New Zealand Budget in Disarray as Treasury Systems Hacked

(Bloomberg) -- New Zealand’s annual budget has been thrown into disarray after the opposition National Party released parts of it early and the Treasury Department said its computer systems had been hacked.

Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf has called in police after finding evidence of more than 2,000 attempts to access secret budget documents on its computer systems since Sunday night, he told Radio New Zealand on Wednesday. While the information obtained appeared to match some of the material released yesterday by opposition leader Simon Bridges, Makhlouf refused to directly link the National Party to the hack. The budget is due for release tomorrow.

So far no information that might be market-sensitive, such as budget surplus or net debt projections, has been released. Bridges has meanwhile denied his party hacked Treasury, saying it acted “entirely appropriately” in obtaining the information prior to its official publication.

The government is “trying to gag the opposition of New Zealand, and that is an undemocratic outrage,” Bridges told reporters. Earlier, he accused Finance Minister Grant Robertson of smearing National “to cover up his and the Treasury’s incompetence” and tweeted that “when what has occurred is revealed, he will need to resign.”

The dramatic events are overshadowing the government’s so-called “Wellbeing Budget,” which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promoted as a fresh approach focused on metrics that matter to people’s lives rather than just economic growth.

Bridges yesterday revealed what he said were “key details” of the budget, such as spending plans for defense and health, without saying where he got the information.

He said the budget was designed to appease Ardern’s coalition partner New Zealand First and its leader Winston Peters.

“It’s not the Wellbeing Budget, it’s the Winston Budget,” Bridges said. “The Wellbeing Budget was meant to be transformational, but it’s all spin and no substance.”

Robertson confirmed some of the numbers released by the opposition were correct and called on Bridges not to release any further material. The hacking of budget information was “extremely serious” and it was now a matter for police, he said.

He indicated the budget will go ahead as planned.

“What New Zealanders care about are the issues that will be dealt with in the Wellbeing Budget on Thursday, and that is what we continue to be focused on,” Robertson said.

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