Budget 2011: opinion round-up

Is Bill English's Budget going to get us out of trouble? Opinion, as ever, is divided.

Mark Mitchell/APN

The New Zealand Herald’s Audrey Young gave Bill English’s third Budget a 6/10: “Bill English’s plan to return the country to surplus sounds good but feels flimsy”, she said. Her commentating compadre John Armstrong concurred: 6/10. English’s Budget will “stand or fall on one thing and one thing only – that the economy really has stopped contracting and the recovery is finally under way.”

Business commentator Bernard Hickey says that English is betting on a flawed assumption that “the economy will come right and the Government doesn’t need to significantly cut spending to get its borrowing under control.”

Over on Stuff.co.nz, Vernon Small says that “trimming of the Working for Families scheme and the requirement for KiwiSavers to put in more, as the Government cuts its contribution by a half through the member tax credit, will impact on the household budgets of many middle income New Zealanders.”

Centre-right blogger David Farrer wonders if the spending cuts are enough; while on the left, John Pagani thinks there is nothing in the Budget to “grow us out of trouble”.

Scoop’s Patrick Smellie says “it’s a coherent Budget that builds on a consistent story, and paints a far less gloomy picture than might be expected after the string of economic and natural disasters that have battered New Zealand in the last three years.”

Mary Holm says that despite the changes, KiwiSaver is still hard to beat, while the Herald’s cartoonist, Emmerson, depicts the Finance Minister in the latest internet craze.

Public Address blogger Keith Ng posted this visualisation.