Something to displease everyone

We could have had transformational change. Instead we got a fairly traditional Labour budget, just with added zeroes.

In hindsight it seems obvious they would never do anything radical. Not in an election year. Not without having campaigned on it. Not with a coalition partner like NZ First.

There are certainly clever parts. 

Extending the wage subsidy is good, and by making it for businesses who have lost 50 per cent of revenue you hone it in on industries like tourism and hospitality that have been really fucked.

The vocational training is also good. And making it for any age means that anyone who lost their job as a result of the pandemic is able to access it. 

Those two parts are obviously the linchpin of cushioning as much of the blow as possible. 

I'm also a big supporter of the Green focus. Getting $1.1B to create 11,000 "green" jobs is excellent. I'd like to see this green focus rolled out to just about everything else. 

It's when you get to welfare that things are less inspiring.

Expanding the free school lunch programme is great, not just for filling hungry tummys but also because it creates jobs. I'm sorely disappointed that there is no increase to the jobseeker benefit. Especially as unemployment is optimistically forecast to top out just under 10 per cent. 

Giving those people enough money to live means money continues to circle through the economy, benefiting not just them but everyone in their community where they would spend that money. Obviously this budget focused on jobs which is clearly going to be what people would prefer to a benefit, but I can't help but ask - why not both?

The magical bit of branding was framing this as a $50B budget but only allocating a smallish portion of that. Leaving the Government with a huge amount of money to use cleverly over the coming months, as the situation worsens and becomes clearer.

My hope that is that my wishlist is somewhat addressed in Labour's re-election campaign.

The other interesting part for me was Bridges' response. I'd been told that both Camp Collins and Camp Muller were sharpening the knives if Simon's response was as woeful as his earlier efforts. However after checking in I was told that he was "better than usual" and that the coup was off. For now at least.

Rumour has it that TVNZ will be doing a Colmar Brunton poll from pretty much now, and that result will be fascinating. The last CB poll was three months ago and had National on 46 and Labour on 41. All the internals over the course of the pandemic has seen Labour in ridiculous 55+ territory while National dropped below 30. It's unlikely that a CB poll - which tends to favour National somewhat - will reflect a situation that dire for Simon, especially as the economic realities start to bite, but if it's anywhere even approaching those numbers then those knives will likely be sharpened again.