Budget 2020 was never going to be a transformational budget. Not for Māori. Not for Aotearoa New Zealand. It is easy to understand the disappointment of many across the country who hoped for something more and who have been advocating for us to adopt a different economic approach. This was a once-in-a-100-year opportunity to be bold, to implement a 21st-century new deal, to move away from the investment mindset of the 20th century that saw large infrastructure projects as the key to a prosperous society.
But this government is not a transformational government. Neither were the recent ones – such is the stigma attached to the last lot who tried their hand at it in the 1980s. Universality and incrementalism are the conditions of this government’s political mandate. It has to exist within the constrains that we, as a society, place upon them. New Zealand, simply put, does not want an economic transformation. The status quo benefits far too many of us to contemplate such a radical reshaping of our entire economic system.
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