Budget won’t be a thriller — just don’t bore us

Every Finance Minister has had a Budget Day tradition. Sir Michael Cullen got a new suit for each of his nine. Bill English was more frugal — a new tie and sometimes a haircut.

Sometimes seeing the results of the Finance Minister’s tradition is the most exciting part of the entire Budget.

This year we will be deprived even of that.

Finance Minister Steven Joyce has adopted Bill Birch’s Budget Day tradition of a new haircut. “But I’m not sure anyone will notice,” he said, for obvious reasons.

At least it will mean his haircut won’t outshine the Budget.

If you told English his Budget was boring, he would glow with pride.

When one journalist asked whether Joyce had the same urge to produce “boring” Budgets, Joyce replied that the two were cut from the same cloth.

So it is left to the rest of us to try to muster up some excitement, some suspense as to what the Budget might hold. Joyce and English have been no help whatsoever.

We have been on a seesaw of hope and expectation. One day there was talk of $3 billion worth of tax cuts (that was Key), then a “families package” and “choices” and then English and Joyce hastily warned people should not get too excited.

Journalists know it is futile trying to trick the Finance Minister into revealing the one big surprise, but there is some fun to be had in trying anyway.

In fending off these futile questions, English used one line: “wait and see.”

Asked about leaks of Budget information, Joyce said “I haven’t grown any leeks myself this year in the vege garden.”

Leeks make for a good soup, but a weak joke.

Nonetheless, after delivering these pearlers Joyce beams as if he’s the cleverest clog in town.

Former Prime Minister John Key and Bill English were foils, as English pointed out with his famous observation about Key bouncing from cloud to cloud while he ground away in the background doing all the real work.

As with most highly technical sports, English has since discovered cloud bouncing is not as easy as the expert made it look. His own attempts have been more like belly flops.

Where Key and English were chalk and cheese, Joyce and English are chalk and

Where Key and English were chalk and cheese, Joyce and English are chalk and chalk.

chalk. At least English and Key also had a bit of comedic banter going on, but Joyce and English are more George and Mildred than Seinfeld and George. They don’t need to entertain us. But this Budget should not bore us. Boring was all well and good during the global financial crisis and recovery from Christchurch. Now, hard times are over, to quote Yoko Ono.

Milk prices are going up and Auckland house prices are slowing down.

When a Government is seeking a fourth term, it needs something to inspire and convince voters it is not stale as weekold bread.

From the hints Joyce has dropped, National has found this inspiring, fresh thing in Labour’s Budget of 2004.

Much has been made of National’s merciless poaching in Labour territory but nowhere is it more hypocritical than with Working for Families.

Once described as “communism by stealth”, National is clasping it to its bosom and it seems set once again to become the centrepiece of a National Party Budget.

National is using Labour’s own weapon against it as a way to deliver more money for families on lower incomes and, it hopes, votes for itself.

There are suggestions the Budget will deliver good things to those on one income, or a low income, with children.

But Key has previously warned of the dangers of delivering miserly tax cuts to middle New Zealand, either through rate cuts or threshold changes, saying if they could not be “meaningful” the money was better spent on public services.

That was a lesson he learned from Labour’s “Chewing Gum Budget” of 2005.

The danger for National is that the goodies it hands out to middle New Zealand are as indiscernible as Joyce’s haircut. And there is firm evidence National has not squandered its surplus away on tax cuts.

Bill English’s one steadfast Budget tradition was to shout himself a pie if there was a surplus. He did not get to eat many pies.

Yesterday he was polling on what flavour pie to get for Joyce.