When finance minister Nicola Willis stands to deliver her first budget tomorrow, it will be a significant moment for her personally, but also for the coalition government, and her own National Party in particular.
The budget is the most consequential event in the annual political calendar. It expresses the fundamental democratic principle that the executive branch of government is drawn from, and accountable to, the legislature.
Constitutional probity aside, the budget also matters for purely political reasons. Willis has promised neither a spending spree nor austerity. If there is a “middle course”, it will lie between the promised tax cuts and the spending cuts that pay for them.
