Finance Minister Bill English holding the Budget speech.
Finance Minister Bill English holding the Budget speech.
Unlike previous years, Finance Minister Bill English's Budget of 2016 actually did not have a big reveal after the usual promises of nothing new.
It really was predictable - a "steady as" Budget.
It had mostly all been revealed before Mr English stood up in Parliament at 2pm (actually alittle after that yesterday, thanks to a car-bomb threat outside the House) to give his assessment of the economic and fiscal performance of the country.
Yes, there seemed to be more pre-Budget announcements this year than normal, with only a few new ones in the speech. However, if you drill down into the allocations you will notice that apart from the big headline news, there is not much substance in the announcements.
An oversight, perhaps? Not likely, this Government is too strategic for that. This is a classic Budget from a government in the mid-term of the election cycle.
Bill English has made the big announcements and now we must wait for the specifics to be drip-fed. The funding is in place and I am sure the Government will get every bit of mileage out of releasing the details of where the money will go in the lead-up to next year's election.
The Government has every right to be proud of the economic health of the country and getting the books back in the black in the next financial year is an achievement. The spending on health, education and social services, along with some infrastructure money, is necessary because of our population growth.
However, once again there is not much specifically for Hawke's Bay, a region that should have been rewarded for the export wealth it is bringing to the country.
