BUDGET 2021: On balance, a Labour government

This is a classic, almost old-style Labour budget, which its opponents will characterise as “spend, spend, spend”.

Thu, 20 May 2021

The first budget from the first majority government of the MMP era has emphatically answered the question its most peeved and restive supporters had been asking.That question was: ‘is this really a Labour government?’The answer, delivered in the budget and most emphatically in raising social welfare benefits – is a clear ’yes’.Excluding pensions, the benefit increases to levels recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group allow Grant Robertson to trumpet “the biggest lift in benefits in more than a genera...

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