National’s trying to buy election - using your money

The Budget was more shameless than subtle in the end. And National’s attempt at sincerity worked too.

The party promised billions of dollars, with largely a straight and slightly concerned face too. Genius stuff.

Do they think we’re fools? Yes. We are. No-one turns down free money. They got our attention.

Because this wasn’t so much a Government setpiece Budget, but National’s super-powered campaign launch.

This wasn’t a Budget but a piece of free political marketing and advertising on the taxpayer.

Incumbency is crucial. You have staff, money (yours) and a platform. If you have it, use it. If you can, flaunt it. And National did all that and more.

National’s billion-dollar Budget memo to the workers this week was simple. It read: ‘’Sorry about the hard-times fullas, the years of crappy wage increases, the choking roads, the full hospitals and overcrowded schools, the immigrants driving down wages or taking your jobs, not to mention the unacceptable and criminallyinsane house prices, but please accept these billions of bucks as a small token of our appreciation of your hard slog and forgiveness. Now please give us a fourth term. Only then do the carrots kick in, by the way.’’

These Nats love a good tax cut. Historically, it’s the only horse they enter in the race. They know it well. It’s run well before. It’s predictable and doesn’t return too much but it usually gets them home.

And this week was as cynical and as simple as that.

This wasn’t a Budget to transform the economy. Bugger that. That’s too hard to explain. No-one votes for transformation.

Not on struggle street anyway. They vote to survive. To pay the bills. To help their kids. To get a hot dog or pie at a Warriors or Hurricanes game. To buy another box of beers. To help pay for the retread on the Corolla. That’s if they vote at all.

So this is just your hard-earned money being returned to you. That’s all. You’ve earned every penny before. Now say thank you.

Crucially, as power grabs go, these billions of dollars of tax cuts and welfare payments are likely to work politically too.

Sure, National is largely playing catch-up after years where house prices soared and wages stayed flat – but explaining is for losers. Take the cash and be grateful.

And this Budget has left Labour scraping around desperately for a negative.

Oh yeah, a cleaner on the

After years of penny-pinching and telling us to tighten our belts, National has thrown money from the sky.

minimum wage takes home just $1 extra a week. That’s going to get boring by the time we sit down to this weekend’s Sunday roast. That’s all Labour could find. What about the single mum, Cherie, on a benefit of $35,000 with three kids? She’ll get an extra $160 a week in various payments.

That’s hugely meaningful. It’s a trolley of groceries. Every week. That should scare Labour. Cherie was Labour’s voter before Thursday. Now who is she voting for?

National has shamelessly raided Labour’s cul-de-sac. National doesn’t give a stuff about principles. This is about power. At all costs.

Winning is everything. The losers sit in opposition, plotting, writing meaningless strategy papers and are bored senseless waiting for their turn to smell the ministerial leather. They pretend to be important and busy. It’s a hell-hole. It’s the worst and most powerless and depressing position in New Zealand. Bill English has sat there and he hated it.

Anyway, it’s not just tax cuts on offer.

The accommodation supplement goes up, making it easier to afford the rent. (See: rich landlords getting richer.)

And National’s love affair with that openly despised ‘‘Communism by stealth’’ Working for Families programme extends into another year with generous increases the more children you pop out.

Workers and families won this week. So did beneficiaries.

Those with kids on low incomes did even better. And high-income people walked away with cash they didn’t need.

But that’s how tax cuts work. My teacher-aide wife gets not much more than a few dollars extra a fortnight – I get about $70.

Labour needed to find a smaller than usual needle in a massive haystack before it could criticise this Budget. And even then you suspect Labour was calling in security after National’s raid on their traditional homelands.

After years of penny-pinching and telling us to tighten our belts, National has thrown money from the sky.

And in the process this Government has made the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest lolly-scramble alongside Helen Clark’s world record bribe in 2005 of interest-free student loans.

Steven Joyce is an election strategist first, finance minister second. This cash-grab and Budget was planned years ago.

National’s Budget said two things to me. First, it desperately wants a fourth term and on this evidence may well get it. Second, there’s nothing that it won’t do to get there.

National is bribing you with your own money this week. It’s likely to work too.

Just don’t take your eyes too far off the cash-prize; if you do you’ll find hospitals, schools and roads are screaming out for some love and cash too. Nothing comes for free. The truth is many, many lowincome families that I call the working-poor have suffered years of hardship to get this little handout.

And they may be asking was the pain worth it?

In 44 short weeks relief is coming. April 1 next year – a small token of National’s appreciation. But only if you vote for them.