MEDIA RELEASE
Budget 2011: where's the vision?
Other countries have found solutions ...
Where is this budget’s vision for all New Zealanders?
19 May 2011
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4.2 million New Zealanders are paying for them through higher GST;
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1.7 million New Zealanders are to pay for them through lost Kiwisaver benefits;
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Tens of thousands of New Zealanders are to pay for them through lost Working for Families entitlements;
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155,000 New Zealanders are still paying through lost jobs;
All so that a few thousand well-off new
Zealanders can pay less tax, and this during the worst global
economic crisis in living memory.
We do not see a vision for jobs growth, for
investment in young people, raised productivity, a fair go for
working families and those without work, or for investment in New
Zealand’s future productive capacity.
There is a lot of trimming of the government
budget – most of it to be borne by low and middle-income families -
in order to keep last year’s tax cut in place.
Yet the 2010 tax cuts have done nothing to help New Zealanders escape the worldwide recession, they have done nothing to future-proof our country, they have not eased the daily financial struggles of the majority of kiwis, and they have not delivered the 2010 budget’s promised 170,000 jobs.
The government must allocate resources to
research and development, to job creation, and supporting families
through this hardest of times, yet we see only the promise of
beneficiary bashing.
Where are the jobs? The well-paying jobs
that will encourage our best and brightest to stay home, that will
keep people off the dole, that will get the tax take back up where
it needs to be so that the Government’s bold predictions for
sustained prosperity in 4 years’ time can be achieved?
Other countries have found solutions –
extending the retirement age, allowing higher levels of inflation,
raising income taxes.
Where is this budget’s vision for all New
Zealanders?
What the Budget means for The Mission
Government is holding funding to the Community & Voluntary sector
with no increase. This means we have to absorb inflation; and with
even more demand on services likely, particularly with the staffing
cuts to government providers that will result from the Kiwisaver
changes; we are going to be asked to do more (again), with
less(again).
This is simply not sustainable.
The Community & Voluntary sector (CVS) has had no meaningful
new money in some time, yet the complexity and volume of work has
increased markedly. Last
year over a thousand CVS organisations de-registered from the
Charities Commission - that is, they closed.This year there will be more.
The Government is making it harder and harder
to look after the most vulnerable in society at a time when the
number of vulnerable has increased significantly. It is distressing
to see the - entirely predictable - consequences of that unfold, and
to know that the last two government budgets are creating the next
20-30 years of work for The Mission.
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