As we squabble over toast for new mums in hospitals and funding for street dance performers in Auckland, we are penny pinching a lot lately, aren't we?

We're bickering about all sorts of things, should nurses be getting the free toast in the smoko room if they're doing a night shift?

The insignificance of all of these debates is being laid bare this morning. There's an article in the Herald, it's a bit of a truth bomb from the Treasury boss.

She's leaving the job, the data is not really new, but the way that she is speaking so openly and frankly is quite new.

Her name is Dr Caralee McLiesh. You probably don't know her name, she doesn't do many interviews, she doesn't want to be in the press. She's Australian, she's apolitical, and her five year term coming to an end. She's actually going back to Australia to be the auditor general over there.

So, what has she said?

Well, she said the chickens are coming home to roost after covid, we have a structural deficit and it is so bad that the penny pinching or the pinching pennies, whatever you want to call it, is just not going to cut it.

"Significance concerns about underlying fiscal sustainability of our operating model" she says.

Our net core crown debt is at 43% of GDP. Yes, that is still within a prudent level, but it is well up on the sub 20% of pre covid.

This is the problem.

And so what do we need? She says capital gains tax, more comprehensive than the one we've got, and a change to the pension age.

Boy, did we screw the pooch during COVID, right?

Everyone said, oh, don't worry, we're going to spend all this money so we don't have a recession, but we've still had recessions.

So it doesn't really matter how much penny pinching, though, we still need the penny pinching.