That new spending is to ensure National meets its target of having about 4000 more elective surgical operations each year.
Housing
The Government has put aside $52.2 million to fund its new plan to partner with private developers and build thousands of lower-cost homes on Crown-owned land in Auckland.
About 500ha has been earmarked for development in areas zoned for residential housing in the city. The land is owned by education, defence and transport agencies and will not include public reserves.
In today's Budget, Housing and Building Minister Nick Smith said a capital contingency fund has been established for the policy, which aims to rapidly increase supply in Auckland's overheated market.
"This latest initiative will enable the Government to select vacant parcels of land from the relevant agency and make it available for development by a private sector partner through a competitive process," Dr Smith said.
Law and order
Waikato and Bay of Plenty Police Association regional director Wayne Aberhart said he was underwhelmed by the Budget announcements.
"We had a Budget freeze for five years. It's about time we got some money."
Mr Aberhart said Bay police had been "operating on a shoestring".
He questioned if the money allocated would keep up with rising costs police faced daily, such as inflation and fuel.
"I would describe it as catch-up."
But Mr Aberhart thought the police hierarchy would be pleased.
"It's not before time. They are not allowed to comment, of course. It's well-deserved and shown we can work to a budget but over time the cost of things does go up, like in running a vehicle fleet."
New measures
•$164 million over four years for police to continue delivering more effective frontline policing and crime prevention.
•$8 million for the Serious Fraud Office.
•$6.5 million for programmes to reduce reoffending, funded from the Justice Sector Fund.
•$40 million for other Justice and Courts initiatives, including the Investing in Justice programme, the Harmful Digital Communications Bill and helping build the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct.
Education
Special education and early childhood education have received a boost in funding as an extra $687 million is invested in education.
Budget 2015 also shows that Act Party leader David Seymour's push for more charter or "partnership" schools has been successful, with two more to open.
Tens of millions of dollars in new spending is also being assigned to the troubled school pay-roll system Novopay.
Yesterday's Budget assigns an additional $63 million over the next four years to assist children with special needs.
Early childhood education receives a $75 million boost over the next four years. Schools' operational grants - which greatly affect their resources and day-to-day operations - will increase by 1 per cent, at a cost of $42.3 million.
New measures
•$373.9million spending on school infrastructure.
•$4.9million will be invested in 2015/16 to accelerate a national programme of earthquake resilience assessments of state school buildings.
•$8.2million over the next four years for vulnerable students.
•$113million boost for tertiary education and skills development.
KiwiSaver
The $1000 KiwiSaver kick-start payment will be dumped for people joining the scheme from today under changes in the Budget aimed at saving the Government about $125 million a year.
Finance Minister Bill English said the payment had cost the Government a total of $2.5 billion since the savings scheme was set up by Labour in 2007.
Mr English said about 2.5 million people had joined KiwiSaver, but it cost about $850 million a year in Government subsidies including the kick-start payment and $521 annual tax credit. Most of that cost was in the tax credit which came in at $705 million this year.
Existing KiwiSaver members will keep the $1000 kick-start they were given and the $521 tax credits would continue. The minimum three per cent employer contribution and employee contributions would remain the same.
New measures
•2.5 million New Zealanders have a KiwiSaver account.
•The 2.5 million members have together received $2.5 billion in kick-start payments since the scheme started in 2007.
•Employers are still required to contribute at least 3 per cent of an employee's gross wage or salary.
•Employees will continue to make their own contributions.
•$705m is forecast to be spent by Government on the KiwiSaver Member Tax Credit.
