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 four

The reporter on TVNZ summed it up perfectly - "Joe Hockey swung his axe, and he didn't miss". The Australian Federal Budget is full of cuts.

And as the Herald reports, the sales job starts today for Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey:

The Australian Government will today start selling one of the nation's most unpalatable Budgets in decades.
Leavened by a handful of sweeteners, Treasurer Joe Hockey's axe has hewn through almost every area of Government spending.
"Doing nothing is not an option," Hockey said. "The days of borrow and spend must come to an end."
The Budget aims to cut the deficit from almost A$40 billion ($43.3 billion) to A$29.8 billion next year, falling to A$2.8 billion in 2017-18.
By 2024 Hockey predicts surpluses of more than 1 per cent of GDP.

Australia has its own Decade of Deficits to deal with; a legacy of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years where spending continued as revenue dropped in Labour's last months. Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott have inherited an economy in freefall, with a $20 billion negative turnaround revealed as Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd packed their bags and headed off to greener pastures.

We'll be looking at reaction from across the ditch as the day progresses, but thus far it is relatively mild and pragmatic. Commentators seem to accept that drastic measures are required to address the decline into deficit. As Hockey himself said "Doing nothing is not an option".

And we wish Messrs Abbott and Hockey good luck in getting MP's to support the proposed one year pay freeze for MP's; things must be especially dire when they ask the turkeys to vote for an early Christmas!

0 Budget week begins

Bill English will deliver his sixth Budget on Thursday afternoon. Having inherited an economy predicted to be in deficit for at least ten years after the 2008 General Election, he is tipped to deliver a small surplus in 2014-15, with larger surpluses to follow in following years. New Zealand's economic outlook has not been brighter for many years.

It's a different story on the other side of the Tasman. Australian Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey is facing a nightmare with the Aussie economy tanking while others like ours recover. That's a legacy of the free-spending Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government that Australians kicked to touch a year ago. The Budget Mr Hockey has to deliver on Tuesday night is going to cut deep.

National held its Mainland Regional Conference at the weekend in Queenstown. And here's what Steven Joyce reminded the assembled delegates:

Steven Joyce is dead right. When New Zealand voters make their choice in September they will face the choice of an economy in recovery under Bill English, at least four years ahead of schedule, or an economic recovery that will run into a brick wall if the Government changes to a big-spending, big-taxing LabourGreenNZFirstMegaMana monster.

We know what our choice is going to be.