The National response

Heading into Simon Bridges' response to the budget, it was make or break. Both leader aspirants - Judith Collins and Todd Muller - had made it very clear that his budget response speech could be the end of him.
When he got up to make his speech it was clear he was nervous, so I think Simon knew too. However his speech wasn't the trainwreck that his earlier efforts had been and so the knives stayed out of his back for a few days more.
But now there's another spectre looming: polls. TVNZ are definitely out in the field doing a Colmar Brunton poll and TV3 will likely be polling again soon too. Those polls will show a drop for National's support - it was on 46 in Colmar Brunton's last poll and 43.5 on TV3's last poll, but that was all the way back in February. It's been at least 10 political years since then.
So Simon needs to be out there now, grabbing attention and putting forward a different vision for how New Zealand should be run. Sadly he is not. Sadly? Expectedly.
There have been several mistakes made just in the few days since the budget.
The first mistake National made was to paint itself into a corner. By criticisng the amount of money that the Government has put aside for the COVID response National now can't offer any new spending on projects (read: roads). 
The second mistake National is now making is to try and pitch themself as the solver of crises. Already I've seen plenty of social media posts about how National got us through the GFC and the Christchurch Earthquakes except it was National, sure, but it wasn't *this* National. That National had John Key and Bill English and Steven Joyce. This National has errr Simon Bridges? Paul Goldsmith? Paula Bennett? These two things are not equal. It's only slightly hyperbolic to say this would be like Jacinda Ardern campaigning that Labour saw us through World War II so is the right party for now.
Besides, this Government has seen us through our first terrorist attack, a volcano eruption and now  the health response to a global pandemic; a health response that is the envy of the western world. All of this in its first term, under a Prime Minister who wasn't even 40. Why would we have National, with its unknown ability to deal with hard times when we have proven achievers?
The final mistake National is making is to criticise the Government on lacking a plan and saying that only National has a plan. When in actual fact, National hasn't put forward any plan. National has put forward a list of bullet points:

• Getting out of lockdown by getting NZ working again.
• Delivering an effective stimulus to a stalled economy by creating an upward curve of growth and jobs.
• Creating productivity in a 2-metre world.
• Unleashing private sector investment.
• Investing in things that would guarantee New Zealand would succeed in the post-Covid world.

None of those are plans. They're buzzwords. They're what I call a "make things betterer plan". You might as well use Melania Trump's "Be Best" slogan.
National has offered up two ideas. Refunding GST to businesses - an idea that was considered by Government which Treasury said wouldn't do much except help the company owners and not the workers - and temporarily change the depreciation threshold for new capital investment to $150,000 for two years. So if a company spent $145,000 on new tech, rather than claiming depreciation on it over several years, a business could claim depreciation on the full $145,000 in the current tax year. 
That last one, to its credit, is a good idea. But again doesn't help the worker.
The one coherent attack line National seems to have settled on is that Labour is now sinking New Zealand in debt and there will have to be new taxes. 
First off, no shit there's heaps of debt. That's what we've done. We've borrowed while interest rates are really low and the economy is really fucked. If National is suggesting that it wouldn't be accruing as much debt then it's also saying it wouldn't be trying to fix the economic hole we find ourselves in. 
But in terms of new taxes, that is a potential line that will work. Labour needs to get on top of that response and soon. 
Grant Robertson has already said that there will be a "tax discussion" ahead of the new election, but being that vague allows National to fill in the blanks and create whatever bogeyman it wants to. That's what happened with the Capital Gains Tax when most people didn't realise that they'd end up with more cash in the hand through income tax decreases.
The budget may have lacked imagination and been uninspiring, but it's been met with an equally weak response. It seems we are in an equilibrium of uninspiring parties.