The Budget gets presented, debated and commented on more than most best sellers but like A Brief History of Time very few people have the time and energy to read all of it.
That’s not surprising. The Budget, any government's Budget, is an Everest of itself.
Here are a few quick notes on Budgets at Parliament to prepare you for your climb.
Listen to the House on Sunday show talk Budget and outline the Budget related bills debated under urgency.
Grant Robertson presents his budget speech to Parliament Photo: Phil Smith
It’s big
In that seminal work of literature The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams gives the universe some 'lyrical' context.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
The Budget is bigger, or at least seems so to read. And when you've read the documents about the Budget, you realise those are just the merest foothills. The actual Budget still lies beyond.
You may never have seen the full Estimates in paper form (they’re digital these days), but you could use them to replace piles under your house. They also are not the full Budget.
The full Budget consists of numerous volumes, including the vote Estimates (sub-budgets for particular spending areas such as health or education). Each of them is thicker than a yellow pages phone book.
In his speech the Minister of Finance backgrounded the fiscal position and then highlighted dozens of notable new spending items: a big increase to Pharmac, multiple projects for transport, for climate change, for health, for education ... eye tests for newborns, care for eating disorders, etc, etc. So many things. Just like most Budgets.
The highlighted projects took a few seconds each but the speech was still 41 minutes long (about the average). But having listened through his speech I was aware (and I’m not unusually well informed), of numerous new spending items left unmentioned.
And that new project spending is just the frilly icing on top of all the usual things.
The main (but by no means the full) Budget documents on the Table in Parliament's debating chamber Photo:
It’s bigger than that
Countries (even small ones) are complex and government is intrinsically involved in many aspects of society. So Budgets from any New Zealand government are boggling in both their scope and complexity.
To get a thorough idea of what is in a Budget you would have to read through many thousands of pages of treasury and departmental documents.
I have not even read the full Budget summary (the main summary is 176 pages), nor the thousands of pages of estimates, nor the many dozens of volumes of background documents that provide details on actual spending and intended outcomes. I don’t have a spare month or three.
Few people have that scope, so everything you hear about any government's Budget will be partially informed at best. Even the ministers are really only cognisant of their own specific areas.
Reviewing War and Peace after skimming chapter one
On Budget Day the media get three or so hours of briefings and reading time in a ‘lock-up’ in Parliament's Banquet Hall. That is not vaguely enough time for them to identify anything more than a few high-points (or low-lights).
Media coverage of the Budget can provide some good colour but it can only scratch the surface. Which items various media choose to highlight can be instructive, but we can't presume they could possibly review it all.
Most opinion pieces are based on a partial read of that minimal reportage. Anything more considered would need a week or two of study.
'Don't look now, but I think there's someone behind us'. On Budget Day the Prime Minister addresses Parliament remotely, while the National Party caucus appear to pretend they have not been are joined by a ghost at the budget feast. Photo: Phil Smith
Luckily, some have more time
That is all one reason the lengthy process of select committee hearings into the Budget are so important, though realistically even they won't delve widely.
Almost immediately the Budget is presented, the Finance and Expenditure Committee considers the core Budget Votes and divvies them up among the various subject committees.
FEC can split them how it desires and sometimes it reserves something odd or interesting for itself, but typically the 12 subject select committees are handed the spending areas that relate to their specialist area.
Each committee will then spend weeks drilling into that area including grilling the various relevant ministers on their plans. Afterwards, when the committees have compiled their findings, there will be further debates and questions in the House.
After all that it’s just possible that a few MPs will have more idea what’s in the wider Budget - or at least in their own specialist areas of focus. This is fortunate, because monitoring and approving government appropriation and spending is one of the most crucial parts of the job for a backbench MP from any party.
Exploring further
In case you want to explore the budget further:
- A ‘short’ 176 page summary document of the new Budget is available here.
- That and other intro documents can be found here.
- The actual Estimates documents for each Vote are available here.
Remember that within each of those 47 Votes are crown entities of various kinds (sometimes many of them), each will have published Statements of Intent and other documents that provide the real detail of their spending plans. You really haven’t conquered any Budget until you have read them all. You may be the first.