John Armstrong: Mr Angry gets tough time in the House

A 67c tax cut might not go far in the real world, but it sure goes a heck of a long way in Parliament.

Michael Cullen's Budget might buy only half a packet of chewing gum. Nearly two weeks after its delivery, however, there is still plenty of flavour left for the Opposition to chew on.

With the House taking a post-Budget break last week, yesterday was the first chance to really rub the Minister of Finance's nose in the public relations disaster of his own making.

The almost-universal castigation of the Budget's miserly adjustment in income-tax thresholds meant this was going to be one afternoon at least when the usual flood of Cullen one-liners was not going to drown the Opposition.

His mood already on the darker side for being obliged to apologise to TV3 that morning for wrongly accusing the channel of using unethical journalism, he largely jettisoned the humour and adopted his less attractive Mr Angry pose to fend off questions.

John Key, National's finance spokesman, was first up, asking Dr Cullen what would be the weekly increase in after-tax income for someone earning less than $38,000 following the adjustment of income tax thresholds in 2008.

Of course, everyone knew the answer.

The Opposition just wanted to force Dr Cullen to utter the embarrassing "67 cents".

Muttering that as quickly as possible, the Finance Minister pointed out that someone on that income, with two children and paying $300 a week a rent, would actually get a total of $129.44 a week extra courtesy of Labour's separate Working for Families policy.

In case anyone had missed it, however, National's Gerry Brownlee raised a point of order to remind everyone the answer to the original question was 67 cents.

Mr Key then began a new game, taunting Dr Cullen whether the 67c tax "break" had been the "deep, dark, secret" in the Budget that Labour Party president Mike Williams, as "some sort of Amway salesman for tax cuts", had been alluding to beforehand.

This is another sore point. Dr Cullen's attempt to blame journalists for hiking pre-Budget expectations of a reasonable tax cut fails because of Mr Williams' loose talk.

"If Mr Williams said that, he forgot to tell me what it was," Dr Cullen responded grumpily.

However, if Mr Williams had been selling tax cuts, Dr Cullen made it very clear he is selling the human cost of tax cuts. He warned that every $1 billion cut in revenue required a 2.1 per cent cut in Government spending. That would mean 497 fewer primary school teachers, 394 fewer secondary school teachers, 154 fewer sworn police, 104 fewer hospital doctors, 422 fewer hospital nurses, another 23 fewer front-line staff plus roughly $9 a week less in super for retired married couples to boot.

Undeterred, Mr Key then pondered whether United Future, as Labour's loyal support partner, had been grateful for the minimal adjustment in tax thresholds when that party had pushed for something far more generous.

Dr Cullen replied that if there was "a mass outbreak of insanity" and Mr Key became Minister of Finance, he would discover that people were never grateful for what is in a Budget. Here, at last, was a hint of an explanation for Labour's apparent insanity in unveiling a 67c tax cut.

Maybe, just maybe Dr Cullen was working on the notion that if people are never grateful, then why not give them something for which they will be truly ungrateful.