Budget 2015: Pop stars and randy chooks

Colleagues applaud Bill English. Photo / Mark Mitchell

MPs reach for vivid metaphors as they react to a Budget that turns politics topsy-turvy

Split Enz, roosters on heat and Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons all featured in the debate on the Budget in Parliament, but the most unusual feature of it was the topsy-turvy role changes.

For a start, it was a National Government that lifted benefits for those with children for the first time in more than 40 years, as well as the Working for Families payments for lower-income workers. Then there was the unusual spectacle of Opposition parties piling in to support the first piece of Budget-related legislation - the bill to lift those rates.

Andrew Little mixes up his Genes and refers to Kiss bass guitarist Gene Simmons. Photo / (Top)Mark Mitchell

The Budget measures appeared to leave some rather flat-footed. Labour leader Andrew Little even had to give the Government some credit for the child hardship package and Auckland land release. He was so flummoxed he started talking about the plight of Gene Simmons, Kiss bass guitarist, instead of Gene Harris, a marketing manager struggling to buy a house in Auckland.

There was little for Mr Little to attack beyond the absence of a surplus and new tax on travellers. He likened Bill English's repeated unfulfilled promises of surplus to the Dance of the Seven Veils. "I don't know what he is trying to hide: some sort of fiscal gender-reassignment or something."

He then moved on to a petting zoo theme, telling John Key, "Do not get on your hindquarters in 15 minutes' time and flap about like a rooster on heat and give your usual dog and pony routine."

NZ First leader Winston Peters used a more local musical act for his response. The seventh deficit recorded in Finance Minister English's name, he said, made it "a Split Enz Budget. Everywhere you look there are deficits, and as Split Enz the group sang: 'I see red, I see red, I see red'."

He described the axing of KiwiSaver kickstart payments and measures such as the new "holiday tax" as "a kick in the guts to middle-income New Zealanders".

Green co-leader Metiria Turei was not going to let Mr Key get away with boasting, criticising the plans to return sole parents to work when their child was 3 and changes to KiwiSaver.

"This Budget was drawn up by people who've never sat at the kitchen table with a mountain of bills, and agonised over whether they should pay for the power this week, or pay for their son's school camp."

Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell was most cock-a-hoop of all, saying his party should get credit for the measure after persuading National to set up a ministerial committee on poverty which resulted in the Budget changes. To a chorus of "amens" from his co-leader Marama Fox, he said most people would be surprised a National Administration had lifted benefits. "Who made the difference? The Maori Party made the difference."

Act leader David Seymour said overall the Budget had fallen victim to "short-termism" because it did not address the costs of superannuation. He called for a referendum on the issue.