That now makes it three years in two years, as in she has delayed surplus by three years in just the space of the two years she’s been at the Finance Minister’s desk.
Had she kept her pledge, the one she made about tidying up this country’s books when asking for our votes in 2023, we would be seeing a surplus next year.
Now it’s 2029 at the earliest.
Getting our books back in order is important if we don’t want our kids to pack up and leave for Australia when they’re old enough to.
Nicola can blame everyone from Treasury to Trump if she wants, but she has not done enough to get us back to surplus.
She has defended, and kept, Jacinda’s wasteful policy of paying for one free year for university students. The policy has been repeatedly criticised as a flop that doesn’t actually make anyone go to university.
Cutting that would save us in the vicinity of $1 billion over four years.
She has given welfare to households on more than $200,000 a year by giving them money for childcare. People on that kind of coin don’t need benefits.
Cutting that would save $1 billion in a little over five years.
She still hasn’t cut or income tested the Winter Energy Payment, which is going to people who are still in the workforce and being set aside for nice trips to Fiji.
Cutting that would save $1 billion in less than two years. Trimming it would save less, but it would save something.
She has cut 2000 public servants when Grant and Jacinda added 14,000.
Be in no doubt - money is tight.
But there is still a lot of waste that could be cut if Nicola Willis was brave enough.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show. This article was sourced from Newstalk ZB.
4 comments:
Now N and L basically follow the same major policies re. Maorification . They dare NZers to vote for one or the other.... either bigger benefits or better economic management.
But the average voter's patience may have run out..... people want confirmation of equal citizenship not a 2-tier ethnocracy.
Right on! Sure she got the economy into the toilet a little but, why not get it more into the toilet? I think she’s tired and doesn’t want to be elected next year, this wolf be the best way to achieve that.
I'd foolishly assumed they'd canned the first-year-free university nonsense, but no! When you hear what they've dished out on equally dubious schemes, subsidies and grants, if you couldn't cut a couple of $billion from the budget in an afternoon of review, I'd be more than surprised.
I'm no finance expert, just a humble engineer who packed it all in and retired many years ago. Had a few lean years financially when the odd thing went against us, try to live within our means and factored in depreciation of our assets as we age. However, we certainly do not go without anything we need, I think we have invested wisely, albeit not conventionally, we absolutely avoid wasting our money on trash. Funnily enough, our wealth is not going down, it has increased - much to our surprise and so others will benefit when we peg it. Wish we could say the same for the NZ books, which are supposed to be managed by 'experts'! However, all we see is public money handed over to grifters and large areas of waste. The Minister has to put the plug in and stop the stuff going down the drain.
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