Water, electricity, transport, and telecommunications must be returned to public ownership and community control.”
Victor Billot
Under the Alliance alternative, public revenue would fund a universal medical service and dismantle the artificial barriers that separate physical, mental, and oral health.
Budget 2026 proves that the current political establishment is still wedded to neoliberal zombie economics that harm the majority while concentrating wealth and power in a small minority.
Reject managed decline. Build the common good.
Tax wealth. Fund care. Own the essentials. Put public services back at the centre of New Zealand's future.
Join the Alliance