Budget 'designed to be less exciting' - English

Finance Minister Bill English with copies of his Budget 2015 at PrintLink in Petone. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Finance Minister Bill English says Thursday's Budget won't be exciting - but he is proud of it nonetheless.

"It is designed to be less exciting," he told reporters this morning at the Budget printing plant in Petone.

"A lot of the announcements are about Government getting on with business right through the year, rather than hinging everything on a budget.

"We've got the public service working that way. For a lot of them now, the Budget's not that important other than to confirm their funding because the serious issues they are grappling with are not about more money," he said.

"A lot of Government agencies are grappling with quite complex problem solving and, if anything, more money is a bit of a distraction for them."

This will be Mr English's seventh Budget and he said the books will forecast a small surplus for the 2015/16 year, as foreshadowed a few weeks ago.

He said the nature of Budgets had changed and announcements had been made since the beginning of the year, starting with significant policy on social housing reform announced by Prime Minister John Key in his state of the nation speech.

"We have aimed deliberately for the Budget to be less of one big bundle of change and announcement and more a record of the financial impact of the decisions the Government is making continuously."

He dismissed a suggestion that he would be less proud of this Budget than others.

"With this Budget I am certainly proud of the consistency the Government has brought to the Budget process, the balance we have brought on economic growth, on fairness, on opportunity, and this Budget will be another one in a line of them."