0 Budget Day - 15 May 2014

It's Budget Day, and it's an especially significant one for Bill English. After five years of having to balance competing expectations with not enough money to go round, he gets to deliver a budget surplus today. Little wonder that he's smiling in the time-honoured pre-Budget photograph at the printer!

In her preview piece in the Dom-Post, Tracy Watkins suggests this bodes well for the John Key-led Government; she opines:

New haircut, smart blue tie - Bill English was even cracking a big smile ahead of today's Budget. 
It has been a long time coming. After six years, a global recession and a devastating natural disaster, the finance minister will announce today that the books are forecast to be back in the black for the first time in seven years.
If the coming election is a referendum on National's economic stewardship, then today's Stuff.co.nz/Ipsos poll suggests voters give it much better than a pass mark, with 69 per cent rating it as doing a good job on the economy.
With the Budget expected to tip surging growth and falling unemployment, that will prove a potent recipe in National's favour at the ballot box, when it will urge voters not to put the gains of an economic recovery at risk by voting for a change of government. 

The opposition parties showed their hand yesterday. The new opposition buzz-word is "inequality", with claims that the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. Politicians will doubtless argue the figures until they are blue in the face, but it is inarguable that a healthy, growing economy provides the best platform to deliver benefits to every New Zealander. And a healthy, growing economy is what Bill English is going to forecast this afternoon.

Unsurprisingly, we have planned our day so that we will be watching from the couch when the Budget is delivered, and we'll be blogging accordingly. We don't think that there will be any major surprises this afternoon; Budget announcements these days are drip-fed in the weeks in advance of Budget Day. But we expect health and education to be the two major areas of focus.

John Key interestingly dangled the possibility of tax cuts to middle income earners yesterday as a longer-term option. That certainly contrasts with Labour's plan to create equality by taxing those who dare to earn a reasonable income, and could create a significant policy difference on the campaign trail in coming months.

But this is Bill English's day. Faced with an economy in rapid decline when he became Finance Minister in 2008, and with Treasury forecasting deficits for the next decade at least, his conservative stewardship has returned New Zealand to economic surplus in six years. He's entitled to a few smiles today.

0 Budget week - part two

It's Budget week both here and in Australia. Australians will get the bad news from Joe Hockey tomorrow evening, whilst New Zealanders will have a far rosier picture painted by Bill English on Thursday afternoon.

In an editorial headed Australians must envy our Budget the Herald opines:

Budget week in Australia and New Zealand normally finds the two countries in a similar economic condition, with Australia looking the stronger. Not this week. Australia's Budget, to be delivered tomorrow, will be an answer to a projected decade of deficits. It is five years since New Zealand heard that phrase from John Key and Bill English, the first since the recession and global financial crisis.
It will be small, so small that it could easily disappear before it can be banked next year. Despite the economy enjoying 3 per cent growth at present, tax revenue is running below the Budget for the current year.
The deficit for the nine months to March was nearly $200 million worse than forecast, better than the $900 million shortfall to February but still a worry when the economy has so much going for it.
Dairy prices have passed their peak but the Christchurch rebuild is still providing a stimulus. The Reserve Bank has begun lifting its base interest rate back to normal levels but that should not be enough to choke the growth spurt.
Wage rises are outpacing inflation and consumer confidence remains strong. In fact, the conditions are right for the Government to present a more far-sighted path of economic development than it has so far.
It needs to give voters a reason to return it to power in September for a third term. A surplus will be a signal achievement, especially after absorbing $15 billion of the Christchurch repair bill, but it is a signal of spending controls so far. An election year Budget needs to look ahead.

We're sure that Bill English's sixth Budget will "look ahead". Firstly, it will look ahead to a small surplus in 2014-15, to be followed by significant surpluses in the years that follow. That will give whoever is elected in September room to move, but not to ramp up Government spending as Michael Cullen did in the latter part of the Clark years.

It's a far cry from the situation facing Joe Hockey across the Tasman:

Across the Tasman, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey must envy their New Zealand counterparts. They will deliver their first Budget tomorrow without a consensus of economic support for the austerity they argue Australia needs. Severe cuts to health, welfare, education and other sensitive areas of spending are a possibility, as well as a possible "deficit reduction levy" on high incomes.

And whilst the Herald's leader writer expects opposition parties to apply the usual derisory labels to Bill English's forecasts on Thursday, there is some very positive comment on the Government's economic performance:

New Zealand's public debt went well above 20 per cent with the costs of the recession and the earthquakes. The Government's aim to have it back down to that level by 2020 will require annual surpluses every year from here on. Opposition parties will call the surplus "smoke and mirrors" on Thursday.
It is a phrase easy to apply to a figure built on forecasts rather than cash in the bank. But if they do not believe the forecasts they have less room to go to the election with proposals requiring additional spending.
The Budget ought to give an indication of the Government's use of surpluses over the next few years. On Friday Mr English suggested that as well as repaying debt the Government would boost spending in its social priorities and eventually resume contributions to the NZ Superannuation Fund.
Its pre-Budget announcements in recent weeks give the flavour of those priorities: $20 million more for apprenticeships, $20 million to fight rheumatic fever, $3000 grants for unemployed beneficiaries to go to Christchurch. The sums are not large but the projects are practical and precise. That has been the secret to the return to surplus: not painful cuts but a focus on results.
It seems to be working.

It does indeed seem to be working. Which begs the question; with Bill English having shepherded New Zealand's economy through the deepest global recession since the Great Depression, and with New Zealand now leading the world into economic recovery, why would anyone want to take a punt on a big-spending Labour-led government which can't even get its most basic sums right?


Footnote: We will focus extensively on the Budget this week. John Key and Bill English have an excellent record on which to go to the country in September. Little wonder they're smiling!