Workers First Union

💲"Misery Budget 2026: a crumbling house with a fresh coat of paint" 📉

Our press release:

Today’s Budget 2026 is a "misery Budget", according to Workers First Union, with students, women, public servants, people with disabilities and our natural environment paying for the Government’s election-year desperation just to maintain the status quo.

"This is an austerity Budget from an austerity Government, and it does not meaningfully address any of the challenges ahead of us - it’s just about keeping New Zealand on life support," said Dennis Maga, Workers First General Secretary.

Mr Maga said that cuts to fees-free study and tertiary subsidies, the loss of thousands of public servants’ jobs, rent hikes for social housing tenants, the ongoing denial of pay equity for women, and cuts to transport subsidies for disabled people showed that the Government was making New Zealanders pay for their economic mismanagement and inability to create a fairer tax system.

"Any projected surplus will be built from the misery of those who can’t afford to sacrifice any more during a cost-of-living crisis that this Government fuels and maintains," said Mr Maga.

"They’re like dodgy landlords who add a fresh coat of paint and a second-hand grey carpet onto a mouldy, crumbling house whose foundations are slipping off the edge of a cliff."

"Meanwhile, we’re all paying for MPs to take accommodation supplements for their second houses and funding more military, prisons and roads."

"Additional funding for health and education is not enough, is too late, and comes after years of deliberate underfunding."

Mr Maga said that even new ambulance funding announced by the Government on Friday last week masked an urgent crisis in emergency services and was not a sufficient or serious solution.

Workers First and CICTAR’s new "Emergency!" ambulance report highlighted that fully funding New Zealand’s ambulance services would cost at least $50 million per year at current service levels, and even halving the vast Trans-Tasman pay gap for ambulance officers would cost at least another $69 million per year. Instead, Budget 2026 confirms an extra $8.75 million per year over four years following a rushed pre-announcement that hides the true reality of the problems our emergency services must urgently confront.

"Luxon, Peters, Willis and Seymour lead a government that is hallucinating as badly as the AI tools they intend to replace 9,000 public servants with," said Mr Maga.
"We desperately need the Opposition to now step up and show us that there is a better way, or New Zealand’s downward spiral will accelerate."

Live today at 5:30pm - cut through the spin and hear a real response to the Government's Budget from workers and a panel of experts! ✅

UPDATED LIVESTREAM INFO:
Let people in your networks know they can be part of the action by tuning in on:
• Facebook: NZCTU
• Instagram: Young Workers Resource Centre Instagram
• YouTube: Big Hairy Network.

🚨 Our ‘EMERGENCY!’ ambulance report in numbers. 🚨

(Stats sourced from our full report - https://tinyurl.com/4edeaa2v)

Slide text:

Major problems are in store for our ambulance sector that the Government’s Budget solution of $8.5 million per year for four years simple will not solve.

Let's break it down...

🚨The ageing population time-bomb 🚨
➡️62% - By 2065, over-65 year-olds will account for 62% of ambulance callouts, despite only being 26% of the population. Over-65 callouts cost 30% more on average, take 20% longer on scene, and are 30% more likely to require hospitalisation. The cost to serve the over-65 population will increase by 368% by 2065 – growing at three times the rate of the population itself.
➡️368% - The cost to serve the over-65 population will increase by 368% by 2065 – growing at more than three times the rate of the population itself.

🚨 The Trans-Tasman wage chasm 🚨
➡️17-33% - New Zealand ambulance officers earn an average of 17-33% less than they would if they worked the same roles in Australia.
➡️$140,240 - An intensive/critical care paramedic in South Australia can earn up to $140,240 after tax - nearly $35,000 more than the same role in NZ.
➡️4x - Australian superannuation contributions for ambulance officers are nearly four times higher than NZ KiwiSaver.
➡️$5 million - When an ambulance officer leaves for Australia, our investment in their training leaves with them. Every 1% increase in attrition costs roughly $5 million per year.

🚨 Charity funding is not sustainable 🚨
➡️25% - Donations to St John fell 25% in 2022 and have barely recovered since, while costs rose $154m over the last four years.
➡️71 years old - The average NZ charity donor is now 71 years old, and there's no pipeline of younger donors to replace them, especially during a cost-of-living crisis.

✅ The solution? ✅
New Zealand should own its own ambulance services, not rely on charity to run them.
We should fully fund our ambulance services.
And we should elect a Government committed to these principles.
We need to protect our ambulance workforce and ensure they can continue to deliver life-saving medical services to New Zealanders when we need it most.

Read "Emergency: Saving New Zealand’s Ambulance Services" to find out more – link in comments.

Today, we’re very excited to launch our new report – “Emergency: Saving New Zealand’s Ambulance Services”.

We make the case for why our ambulance services need full government funding now – not more one-off top-ups during an election year – and why public ownership must be the future.

The findings are revealing. New Zealand is one of the only comparable countries in the world that still funds its ambulance services partly through charity - coins in a bucket, community drives, and donations from an ageing donor base that is shrinking every year. That model was never designed for the modern world. And right now, five compounding pressures are pushing it toward breaking point.

1 - An ageing population is driving demand through the roof. The over-65 population will double by 2065, pushing ambulance callouts up 61%. The total annual cost of running our ambulance services is projected to grow from $508 million today to nearly $2 billion by 2065. The service will cross the $1 billion mark for the first time by 2045, and charitable giving will cover an ever-smaller fraction of that.

2 - Our ambulance officers are being paid to leave. Any NZ ambulance officer would be 17-33% better off the moment they cross the Tasman. Training a registered paramedic costs the public nearly $150,000, and when they go to Australia, that investment goes with them. Every 1% increase in attrition costs the system roughly $5 million a year. We are effectively paying to train the Australian health system's workforce.

3 - The charitable model is collapsing just when we need it most. Donations to St John fell 25% in 2022 and have barely recovered, while costs rose $154 million over the same period. The average NZ donor is now 71 years old. There is no pipeline of younger donors to replace them in a cost-of-living crisis. So instead of fixing the funding model, the system is quietly shifting costs onto patients - St John raised its call-out charge by 28% last year, to $125, the first increase in eight years.

4 - The fuel crisis has made a long-term problem urgent. Our entire ambulance fleet runs on diesel. After the 2026 fuel crisis, diesel prices nearly doubled. Electrifying the fleet would save money in the long run - but the $259-300 million upfront cost is simply impossible for a charity to raise. Only the Crown can do it.

These are not problems that band-aid solutions and one-off funding top-ups will fix. The Government is already the effective employer - it sets the funding, and that dictates everything else. It's time to make that relationship formal, fund the service properly, and move toward public ownership.

Value our Skills - Save the Mills!
This Saturday (23 May), we're hosting a public meeting in Kaitāia about the future of the two JNL mills that are currently for sale and could be closed if no buyer is found.
Come along to hear more, share your views and join the fight to save a crucial part of Kaitāia's economy and 200 skilled wood-working jobs.
We've lost six wood processing facilities in the last two years as a country, and we can't afford to lose more.
Nau mai, haere mai, piki mai, kake mai.
See the Facebook event in the comments for more details.

This is the move of a Government that is lost and directionless, vapid and purposeless, vain and careless. They just DO NOT CARE.

We should all be embarrassed that our so-called ‘leaders’ are willing to risk our environment and our native species, our health and our education, our workplace safety and our wellbeing for the sake of their stupid, short-sighted political games and desperation above anything else to be re-elected despite their complete and utter failure to manage our economy.

Chris Luxon and Nicola Willis are out of their depth, Winston Peters is full of (neoliberal) hot air and making undeliverable promises that he won’t follow through on, and David Seymour is presumably licking his lips as our Government follows through on a neoliberal dystopia from the 80s. Shame!

Enrol to vote at vote.nz and let’s get these people out of Parliament in November this year.

How and why are fuel companies making massive profits from our pain at the gas pump? Let's talk about fossil profiteering...

Oil companies have increased fuel prices due to US-Israeli attacks on Iran and are posting massive profits. This profit is paid by ordinary people (you and me) who are paying more to fill their gas tanks, power their homes and for increased business and product costs. This is war profiteering.

The Guardian found that "big oil is reaping huge war windfall from consumers" - $30 million per hour. An amount which has likely increased since the article, as fuel prices continue to rise!

These same oil companies block and delay international climate action and lobby our Government to lock us into car and fossil dependency. This leaves the New Zealand consumer no choice. We are forced to pay whatever they ask, from our wallets and our environment. This is fossil profiteering.

But we are not entirely powerless. We can vote for a government that prioritises public ownership and democratic control over power companies, and a massive rollout of renewables. We do not have to be chained to war and fossil-profiteering mega-corporations - this is something that WE have control over, IF we elect people that represent our interests.

Enrol to vote TODAY: www.vote.nz

This is an outrageous story.
We're pursuing a Personal Grievance (PG) case alongside Katie and will report back.

Lotto lady out of work with two weeks’ notice after nearly 30 years’ service Pak’nSave Lotto lady Katie Tippler is heartbroken to have been made redundant, a casualty of the physical redevelopment of the Palmerston North store’s entrance.

We're still buzzing from May Day.

This month's stats may show that the coalition Government has been bought with (oops, we mean "donated") over $1 billion* from wealthy donors to fund this election, so far...

But NZ workers are STRONG. We can't be bought and sold. Ask your friends and whānau to enrol and check their enrolment details RIGHT NOW, and let's absolutely smash this election.

*Compared to ~$250 million for opposition parties.
Source: Newsroom "The latest charts and data on Election 2026", 2026-05-01