Government budgets used to be about micro-managing things like tax hikes increasing the prices of cigarettes & beer & petrol. They’re still about micro-managing, with some subtle touches.
One of those subtleties is that the spends are announced as totals but the sums coming from the Government coffers are trickled out. The new trick is the 4-year spread, through 2 election campaigns.
Yesterday’s election-year budget was very much about reducing the opportunities for the Opposition to campaign, and the Government’s done this with social welfare handouts & investments.
It’s a slow awakening for a government which has been reactive through its 3 terms, and it’s a questionable one.
Many of the measures announced yesterday & through preceding months increase dependency on the state, and not just for poorer citizens. Business, innovators, exporters – everybody has a potential handout to stretch their fingers out for. Ironically, socialism creep from a supposedly capitalism-supporting government.
If you think about why dependency is increased, you’ll find 2 reasons. One is that management of basics like housing construction and the control of economic inputs like migration has been abysmal, hurting those at the bottom of the pile but also causing widespread damage for everyone trying to go about their business.
The answer is to pay handouts, when for a government of this one’s ideology it should be about creating the basis for a thriving private sector, which would reduce the need for handouts.
The other reason is that support for private enterprises has been structured as handouts, instead of being in the form of facilitation. There’s a small but essential difference, partly due to the control factor but, more importantly, due to the inability to understand how to lift an economy.
One potential beneficiary has fared less well, and that’s Auckland. The Government didn’t trumpet too loudly that it’s finally paid the entry fee to Auckland’s city rail link project, but it did state once more that roads are the way ahead.
Every Aucklander knows that alternatives are imperative before the region is consumed by total gridlock, but roads are where the big infrastructure money has been directed.
In summary:
It’s a budget which displays largesse, which will be lapped up by a nation of beneficiaries.
It’s a budget aimed at winning an election through the offer of small individual gains, not at demonstrating what it could have been used for: demonstrating prowess at advancing the nation economically.
Links:
Treasury, Budget 2017
Labour on budget
Greens on budget
NZ First: Budget a ploy to hide crises
Attribution: Budget documents, my comment.