Defence Minister Ron Mark's ministry has received a big funding boost in the Budget. Photo / File
Defence Minister Ron Mark's ministry has received a big funding boost in the Budget. Photo / File
The big winners in the Budget this year include the Ministry of Defence and the intelligence agencies.
The Ministry of Defence tops the list, with a 71.5 per cent increase from $446.6m last year to $766m this year. But that is still small potatoes compared to the Defence Force.
Even though the NZDF's percentage increase is only 18.9 per cent, it is actually receiving $683m more than the $3.6b it got in 2018.
Housing and Urban Development got a 70 per cent boost, from $1.3b in 2018 to $2.2b in this year's Budget. That is due to the large sums being devoted to initiatives aimed at ending homelessness, including Housing First and transitional housing for those in need.
The Ministry of Pacific Peoples got a big boost but had only a small budget to begin with. Nevertheless, it's gone from $12.2m last year to $19.9m, a 63 per cent increase.
The Government Communications Security Bureau and Security Intelligence Service both got hefty increases. The GCSB got a 24 per cent boost to $173.8m and the SIS 27 percent to 106m.
The Ministry of the Environment now has a budget of close to a billion dollars after a 38.7 per cent increase to $995m.
Winners and losers
Despite the big boost to health – more than $2b, it equates to only an 11.6 per cent in the total health budget. It now gets $19.8b.
The big losers include Corrections, Police and Customs.
Police lost $43m, a 2 per cent cut in its funding to $2.04b. Customs lost nearly 3 per cent or $7.3m to sit on $241m and Corrections lost $87.8m, or 3.9 per cent. Its budget is now $2.17b.
The Ministry for Primary Industries, Serious Fraud Office and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which made up three of the biggest losers in the 2018 Budget, are there again.
MPI has lost 10 per cent of its budget and now gets $1.2b. The SFO, which operates on a small amount anyway, lost another 10.4 per cent and is on $9.7m, and DPMC dropped 21.6 per cent and now receives $92.8 per cent.
Reporter Martha and friends are in Minginui introducing us to their favourite four-legged neighbours, wild but friendly horses that have had free reign of the place since 1870.
