COMMENT:
The gap between rhetoric and delivery in this Budget is huge.
For all the talk of wellbeing and despite the welcome increases of support going into mental health and rail, there is no serious expenditure going into addressing underlying issues like homelessness, poverty and the uncertain future predicted by climate change experts.
This Government is focused on managing poverty rather than eliminating it. Managing the system and transforming it are two very different things. Much is made of the decision to index benefits to wages, but on its own this will not get to the root of the problem — that benefits are simply too low to start with. There will be a slight lift in years to come, but this will not pull those on working-age income support out of endemic poverty.
As the numbers of people who are homeless or in massively substandard housing move steadily upwards in urban, provincial and rural New Zealand, this Budget makes no attempt to accelerate the rate of houses built to meet real need.
