Several commentators are criticising today’s Budget for being boring.
Boring in the sense of no surprises is good for Budgets.
We should be grateful the days when everyone stocked up on fuel and fags then sat round the radio listening to the Finance Minister add taxes here and give out subsidies and other taxpayer largesse there are long gone.
But a Budget that delivers more of what’s working for New Zealand shouldn’t be written off as boring and the programme being built on in successive Budgets is working.
NBR editor Nevil Gibson writes of a Budget success story we don’t hear about:
One of the biggest contributors to the reduction in the budget deficit is the money not being spent on welfare.
It’s a success story you won’t hear much about as opposition parties insist a rise in the welfare budget is a better measure.
But, like the ACC reforms and its lower fees, the savings in welfare benefits are like a tax cut for all other taxpayers. . .
The reduction of people on benefits pays dividends in financial and human terms.
The reduction in benefit numbers since the reforms began in 2012 and the projections are described as “startling” by an Australian commentator, Rick Morton.
His column quotes figures that show the number of years people will spend on benefits has fallen 12%, worth 650,000 years of benefit receipt in the next five decades.
“Two-thirds of this is due to a reduction in the number of people who will gain benefits and one-third is a reduction in the time they will spend on those benefits,” Mr Morton writes.
“From $NZ86 billion, the future liability of the welfare recipients shrank to $76.5 billion in 2013 and to $69 billion last year, largely on the back of economic factors such as inflation.
“But $2.2 billion of the reduction was attributed, in a report released earlier this year, to the ‘effectiveness’ of the policy, which is measured by fewer people getting access to benefits and more people leaving them.” . .
Lindsay Mitchell notes the success in reducing the number of teen pregnancies:
. . . To be demonstrating prevention-success alongside support for the diminishing number who do become teenage parents is a political dream.
Stopping people going on to welfare and getting beneficiaries from welfare to work are two of the best ways to alleviate poverty.
Whatever further measures to address the problem of poverty are announced in today’s Budget, the significant reduction in the long-term financial and social costs of welfare are anything but boring.
An email from the National Party yesterday made these points:
- 194,000 new jobs created since the start of 2011 under National – that equates to around 120 new jobs every day.
- We’ve turned the Government’s books around – the deficit peaked at $18.4 billion in 2011 and now we’re expected to be back in surplus next year, a year later than the target we set in 2011. We’ll still be one of the first developed countries to be back in surplus after the global financial crisis.
- This will be the type of Budget a responsible Government can deliver when it’s following a plan that’s working.
- Budget 2015 will contain $1 billion in new spending. It continues to support New Zealanders and help families while responsibly managing the growing economy and the Government’s finances.
- The Government will continue building on what we’ve put in place to address the drivers of hardship. This approach is working – there are now 42,000 fewer children in benefit-dependent families than three years ago. So our spending will make a difference to those who receive it, while at the same time we respect the taxpayers who pay for it.
There is no money for a lolly scramble budget and even if there was that would be wrong.
A business as usual budget might be boring to some but it’s working for New Zealand.