9 Billion less by 2024?

Labour: Budget creates huge fiscal hole
Labour says the longer-term impact of the Budget is likely to be an increase in Crown debt of more than $9 billion by 2024.

Finance spokesman David Cunliffe says the projection is worked out on the basis of Treasury assumptions contained in the Budget.

He says the only way National can fund long-term tax cuts for the wealthy is by reducing the level of public services, or selling off the family silver.

"The government made much, particularly pre-Budget, of the importance of the document being fiscally neutral, but that's clearly not going to happen," says Cunliffe.

He says Budget 2010 worsened the fiscal deficit by $1.1 billion in the forecast period up to 2013/14, and after that time additional debt accumulates more rapidly, rising to $9.2 billion by 2024.

The government will no longer be able to sustain the level of spending on public services because it simply won't have enough revenue coming in," says Cunliffe.

"Even in this Budget the government has redirected $1.8 billion of what it calls lower quality spending, and that has meant savage attacks in areas like home support for the elderly and running down early childhood education."

Remember the post budget glow as Journalists rubbed themselves up and down on Bill English's leg over how amazing the tax cuts looked for them? Well that afterglow has faded as the stark reality of the largest transfer of wealth to the already wealthy starts to make itself clear in the minds of voters. This is only going to get worse once the paltry tax cuts come into effect as GST goes up, and the inflationary pressures will wipe out any crumbs John has flicked from his table.

People are going to get more negative on this Government's approach and as National line up assets to sell 2011 becomes a real battle for the ideological heart of NZ.

The SuperCity is a blueprint for the mass privatization National want to kick off post 2011, the sooner NZers realize this, the better.

How is that change feeling? A little less shiny I'm thinking. Voters who voted Labour in 2005 but voted National in 2008 are the battle field and those Labour voters in Auckland who didn't bother to vote (making the last election one of the lowest turn outs ever) are the prize.

National 2011 is looking a lot less certain than those brash proclamations made on election night 2008 that a new era of right wing Government was here for a 1000 year rule. The challenge for the left is real policy for an electorate who will be thirsty for real change.