There are two time measures of a budget: what it does now and what it sets up for the longer-term. How did Bill English do last week?
Short-term — the next five years — he has set up a track out of fiscal deficits and into rising surpluses. Labour’s David Cunliffe on Friday detailed a list of nifty accounting manoeuvres that generate the microscopic 2014-15 surplus but that does not deny the trend. Labour’s David Parker on Friday reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to a 2014-15 surplus.
Last year’s budget stumbled on education. Class sizes were to rise to pay for more professional training of teachers. Middle class parents killed that. Bill English beat a humiliating retreat.
The policy came from the Treasury which had latched on to a germ of an idea. The public was not led through the argument so Hekia Parata’s hospital pass was to sell the unsellable.
There has been much talk since Parekura Horomia died about the foreshore and seabed turmoil and his decision to stick with Labour then. But what if Labour had not passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act to override the Appeal Court decision?
Would Maori have been pleased or angry now?
There was abundant Maori anger at the time: a hikoi and a new anti-Labour Maori party. From that perspective Labour would have been much better to have gone along with Dame Sian Elias and her problematic colleagues.
This month Bill English produces his last budget before the one which is supposed to have a plus sign in front of the balance. Can he do it? What is the point?
Whether he can do it depends partly on Beehive determination, partly on the global economy and partly on untoward events at.
English measures up on determination in two ways.
In a couple of weeks Australia and New Zealand will publish their government budgets. Each has some learning for the other.
It is now ingrained in the New Zealand psyche that Australia is far richer and so a far better place to make a living. In the 12 months to March 51,273 emigrated there.
Wages and salaries are far higher for the same work. Australia has vast quantities of stuff it can dig up and ship to China and other voracious “emerging” economies. The stuff we export mostly comes off grass, not from holes in the ground — vanilla to Australia’s absinthe.
Labour triggered four of the biggest items of last week’s politics and in different ways they touch on security — appropriately as Anzac Day looms.
Enabling same-sex couples to marry adds a bit more legal security for those couples. Some argue the state should stick to legally safeguarding civil unions and leave it to couples to consecrate their union as they prefer. But the state will not get out of marriage so those wanting equality needed the next step.
Last Thursday Paula Bennett was pleased with herself for getting her you-must-work welfare bill through Parliament and Bill English was pleased to confirm that you-the-taxpayer are still on course to get him a budget surplus.
The two are linked. And both are linked to a two-dimensional housing tangle.
John Key cruised into his job. He didn’t do the apprenticeship a Helen Clark or a Jim Bolger did before becoming leader of his party, then Prime Minister. That is one reason he misses some points of proper process.
The apprenticeship he did do was doing deals. Doing deals is how politics and government are done in Washington where money talks and talks big and Key has a soft spot for the United States (viz his Korea mistake on Sunday). A deal-making mentality is another reason he misses some points of proper process.
Mighty River Power pre-registrations 440,000, anti-selldown petitioners 390,000. The selldown wins. Or does it?
Two years ago the political calculus was: do the selldowns well, make a lot people feel they have won something and show most of the rest the sky hasn’t fallen in and selldowns will cease to be a third-rail issue.
April is a month for thinking about Australia because it has Anzac Day in it: the day we two countries separately commemorate our joint defeat in Gallipoli. Separate-but-joint defines us.
Each country puts different weights on the “separate” and the “joint”. New Zealand cannot ignore the “joint” even when going its “separate” way in international relations. Australia is a prior quasi-domestic issue. Not so the other way round.