Budget 2022: Winners, Losers & Predictions
Grant was happy, Journalists who get locked down with Treasury Officials looked confused, a weary frightened population held out their begging bowl and asked ‘more’?
Budget 2022 was an attempt to offset the crippling cost of living crisis and it certainly did that for the middle classes, the working classes and beneficiaries however can go fuck themselves.
I’m going to send my 3 fiddy in GrantBux on tobacco, alcohol and gambling. If only Labour had decriminalised cannabis!
There are of course political winners and losers
WINNERS
Grant Robertson: He pulled off a cost of living crisis budget funded from the closure of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. It’s big and attempts to be everything to everyone which will of course disappoint most. He is a Finance Minister at the heights of his power which is disappointing news for everyone left on the bottom. Sadly this is Robbo at his best I’m afraid. Sorry everyone.
Willie Jackson and the Labour Māori Caucus: No one has managed to force this Government to give another billion to Māori quite like Willie Jackson. The Labour Māori Caucus has never been this strong and this is the 5th budget in a row where Willie has negotiated a billion for Māori in targeted funding. In 5 years Willie Jackson has managed to get almost 5 times the budget that NZ has paid out in Treaty negotiations, has there ever been a more effective negotiator for Māori? NEVER! Which is why Willie will now have a target painted on his back.
Middle Class NZ without kids ‘GrantBux’ : FREE MONEY! Who doesn’t like $350? Will it offset the cost of living crisis? FUCK NO, in fact most people will already have spent this well before it ever gets paid out, but hey, ‘3 fiddy in GrantBux’. Yay!
Disabled: For a community as huge and invisible as the Disabled, there is some good news re representation and political voice, but the naked truth is baseline benefits for the disabled have not risen and their lives are made immeasurably more difficult with the ongoing paper work to prove they are disabled.
LOSERS
David Seymour & ACT: He’s had a rush of blood to the head with his brutal alternative budget where he wants to take a rusty chainsaw to amputate 5 entire Ministry’s plus the Human Rights Commission. Economist Shamubeel Eaqub slammed Seymour’s comments on Budget 2022, calling them “economically illiterate” and lies about the economy.
As The Daily Blog has been pointing out since the election, the extreme hard right policy of ACT is simply not appreciated by the majority of kiwis.
But it’s there, oh sweet Jesus is it there.
That’s just the start…
- Cut and freeze the Minimum wage
- Interest back on all student loans
- No Kiwsaver subsidy
- Cancel winter energy payment
- Dump all climate crisis legislation
- no more best start payments for families with new borns
- cut welfare payments
- no tax credits for research and development
- cuts to working for families
- $7b a year cut in public services
- Abolish Maori seats
- Abolish Human Rights Commission
This is Romper Stomper Hard Right insanity that makes Qanon look reasonable and because there is no way National can win without ACT, every vote to National empowers ACT.
David Seymour is a very funny, very clever, very talented politician who desperately wants what the humans call, ‘l-o-v-e’.
He doesn’t want to be in Parliament for one second longer than he has to.
He wants to get out of politics and get paid enormous money in the corporate world and maybe find a friend.
In short, David is a wide eyed idealogical mouth foamer who feels honour bound to mutilate the State so that it’s too wounded to ever grow back.
It’s called the Milton Friedman Prune.
David is a man in a hurry to try and get a life before politics robs him of one, so when he puts out these blistering policy directions that would cause enormous damage and carnage to the social infrastructure that so many people desperately require every day to survive, you best fucking believe he would do it in the blink of a sociopath’s eye.
While TDB has been pointing out that the Wellington Bureaucracy certainly do control policy and have far too much influence for their own self interest, we argue conquering that requires a plan to use tasers on their most sensitive areas to advance a left wing economic policy platform. It doesn’t require taking a chainsaw to the entire capacity of the State and calling that blunt force trauma amputation surgical!
David is throwing the baby, the bath, the little plastic toys, the soap and the entire toilet out with the bathwater.
I don’t see why the nation has to suffer another hard right neoliberal hatchet job on the State’s capacity to help people just because David Seymour wants to get laid now.
David wants to hand on heart be able to tell Satan that he did all he could to mutilate the State before he leaves for a life of first class travel and disappointed in-laws.
Christopher Luxon & National: People are pissed off with everything because we’ve all been through hell over the last couple of years thanks to the pandemic. Of course we are angry, and tired and fearful and angry, really, really, angry and Jacinda is getting lots of it in the neck and Labour are sliding in the Polls.
In steps Christian Lex Luthor, Christopher Luxon.
Sure, he can do the CEO 45 second sound bite but when actually pushed on details ends up shooting himself in the foot with some boofhead reactionary bullshit. He has no intellectual curiosity because Christopher knows his evangelical God loves him and his 7 properties are evidence that prosperity Jesus blessed him.
He’s a white Brian Tamaki in less leather.
Christopher only cares about the Pilots, the first class travellers and his relationship with God.
It is his certainty that National are selling to a frightened NZ, not his ideas or policy.
Christopher doesn’t have time for bottom feeders and policy is for little people which is the real danger. David Seymour is far far far far far far smarter than boofhead and will get all his mutilation of the state through without Luxon even being aware it’s happening.
The yellow quick fox will jump over the lazy blue dog.
Luxon has nothing to offer other than everything to his God.
Greens: They got to ‘shine’ at the meaningless climate crisis response earlier in the week. They announced their sophistry around emissions to make NZ carbon neutral by 2050 as our solution to the climate crisis. I say sophistry because it is. If you believe as I do that the climate crisis is an existential threat to our species you will note that:
- By 2030, over 50% of the oceans will be collapsing as bio-habitats.
- By 2030, 122million will be driven into extreme poverty as direct result of climate change.
- By 2030, 100million will die as a direct consequence of climate change.
- By 2030, even if the Paris Agreement is actually implemented, we will see a planet warm to 3.4 degrees by the end of this century
- By 2030, the global annual cost of global warming will be $3trillion.
To appreciate how weak the Government’s proposals are, National and BusinessNZ have already signalled their support, which begs the question, if James Shaw yawns in a carbon sink forest, did the climate notice?
If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are part of the problem.
There are 10million cows in NZ, a cow produces 14times faecal load as a human, that’s equivalent to 140million people shitting into our waterways – where’s the realisation of that in this emissions plan?
We are not looking at true energy self sustainability utilising solar, wind or tidal technology.
We are not funding community resilience or decentralised food supply chains.
We are doing very, very, very little to combat the true scale and danger of the climate crisis.
Public Transport Users: The bottom 25% of NZ spend almost 30% on transport each week, free public transport is a way to put money right back into the pockets of the poor without the malicious spiteful WINZ or MSD clawing any of it back. Taking large numbers of car users off the roads and onto the buses allows those who use the roads more efficiency so it’s a win win for car uses and bus users. Unfortunately Labour have decided not to make public transport free and are only extending it to community service card holders which makes public transport free for people who you don’t want to sit to next on the bus which makes you drive your car instead. It’s like Labour said to itself, ‘how can we turn a good idea and fuck it up’. See I don’t mind sitting next to someone who smells and is talking to themselves because the ride is free for me as well, but when I have to pay for the privilege of sitting next to someone talking to themselves while smelling really bad, w-e-l-l back into a car for me, am I Right? Counter productive public transport policy, standing ovation Labour, standing ovation.
Pharmac users: Once again they get fucked by the petty tyrant bureaucrats who seem to get off on denying sick people life saving medicines.
Environment: Burning.
Beneficiaries: They get free public transport, and some solo parents don’t have to face MSD clawbacks on child support payments, but over all, their exclusion from the one off $350 because they’ve had winter energy payments seems cruel. For a group who are experiencing vast pressures and stresses, this budget does very little.
State Housing: As John Minto painfully points out…
The $221m for Affordable Housing Fund is to get the children of the middle class into their first home. The other three amounts are for state housing and social housing providers and if taken together ($1.43b) would build just 5,000 homes – in practice a hell of a lot less.
How does that address the 25,500 – and growing – state house waiting list? It doesn’t and Labour is happy to keep it this way.
In essence, by keep down the number of state houses the government is bolstering the incomes of middle-class New Zealanders who have rental properties. Keeping the housing supply tight for low-income families forces these families to stay in private sector rentals and pay impossible rents. The government then subsidises these impossibly high rents through the accommodation supplement rather than build state houses themselves.
For those on low-incomes this is a landlord’s budget.
…he’s right.
PREDICTIONS
Rather than fully fund universal services like public transport or free school breakfasts and lunches or break up the supermarket duopoly, rather than build more State Houses to meet the need of the 25 000 on waiting lists or do something meaningful on affordable housing, rather than any of that, Labour have splashed out $350 which will be evaporated immediately.
Great there is extra money for this and that, but it just seems to ignore the magnitude of events occurring now.
Before Putin invaded the Ukraine, global grain production had already plummeted in 2022 due to massive climate crisis global droughts impacting harvests and interrupting the agricultural calendar.
Russia & Ukraine produce 12% of all globally traded calories and the shut down of exports and war damage to farms has devastated food and fertilizer production which will trigger food riots throughout the Middle East and South America.
I’ve been arguing that our inflation will hit double digits by December because we are grossly underestimating the Apocalyptic impact of global War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.
There is an amalgamation of crises that are rushing together pushing the planet into a steep economic recession. Since 2008 the central banks have printed 25 Trillion to keep the Ponzi scheme from collapsing and that has artificially created the lowest interest rate in 5000 years.
The unwinding of that kind of pressure surely is going to be the event horizon of a Debt Black Hole?
A climate crisis that exacerbates an economic crisis that exacerbates a war crisis that exacerbates a pandemic crisis.
That’s a lot of Black Swans all ubering home.
In the light of the threats to us in the here and now, this budget trying to determine the future seems hopelessly compromised.
We are all losers in this budget.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
It’s about 4 in the morning and I am in that energy.
We got Trump’s money bags
A billion dollar cut seemore ain’t never done that before let’s keep it that way.
When we elevate we seperate let’s keep it that way.
The $350 was plain weird. What does that do? Down payment on the spare wheel of a used E car? Full tank of gas? A few blocks of NZ made cheese that are half the price in Aussie?
Good budget again for rail, the only thing I can think of that the government have at this time to put a dent in climate change.
Luxons pre-rehearsed ZB Newstalk angry man caller session were entirely predictable, a yawn fest of dull cliches. His angry man character is destructive and boring simultaneously. Anyway National and Labour’s pact with the devil to ensure the housing catastrophe corroding society is still firmly in place, so shut up, right?
And yes, Pharmac. Once an asset to this country, now a killer, literally! What the actual fuck Labour???
27$ is better than $2.15 Nationals tax plan for the bottom feeders and if you shop at Pak n save you can get a 1kg block of cheese for under 10 bucks and a 5kg bag of chicken for $19.99 often on special. I was on a benefit when the mother of all budget came out and we really struggled with the huge 40$ drop in benefits it was a nasty policy and at one stage my daughters’ father was paying more maintenance than I was getting on the solos benefit.
Thank you for finally acknowledging what I have been saying for over a decade.
The under funding of Pharmac is a blatant disgrace any thing less than $417 million a year increase was an abdication of responsibility. Pharmac’s wish list was 65 meds long in May 2021 god knows what it is now plus another 200 plus meds going through the funding application process.
People liking on you Facebook
People commenting on your twitter
People watching you Instagram nobody wants to fail just to make it. Nobody wants to die we’re just trying to live our lives now this crazy lady is trying to lead the way!
If we’re not respectful we may as well be ruthless mobsters and hedonistic actors.
Take a moment to appreciate the fact the world is moving faster than standing still.
Another loser group: Most middle class salary earners who will be forced to fork out for an unemployment insurance scheme they’ll never need to use. They’d be far better off putting it into their mortgage.
They would be better putting it on the mortgage. I think Martyn is bang on when he says it’s a sop for the PSA to enable them to take 6m taxpayer funded gardening leave as they periodically rotate their careers through the Govt departments & SOEs.
So you think that people who cannot work because they get cancer or the like should just take their chances on the benefit and lose everything?
Theres nothing stopping people buying their own income protection insurance.
There’s nothing to stop any individual taking out similar insurance on their own behalf if they wish. I did when I had a mortgage.
Private UI/IPI way more expensive than this scheme and less generous. Also, by that logic, we should get rid of ACC.
It seems a lot of people on here condone poverty and homelessness because they don’t want to pay tax.
It’s not a matter of condoning poverty and homelessness, it’s more a case of recognising that in most cases people got there through a series of poor decisions.
NZ is a gentle and tolerant place, which is fine, but it gets abused by the wilfully feckless; and there is a limit to taxpayers tolerance of this.
Was this when you were working at Pak n Save or the Warehouse?
Tell that to the many Nzers who get cancer and can’t work Andrew
Asset prices inflation says hi
Agree with the majority of the sum up.
The problems in NZ is not about the amount of funding allocated which has become what NZ obsesses about, but how poorly recipients are allowed too spend the governments money with zero accountability and an identity based ‘get out of jail free card’.
For example
“Willie has negotiated a billion for Māori in targeted funding. In 5 years Willie Jackson has managed to get almost 5 times the budget that NZ has paid out in Treaty negotiations”.
But Maori seem to be sliding into more poverty and worse outcomes.
Maori elite have the money, but like every other ethnic groups elite in NZ, it fails to trickle down to those who need it and the demand more and more while blaming others for why everything is getting worse.
The only way to get people out of poverty is through education and sadly NZ’s education system is groaning into the bottom in international statistics. People who don’t agree are undermined aka Elizabeth Rata.
Considerable amounts of NZ kids still leave school without being literate and numerate, setting them up for a higher chance of crime and poverty in NZ.
Physically and intellectually disabled people get nothing as the trendy groups take over the funding with mental health, more mental health, and now forget about nurses, we have rehab and mental health nurse training. Sadly I think this will just be another quasi qualification that NZ has become leaders in and letting down people who should be able to access qualified people who are qualified nurses/psychologists with ADDITIONAL training in specialist areas like rehab and mental health.
Our tertiary sector has given up on domestic Kiwis, as Jacinda and the neoliberals trawl the world to get international students back.
The sunset Ponzi ran out of juice during Covid and now NZ only gets high needs students who can’t get into any other country and thus come here and work the next Ponzi which is fake low paid jobs in NZ industry as a ‘business masters graduate’ and prop up the over priced construction industry as right wing/woke led planning rid city centres of Kiwi workers/middle class and fill them with mega apartments for absent superrich, emergency housing for beneficiaries, international foreign workers in ponzi’s such as recruitment firms bringing in anybody who can pay their fees and then end up on benefits/cash workers/criminal system and needing charity (ching, ching) when they unqualified to work here, and international students who are becoming lower and lower quality.
This has become so bad that the outputs of NZ ponzi visas now are going around without any qualifications but posing as qualified https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/467061/student-engineer-signed-off-dozens-of-projects-while-posing-as-structural-expert and the NZ firms and their professional bodies and the police don’t care either!
Who cares about buildings falling down or not being able to build a house, road, competently work in government departments such as OT, run a hospital with an absence of qualified nurses and doctors but fill it with ‘medical workers’.
Funny enough medical workers can’t get the large hospital waiting list down because you need qualified people to actually do the operations not posers with a marketing moniker!
As for Minto, used to have some really good ideas, now just comes across as a sad, robotic left refugee, who is stuck in the 1990’s with his discourses and like many former advocates for equality, failed to activate critical thinking to notice what globalism is doing to the poor, middle class and the environment in NZ.
But those medical workers are all on gardening leave Robbie said sucking on the public tit.
27$ is better than $2.15 Nationals tax plan for the bottom feeders and if you shop at Pak n save you can get a 1kg block of cheese for under 10 bucks and a 5kg bag of chicken for $19.99 often on special. I was on a benefit when the mother of all budget came out and we really struggled with the huge 40$ drop in benefits it was a nasty policy and at one stage my daughters’ father was paying more maintenance than I was getting on the solos benefit.
Brown privilege thats a change as we have always had white privilege in our country whats a matter Mr straight x cant you stand for Maori and PI to get equity in this cuntry does it upset you
“Public Transport Users: The bottom 25% of NZ spend almost 30% on transport each week, free public transport is a way to put money right back into the pockets of the poor without the malicious spiteful WINZ or MSD clawing any of it back. Taking large numbers of car users off the roads and onto the buses allows those who use the roads more efficiency so it’s a win win for car uses and bus users. Unfortunately Labour have decided not to make public transport free and are only extending it to community service card holders which makes public transport free for people who you don’t want to sit to next on the bus which makes you drive your car instead. It’s like Labour said to itself, ‘how can we turn a good idea and fuck it up’. See I don’t mind sitting next to someone who smells and is talking to themselves because the ride is free for me as well, but when I have to pay for the privilege of sitting next to someone talking to themselves while smelling really bad, w-e-l-l back into a car for me, am I Right? Counter productive public transport policy, standing ovation Labour, standing ovation.”
If it was free, there would be no guarantee it would not be full-up at the time you wanted to use it.
There is a case of free for CSC holders (9-3 and weekends) and half price for others (peak to and form work time). That was the alternative not chosen.
165,000 migrants to gain NZ Permanent Residency. Note many doctors didn’t qualify because they were contractors and nurses are not on some of the skilled lists – these visas seem designed to be adding more high needs, low income people into NZ into basic jobs that pay so poorly you are often better off on a benefit.
For those applicants who have partners and dependent children overseas their residence application can include these family members.
There are several favourable aspects of the 2021 Resident Visa application process.
1. There is no English requirement and no age restriction
2. As it is an online process, original documents are not required to be submitted
3. New overseas Police Certificates are not required unless requested by INZ
4. Medical certificates provided in the past 3 years can be relied upon and more health conditions can be accepted
5. Employment is based on average weekly work of 30 hours or more with allowances possible for reduced hours or pay due to the impact of Covid
6. There is a new option, for the first intake applicants, which enables dependent children aged 25 years and older to apply
7. The 2021 Resident Visa application fee is $2,160 which is favourable compared to Skilled Migrant.
https://www.pathwaysnz.com/one-off-resident-visa
Keep selling off NZ to pay for our bizarre policies!
Grant is obviously a giver of life but Seymour accused him of being just another sweaty WINZ case manager doling out the money. Grant will have the last laugh if his movie gets made and he gets star power.
On an hourly basis,how many hours does our estimed Finance Minister work to make $350. One or two?
On an hourly basis,how many hours does our estimed Finance Minister work to make $350. One or two?
On an hourly basis how many years will someone on minimum wage getting a $2 a week tax cut need to match Luxon ‘s $18,000 a year tax cut?
If the problems that beset this country were a gaping leg wound, Labour would be offering a couple of band-aids that barely cover it & a working group to look into the effectiveness of stitches (which it will subsequently ignore), and the Greens would be preoccupied by figuring out the right pronouns for a leg-wound afflicted person, while National would be preparing the whole leg for immediate “home surgery” amputation, and ACT would be pressuring them to amputate a perfectly healthy arm as well (and charge you for it!).
What a lousy choice we have next election.
+1 G-Guy. In addition all the parties would also offer migration to hundreds of thousands of the worlds’s gaping leg wind victims and their families so they could share the NZ band-aids (woke) and privatise the health system and sell government assets sooner (ACT, Natz) and make a new social bond out of the competition for misery (all of them).
The Greens additionally would accuse the NZ band-aid victims of racist/homophobic/hate micro aggression while virtue signalling to the UN for their next career opportunity.
Love how the woke are so desperate to get more crims in NZ while sending the practising doctors packing as their policy. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/residency-limbo-emails-reveal-pleas-of-rural-gp-while-convicted-criminals-granted-stay/7YXXA3A2PVAX33P5PVFWSRH42A/
Wow Frankie, now that was true tribalism.