The Government says it will slash $4 billion from public service spending over the next four years and also cut money spent on consultants and contractors.
The policy incinerator was also reignited on Monday as the Government tries to get the books looking as good as possible before the election.
Chris Hipkins stepped up to the podium in the Beehive for what could be his last address there. He had one last political ploy up his sleeve
"A programme of inflation-easing savings and efficiencies," Hipkins said.
Savings and efficiencies are government euphemisms for cuts.
After weeks of casting the right as the coalition of cuts, the Government is slashing and burning itself.
"The changes are sensible and timely and, while significant, I want to underscore the fact they deliberately do not affect frontline public services," Hipkins said.
Grant Robertson's latest fiscal belt-tightening exercise means - abracadabra - a magic money tree sprouting $4 billion of savings.
He denied that showed how much fat there is in the system.
"We are committed to meeting our fiscal rules, we committed to protecting frontline services but we've set agencies a very clear task."
The task is to scrimp, save, toss and trim, anything, to make 1-2 percent of cuts across government departments - all to make the Government books look better.
Those books will be opened in September.
Top of the big kahunas in terms of immediate savings, meaning scrapping unwanted or unneeded programmes, was $115m clawed back from research and development grants.
There's also $101m returned from the shovel-ready projects programme, including the Whangarei conference centre, $94 million from the housing acceleration fund, and while the health system is technically off limits, $71 million in health baseline funding intended to better the now-defunct DHBs books has been returned to the Government.
And for government contractors, the gig is up.
Contractors made up 13.4 percent of public service workforce spend when Labour took office. They ground that down to 10.4 percent by 2020, before it spiked up to 14.6 percent in the 2021/22 year - the Government attributes that to COVID.
Now the order from the Beehive is cut contractors out, saving an estimated $165m a year.
"We are acknowledging that we do need to get agencies to focus on bringing that expenditure down," said Robertson. "Our track record going into COVID was that we were bringing it down."
It's all too little too late for the Opposition.
"Today Grant Robertson has reached peak-Labour," said National's finance spokesperson Nicola Willis.
"After six years of spending New Zealanders' money with reckless abandon, he has now finally admitted he has a problem six weeks out from an election."
Six weeks to go with $4b in the bank. But Robertson said none of it will be splashed on the election campaign.
The low-spending, low-expectations campaign for reelection continues.
