New Zealand's debt has grown out of control. ACT has the plan to pay it down.
See ACT's planACT's plan
On Treasury's forecast and on Labour's plan, debt keeps rising until 2030. ACT's plan turns it around a year earlier and takes $12.4 billion off debt by 2031. Switch each step off, or open it up and choose the parts, to see what it does.
Bring non-frontline spending back to 2017 levels per person, adjusted for inflation and wage growth. Health, education, defence, police and children's services keep every dollar of growth since 2017.
Cap new Budget spending, keep NZ Super affordable and target welfare to those who need it.
Step total also includes $0.3bn of other welfare savings in ACT's plan.
Faster growth means more tax revenue without higher tax rates. Use the slider to add it: it starts at zero because ACT's costed plan doesn't rely on it.
ACT's own commitments, fully costed and paid for by the savings above, not by borrowing. Amounts are the total cost to 2031.
Why it matters
Taxpayers are spending more than $1 million an hour just paying interest on existing debt. That is money taken from health, education, infrastructure or lower taxes.
Less debt gives New Zealand room to respond to the next earthquake, financial crisis or pandemic. And it is immoral to cut taxes by borrowing: that simply pushes the bill onto future generations, with interest.
What ACT's plan changes
a year less spent on interest by 2030/31, and growing.
a year more surplus by 2031 than on Treasury's forecast.
That's the groundwork for much lower, flatter taxes, paid for by spending control rather than borrowing.
of room under Treasury's 50% debt ceiling in 2031.
ACT vs Labour
On Labour's own numbers, debt is higher than Treasury's forecast in every year and still rising in 2030. That's before the holes others have found in their plan. Test them yourself.
Net core Crown debt (excluding the NZ Super Fund), years to June: the measure in ACT's fiscal plan. Labour's figures apply the gap in its own published net-debt track to the same measure.
Test Labour's numbers
of extra debt by 2031 if these costs are real
Labour says it has $10.5bn of unallocated operating allowance to cover costs like these.
Cut the waste.Balance the books.Pay down the debt.
Every figure on this page comes from ACT's Fiscal Plan 2026, Treasury, Stats NZ, Labour's published fiscal plan or the other public sources listed below. Open a section to check the working.
Reflects the steps as currently set. $ billion unless stated.
Years end 30 June. 2017–2026 actual (2026 unaudited); 2027–2031 Treasury forecast.
Debt measure. Net core Crown debt (excluding the NZ Super Fund and advances), Treasury's headline debt indicator and the measure used in ACT's fiscal plan. ACT's plan, Labour's plan and Treasury's forecast are all compared on it, and the live counters use it. The sources table also shows PREFU's broader net debt (excluding the NZ Super Fund) for reference.
ACT's path. Each item's yearly effect on the operating balance and on cash comes from ACT's fiscal plan, for 2027/28 to 2030/31. Measures still to be announced are included in the totals. ACT's debt is Treasury's forecast less the running total of the cash improvement. Interest savings are charged on the average reduction in debt during each year, matching the financing-cost savings in ACT's model. "Off debt by 2031" is each step's total cash contribution over the four years. Within "Cut the waste", the four named examples are as listed in ACT's fiscal plan, and "Bring other spending back to 2017 levels" is the rest of the plan's headline non-frontline reduction. "Cap new Budget spending at $2bn a year" is the plan's reduction in future Budget operating allowances from the $2.4bn a year Treasury's forecast assumes.
Labour's path. Labour's fiscal plan (October 2026) publishes its debt on the broader "net debt" measure: $0.74bn, $0.77bn, $0.80bn, $0.84bn and $0.88bn above Treasury's forecast from 2026/27 to 2030/31. We add that gap to Treasury's net core Crown debt so all three tracks use the same measure. Labour's OBEGAL figures are as published.
Testing Labour's numbers. All five tests are off by default. $90m error: Labour recorded its Income Related Rent Subsidy and Accommodation Supplement reversal as a $44.8m saving when it is a cost (identified by the Taxpayers' Union, accepted by Labour); Investment Boost: National says official Treasury and Inland Revenue costings are $1.71bn in 2027/28 and $1.28bn in 2028/29, against Labour's $2.11bn and $1.97bn, a $2.2bn gap over four years; we split the remaining gap evenly over 2029/30 and 2030/31. Labour disputes this. Pay equity: Budget 2025 booked about $2.7bn a year of savings from the Equal Pay Amendment Act. Labour will reinstate the regime but provides $558m a year (the $4 an hour rise), so the test adds the $2.14bn difference from 2027/28. Each test also carries interest at 4.7%. Health cost pressures: Labour's plan adds $1.40bn, $1.44bn and $1.55bn of health cost-pressure funding to 2029/30, then nothing in 2030/31; the test adds $1.5bn that year. School lunches: Labour funds $146m, $295m and $149m to 2029/30 and nothing in 2030/31; the test adds $295m. Unallocated room: Labour says $10.5bn of its operating allowances is unallocated. Treasury's forecast already assumes allowances are spent, so costs paid from that room don't add to debt but leave nothing for other cost pressures. The debt figures assume Labour borrows instead.
Growth. Treasury's rule of thumb (PREFU 2026, Table 3.1): one percentage point faster nominal GDP growth raises tax revenue by $1.3bn, $2.8bn and $4.5bn in the first three years. The slider scales this from 2027/28 and lifts GDP in the ratios. It is not counted in ACT's costed plan.
Live figures. The debt estimate moves in a straight line between the June 2026 actual ($186.7bn) and the June 2027 forecast ($209.6bn) of net core Crown debt, about $63 million a day. The "since you arrived" counters use the same rate of new borrowing (about $727 a second) and the 2026/27 finance-cost forecast of $10.3bn (about $326 a second).
Crisis buffer. Headroom is the gap between debt and 50% of GDP, the ceiling Treasury recommends in normal times (Investment Statement 2025). Treasury estimates shock responses have cost about 10% of GDP per decade since the late 1980s (Te Ara Mokopuna 2025), about $58bn at 2030/31 GDP.
Horizon. The comparison runs to 2030/31, the last year of Treasury's forecast and of Labour's plan.
Authorised by C. Purves, www.act.org.nz