Candidate Kōrero: Nicola Willis (The National Party)

Words by Ethan Manera (he/him)

Nicola Willis says she was never “a Young Nat or anything” during her time at Victoria University of Wellington. It's been a huge turn around for the MP vying to be New Zealand’s next Finance Minister, who says she “wasn’t even into politics” while studying a BA in English Literature in the early 2000s. The National Party Deputy Leader was, however, a champion debater while studying, and admits that the debating society is the “dorky” way she met her now-husband.

“He was the third speaker, I was the second speaker. We went to various international national tournaments together and fell in love, as you do.”

Nowadays, Willis is campaigning alongside Christopher Luxon for a change in government, and has her sights set on leading the country’s economy. Salient sat down with Nicola Willis in her office to hear her plan for students.

Cost of Living

Her top three priorities for students? “Cost of living, cost of living, cost of living”. Willis said National are committed to multiple cost of living measures to support students, including increasing student loans and allowances in line with inflation, continuing to offer interest free student loans, and vowing not to reverse the current first years fees free scheme.

When asked if National would increase student loan and allowance payments to a liveable level so students don’t need to balance work alongside full-time study, Willis said, “I don't think in and of itself it’s bad that students are often juggling paid work and study.”

“For many years, there have been students who work in order to supplement their income while they study, whether they work during the summer break, or whether they work while they're studying. In fact, my experience has been that students who have developed a work record while studying are often really employable.”

Most importantly, National “want to make sure that you're paying less tax when you're working”, she said.

Their flagship cost of living policy would see tax cuts for middle income workers, but those in part-time work would only receive around $4.31 per fortnight. Willis says this is because those in the “squeezed middle” are a group who are “really struggling”.

“We want to have a tax system that ensures that those people who are busting a gut and are working full time are getting more reward from their effort. We do think the cost of living is very important for other groups, and we’ve always maintained that the most important thing is getting a lid on inflation. Because unless we get inflation under control, students are going to continue to struggle very badly.”

Housing

Willis says the Labour Government has been “determined to blame landlords for the housing problems in this country”, but reckons in reality, the issue is far more complicated. National’s policies to fix the rental market aim to make it easier to be a landlord, and include re-allowing landlords to evict tenants without cause and giving landlords a tax cut in the form of re-introducing interest deductibility, which Willis says will put “downward pressure” on rents.

When asked if National would implement a mechanism to ensure savings from the landlord tax cut is passed onto tenants, Willis said, “No, because around the world where rent controls have been placed on, the evidence is that it reduces housing supply, which just gets us back to the beginning of our problem.”

The party also wants to allow people under 30 to tap into their KiwiSaver fund to pay for rental bonds.

National also wants to scrap the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS), allowing councils the choice to build either higher density housing or in rural areas. The MDRS currently means higher density housing is able to be built in suburban areas without consent from neighbours. The National Party formerly supported this policy, which was introduced as a bipartisan housing accord, before withdrawing their support earlier this year in favour of a council-led approach.

She said that, simply, councils just need to consent for more housing to be built. “That can be greenfields, it can be building up, it can be building out, but if [local councils] don’t zone for enough of it, we as Government will have to intervene.”

Transport:

Willis says that she understands the frustrations that students feel with Wellington’s public transport system. “The biggest challenge that has come to my desk on public transport in Wellington is the fact that the bus service is still so incredibly unreliable: cancellations of buses, buses running, late buses that never show.”

She says National will scrap Let’s Get Wellington Moving and focus on getting a reliable bus service and building more roads, rather than “fantasising about trains to Island Bay and doing new visualisations of what light rail might look like, [...] my kids love their train sets too, but you know, we're all adults now.”

The party has promised to begin work on a second Mount Victoria tunnel within their first term of government, and to “sort out the basin reserve” by building more roading infrastructure to Wellington airport: a policy they've nicknamed “four lanes to the planes”.

They're also keen to scrap the current half-price public transport subsidy for under 25s, as Willis says “there isn't good evidence” that it has “has increased the use of public transport in any meaningful way”.

Public Service

National are proposing cuts to the ‘backroom bureaucracy’ of public service in order to reduce government spending. Willis says that Labour’s spending has been out of control and “despite spending more, we're not getting the impact we need” out of our public service.

“Our current trajectory as a country is unsustainable [...], we are running massive deficits, and yet our social services haven't demonstrably improved.”

When asked what this would mean for those working in the public service, Willis said their goal “is not about numbers of jobs, [...] there will still be graduate jobs.”

“There are options that will mean job vacancies won't be filled, there are options that may mean that some teams working on existing projects are no longer critical. There's a lot of ways that [spending reductions] could be made.”

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“National offers a better path,” Willis said. “I think it’s pretty obvious to smart people that New Zealand’s been heading in the wrong direction.”

Her final words for undecided voters? “A vote for Labour is a vote for more of the same failure which we’ve had over six years. Leopards don’t change their spots.”