Budget surplus – what budget surplus?
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?
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?
The claim we have a surplus when there is so much social deficit is a game of smoke and mirrors played by the National Government. The question is are New Zealanders smart enough to see through this illusion?
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!
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 .
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!
You can give with tax cuts and take with increased speed cameras!
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?
NZ MSM is CNN Esque BS
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.
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.
Outright lies are an essential component of the propaganda system that keeps the masses deluded and compliant. We are governed by professional liars.
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.
So informative graph, but a bit dated.
Reserve Bank: E3 New Zealand’s overseas debt (discontinued June 2013)
More National Party cover ups.