Opinion:
A balanced Budget has been delivered.
Budget 2021 is about securing our recovery from Covid-19. We're focused on creating jobs, growing the economy and keeping a lid on debt, while tackling long-term challenges like child wellbeing, housing and climate change.
We're lifting weekly main benefit rates. Lifting main benefits will not only support families on the lowest incomes – ensuring that child poverty will reduce – but we know that lifting the incomes of those who have the least discretionary income gets spent in their local communities.
This increase will get spent on things like putting food on the table, buying children shoes, and heating homes, which will provide a stimulus for our businesses here in Palmerston North, while also supporting our wider recovery. Main benefits will increase on July 1, and again on April 1 next year.
We're also continuing to upgrade infrastructure across New Zealand to drive economic growth. Budget 2021 includes a record $57.3 billion investment over the next five years that will create jobs and address the long-term underinvestment in infrastructure, ensuring we have hospitals, schools and transport networks we need for the future.