Budget to help those on modest incomes says PM

4.00pm

Thursday's budget will continue the Government's theme of helping people on "modest" incomes, Prime Minister Helen Clark said today.

The budget -- Finance Minister Michael Cullen's fifth - will have as its centrepiece a $1.1 billion "future directions" package that will eventually help out 300,000 low and middle income households.

Helen Clark said the budget was clearly aimed at working families.

"But then the budgets from the outset under the Labour-led Government have been about supporting people on modest incomes whether through income-related rentals, what has happened with health and education spending, lifting the level of the super in year 2000," she said.

"So this time it's the families that directly benefit, and (it's) well deserved."

Asked how the Government would counter criticism that it was a beneficiaries budget, Helen Clark said she believed that once people had seen it they would realise it was about getting more people into work.

"With unemployment close to a 17-year low, it's time for all hands to the wheel," she said.

"I think when people see the details of the budget they'll see that the middle income family which often does feel it's the one that's overlooked is certainly very much in the Government's sights."

The Government had always been careful never to spend more money than it had and as a result had a strong economy and surpluses.

Labour has been taking a hammering in the polls; the latest One News/Colmar Brunton poll put it 10 percentage points behind National.

Asked if she believed the budget would improve its poll ratings, Helen Clark said she took a long-term view of both.

"The budget is in the tradition of careful management, doing what you can when you can, taking a step at a time and always focusing on how to make your people better off," she said.

"I look at all polls, not just one that gets a lot of publicity, and I can only say that I feel perfectly comfortable about where things are over all the polls."

- NZPA