Dawn Chorus: Tight enough?

TLDR: Finance Minister Grant Robertson has revealed the cover photo of Budget 2022 ahead of Thursday’s full release, saying this year’s Budget would be tight enough to ‘strike a balance’ between ‘keeping a lid on debt’ and supporting the economic recovery from two years of Covid, including a health system revamp.

However, the Opposition is calling for the Government to stop ‘spraying cash’ around and deliver more with the money being spent. That is out of line with the IMF though, which has said policy is plenty tight enough.

Also, National Leader Christopher Luxon took the surprising step yesterday of calling climate subsidies for dairy and other coal boiler conversions ‘corporate welfare’, although he stopped short of saying farmers were being given ‘corporate welfare’ by not being part of the Emissions Trading Scheme, which he said should be beefed up. Paid subscribers can see more on this and the IMF’s comments on Labour’s fiscal policy stance below the paywall fold.

Grant Robertson wasn’t giving much away other than his pride in the cover photo, when he revealed the Budget document design to the press gallery yesterday. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKaka

Elsewhere in the news overnight and this morning:

• China celebrated what it called ‘Covid zero’ in Shanghai overnight, although almost 300m workers still remain locked in their homes and factories in dozens of cities as China’s economy goes into freefall;

• Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned the world’s central bank would keep tightening hard until inflation began falling; and,

• Dairy prices fell again overnight, taking the slide since March 1 to almost 16%, although the kiwi dollar’s 6% fall since then has softened the blow.