Scrutinising government's budget in an election year

Photo: Photononstop

Budget week wrapped up over a fortnight ago, but Parliament's job of scrutinising the government's spending plans is far from finished.

The first week of the June sitting block is Scrutiny Week, a twice-yearly fixture in Parliament's calendar when MPs and ministers are expected to be in Wellington, but the House doesn't sit.

There are no legislative debates and there is no Question Time. Instead, attention shifts to one of Parliament's other core functions: holding the government to account for how it spends public funds.

While the December round of scrutiny focuses on annual reviews, looking back at how departments and agencies performed during the previous financial year, the June round focuses on the Estimates - Treasury parlance for the spending plans contained in the Budget and delivered by the Finance Minister just a few weeks ago.

One unusual quirk of this particular Scrutiny Week is that it is the last of the 54th Parliament. To unpack that, and to understand how Parliament's financial scrutiny works, I spoke with Clerk of the House David Wilson and Clerk Assistant James Picker.

An Endless Cycle

Parliament's financial scrutiny cycle, which this year for the first time includes two scrutiny weeks.

Photo: Parliament

As Budget week fades into the rear view mirror, Parliament's financial scrutiny process continues.

"It never really stops," Wilson said.

"It's an ongoing cycle of approval of spending, spending, review of that spending, planning for the next financial year, and approval of that, and on and on it goes.

"Parliament really is involved in most of those parts. The government does the planning and presents what it would like to spend to Parliament. Parliament then decides whether it can or not."

Wilson said people often imagined the Budget as a single annual event, with all its anticipation and fanfare, but it took months to pass.

"The Budget, although it applies for a financial year, won't actually be finished by the start of the new financial year on 1 July, because the Budget is actually not a distinct process, it is a piece of legislation. It's an Appropriation Bill.

"It just takes quite a long time to pass compared to most bills, and it gets more scrutiny than most."

The Clerk of the House of Representatives David Wilson.

Photo: VNP / Phil Smith

Because of the need to keep things running while this scrutiny is taking place, Parliament grants a temporary authority.

"Parliament gives the government an interim authority to spend money," Wilson said, "which is called Imprest Supply.

"It needs to do that a couple of times a year because the financial year and the Budget cycle don't completely line up, and they never have."

Scrutiny in an Election Year

With Parliament scheduled to rise in September for the campaign period leading up to the election, this will be the final Scrutiny Week of the 54th Parliament.

Picker said that scrutiny of ministers "takes on an extra element in an election year".

"They're also thinking about how they hand over to who comes into the next parliament… so what areas do they particularly want to scrutinise? What areas are ongoing areas of concern for them or areas to highlight that they want to hand over to the MPs that follow them on the committees that come in the 55th Parliament?"

"Whilst the House will pause briefly for an election, we'll be back towards the end of the year and we'll pick up those conversations with departments and ministers all over again."

The year's second Scrutiny Week, which looks at annual reviews, is scheduled to start on November 30. However, the official election result isn't due until November 27, so Parliament is unlikely to be sitting.

Picker said when a new Parliament forms, it would decide on a sitting calendar and how "it wants to operate, [and how it wants] committees to operate".

"But the bulk of the scrutiny that committees would ordinarily do in… November and December may well be slightly moved. It's not unusual for new Parliaments to do a lot of that work early in the new calendar year."

New Zealand Herald Wellington business editor Jenée Tibshraeny records a few budget 2026 thoughts from economist Brad Olson in the Press Gallery kitchen. With lots of extra bodies on precinct for Budget Day, people grab space where they can.

Photo: VNP/Phil Smith

If different parties are in government for the 55th Parliament, former ministers from the 54th Parliament will have the unusual prospect of scrutinising decisions they were once responsible for.

"Members pick up the role they have when they start the new Parliament," Picker explained.

"If governments change and you've got a new role, then your responsibility as a member of a committee is to pick up that scrutiny and look at it from the perspective of your particular viewpoint."

After changes to Standing Orders (Parliament's rules), this 54th Parliament is the first to have dedicated financial scrutiny weeks built into its sitting calendar.

Picker said that before the Standing Orders change, you would generally expect more rigourous scrutiny in an election year, "but now you get it all three years, which can only be good".

Much of the public attention during Scrutiny Weeks tends to focus on the more political committee exchanges that generate headlines: the grillings, interrogations and clashes. But Picker said much of the work was more detailed and less theatrical than those moments suggest, and proceedings were kept on track through pre-prepared scrutiny plans.

"The useful thing about a scrutiny plan is its ability to capture what committees are really interested in scrutinising," Picker says. "So it becomes much less performative and much more in-depth. Committees are able to say to agencies and ministers: these are the areas we want to talk about in detail with you, and then really drill down into those areas."

He said the process gave committees more focus than in the past.

"Maybe previously, ministers and agencies didn't know what they were going to be asked when they went to a hearing, and committee members maybe hadn't had a discussion in any great detail about what they planned to talk about... there's an element of performance in all politics, but now there's much more depth and richness to it."

The prospect of a change of government also raised questions about how spending authority carried over from one administration to the next.

"Government is continuous, even though the parties or people who make it up might change," Wilson explained.

"There's always a government in New Zealand... after an election there might be a period where it's not clear who's going to form the government. The existing government stays in place in a caretaker role."

That meant spending approved by Parliament continued, regardless of the outcome of the election.

"The current government's spending plans continue because they were approved by Parliament, and it's Parliament that decides how that money is spent in the end. An incoming government might want to make changes, and it might legislate urgently to do that, but otherwise its big opportunity to change things will be its first budget."

While an incoming government could theoretically deliver an emergency-style budget soon after taking office, Picker said that was not usually how transitions work in practice.

"What they will often do is come in and look at what levers within the existing budget process they can push ahead of May."

For example, just because money had been appropriated as available for spending by Parliament, that didn't compel an incoming government to spend all of it.

So while one year's spending plans were being scrutinised, departments and ministers-potentially new ones were already laying the groundwork for the next budget.

For many people, the Budget felt like a single day or week in the political calendar. In reality, it was only the most visible moment in a process that stretches across years, and that this year, stretches across parliaments.

You can listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the link near the top of the page.

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