Chester Borrows: There are many positives in the Budget

Parliament last week was buzzing with Budget week happenings, and Budget day on Thursday saw Bill English deliver a sensible budget for our country. The trajectory being set for our country's economy in this is encouraging. The Government is forecast to be in surplus a year earlier than forecast last year. But within the belt tightening and streamlining is still good news.
The Budget provides $2.2 billion over the next four years for new health services. These include improving care for first-time mothers, widening access to medicines funded through DHBs, additional elective surgery, more resources for patients with dementia, increased disability support services and training more doctors.
The Government's commitment to raising education standards also remains strong.
The Budget provides $1.4 billion over the next four years for schools and early childhood education. Now that the hoopla from the introduction of National Standards has passed, people have started to see that this might just work. We want to continue supporting the successes in primary and intermediate schools. The Budget will provide $36 million to support children who need extra help in reading, writing, and maths, and we'll set up experts to work with schools and teachers to help raise the bar in education. One 2011 Budget allocation I'm particularly proud of is the $43.7 million set to improve services for children in state care, such as education and mental health assessments. I look forward to Paula Bennett's Green Paper on Children too, which will invite Kiwis to have their say before forming a Children's Action Plan.
Capital spending outlined in Budget 2011 includes $942 million to complete the Government's funding for ultra-fast broadband and $28.2 million more to connect fibre to schools.
Wanganui will be among the first cities and towns to benefit from the Government's roll out of ultra-fast broadband.
The major economic priorities of our area such as bio-industry, integrated education and smart business will now have even greater potential for growth. This is what we want for a city with plenty of further potential in these areas. Many in our electorate look forward to the increased connectedness that this will create and the developments in communication, learning and enterprise that this will bring.
The big picture economic changes will affect our region closely.
Economic changes matched with commitments such as $24 million over four years going to business research and development and commercialisation will have a direct impact on the work being done in Wanganui.
The funding for business will go into priority areas such as high-value manufacturing products and services, and will be aimed at connecting research with business innovation. Our proud history of production and manufacturing will continue to be a way forward.
After the many negatives that seemed to have hit our nation throughout the last term, it's good to have a strong Budget that looks forward to building up the important things.