The Government has shrugged its shoulders and has decided ‘you’re on your own NZ’.
This Budget is death by $780million cuts, that’s the amount of money the Government are taking from State Tenants, Students and Beneficiaries to cook the books.
By refusing to tax the rich, the Political Right undermines confidence in public services by underfunding them. They then manufacturing Debt Monsters so the electorate give up hoping for more from their Government and a better standard of living through fully funded public services.
Take Health.
It costs $1.4 billion to fund the current system. We need $2billion per year to fully fund it, the Government have offered $1.3billion – The Government are trumpeting providing less than what it currently costs as a social good!
Look at Education, half a billion each year, but $100million of that is to implement Erica Stanford’s controversial curriculum so it’s a weak boast to claim you’re putting half a billion into education when 20% of that is budgeted for an ideological ram raid!
There are a few flecks of gold: The increase in Māori media funding, the $50 000 to the RockQuest and extra funding for musical instruments at schools were brief respites, but the scale of the cuts flush those tiny flecks of gold.
Even the Banking Levy was a joke. The Banks made between $7-$8 billion in profit last year.
They will pay $70m a year.
That’s crumbs.
The irony is that despite crying that they are paying for the borrowing of Labour’s Covid response, this Government is actually borrowing more than Jacinda and Grant did!
By the end of the decade we will be $361billion in debt thanks to this Government and those numbers come from the Taxpayers’ Union, a mouthpiece for the right!
By refusing to tax the rich, we are left with ever diminishing policy options.
I say this is a puritan budget because the Government only wants to help people in work, everyone else outside of that: Careers for the disabled, State tenants, Beneficiaries, solo parents, anyone NOT in work gets punished.
This budget helped no one while piously punishing the poor..
