Budget surplus – what budget surplus?

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Well, well, well, you know it’s election year because we suddenly have a surplus…

Government surplus of $1.5 billion well ahead of expectations

The Government’s Budget surplus has jumped out to nearly $1.5 billion, more than $1.3b ahead of forecast, as ministers put the final touches to next year’s accounts.

With the Budget due on May 25, Treasury said the surplus excluding gain and losses (OBEGAL) for the nine months to the end of March was tracking at $1.468b, against an expected $147 million surplus.

…when you consider the way the Government are throwing beneficiaries off welfare to manipulate the unemployment rates and cut back on costs, when you consider the way the Government are underfunding mental health, schools, public services, public health, public broadcasting and social infrastructure there should be no surprise whatsoever that the National Government have managed to magic up a surplus just in time for the election.

Can we honestly claim to have a surplus when our rivers are so polluted that people are being poisoned in Havelock North?

Can we honestly claim to have a surplus in the same week the Government are handed the People’s Mental Health report that paints a grim picture of the damage we are causing our most mentally vulnerable?

Can we really have a surplus when our suicide rate is larger than those who die in traffic accidents?

Can we really have a surplus when housing affordability is so bad that two thirds of renters and 80 percent of potential first home buyers could not afford their housing costs?

Can we claim to have a surplus when 1 in 100 NZers are homeless?

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Can we claim to have a surplus when over 200 000 children live in poverty?

Can we really claim to have a surplus when over 10 000 are locked up inside prison?

Can we really have a surplus when you consider how much debt the National Party have locked us into so they can continue to borrow billions for tax cuts?

18 COMMENTS

  1. Nationals non policy on housing and a CGT is clearly evidenced by this:

    “MPs are making a killing buying up large in New Zealand’s overheated property market. Their penchant for property investment has been laid bare in the latest publication of MPs’ Pecuniary Interests – registering a 52 per cent leap in the number of properties our elected representatives declared an ownership stake since 2008. Between them, 116 of our MPs own or have an interest in 302 properties and more than three quarters boast a portfolio of anywhere between two and 12 properties.”

    So for all the right wing supporters not sure why National are reluctant to create meaningful policy on property speculation, the answer is “I’m alright Jack”

    • New Zealand is rotten to the core, the stink of self gain and capital gains. I waste my breath. This place is not worth bothering with the money grubbing scum have taken over!

  2. Even if there is a surplus and there probably isn’t more likely the money has been taken from another area ie the Canterbury rebuild, school and hospitals.
    This so called surplus has come at too large a cost to our country and our people too much unnecessary suffering and now we are seeing an about turn forma group that has denied we have any problems .

  3. Of course the “Surplus” is a mirage. It is a manipulated figure that has been choreographed to suit National just before election time.

    You are 100% correct in your comments.

    A sad example of Nationals shell game is a woman who was stabbed by her mentally unwell son in Northland. The police response was non existent to her emergency calls (multiple). Mental health workers deemed the man sane when he was not. Both organisations were and are cash strapped and with that goes dysfunction. Who is really to blame when National cut funding for both to the point where they don’t work properly anymore? Who has blood on their hands? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11853768

    This is not a one off, it will happen again.

    Where is Labour and the Greens calling Nationals so called surplus a sham? Get off your arses and don’t agree the economy is doing well when it is not!

  4. So you take 1.5 billion put of the economy through the tax system and say grow the economy and call ot a surplus. Winning?

  5. It’s a gutless and worthess MSM who enable the National Party Liars to spin that kind of crap to us, the public.
    The Rabid Chipmunk
    The Shaven Haven headed, gerble-smuggler Henry
    The Big Tall Proud well hung Real Man that hoskings isn’t no matter the Ferrari.
    Duncan Garner “a quick root thanks” via Tinder where narcissists are in their element.
    Rachel Smelly, bitter blond Himbo yet to come out.
    And lets not forget Kathryn Ryan. Like having poisonous syrup poured into your ears, like it or not. Ms Shush Puppy who can’t say her esses.
    What a pack of wankers.

    • I have told you this before Countryboy – you need to get a publisher and get into print – a regular column somewhere who will accept your profound outrageous but delicious comments – or even better a series of books with your musings – I think your eloquence needs to be got out there. Keep up the good work.

    • NZ is now a seriously corrupted dirty little country about to be seen by the globe as a shoddy place to invest in when the axe comes down Martyn.

  6. The fact that this government blew out the national debt to 93 billion to give the wealthy tax relief was one of the most irresponsible decisions in recent history and this administration has made some clangers.

    How this crowd is viewed as the best economic managers defies actual sanity.

    The main argument for the harsh prescription of neo liberalism we were force fed was because of the danger of the huge national debt and the crippling effect of that was ” not being able to afford nice things ”

    Yet Key and English blamed Labour for a decade of deficits in 2008 (which was a lie ) went on to borrow billions pushing up the external deficit after it had been paid down for the last eighteen years at huge cost to many kiwis and the loss of many of the S.O.Es to repay debt.

    It seems we have learned nothing since those dark days in 1984 when as a country we were facing bankruptcy and told of the sacrifice and crisis management required to turn New Zealand around.

    Smoke and mirrors in the short term for political expediency has major long term consequences for our country and the burden falls not on the John Keys and Paula Bennetts of this world but the poor and financially enslaved middle class.

  7. Accounting tricks we can call it, what the Nats and their support party lackeys are doing, nothing else. Fiddling with sums and with expenditure and taxation, to favour the upper middle class and the rich, the property owners and business operators, and trying to suck more blood out of a stone when it comes to the poor in this place.

  8. Since you’ve closed down the comments on Trotter’s column about Shipley I’d just like to submit my subservience to Countryboy and Mike in Auckland. Mike, as a reserved Scots NZer I heard socialist sentiments from my unionist boss in the 80s and the next time from a Swedish doctor, who called herself such, 30 years later. Hence, I think, the lack of talk–not a (Scots, Victorian) NZ strength– lost us our great shibboleth of equality.

    TDB is where we can speak our truths, bugger politics. The downside: nobody will be persuaded here. Shipley certainly won’t visit. I, however, prefer TDB, and you two, to Bowalley Road and the Labour deputy leader as the 2nd coming.

    ‘NZers’ sympathy for each other is only matched by their suspicion of each other’

    Our downfall.

  9. National are currently trumpeting about new spending in business development and tourism infrastructure.
    Not a word about the current deficit, woeful underspending on social services or child poverty.

    • Yeah Mike agree, not a word about the IMF debt increase not a word about the damage their polices have done to our people, our country and our reputation

  10. Outright lies are an essential component of the propaganda system that keeps the masses deluded and compliant. We are governed by professional liars.

  11. IMO this country is being deliberately overtly/covertly drained and sold off: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/external-debt
    Further, I believe this government and, by force, election name change or not, that which follows will be obliged to bow down to NZ’s largest creditor, China. Whatever government, the Dragon will rule.
    Unless of course we bind ourselves together ignoring everything save for the fact that we are united as one. If we don’t, start practicing deep bowing and get ready for the mark of the beast (RFID chip) which will extinguish the light of the Creator and condemn our soul but will be the only way to access any money on which to live.

  12. So informative graph, but a bit dated.

    Reserve Bank: E3 New Zealand’s overseas debt (discontinued June 2013)

    More National Party cover ups.

Comments are closed.