Sitting through TV One's coverage of the Budget, I thought Bill English's speech seemed to be over very quickly. I may have nodded off during part of it or, to use the phrase du jour, I may have experienced a "moderate adjustment" in my experience of consciousness.
With a haircut that screams zero Budget and Ayatollah-like eyebrows, he plundered his way through Scrooge's Thesaurus for the Thrifty. The key messages were short term austerity and long term growth.
Fittingly for Olympic year there was a false start with English proposing a motion for a second reading of the Appropriations Bill only to be reminded by the Speaker that he had omitted the first.
Read all of nzherald.co.nz's Budget coverage here.
The motion was then put to the vote and predictably enough Winston Peters raised a point of order. Is he capable of anything else? Apparently John Banks had got to his feet to vote but may not have articulated an actual vote.