Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives Budget 2021 speech during lockup. Video / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
I think we have enough informed commentary now to call out the Budget for what it is.
From Steven Joyce, Richard Prebble and Bryce Wilkinson, all writing in the Herald, they've all seen what most of the rest of us did when it came to the Budget forecasts, theycalled them heroic, a better word might be fanciful.
From inflation to growth to employment to comparisons with Australia, this country is entering a golden era, it's almost as though Treasury and Grant are on the magic mushrooms.
The housing numbers were backed up last week by Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr when he concurred that house price growth is going from 19-20 per cent down to less than 1 and it's staying that way for years.
It's possible this is all part of a plan, if you say something loud enough and often enough, it's possible that those who aren't paying all that much attention believe you.
Grant was on my programme the other day and he told us the economy was cooking with gas.
I pulled him up of course, because the last quarterly number we got was for Q4 of last year and it was minus 1, and the first quarter of this year is out in a week or so, and it's possibly in negative territory, which means we are officially in recession, and a double-dip recession at that. And even if it's above zero, it will barely scrape above the line, and that will be because of our spending, the numbers for which came in a week back ... and they were higher than expected.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on their way into the House for the reading of the Budget 2021. Photo / Mark Mitchell
But, either way, there is no gas and there is no cooking ... it's a con.
What is keeping the economy from sinking like a stone is debt, another forgotten aspect of the increasingly elaborate charade that the Government is trying to distract you with.
The gaps in the economy, of which there are many, are being filled by Adrian Orr and his printer at the Reserve Bank.
Tens of billions of dollars are pumped in, and flushing the system with a problem that will take lifetimes to pay back.
All of which would be OK, if we were growing as a result of the expenditure.
Investment for growth is one thing, but spending for the sake of a redistribution programme is another.
The borders are closed, job ads are at record levels and the vacancies can't be filled.
Yet at the same time we have stats that show the number of long-term jobless has almost doubled under this government.
The social housing queue has exploded, and even using the Government's own building numbers, they're not coming close to addressing the problem.
The long-term jobless, that's people out of work for 12 months or more, has gone from 65,000 to 115,000.
At the same time they've announced the social contract set up by the previous government in 2013 is to be abandoned, because it's too administratively difficult.
That contract involves expectations like enrolling your child in school and having your child have a doctor, in other words being a half-decent human being and pulling your weight.
The Government has decided it doesn't want to do that anymore, but what it has done in this past Budget is to give these people more money.
So record job ads, no migration to fill those jobs, business unable to hire to fill the gaps and grow their businesses and thus produce much needed growth for the economy, not to mention create a larger tax base to cover the ever increasing expenditure. While at the same time we've never had more people jobless for extended periods, all of whom don't have to actively parent, or get out of bed, or contribute in any way shape or form ... and for that there is just more money in their pocket.
For those of us who go to work each day to fund this socialist con, what part of the aforementioned equation makes any sense at all?
And just how bad does the debt have to get, the lack of growth have to get, the job gaps have to get, before enough people wake up to the charade and call it out? Hopefully before the damage is so great that we've lost the country we once knew and loved, to a bunch of theorists whose view on economic management was discovered in a book in a campus library.
