VIEWPOINTS

The tourism industry will be disappointed. Some operators will see it as a kick in the teeth.

Ben Thomas comment

Early reaction to the Budget showed the magnitude of the challenge even a fiscally unleashed Government faces after Covid-19 and the lockdown.

Eye-watering items of expenditure that would each be the centrepiece of a “wellbeing” Budget in any ordinary year are criticised as inadequate.

In part, the Budget’s massive bill is just buying time. Benefit spending will double — to $4 billion — without any increase in the rate paid to individual job seekers (beyond the previously announced $25 a week), as unemployment peaks around 10 per cent.

More will be spent on the targeted wage subsidy extension to give businesses breathing space to prove they have a future beyond the downturn and, vitally, keep people in work.

Ironically the Greens may have done the most to create jobs in the short term with large-scale conservation and pest-control projects that will be labour intensive, suitable for the young tourism workforce, and help improve our number one international drawcard.

“Shovel ready” infrastructure projects from around 2000 proposed by councils, Government agencies, iwi and the private sector will get $3b: essentially the Provincial Growth Fund on steroids.

If it can deliver on the promise of “modernising the economy” in a newly sustainable way with these projects then it may quiet critics. Ben Thomas is a public relations consultant, a former journalist and former press secretary to Chris Finlayson.

Lizzie Marvelly comment

It was informally billed as “the Jobs Budget” and on that front it delivered. The expansion of the wage-subsidy scheme and funding for retraining will provide relief to some SMEs, and the newly unemployed.

The tourism industry will be disappointed, however, with just $400 million. Some operators will see it as a kick in the teeth. An extremely tough winter approaches for tourism.

The Budget also needed to fix some of the problems with the benefit system. It hasn’t. That will be disappointing to the many who will shortly find themselves on the dole.

We have to hope extra DHB funding will go to mental health because if Australian estimates are correct, demand for mental health services is about to rise sharply.

I was pleased to see some dedicated funding for Ma¯ori for training, employment and health. It was smart too to keep money in reserve to give room for further crisis responses.

The debt burden we’re shouldering is immense, but given the circumstances, understandable.

My hope for my fellow younger New Zealanders is that when times are steadier we look at sharing that burden more equitably, which may involve eventual changes to things like superannuation. Lizzie Marvelly is a musician, writer and activist