Budget gives a little to a lot but may end pleasing few

Grant Robertson’s latest Budget may end up pleasing very few. And that’s not because it’s miserly — it isn’t.

But in these high-inflationary times, the whopping $6 billion in new operating spending doesn’t go far.

Robertson’s last two Budgets were delivered in times of a Covid crisis and led to unprecedented borrowing and spending to keep jobs and economies afloat.

This Budget has been delivered during a cost-of-living crisis when Kiwis have not yet been weaned off the Government’s Covid teat.

The Government was expected to come to the rescue, as it did, but in a very measured, targeted way.

The direct relief by the Government will help the working poor and it is largely temporary.

It will effectively pay two million people earning less than $70,000 an extra $27 a week for three months from August 1, at a time when inflation is expected to peak.

For low-income earners, it will be worth more than the National Party’s promised tax cuts.

The fuel excise and public transport subsidies, which benefit everyone, will be extended to August — and the half-price discount made permanent for Community Card holders.

Robertson had few choices in terms of responding to the cost-ofliving crisis. He could not have done nothing. He could not go over the top. Instead he has given a little to a lot

— at a cost of $1 billion.

Robertson has taken to repetitively comparing his management of the Covid economic crisis favourably with National’s management of the global financial crisis.

It is slightly unseemly but understandable given the in-built bias there is to National as being better economic managers.

In a bid to counter the suggestion that Labour has fuelled the inflation crisis by irresponsible spending, Robertson is at pains to point out that the current spending track will put it on a par with the last National Government’s — just under 30 per cent of GDP.

A third of the Budget’s new spending is on health and the boost in funding for Pharmac, $191 million over two years, and $256 million for ambulances over four years.

The greater challenge for the Government is the huge amount associated with the health reforms that start to take effect on July 1.

Part of that is on mundane items such as an IT system which is essential to a national health service rather than a splintered one.

But the expectations that the Government has built up are a problem in the making.

There is no way the reforms will be able to readily meet the high expectations set to get rid of waiting lists and have more even treatment across the country.

The same goes for the expectations the Government has set in the Māori Health Authority.

For some, its funding allocation of $168 million over four years to commission health services ($33 million for the next financial year and $45 million for the year after that) will be seen as paltry.

For others, it marks the beginning of a separate health system that should not be funded at all — a classic case of the Budget pleasing no one.