KEY POINTS:
The Government may have ditched the Labour-Green planned home insulation fund but Prime Minister John Key says insulation projects may be among expected infrastructure spending.
Labour and the Greens have criticised the Government for canning their 15-year $1 billion home insulation fund. National said the money was never there for the fund.
Yesterday Mr Key was asked about Australian plans to invest in green projects.
As part of measures to stimulate the economy - as new figures show the Australian Budget will be at least A$15 billion ($18.8 billion) a year in deficit for the next four years without new spending - Kevin Rudd's Government is looking at giving home owners free ceiling insulation with subsidies for rental owners.
The package will be Australia's second stimulus package; the first worth A$6.6 billion was announced in October.
Mr Key is to announce plans today to help small business.
"Part of what you will see from us around our infrastructure is an attempt to address a number of different concerns that we have," he said.
"For instance if we were to undertake areas of housing, insulation being an example, I think there's a number of wins that we can get there.
"One, it's scalable across the country; two, you've got a situation where you've a workforce that's ready to do that - the construction sector's been slowing down so there's capacity; thirdly, you do get health and social benefits; but fourthly, you get environmental benefits."
Mr Key said infrastructure spending would be targeted at projects that had multiple benefits and long-term gain.
Finance Minister Bill English is off to Australia to meet his Australian counterpart, Treasurer Wayne Swan.
"We want to tap into the Australian Government thinking about how they are dealing with a recession," Mr English said yesterday.
"We have a common interest in what is going on in China and Asia."
Australia was more dependent on those countries but it was New Zealand's biggest market.
The ministers would talk about the shared problem of a hole in the books.
"Both Governments have the responsibility of making sure that any stimulus now has to be repaid later with interest."
Mr English said United States President Barack Obama had started to talk about a long-term focus.
"Our approach is to look out over five to seven years, through the process of recession and recovery and then repaying the debt and we have to be thinking about that now."
He hoped recovery was between six and 12 months away and Treasury was predicting growth in 2010.
- NZPA
