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Ryan Bridge: Budget spending must be careful and calculated · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The budget's always a bit of a fizzer, in the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: sense that most of it is announced beforehand. These days
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a few sweetness on the day to get you going.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: But this time, unless there is a rabbit about to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: be yanked from a hat, even they might be more
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: worth as original than chocolate cake. The best time to
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: read about the budget, I always think, is the following Monday.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: That's when you get the real juice. All the cuts
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that the pundits missed on the day become clearer once
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the dust is settled. This budget is one of many
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: now that seen Niccola Willis spending more than Grant Robertson.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Did I know? It's outrageous. Surplus has been pushed out
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: more times than you can shake a stick at. It
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: meant to be twenty thirty. We will balance the books again.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Nikola Willis has no choice but to honor that, I
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: think politically what she should do actually has come out
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: today and tell us that we're going to get there early. Otherwise,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: what was all the cutting relative term, by the way,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: for in the first place, capital spending. That should be
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the aim of the game, and it largely will be.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Not all spending as bad of course, handouts and made
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: up ministries not great, roads and hospitals quite good. We're
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: up over forty percent of debt to GDP, and many
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: people argue, including labor and including the Greens, that we
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: can and should spend more. And yes we can, and
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: yes we probably should, but not on day to day stuff.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: That's dumb. We're not America, we're not Europe. We don't
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: have huge domestic demand. Quite prone to earthquakes, thank you
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: very much, a few weather events to boot. Any spending
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: we do must be careful, must be calculated, because, let's
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: be honest, our economy is more fragile to shocks, both
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: here and abroad, which is why the surplus keeps getting
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: pushed out. It's the shocks, which is why we need
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to unshackle ourselves from a structural deficit. And the sooner
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: we can do that the better. Ideally Ahead of schedule
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: for more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 1:47
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• 1:50
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