Budgets these days are so predictable they're an anticlimax masquerading as an event
Count your blessings, folks. They may be all you've got left. Probably not, but it's still Thursday morning here and you just don't know. "Wild" Bill English may make a mockery of predictions. He may have a brain explosion - don't even think it, you cheeky brat.
He may have
an epiphany - whatever that is. Heck, he may go utterly bonkers, wig-flippingly mad, potty as a hydroponics shop (in the nicest possible way) and dance gaily into Parliament this afternoon with a kipper in each ear, wearing nothing but a tutu and gumboots, before sacrificing a goat, ripping out the entrails and making the whole thing up on the spot.
We live in hope, my angels. We live in hope. Anything to confound the pundits and enliven the dull inevitability of things.
Because Budgets these days are predictable. They're an anticlimax masquerading as an event. They're the Christmas present you already know you're getting.
("I can't tell you what I'm giving you, it's a secret, but there's more GST, less tax, some nice money for the trains, a kick in the fiscals for landlords, a slap in the Hanover for trusts and you can't open it till the 25th.") Thus, if only to give us something meaningful to debate, it would be nice if Mr English had announced paid public holidays for everyone right through to New Year's Eve or, as is more likely, slapped scary new taxes on anything that moved.
You know, tuppence extra on crisps, a farthing on treacle, another groat on corn, a ha'porth here, a guinea there, extra taxes everywhere. Had he been daring, he may even have introduced a window tax or a tax on the keeping of ferrets and a 25 per cent surcharge on the sending of twittery tweets.
A bottle of ouzo or a new bouzouki could now cost as much here as they do in Athens.
Tragic young policy analysts and Senior Legislative Comma Inserters, Grade 3, may be sobbing, heartbroken because, from this day forth, they'll be forced to pay the gummint if they wish to retain their inexplicable jobs in our blossly groated bureaucracy.
Tuhoe may have been told that if they really want that blasted national park, they'll have to buy the damn thing. There could be a 41.2 per cent hike in the tax on rioting to bring us into line with Bangkok. ("It's moments like these you need Mintoes.")
Anyone not exporting apples to Australia (all of us) may be obliged to pay a hefty non-export levy intended to teach us a lesson and remind us how utterly slack we've been on the economic recovery front for the past 10 years.
All that and more could have been preoccupying us if Bill English had dared to be different. But he won't have been. Too risky, you see.
The trouble with boldness is, it's just too bold. And however much people say they want boldness and daring and juggling live hand grenades on a tightrope without a safety net, they absolutely hate it when they get it.
Our politicians are timid because we're timid. Our best tomorrow is another yesterday. That's why the nice gummint's just sent us the $750 million bill for all those clapped-out trains. They know we'd rather cough up than sell 'em - and to hell with the hip replacements!
So yesterday's Budget will be, as promised, "fiscally neutral". Which is like going on holiday by staying at home. When you arrive where you're heading you haven't left where you've been.
The only thing that's changed is that everything's the same. Different deck chairs, different charges, but the Titanic's income hasn't changed. It's still what it was the day before.
Trouble is, everything else has changed as well. It's fine being "fiscally neutral" when your name's Switzerland and you're the globe's last great secret banker, with every shyster, crook, rat bag and despot's savings safely tucked away in your vaults, but we're not Switzerland.
We're a fractious little city trapped in a country's body at the bottom of the world, growing cows and wool and flogging off our scenery and hoping that'll make ends meet.
Which will be even harder to do in a couple of years when those flippin' Aussies up the ante by cutting their taxes all over the shop.
There's no point being "fiscally neutral" with those plonkers sharpening their competitive edge. Better for 'Wild' Bill English to have risen yesterday and boldly announced, "as of January 1, 2011, we will be the first country on Earth to absolutely, totally abolish all income tax and pay for everything the gummint does with GST. Put that in your boomerang and smoke it, Mr ruddy Rudd and Mr flighty Swan!"
If he'd said that, even with a kipper in each ear and a tutu round his waist, the world would be beating a path to our door rather that the other way round.