It is laudable that the Prime Minister is promising to deliver a "balanced" Budget tomorrow. The nation indisputably needs tighter fiscal management to rein in our burgeoning debt problem.
Don't be feeling too complacent if you are a public servant, as Mr Key has hinted strongly that the knife will again
go through the bureaucracy. Neither he nor Finance Minister Bill English will be as blunt as to say more public servants will be exiting the service soon. Instead, they will give government departments savings targets to reach over the next three years.
It will fall to the chief executives to do the hard number crunching but it is most unlikely they will be able to avoid further staff "reviews".
It's a high-wire manoeuvre: If the state sector sheds large numbers of employees and a significant number end up unemployed and on the dole, they become that very thing the Government is seeking to remedy - a cost to the nation.
Hard decisions have to be made, however, and we will judge tomorrow whether the overall package strikes the right "balance".
It was interesting yesterday to see ratings agency Standard and Poors expressing the same fundamental sentiment as this editorial column has - that the expected cuts to the state's KiwiSaver contributions could act as a disincentive to saving money and had the potential to pull New Zealand further into debt.
Mr English, as you would expect, argued the point but he can not escape the charge that National is fiddling with a retirement scheme New Zealanders put their faith in.
And as National prepares to chip away at the average New Zealander's superannuation scheme, came news that the generous pension plan for MPs will be left untouched.
Under the scheme, MPs are entitled to a subsidy of up to 20 per cent of their salary. They receive $2.50 for every dollar they save, an astounding top up by the state.
MPs who entered Parliament before 1992, Mr English among them, receive a subsidy equal to 23 per cent of their gross salary.
It smacks of one rule for the few, another for the many.
