The first Budget of the coalition Government was an opportunity to show which way in which the Luxon-led administration wanted to travel. The answer after all the announcements yesterday was that we still don’t know. It was a Budget strong on rhetoric and politics, but short on economic vision and a sense of direction.
The Budget tried to please too many people, and will probably end up pleasing nobody.
Take the tax changes. The advertising before the Budget claimed families would likely be in for a windfall - $250 a fortnight. That was until the CTU showed that this would go to fewer than 3000 households. Now we know the number receiving that benefit is likely to be even lower. Pensioners will get $2.25 a week each on Superannuation. That’s not even a loaf of bread – let alone getting Aotearoa back on track.
Many areas are seeing overall cuts to budgets – many that make no sense. How does cutting the funding to the Serious Fraud Office help deliver the crackdown on tax evasion this Government has promised? I suspect these particular cuts maybe be driven by political utu rather well developed policy or strategy.
How does cutting funding for Customs make sense when we are so reliant on a strong border for biosecurity reasons? The Government has had to cut much further and faster than it clearly wanted to so it could make its tax package work.
Nowhere is this clearer than in funding for the Māori Development and Pacific Peoples ministries. More than $100 million is being cut from these budgets over the next four years. To add insult to injury, there is no new funding allocated to these areas at all. This is clearly a blind spot for a Government that has no Pasifika representation, and vanishingly few Māori MPs. If you don’t see these issues facing whānau across Aotearoa, you don’t know that they need to be addressed.
This is absolutely crystal clear when it comes to unemployment. The number of people without work is due to rocket over the next year – up by 47,000 from when National took office. We know it is Māori – particularly rangatahi Māori – who suffer when jobs becomes scarce. But there is nothing in this Budget for them. Just a vague demand that the number of people on Jobseeker is reduced by 50,000. Programmes supporting Māori into work haven’t been extended, and no new programmes have been agreed.
Youth unemployment is already high – its at its worst level since 2015 right now. Yet the Budget makes it clear that they aren’t a priority. Nor are their housing needs, with $20m being cut from rangatahi transitional housing. A further $40m is cut from the supply of Māori housing overall.
This is not a Budget that will help lift a generation of Māori affected by Covid, by high unemployment and by unaffordable housing. This is not a Budget that even recognises our needs. This is a Budget that essentially assumes we won’t vote for National, Act or New Zealand First in the future, so we don’t need to be rewarded. It’s transactional politics at its worst.
But it also signals an opportunity for an Opposition that is listening. Māori and Pasifika were the fastest-growing group of people at the last census. Tackling our needs properly – and in ways that put us in the driving seat – would be a way of building the coalition needed to remove this Government at the next election. This Budget will be sold for its tax cuts, but the cost of delivering them could be this Government’s ultimate undoing.
