We just got the Budget’s title today, and the hint is right there in black and white. Support for today, Building for tomorrow.
We know what building for tomorrow is, Grant and Chippy have been hinting at that for a month. That's just a big spend up on crucial infrastructure and rebuilding after the cyclone.
But what’s ‘support for today’? That's what we don’t know. It's got to be something that happens right now. It’s not in the future; the cost of living crisis is right now. So think money in hands now.
It's not a tax, Grant’s ruled that out on the show on Monday.
If you were guessing, you’d include options like- bumping up Working for Families payments, subsidising necessities like health visits, something that makes families’ budgets easier to balance.
And whatever it is, it’s got to be significant. Because it is the last big thing Labour’s got to save its bacon before election time.
It's got to make voters love the party just a little bit more, so it can pull ahead of National.
Labour knows it can’t rely on the infrastructure spend up to that, voters aren’t impressed by that anymore. We've had our expectations dashed too many times by this party. 100,000 KiwiBuild homes, Light Rail, $1.9 billion for mental health.
We're probably not going to fall for a big spending promise again.
For all Labour’s faults, you should expect these guys to pull a rabbit out of a hat when it’s needed.
Remember, Grant was one of the guys who helped dream up interest free student loans for Helen Clark back in 2005.
He and Chippy are very good politicians. They’ve been playing this Budget down all month, probably so they can do the old ‘under promise, over deliver’ on the day.
So I reckon, brace yourself for a nice surprise in tomorrow’s Budget. I suspect it’s not going to be as boring as they’ve been pretending it will be.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
7 comments:
Heather a surprise is where you get excited by being startled.
Robertson is anything but startling and any surprise will be backed by the absolute of none-delivery.
Like buying something from Amazon. You pay your money and then wait but it never gets delivered......and Amazon disown any knowledge.
Just like Labour, the party of the aspirational surprise but the realistic package that never arrived.
expect more from the money hose - thats all they know that works
Of course they will seek election bribes by increasing welfare - spending other people’s money is all they know how to do. And no doubt many will fall for it, then potentially wonder why in 3 years time they’re even more worse off than they are now. We know this, the government knows this, but our overwhelmingly economic illiterate voters don’t.
NZ is on the brink of Third World status - no country can thrive economically given the size of the beneficiary bill and the culture of " non-work" in nearly half a million of the population.
How many tax payers even know how big this is? It is rarely mentioned.
Only a matter of time.
Maybe they will spend it on the decolonisation of NZ.
Anonymous@1.02 - they don't need to do that. Their policies and those of Australia's have already secured such.
Spending on decolonisation? I think I saw $34million for kapa haka. The government is investing $34 million over two years, up from $2.9 million per year. This is a lot of money. This is blatant buying of votes for Maori. At what point does government spending become corrupt?
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