It will be interesting to see if these are in there or if Mallard has been mislead (or is being misleading). These are all cuts - despite the risk of a credit downgrade I highly suspect that National will have a few radical new spending plans in there, mainly for PR reasons.
- Playcentres not to get the funding promised in Nats election policy for at least another year.
- Modern apprenticeships abolished.
- Polytechnic funding for trades courses slashed.
- Sparc budget slashed.
I personally would be happy with minimal spending cuts, and perhaps some tax cuts also. In times of hardship firms quite reasonably cut discretionary spending, but the Government does not and should not have this luxury. I like a balanced budget as much, if not more than, the next man, but most economists would accept that if it is to be done, budget-balancing should be counter-cyclical, as it is economically contractionary. This was done quite excellently by the previous administration, something I think is under-recognised by the its critics, who frequently focus too heavily on tax cuts as the sole metric of good policy.
As an aside, there appears to be very little comment on the NZ blogs that I read as to what people expect to see in this week's budget (aside from very good satire).