Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
Number of additional jobs per year needed to match population growth: 25,000 * Jobs promised by National last Budget to be added in March 2012 year: 36,000 * Actual number of jobs added: 20,000 * Additional unemployed: 5,000 * Change in number of fulltime jobs: -6,000 * Change in number of parttime jobs: 25,000 * Growth in underemployment: 4,000 * Broken promises: 1 really big one
The Roy Morgan Polls are all over the place, at the moment, and the latest one has the Left at the bottom of the roller coaster. In other news, the Readers Digest survey of most trusted individuals, which this year is dominated by scientists!
Amongst the many vacuous claims made in relation to the last budget, the claim that cuts to KiwiSaver would encourage savings always struck me as the dumbest. Now the facts are in, and guess what…
The Budget is unravelling at a startling rate of knots. Bill English is floundering to explain his dodgy asset sales numbers that count the benefits but not the costs. Now, a senior minister has admitted that John Key’s claim that “there are 170,000 new jobs being created as a result of this Budget” is a lie. We actually really do deserve better than this.
The Nats haven’t got a clue how to run a successful country, and most of the things they do try just make matters worse. We’re drifting…
Do you remember back in the day when Bill English didn’t want to put any money into the Cullen Fund? Remember how we were smugly told that borrowing to save was foolish? Well, since then the Cullen Fund has made a fortune and, we know learn, the government has been borrowing to build up savings for the Christchurch rebuild.
Don Brash has attacked Bill English’s budget which he says fails to lay out a plan for New Zealand. The reality, I think, is that both have plan however there is little or no future in either plan. Neither Brash nor English have laid out a plan which deals with the present and quite near problems we will face.
I’ve been thinking about the budget. Its economic vacuousness: borrowing and crossing fingers for strong growth, while keeping tax cuts for the rich. The bare-faced cheek of counting the asset sales in its projections and passing Kiwisaver cuts without getting a mandate. But also, the cuts to vital public services without a more imaginative and sensible solution: drug reform.
TEU President Sandra Grey writes: When all the unders and overs are calculated, the maths for tertiary education is a lot simpler than all the commentary from the government would have us believe. For the next four years, the minister, Steven Joyce, will be putting less money into tertiary education. That is a political choice.
Oh dear. Only two weeks after its Budget 2011 economic forecasts were released, Treasury is already warning they are too optimistic. In their defence, they say the forecasts were settled in April and growth prospects have got worse since then. Well, you’re not much of a forecaster if you can’t see that happening in the middle of an oil shock.
Night of politics at the pub on May 31 7pm-9pm at the Wine Cellar, St Kevin’s Arcade, K Rd, with panel: Jesse Mulligan (Comedian and commentator at-large), Rhema Vaithianathan (Economist) and Jacinda Ardern (MP).
PEDA last year. Parents Inc this year. Ministers giving backhanders to their mates is a growing trend. $1.5m is being cut from the Community Organisation Grants Scheme that funds things like Rape Crisis. Instead of this democratic, accountable process, the money will go to four groups hand-picked by Turia. Dodgy as hell.
A new organisation, the Coalition for Social Justice, is calling for a march in Auckland tomorrow.
Remember when John Key was promising that he would seek a mandate from the people at the election before starting to sell public assets and cutting Kiwisaver. It was only a week ago. And he’s breaking his promises already: the Kiwisaver cuts actually kick in on July 1, and the privatisation process is underway.
In last year’s budget, the Nats awarded a $4.8m contract to an unknown organisation called PEDA without tender and against official advice. The people behind PEDA were apparently tied to Bill English via his wife. The full truth still hasn’t come out. Now, the Nats are up to the same trick with Parents Inc.
Last week we had National’s budget and Labour’s conference. A chance for both parties to set out their ideas for the future. National’s do-nothing budget went down like a lead balloon, while Labour started setting out promising new policy. Looks like the 2011 election campaign will be a contest between ideas and schoolboy mockery.
“The worst display from a Prime Minister since the schnapps election” – that’s what a journo said about Key the other day. No, it wasn’t about him being a multi-millionaire who gave himself tens of thousands of tax cuts opposing a fair wage increase for the lowest paid workers. It was this disgraceful behaviour on Budget Day. Watch.
Cartoonist Guy Body in The Herald, with one of those pictures that is worth a thousand words…
John Armstrong is highly critical of the sub-zero budget: “The Budget has displayed a degree of cynicism one would expect from a Government in its third term, not its first”…
As I think you can tell from the budget speech, that Bill English is quite a funny guy…
John Key thinks National will lose some support because of the budget saying: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we ease back a bit. I mean that’s logical. Some of that sort of froth in there will come away”. Hear that, tens of thousands of swing voters who believed in the ‘brighter future that Key promised you and didn’t deliver? You’re just ‘froth’ to him.
I was listening to John Key on Parliament TV last night on the budget and he is bloody lazy when speaking. I had to watch his lips before I could figure out what he was saying. This morning there is a video of his remedial vocal work that illustrates this problem..
Not in John Key and Bill English’s third budget. The ‘good times’ they are promising would have looked pitiful under Labour. 4% wage growth will be below inflation once the Kiwisaver clawbacks get you. National have pinned their hopes on Christchurch rebuilding itself, and claiming the credit for themselves. Oh, and their projections assume asset sales.
In which we hear from the Treasury analyst behind the budget’s more than rosy growth predictions…
Unions and community groups don’t need to wait till after the Budget is read to know they’ve been screwed. They’re gathering today at […]
It’s only taken two and a half years of mismanagement and reckless tax cuts from to run the country into a mountain of debt. How bad have they let things get, who will they make pay for their mistakes, and how rosy will the forecasts their plans hang on be? Rolling coverage through the day.
Updates: Plans for privatisation are set out. Families hit harder than expected.
So, today is Budget day. The big stuff has all been pretty well signposted, tinkering with KiwiSaver, Working for Families, and student loan eligibility. The devil will be in the details of all the cuts that get made to try and limit the damage in health and education.
Bryan Gould writes: “The fact that this week’s Budget will do no more than mark time should come as no surprise. We now have getting on for three years’ experience of a government whose idea of managing the economy is simply to wait and see what turns up.” True that.
It has been great to see Labour’s statements on how they would approach Budget 2011. But, as is often the case at this stage of the electoral cycle, it is the Greens who are laying out their alternative budget ideas in the most detail.
Good speech here from David Cunliffe to the Manufacturers and Exporters Association last night. He and David Parker both spoke and I understand their message was very well received by the audience. He outlines the principles for a good budget, and then answers the question about what would Labour do. There is another one to Business New Zealand today.
Gee, a disaster can be a useful thing. You can blame it for your pathetic record on economic management and borrowing for tax cuts. Then, you can take the credit for the jobs, growth, and higher wages created by the rebuilding. Course, you have to be a certain type of person to exploit a city’s suffering so.
Apparently the budget will forecast strong growth in GDP and wages, and a return to surplus within a few years. Sounds good? Well yes, but it is all based on purely hypothetical “projected growth”. Wishful thinking from Treasury analysts with a three year record of being wrong wrong wrong.
John Key is fond of saying “there is a constituency for every dollar you spend”. So, having borrowed to the hilt for tax cuts for the rich, which he refuses to reverse, how can Key cut enough to satisfy the credit ratings agencies without pissing off too many voters? He can’t, but he’s gonna say he can and leave the hard choices to his successor.
Reading Don Brash’s letter to John Key and watching Roger Douglas on Q+A, I wonder if the Nats behind the takeover of ACT realised what they were unleashing. I’ve heard some talk that ACT won’t vote for Key’s Budget. Where would that leave Rodney Hide? Where would that leave the Maori Party? Could we see a snap election?
