Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told party faithful in a conference over the weekend that she "can't do everything at once", leading to questions about whether the Labour Party over-promised in their campaign.
Ms Ardern joined TVNZ's Breakfast this morning to talk about the conference and Labour Party's balancing act between uplifting Kiwis' wellbeing and a strong economy.
Ms Ardern said of their campaign promise, "We even campaigned on a set of budget responsibility rules that said we would try and get debt down; that we could run surpluses; that we would keep government spending relative to income and checks, so we actually set up that all before going into office because."
"Actually, I can't do everything that I want this Government to be able to do, on lifting the wellbeing and investing back in health and education without having a really strong economy and balancing the books well, so it's always about balancing out both of those".
"Having said that, we are investing vastly more than the last government on things like health, housing and education."
Ms Ardern also explained why she campaigned on ending penalties against solo mothers who don’t name the father of their child.
"The only delay in that is that we've said, actually, we want to look at sanctions across the board and see whether those are being applied in a way that actually isn't beneficial to our goals of ensuring people are in employment and well-supported. I absolutely still stand by that. We've logged that into the welfare expert working group that will be coming back to us very shortly."
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