Bus service

On Nelson Mail Facebook page we find a number of comments from people in favour of an airport bus service, but once again it would appear that very little thought has been given to the subject before pressing the ‘‘send’’ key.

A bus service is not flexible like a shuttle service which provides a pickup or delivery.

If you are flying out you will need to get to a bus depot and flying in you need transport from a depot.

The present shuttle service companies provide a good service so why take away their livelihood? Rather than have more buses running empty each day, why not set up a subsidy arrangement with the present providers.

As for a new terminal, I haven’t used an airline since 1995. Steven Joyce has delivered an election year Budget that puts money in everyone’s hip pocket with a big hint of more to come.

You can call it a lolly scramble or you can call it an election year bribe but with bumper surpluses projected and debt well below the norm in the western world this is the Budget National scrimped for over the last eight years.

Joyce delivered the Budget wearing his hat as finance minister but it showed the cunning of someone who wears another hat as campaign manager.

Nearly everyone gets something, with tax threshold changes delivering around $41 a week to a couple on the average wage, while superannuitants will be better off by $13 a week for a couple, or $8.50 a week for pensioners who live alone.

There are shades of the infamous chewing gum tax cuts for those on the lowest incomes – someone on $15,000 a year won’t even scrape up enough for a Big Mac, qualifying for just $1.30 a week.

But whopping increases to the accommodation supplement and – to a lesser extent – working for families make up for it.

The Working for Families and or economy. Most of the other spending announcements have already been rolled out and aren’t ‘‘new’’ at all. And where there are winners there are losers – changes to the Working for Families thresholds mean some families won’t be any better off.

But it’s thin pickings for Labour.

This is a Budget that makes yet a further raid into traditional Labour territory by targeting low and middle income New Zealand.

But with the upper tax rate unchanged, Joyce’s big hint that there will be more to come on the campaign trail is a big steer that there could be a move to keep National’s traditional constituency sweet as well.