Mike's Minute: What I hope from the Budget

What I hope for today is a sign and a sense that what we are facing economically as a country is real, and it's real bad, and the Government see it, accept it, and chart a path forward that gives us some sort of hope. 

The damage done by Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, and Adrian Orr is now years long. 

You can't invent money in that volume without spending the ensuing years trying to dig yourself out of it. 

The start has been made. 

The cutbacks have begun and the screaming, wailing, and upset has ensued. But there is a lot more where that came from. 

The seeds of recovery are real, manufacturing is expanding, and has been for several months, but services aren't. Sentiment isn't. 

The farmers have struck gold, but the weather has been exceptionally kind, as have Americans with their passion for burgers. 

Our debt is shocking. We are not running a surplus on an annual basis and still won't be for years. 

The Finance Minister today has virtually nothing to play with; no excess, no lolly, and no largesse. 

She has, I hope, found a fortune in savings and she will redirect that to better places. 

I pray she isn't borrowing on top of what we have already incurred. If she has, she may well be making a generational mistake, given Treasury says 50% debt by way of GDP is it, and we are close enough to that to worry the conservatives. 

In a sense today should wrap some numbers and forecasts around the rhetoric, being we are open for businesses, we are pro-growth, we are big on infrastructure and most importantly, fiscally as well as economically, we are not going to die wondering. 

Today is not a day for a dollar here and a dollar there. It is not an itch-scratching exercise. 

It should be a document that lays an ongoing foundation for the major project that is the economic resuscitation of the New Zealand economy. 

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