Terry Sarten: Bill English and the Eeyore Budget

I listened to Bill English present the Budget, and the first thing that came to mind was Eeyore.
I know I wrote about the Eeyore last week. I have not developed some strange fixation with story-book characters, but as he delivered the Budget I was reminded of the AA Milne story in which a house is built for Eeyore. Piglet and Pooh Bear are out and about in the Three Acre Wood. They come across a pile of sticks and decide they will surprise Eeyore and use them to build a house for him.
They meet him a short time later and find him despondent and mournful because he can't find his house. He explains where it was and they realise that what seemed to be just a pile of sticks was in fact where he lived. They are embarrassed but show Eeyore the new house without mentioning their mistake. Eeyore looks inside and is pleased (in a glum sort of way).
Bill English and John Key, like Pooh and Piglet, have taken a bundle of economic bits and pieces and reassembled them in the hope that the voters, like Eeyore, will grumble but accept that is just the way things are.
The Budget made no mention of inequalities or sustainable economic goals, despite the well-researched connection between equitable societies, improvements in education, health and reductions in imprisonment rates. There was no mention of the yawning chasm that is the gap between CEO salaries and what they pay their staff. The corporate tax rate was noted, but there was no mention of corporate profits.
Cuts were described in a cosmetic surgical type of way - a little bit taken off this and a little bit off that with a shot of Botox for the public service to give them a fixed smile as they grit their teeth and try to do three peoples' jobs at once. There was nothing about cuts to the millions for the Rugby World Cup and America's Cup.
The economy is clearly a bit battered. The government has been borrowing to cover the cracks created by debt, while companies have been using every trick in the book (and some that aren't) to avoid paying their fair share of tax. This is often the same sector that grumbles about the lack of skilled staff and the flight of talent overseas while remaining wilfully blind to the connection between the millions in taxes they avoid paying and an educated population. But of course how silly of me - it is the government's job to educate and train workers so that private enterprise can employ them while contributing as little as possible to the cost of the health, education and social structure required to grow productive citizens.
The notion of a flat tax rate has been debated before. The sums have been done and it has been calculated that if wage earners, corporations or Trusts all paid a flat rate 15 per cent of tax on their income, with no options for tax avoidance, the tax take would actually be much bigger than it is under the system we have now. It would be a great leveller - lower taxes for most people and a bigger take from the wealthy, corporates and trusts that currently pay very little or no tax at all.
We may grumble about Bill English's Budget but unlike Eeyore, we can see it is just a pile of fiscal and political sticks that have been rearranged into a different shape.
Terry Sarten lives in Whanganui and describes himself as a parent, social worker, musician and writer. Email: tgs@inspire.net.nz