" This Budget points the way to rebuilding a fair and sustainable social and economic order..."
— Dr Michael Cullen, Treasurer and Minister of Finance

" The Budget makes a significant investment in Maori and Pacific people's communities and organisations in order to better determine their needs and build their capacity. The aim is to establish a firm partnership to improve social and employment results for the future. This approach recognises that Wellington does not have all the answers. Strong whanau, hapu, iwi and Maori and Pacific peoples community organisations are often more effective because they understand local needs..."
— Tariana Turia, Associate Minister of Social Services and Employment

"It is one huge leap to the left for the government, and one huge leap backwards for New Zealand."
— Wyatt Creech, National Party deputy leader

" Dr Cullen has failed to deliver the king hit that New Zealanders needed to restore flagging confidence in the future. And he has shown he doesn't understand what drives enterprise and initiative. He doesn't know how to restore confidence, and without that, New Zealanders' jobs, incomes and investments will suffer ... There is nothing in this Budget to restore confidence in the Government's policy or meet the high expectations Labour has created for social change."
— Bill English, Opposition Finance spokesperson

" This Budget is a huge step back to tax, spend and bust. Fire Michael Cullen. He will never write a budget that will create jobs, growth, and attract kiwis home! Appoint Phil Goff."
— Richard Prebble, Act Leader

"After 9 years of trumpeting that he was "going to reinvent the Welfare State", Mr Maharey has won no new funding for his key portfolio areas. The Department of Work and Income base lines have barely changed. While the Minister has proclaimed he would help more people into jobs, there is no new funding in the budget for work schemes. Like the deck chairs on the Titanic, the Minister has re-shuffled employment programmes, but there is no new money to help those hundreds of thousands of people who are stuck on a benefit, to move off..."
— Dr Muriel Newman, ACT Social Welfare Spokesman

" This is another Budget that has focussed on delivering social, cultural and other outcomes without any apparent recognition that you first need sustained economic growth to pay for them..."
— David Moloney, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Manufacturers Federation

" Practical support for structured industry training, including Modern Apprenticeships, and for the difficult area of school-to-work transition will be welcomed by employers. However, it is clear that the costs of other policies such as re-unionising the workplace and re-nationalising ACC have not been taken into account in this Budget."
— John Pask, NZ Employers' Federation

" This is a government which recognises the intrinsic value of a strong arts, cultural and heritage sector, and recognises the potential economically of a strong creative sector for employment and for export earnings. A creative nation releases energy, right across the performing and visual arts, to film, television, new media, the internet, design, technology, fashion, architecture you name it. That sector will enable us to rebrand this country in the twenty-first century as a dynamic and young country drawing from so many heritages and presenting to the world products, services and technologies which are leading edge. That is where our future will lie."
— PM Helen Clark, from her post-Budget speech

" The pluses in the budget for unemployed workers and beneficiaries are the introduction of income related rents for state tenants, the increase in the special benefit and other pro-beneficiary changes to the Department of Work and Income, the creation of jobs though social, economic and regional development policies and the increase in health and education spending.
" But none of these changes will take those on a benefit out of the poverty trap that Mrs Shipley threw them into with her 1991 benefit cuts. Until benefits are restored to a just level, those on a benefit will not be able to "participate in a vibrant social democracy" that Michael Cullen's Budget states as his goal..."
— Robert Reid, President of UNITE!, the union representing unemployed workers

" While the Budget does provide very welcome funding increases for building the capacity of Maori and to a lesser extent, Pacific Island community sector groups, there appears in fact to be nothing extra at all for capacity building in the voluntary arena at large.
" Nine years of National governments have already pushed a lot of dedicated and hard working groups to the wall, and many more teeter on the brink of disintegration right now. I am talking here about all kinds of organisations, not just those working with unemployed people and beneficiaries, but also groups right across the board dealing with issues from housing to human rights, from disabilities to community economic development, and many many more.
" Many such groups also work with people from across the racial and ethnic spectrum, that is, with nga iwi tatou katoa - Pakeha, Maori, Pacific Island people, immigrants and refugees. If the Government is serious about its good will in moving towards a productive NGO/Government agreement process and towards strengthening the role of volunteers and of voluntary sector organisations, it must also begin to get serious at helping to build the capacity of the whole sector, not just parts of it"
— Sue Bradford, Green MP

" The best prospect for the poor, both brown and white, lies in work. Jim Anderton's scheme to boost business in the depressed regions remains fuzzy and untested. But even Max Bradford, it seems, realises that the market alone will not rescue Northland and the east Cape. So Anderton's scheme is worth trying. It will need to be supplemented by community work schemes run by Winz. What Steve Maharey plans in this area, following the axing of the Work for the Dole scheme, also remains unclear. It will be vital in the fight against poverty..."
— editorial, Sunday Star-Times

" Not since Ruth Richardson's Mother of All Budgets in 1991 has the government's annual financial statement carried so much philosophical baggage. It read more like a Labour manifesto than a financial statement and the first page of Dr Cullen's speech said as much."
— editorial, National Business Review

" Dr Cullen and his colleagues have focussed largely on redistributing the economic cake rather than increasing it. That is fine as far as it goes, but feel-good social policies alone will not generate the income and jobs needed for New Zealand to keep pace with the world."
— editorial, The Dominion