This would be encouraging if we knew that the direction of that turn was to be upwards, but going by financial data released this week that is anything but certain.
The Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, released on Tuesday, was predicted to be discouraging and it did little to disappoint.
The Crown's financial position has deteriorated to the point that tax revenue is anticipated to be about $13 billion lower than forecast over the next four years.
At the same time government is expected to spend more than was projected in Budget 2024: it turned out that the cost of fighting inflation and cutting expenditure, higher unemployment, means that the expected cost of jobseeker benefits has risen. Who knew?
This occasioned much jeering from the Opposition.
Nicola Willis. PHOTO: ODT FILES
Adding to the miserable outlook, Treasury said that sluggish growth in productivity meant it had to revise economic growth predictions downwards.
Anaemic GDP growth meant that the already highly optimistic prediction in Budget 2024 that the country would return to surplus by 2028 were pushed out by a year, possibly in hope than expectation.
Reinforcing that gloomy picture was the release yesterday of the GDP figures _ a 1% drop.
Ms Willis termed it as "eight quarters of negative growth on a per head basis", which translates as New Zealand's economy now having been in recession for two years.
Numbers like that do not suggest that a happy Christmas lies ahead for most New Zealanders, and especially not for those reliant on an active retail sector.
To be fair to the government, the economic picture is not entirely a study in grey.
The one shining light Ms Willis can point to is inflation finally being back within its mandated limit, although the Reserve Bank rather than the Finance Minister may have had greater responsibility for that occurring.
Ms Willis has, with some justification, blamed New Zealand's economic woes on inflation.
She will now need to be proven right by falling inflation reversing other negative indicators.
The drop in inflation has coincided with the thing Ms Willis' famed "squeezed middle" wanted more than anything else, a drop in home interest rates.
It has been slow so far, and it will have come too late for some who were obliged to refix when rates were at their highest, but dropping interest rates are. Mortgage payers will be hoping that there are more falls to come.
So will Ms Willis, who is cheering each interest rate drop in the hope that it will restore consumer and business confidence and that each will start spending again.
Crucially, Ms Willis wants that spending to be on productive industries.
The government is betting that with red tape slashed and the fast-track set to be cranked up, that the extra money in the economy will be invested in growing businesses still further.
Treasury agrees, but only to a point: growth is tipped to accelerate to 3.3% in 2025-26 but drop back to 2.4% in the three years following: much remains to be done to get New Zealand back to work.
Ms Willis has two more Budgets to deliver before the next general election, and she will be doing so within a very tight operating allowance, there is very little money available for bold new initiatives, and the vexed question of how to pay for old initiatives (think hospitals and ferries) remains.
There is wiggle room available: the government can keep saying new hospitals will be built for X dollars, knowing that the actual likely expenditure figure of Y dollars is some years away, and giving Winston Peters a year to go ferry shopping further defers that expense until a more propitious time.
Ms Willis argues that the economic figures show both the scale of the challenge and the extent of the opportunity New Zealand faces.
Right now many will feel that the scale requires crampons and an ice axe, and figures like those unveiled this week mean questions remain as to just how abundant that opportunity might be.
