Boring Budget

For those of you, like me, who found this budget boring and reeking far too much of National's apparent tactic of trying to be all things to all men I give you this from Peter Wilson:

When a new government takes office and decides remedial economic action is needed, strategy usually focuses on getting it out of the way as quickly as possible.
Swift implementation, it is hoped, will mean that in three years' time voters will have either forgotten about it or become used to it.

A good example was the "mother of all budgets" that followed National's election win in 1990, although in that case it had such far-reaching effects that despite having the longest possible recovery period the party only just managed to retain power in the 1993 election.

Finance Minister Bill English has taken a course opposite to the one dictated by political wisdom -- his next two budgets, by his own admission, will very likely be more severe than the one he presented on Thursday. more