The Latest Breaking News from Chris Hipkins

Grant Robertson’s sixth budget was an exercise in threading various needles. Much of its substance had already been foreshadowed, and to begin with the mood music was suitably sober.

Months before an election, New Zealand’s government is offering some modest financial relief to many people by making most prescription medicines free and increasing subsidies for childcare and public transportation

Prime minister offers measures to ease cost of raising children as part of promise to focus on ‘bread-and-butter issues’ ahead of election

The cornerstone of the Government’s cost-of-living package won’t kick in for almost a year. It isn’t the big ideas Budget Grant Robertson would have liked to deliver and leaves it exposed to attacks from the Opposition in election year, writes political editor Jo Moir.