Budget day

• mickysavage
• 12 months ago
• Categories: budget 2023, grant robertson, labour

Today is budget day.

Grant Robertson has been busy promising that there will be no major surprises.

Clearly he will not want to spook the Reserve Bank into raising interest rates further.  An increase before the election will not be politically helpful.

In a pre budget speech Robertson said that the themes of the budget would be:

• supporting New Zealanders with the cost of living,
• delivering the services New Zealanders rely on,
• recovery and resilience, including economic resilience and
• fiscal sustainability.

So I do not anticipate any major announcements except perhaps some form of return to citizens to alleviate hardship.

National will no doubt talk about excessive and wasteful Government spending.

Perhaps they should concentrate on the use of limos by their leader.

And it would help if their leader could get his figures right.

The fun kicks off at 2 pm.  This post will be updated as announcements are made.

Update:  The Herald has reported these headline policies:

• Extension of 20 hours Early Childhood Education to 2 year olds – $1.2b
• Abolition of $5 prescription co-payment – $619m
• Cheaper public transport for children – $327m
• $71m infrastructure spend
• Inflation stays higher for longer
• Net core Crown debt hits $181b