What’s what in Budget 2024 

There’s a lot of noise and debate around the Coalition’s Government’s first (not a Wellbeing) Budget. So we’ve curated what we rate as the top seven takes on the Budget 2024:

• Read journalist and researcher Max Rashbrooke discuss how this budget reflects short term political desires over the long term needs of New Zealanders in his piece in The Spinoff. 
• Want to learn more about the ins and outs of the tax cuts? Check out Susan Edmonds’ piece for Radio NZ with input from multiple tax experts. 
• Listen to Bernard Hickey and Toby Manhire in conversation about how if New Zealand’s economy was an engine, deferred investment in people and infrastructure is seeing the pressure building, gaskets blowing and steam starting to escape on the When The Facts Change podcast. 
• Read Isaac Gunson on Te Ao Māori News reflect on the lack of funding for Māori Development and how the tax cuts disproportionately benefit Pākehā than Māori. 
• “No serious economist or political analyst could endorse Budget 2024 (nor the last Labour Government’s budgets) as a credible blueprint for creating a good society” says political commentator Bryce Edwards, who debates the dichotomy between our tax attitude of the US and our Scandinavian expectations of a quality public service in his piece for the Democracy Project.
• If you are wondering what happened to wellbeing in the Budget Policy Statement and question who “building a stronger, more productive economy” is for, and how it will be shared, check out the submission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee from Tax Justice Aotearoa. 
• Listen to Dr Ganesh Nana in conversation with Bernard Hickey on Nana’s Substack discuss our economic outlook and the fiscal contraction spiral of the perceived need for the government to ‘balance the books’.

What does the Budget symbolise? 

At the Child Poverty Action Group Post-Budget Breakfast on Friday morning in Wellington, people asked what values the budget represented and Alan Johnson from CPAG asked ‘if a budget is symbolic, what does this one symbolise?’ 

That got us thinking. 

• Does it symbolise our collective care for people facing hardship in Aotearoa? 
• Does it symbolise the urgency for action in tackling the pressing challenges of our ages including the climate and biodiversity crises?
• Does it symbiolise preventing problems rather than focusing on costly band-aids?
• Does it symbolise our responsibility to the needs of future generations?

What do you think? 

We believe Aotearoa New Zealand can design economic policies to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, support workers, see justice and fairness, restore nature, and increase connection and social cohesion. Let us refer to these long-term, critically important goals as ‘getting back on track.’