It's never easy becoming a new government and especially if you've made a lot of promises that demand a lot of change. 

This government has made a lot of promises and hyped up a 100-day campaign to install critical parts of their policy planks which has left us waiting for details. 

Much of that will be revealed in Nicola Willis' mini-budget which is promised in 9 days time. 

Already both the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister are claiming Labour's left fiscal cliffs and holes left. 

There's talk of unfunded commitments and time-limited funding.  Such as school lunches.  But not everything is budgeted for forever and that is neither a cliff or a hole. 

Then there's some massive overruns, particularly in transport projects and they're already blaming the financial management of the Labour Government. 

I look forward to the big reveal.  I hope they won't be extreme.  Certainly, things like the Pre-election Fiscal Update are supposed to reveal these surprises to all and sundry so we're not taken by surprise. If National start a Labour blame storm they'll have to back it up with evidence of Government mismanagement 

The government has already talked generally about 2 projects that are proving tricky. 

The rebuild of Scott base looks to ballooning in costs.  Let's remember this is true of all construction in New Zealand.  Especially projects in environments as challenging as Antarctica. The 340 million dollar base has now grown to cost half a billion and the preferred construction company seems to be falling out with Antarctica New Zealand, mostly over the expanding costs which seem out of their control. 

These are people working for the government and spending the money raised from our taxes so we're all concerned. But the base has not been improved for 40 years and is starting to fall apart and the work has to happen mostly these things are what they are and not an example of ineptitude 

The other biggie is KiwiRail 

We all know the boats are past it.  KiwiRail has decided we need bigger boats and they're diesel-electric.  But once again the construction costs for the bigger berths are skyrocketing. 

Nicola Willis is blaming the previous government for the modelling even though the modelling was done by the rail company not the government and the plans were drawn up before Covid and inflation, and at a time when the ferries were more profitable than they have been since the pandemic 

Both these projects are well documented and the reasons for their blowouts are abundantly clear and, in my opinion, would have happened to any government. The risk in claiming this stuff is a surprise is that it may be a surprise to you which suggests you might not have been following the projects closely enough while in opposition 

One of our great complaints about the previous government was the continual blaming of previous administrations for the nation's woes.  I hope the new administration isn't falling into the same political hole. Infrastructure is not easy and we're beyond playing petty politics about it.