OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay.
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Competent Budget in which the free doctors’ visits for under-13s will justifiably get a lot of coverage. But … it appears that this government continues to hate on public health and primary care services, including for disability. Cuts in dollar terms in quite a few places.
And for reasons I can’t work out, the budget for Problem Gambling Services has been cut 11.6% and is less than the income from the gambling levy that funds it.
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The answer on Problem Gambling funding:
Reasons for Change in Appropriation The decrease of $1.936 million is due to the expected timing of expenditure under the Problem Gambling 3-Year Services Plan and a one-off funding transfer, which increased the 2013/14 appropriation by $1.730 million. Current and past policy initiatives are listed above
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/2014/estimates/v6/est14-v6-health.pdf
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
Competent Budget
Erm...
Sound like a Labour budget almost. As for that surplus.
As Winston pointed out, the amount of surplus is less than the amount than the insurance payout for Chch, which went into Govt. bonds thus showing as a positive amount in treasury. -
The 2013 Budget delivered a miserly response from the Government to
the outcome of the Appeal against the 'Famiy Carers Case".Instead of merely removing the prohibition against the payment of
family members providing care for those eligible for Home And
Community Support Services via MOH: Disability Support Services, the
government passed, under urgency, with a heavily redacted Regulatory
Impact Statement, the ammendment to the Public Health and Disability
Act.This amendment made legal the policy that had been deemed illegally
discriminatory by the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the High Court
and the Court of Appeal.https://www.google.co.nz/#q=i+think+national+has+just+broke+our+constitution
This 2013 Budget had a joyous announcement of 23m per year extra for
paying some family carers under a new operational policy.http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/92m-pay-family-carers-disabled-adults
This new operational policy was released in October 2013...allowing
payment to 1600 parent carers. This scheme is heavily restrictive,
impossibly complicated and quite possibly breaches employment
regulations...but section 70E of the PHDAct amendment prevents any
legal scrutiny of this by the Tribunals or Courts.Unsurprisingly, less than 10% of the prospective 1600 parents have
applied successfully for payment under this scheme.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11240668
What a pity the governments largesse did not extend to increasing the
accessibility of this miserable response to over a decade of battle
between disabled and their family carers and the government.And yes, Russell, Disability services do seem to miss out....looking at the Vote Health Document
http://www.budget.govt.nz/budget/pdfs/estimates/v6/est14-v6-health.pdf
it appears that expenditure is expected to be more or less static for the next 3 years.
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George Darroch, in reply to
Yeah, though I can't work out with absolute certainty whether that means what it looks like it means. I'll assume it does for the moment.
Interestingly there's a big increase ($180m) for Defence. New helicopters and frigate upgrades, mostly. Which, you know, might be justifiable - there are arguments for and against things.
But it's peculiar what gets funded and what doesn't. Why not a systems upgrade for civilian bicycle lights? After all, the threat to me is immediate and proximate (about 5 minutes and 20 metres away). I'm more likely to suffer in the next few years from a unguided vehicle than a guided missile. Now that we have free GP visits for the under 13s and 18 weeks of paid parental leave* we'll consider these part of the landscape and it will take a fundamental shift in thinking to step back from them. Our decision making is ad hoc, traditional and incremental, but sometimes that denies us the ability to think more clearly about what gets us to what we really want.
*Laila Harre had to fight the Clark Government to get 12, proving the point. Parental leave is now established in the expectations of the population and their politicians.
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Mea culpa....
link to PHDAct amendment
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2013/0118/latest/whole.html
and the RIS •http://www.health.govt.nz/familycarersris
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The visualisation's a bit off for MPI - "Border Biosecurity Risk Management" is listed as both increasing and decreasing by 100%, as is "Implementation of Policy Advice" (at least I think those are the same thing both times). LINZ has similar issues - it thinks almost everything is new. Only a few of them are like that though.
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And the bulges in the Gallery’s pants were already starting to show in the Budget lock-up, which bodes poorly for the election
To be fair Keith, and probably to our equal surprise, the first question to Bill English in the lockup wasn't about tax cuts. (Brooke Sabin asked a number of quite pertinent questions about the impact of migration flows on housing).
When the question was asked what was interesting about the ensuing discussion was the admission that tax "cuts" could be accommodated within the $500 million extra operational spending.
Sneaky measure of the day: the suspension of inflation adjustments to the student loan repayment threshold for a further two years until 1 April 2017 effectively a tax increase for those with student loans. (This gets double points points for sneakiness as it was included in the announcements about boosting tertiary education and research, even though Student Loans are administered by the Inland Revenue.)
Great graphics, Keith, gee that must have taken some work.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
a big increase ($180m) for Defence
We must be strong.
For if we are weak, we are not strong.
And if we are not strong, we are weak.
So we must be strong.
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$5.2m less for public broadcasting and $4.4m for the First World War instead.
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Okay, thoughts please on the decision to grant a $375m interest-free loan rather than conventional funding to NZTA.
This will cost only what it costs to serve the loan, but I'm not clear on how NZTA pays it back. Is it fair or not to say that the $375m loan is a dodge to contrive the $372m surplus?
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nzlemming, in reply to
This will cost only what it costs to serve the loan, but I'm not clear on how NZTA pays it back. Is it fair or not to say that the $375m loan is a dodge to contrive the $372m surplus?
Seems about right. NZTA is only too willing to bend over backwards for the political masters, as long as they get to build ROADS!!!
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Sacha, in reply to
Is that related in any way to the loan for Auckland's new electric trains?
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Russel Norman identifies large effective cuts in Health and Education budgets.
For Education, there is a nominal increase over those years from $10.12 billion in 2014/15 to $10.15 billion, but in real terms that is a 5.5 percent cut.
"In Health spending, the cuts over the three years amounts to $1.8 billion in real dollar terms. In Education, it is $588 million over the three years.
"The cuts in these two areas alone equal $2.4 billion, two thirds of the $3.5 billion surplus National is projecting by 2017. National is paying for their surplus from cuts to our health and education."
Andrea Vance tallies the other departments facing cuts.
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Sacha, in reply to
Competent Budget in which the free doctors’ visits for under-13s will justifiably get a lot of coverage
Totally. Great policy.
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Just a first glance but these things stood out:
MoBIE 2.3B in 2015 (down 16.7% 2014-2015)
DoL 1.1B (down 10.1% 2014-2015)
MED 254M (down 30.7% 2014-2015)
MSI 113.4M (down 0.3% 2014-2015)
DBH $74.9M (down 48.1% 2014-2015)All as separate line items, yet the later 4 were subsumed into the former which takes actual MoBIE expenditure to $3.8B – now there may be valid statutory reasons for identifying things separately (e.g. Marsden Fund) but they shouldn’t be listing them as separate entities, still.
Also, a number of items in the MoBIE breakdown come up as “Policy advice and outputs” without identifying what these things are for. Will the detail be forthcoming in a later iteration, Keith?
And, finally I notice that the Commerce Commission Litigation Funds $7M and 3.5m as separate packages of new money in MoBIE’s budget (i.e. didn’t exist before). And the Financial Markets Authority Litigation Fund ($2M down 1.9%) Takeovers Panel Litigation Fund ($200K down 1.9%) are also in MoBIE’s budget. Now, I know for a fact that nothing leaves MoBIE without going through Joyce’s office, even before it gets to the responsible minister so that tells me a little something about how this government intends to regulate the market…
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Sacha, in reply to
Disability services do seem to miss out
We need to see all the other amounts spread across government, not just the MoH-funded support services. It all adds up to about $3b.
I imagine one of the disability organisations will analyse that - perhaps DPA now that they have a really good policy person on board.
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Sacha, in reply to
DBH $74.9M (down 48.1%
That must represent some internal transfer of functions?
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
"I imagine one of the disability organisations will analyse that - perhaps DPA now that they have a really good policy person on board."
I will await such an analysis with bated breath.
Although, since the Government is funding DPA NZ to the tune of $615,837....
compared to $11,000 in actual membership fees.....
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Sacha, in reply to
They did some helpful summaries in previous Budgets. Takes ages to riffle through the various docs otherwise.
Note that if you highlight text in a comment before you click on Reply it automagically gets pasted in as an indented quote. Handy.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
They did some helpful summaries in previous Budgets. Takes ages to riffle through the various docs otherwise.
Aha! You can teach an old b^#ch new tricks! Thank you Sacha.
Anyway, the taking "ages" bit I get, but I also do a fair amount of riffling myself.. Quite enjoy the pastime. Funny what turns up.
It would appear that this Budget is going to struggle under close scrutiny.
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Ultimately, I think this budget is fine, and National really is doing a reasonable job of managing the finances.
This opines the authentic self-satisfied liberal middle class.
Nothing for the poor. Not a cent for the bottom.
Still, I guess we got gay marriage.
Francis Fukuyama was right. The neo-libs won.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Is it fair or not to say that the $375m loan is a dodge to contrive the $372m surplus?
I'm not sure whether NZTA purports to be an independent body whose debt is not guaranteed by the state?
In any case, the government is on shaky ground in this area. They won on Bank of Tokyo v Solid Energy.
But there was a lot of mess around Learning Media where the government infused cash to pay off Westpac while leaving their other creditors (the owners of their leased premises) dangling. (Winston Peters should do more digging in that case, maybe).
It's quite hard for a government to act as an arms-length shareholder and claim limited liability when it controls the order pipeline and legal environment of most SOEs and Crown entities.
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Sacha, in reply to
Nothing for the poor. Not a cent for the bottom.
Please be more specific. Voters need to hear it.
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Sacha, in reply to
Funny what turns up
totally
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