Ruth Berry: The boring speeches over, Winston wakes up the House

COMMENT

Finance Minister Michael Cullen just wasn't going to buy into questions about whether his biggest spending Budget was a vote-winner yesterday.

"I've never seen a Budget that's a vote-winner," he harrumphed during questioning at the pre-Budget lock-up, sensitive to the fact the Opposition was labelling it a pre-election bribe.

He let his aspirations slip a little later, however, when rejecting accusations there was little put aside for the elderly. From July there would be $3 prescription charges for the over-65s and, of course, the expanded knee ops.

"If we go down in the polls after this, I'll probably need one," he joked.

He didn't mention the hip ops, but perhaps it may have sounded a little too much like hip hop.

The words "beneficiary" and "Maori" were also notably absent from the Government's vocabulary yesterday, with Dr Cullen pointing out when quizzed that all programmes were based on "need".

"There's an awful lot of Maori among low-income households," he added irritably.

If some things have changed, other traditions remain. Dr Cullen wore a red tie and National leader Don Brash a blue one.

The Finance Minister was suitably boring when he delivered his Budget speech. It's de rigueur, as it conveys the gravity of the occasion.

As he emitted endless mindboggling figures on how families everywhere would be winners, his colleagues did the cheering around him.

Only the news that a Waihi family on an income of $55,000 with four children would get an extra $150 a week provoked a slight smirk.

Then it was Dr Brash's turn. Perhaps he forgot he was not already the Finance Minister or perhaps, given he's rather new to Parliament, he believed he was supposed to be as boring as Dr Cullen.

Whatever happened, he looked and sounded like a washed-out preacher. His attempts at fire-and-brimstone indignation about the Government's squandered opportunities fell flat.

And his colleagues, including deputy Gerry Brownlee who sent text messages during the sermon, endured it without bothering to extend a few rallying cheers.

It was left to Helen Clark to turn up the volume: "The only squandered opportunity in sight today was that sad speech," she hollered, delightedly. "Mr Speaker, where was the policy?"

It can't have been related, but Dr Brash did spend the rest of her speech flicking back over his notes.

It was once again left to New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to deliver something really rousing.

He was so worked up it was hard to catch what he was saying, but it woke everybody up again.

Mr Peters flourished a series of giant cheques with "open-ended" scrawled on them.

One was to Ahmed Zaoui, one to the treaty gravy train industry and a third to "killers, rapists, thieves and their associates".

It must have been spending Dr Cullen had hidden deep in the Budget estimates that only Mr Peters had discovered.