Words and Numbers: Beginning Budget Day in the House

In Parliament's debating chamber Budget Day begins as a surprisingly sedate affair. It makes up for it later, mostly with sheer volume, but at the beginning it is both formal and formulaic. The first Budget-related business - while everyone is on tenterhooks for the big reveal - is only about the previous Budget.

The tabling of the Supplementary Estimates is a palpable let-down for the public in the galleries. This document is an update on last year's Budget, looking to update permission from the House for spending that has deviated from the previous Budget.

When the Budget is tabled it comes with such a slew of related materials it feels like an afterthought. We call it the Budget, and Budget Day but the naming is clumsy. The Budget is an event, a concept, a speech, a number of documents, and a lot of numbers.

It is also, in part, a piece of legislation that permits the government to spend money in an agreed way. It is a trove of documents associated with the bill that detail the actual spending plan. In common parlance it often refers to the Budget Statement - the speech given by the minister of finance. This year, that is Nicola Willis.

All Budget statements are a sales pitch rather than a fair summary. The most telling aspects are chosen, polished and displayed for their best angles.

The usual focus for ministers of finance is on positivity. Things are heading in the right direction, improving, building, advancing, etc towards a better, richer tomorrow. Few are brave enough to list the cuts they plan (Ruth Richardson may be considered an especially brave exception here). Instead they focus on new programmes and new spending. You will likely still hear talk about savings or reprioritisation though. They sound gentler.

This Budget, Nicola Willis noted savings of $5.3 billion a year. "The result," she said "of ongoing efforts by multiple ministers." I expect that means that many different government entities will have reduced funding. Specifics were not carefully enumerated in her speech, but she did note savings of $2.7b per year achieved by walking back Pay Equity legislation.

Willis also noted that "savings have been made by closing a number of tagged contingencies and from reviewing the value for money of grants and fund across government."

Willis continued: "This is not austerity. In fact, it is what you do to avoid austerity, because getting the books in shape ensures New Zealand has financial security and choices into the future, and, as I am about to set out, savings in this Budget have allowed us to make much-needed investments in health, in education, in law and order, and in rebuilding our defence force."

Her Budget Speech was relatively short, at a little over half an hour long by my watch. Despite the relative brevity, this article can't possible canvas it all any more than Willis's speech could hope to canvas the vast detail in the Budget itself. It doesn't hope to. As I already mentioned, the purpose is to sell the Budget, not to read it.

The second speech is equally political (they all are). Second is always the Leader of the Opposition. This year Chris Hipkins.

The Leader of the Opposition has a few jobs in this second speech. Traditionally it begins by moving an amendment to the question being debated - to turn it into a no-confidence motion instead. In theory, the debate from this point is about that question as well as the Budget.

Opposition Leaders also seek to influence press coverage by naming the Budget with an insulting moniker that journalists will pick up. They hope to portray it in a fashion that will negatively affect public opinion toward both the Budget and government.

Hipkins used a few options to see what might stick. I noticed both "a scramble without the lollies", and "the Budget that left women out", were both picked up by media.

It is always interesting to listen to all of the speeches in their entirety. The speeches from across the House often mirror each other, blow for blow. For example, the "this is not austerity" section above from Nicola Willis and this from Chris Hipkins.

"They are choosing austerity and cuts. And austerity is exactly what it is. It failed in the United Kingdom and it will fail here. It will leave New Zealand a poorer country and it says to the next generation of New Zealanders, who are already giving up in record numbers, that they may as well leave the country because there is no hope here."

Parliamentary speeches are not just policy positions, they are often like aural Rorschach tests, brimming with signifiers of person, party, culture, and attitude.

The prime minister is something of an afterthought on Budget day, speaking after the leader of the opposition. Again this year Christopher Luxon took the unusual approach of launching not into praise of the new Budget but into the opposition. "Well, hasn't it been a shambolic year for the Labour Party - hasn't it? I have to say: has there ever been a leader of the opposition with less substance than Chris Hipkins?"

He did speak about the Budget, but it took about 1700 words on attack before he got there.

The full Budget Debate is a lengthy affair and will include speeches from much of Parliament, but on Budget Day it only gets as far as the party leaders (or their surrogates). At that point it typically gets shelved for a few days of debating about budget and budget-adjacent legislation under urgency.

This year the government has listed 12 different bills to debate under urgency, six of them through all stages, six for only a first reading. MPs are going to have a long week.

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