The title should have been a clue. Nobody expects anything called a Budget to be exciting.
Promising all the suspense of a spreadsheet, the budget sounds as exciting as a flat roster for chores.
Put it this way: nobody ever gets Xero confused with Tinder. (Actually I did once. Ithought I'd joined a dating site exclusively for gold-diggers. "How shallow are these women! They keep asking for receipts!")
And while the Budget is all about money, money, money - so in theory it has the potential to be exciting - the prizes yesterday weren't huge. And if everyone wins a prize, it's a bit like nobody did.
A weekly difference to some households of say $15 to $30 - that's like tuning into Lotto to see if you've scored Division Five.
And even if $15 to $30 a week isn't a lot of (cliche alert) avocado toast - it looks like National might just have eaten Labour's lunch.
Along with low-income families, one of the main winners yesterday was "the average worker" - by definition, Labour's target market. Game on.
RNZ got some money, so that's good. Now their staff can be paid in money, rather than pieces of native bird.
The tough thing about evaluating a Budget is to notice what's not in it.
Clean water.
All the problems we're fatigued talking about: Auckland housing, Auckland gridlock.
It's like the Government thinks a train to Auckland Airport isn't a priority. After all, it's an airport. Can't people fly there? Immigrants manage to fly there! What excuse have locals got?
But if you're a child with behavioural issues, in a low-income family, supported by an average worker, and your mental health issues are due to an unrequited, burning desire for a City Rail Link, then yesterday's Budget was a love letter to you.
