Much of the commentary has focused on how small this Budget is – its $1.3 billion allowance of “new” operating money being the smallest in decades. While correct, that misses the fact that the package of new spending decisions, the line-upon-line of budget decisions (the tax credit change, the learning support funding, etc) actually totalled $6.7b a year – a vast sum, which might be larger than some of Labour’s last budgets.
What makes this Budget different is that $4.8b of that new spending came from cuts, money siphoned from somewhere to somewhere else. Some $600m came from new charges and just $1.3b was chucked on the credit card. That’s quite different from Labour’s final budgets, which were weighted in favour of funding new spending by borrowing.
Funding budget priorities through cutting low quality spending areas is far far more preferable to me, than funding them through borrowing.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
1 comment:
The headline to.Coughlan's article was "Government tacks hard right in Budget and why that’s a challenge for Labour". In other words, Labour and voters need to challenge the far right direction National is taking the country. The rest of the article was pay walled.
It's hard to understand how this budget could remotely be considered far right unless you are a Greens supporter.
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