From a business viewpoint, Budget 2015 won't be remembered as the gift that keeps on giving, other than the prospect of lower interest rates, a double edged sword. It projects a trajectory that is more realistic than optimistic and a scarcity of anything really different - the cruel reality of life. But to capture a fourth term, something more tangible than projecting a positive national trajectory needs to be felt by the general voting public.
Budget 2015 addresses this by foreshadowing modest tax cuts as a tangible manifestation of prudent stewardship. Of course there is no certainty about those cuts, as we are not totally in control of our economic destiny. Issues in Europe and Asia, and more closely in Australia, can still materially shape our economic future, as can commodity prices and our exchange rate, none of which we really control.
But even if the economic forecasts prove to be right, modest tax cuts of themselves may not be enough if the nation's economic prosperity is relatively modest - and more importantly, if it is not spread throughout our cities and provinces, and across a wide spectrum of the population.
Video: Budget 2015 - Public reaction
This issue manifested itself in the 2014 election through the lens of child poverty. Almost certainly the issue will also manifest itself in 2017 through an additional lens - the starkly different trajectories of provincial and other metropolitan areas versus Auckland.
And even in Auckland, the impact a hot property market has on those who live and work there, and more particularly the ability for Aucklanders to enter that market at current levels.
Budget 2015 recognises most of these issues and visibly starts to address the first, which was a major focus of the Budget, but does relatively little in relation to the second. Both issues are interrelated in that the solutions require that economic prosperity touch as many people and parts of the nation as possible. This is currently not the case as a disproportionate amount is concentrated in and around Auckland. In part this is due to, and certainly exacerbated by, the inward migration that region currently benefits from.
Video: Finance Minister Bill English - Helping parents into work:
In terms of Auckland, the initial issue is squarely targeted at the ever rising cost of housing, rather than the associated infrastructure challenges, with the initial salvo being a number of tax changes. But those changes do no more than reinforce existing settings and will do little to curb investment in that sector and the upward pressure on prices.
As international precedents prove, tax can at best only take the edge off a hot market.
In terms of supply, Budget 2015's responses were relatively muted. In part because there is no easy answer or magic wand.
There was silence about demand and whether in fact the Government would be better placed to also try to choreograph the inward immigration more widely than just Auckland.
Where does that leave us? From a business perspective evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but probably even less evolutionary than expected - but relative to Australia, it's all good here.
• Thomas Pippos is the chief executive of Deloitte New Zealand
