Editorial: Plenty of carrots to tempt voters

The $90 million set aside to extend free doctors visits until a child is 13 years old is a bold raid by Prime Minister John Key and Mr English deep into traditional Labour policy territory.

Well, the National Party-led Government has certainly pulled a rabbit out of the hat.

After dampening down expectations of any big surprises in Finance Minister Bill English's Budget yesterday, the Government has offered election-year promises designed to tempt Labour supporters to vote for it.

The big surprise in Budget 2014 is the $90million the government is setting aside over three years to extend free doctors visits and prescriptions from children under six to those under 13.

This will come as an amazing relief to many parents, but it has strings attached.

National is using it as an incentive for people to vote for it this year, with the initiative kicking in from July 2015.

This is a bold raid by Prime Minister John Key and Mr English deep into traditional Labour policy territory and it will leave the official opposition with not much room to move on this issue in its election campaign.

Throw in an extension of about a month to paid parental leave and you have an appealing package for an important group of voters.

The other surprise in this Budget is the size of the surplus for the next year. After six years, the Government books are finally back in black and the $372million surplus is bigger than the paltry $86million forecast six months ago.

The surprising thing for many is how generous the Budget is. There are enough carrots in there to tempt voters and it is all served up on the platter of a stable economy.

Apart from the free-doctors-visits bombshell, there are no other big surprises, but just enough juicy little incentives to make Labour's task of toppling National from Government just that little harder.