Papua New Guinea’s 2026 National Budget has drawn immediate opposition criticism from East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, who says the government continues to overspend, overestimate revenue, and deliver few tangible results for ordinary citizens.

The K$30.9 billion (about NZ$12.8 billion) spending plan, unveiled earlier this week, has been characterised by analysts as highly political and aligned with next year’s election cycle.

Critics argue the Marape government has again prioritised high-visibility projects over long-term structural programs that would strengthen essential services.

Bird said this year’s budget followed a familiar pattern — record allocations on paper, but limited real-world improvements.

He pointed to ongoing shortages in medicines, persistent law and order challenges, and what he viewed as a widening gap between spending announcements and service delivery outcomes.

He has also raised concerns about revenue assumptions, noting that last year’s budget was short by K$2.5 billion and required significant mid-year corrections.

Bird believes similar risks exist in the 2026 plan, warning that overly optimistic revenue forecasts could again lead to financial strain.

Flawed fiscal discipline
Another key criticism centres on fiscal discipline. According to Bird, spending outside the formal budget framework remains common, with additional expenditures later reconciled in the Final Budget Outcome.

He said this practice undermines transparency and highlights deeper issues in the government’s financial management.

While the government insists the budget focuses on infrastructure, job creation, and community development, public reaction online has been overwhelmingly sceptical.

Many Papua New Guineans are questioning why record-high spending has not translated into better healthcare, education, or security.

For Bird and many critics, the central measure of any budget is whether it improves the everyday lives of citizens. Based on recent years, they believe the benefits have been limited — and they see little in the 2026 budget to suggest that trend will change.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Susan St John

With the coalition government’s second Budget being unveiled, we should question where New Zealand is heading.

The 2024 Budget laid out the strategy. Tax cuts and landlord subsidies were prioritised with a focus on cuts to social and infrastructure spending. Most of the tax package went to the well-off, while many low-income households got nothing, or very little.

Even the tiny bit of the tax package directed to low-income people fell flat. Family Boost has significantly helped only a handful of families, while the increase of $25 per week (In Work Tax Credit) was denied all families on benefits, affecting about 200,000 of the very poorest children.

In the recession, families that lost paid work also lost access to full Working for Families, an income cut for their children of about $100 per week.

No one worked out how the many spending cuts would be distributed, but they have hurt the poor the most. These changes are too numerous to itemise but include increased transport costs; the reintroduction of prescription charges; a disastrous school lunch system; rising rents, rates and insurance; fewer budget advisory services; cuts to foodbank funding and hardship grants; stripping away support programmes for the disabled; inadequately adjusted benefits and minimum wage; and reduced support for pay equity and the living wage.

The objective is to save money while ignoring the human cost. For example, a scathing report of the Auditor General confirms that Oranga Tamariki took a bulldozer to obeying the call for a 6.5 percent cut in existing social services with no regard to the extreme hurt caused to children and struggling parents.

Budget 2025 has already indicated that Working for Families will continue to go backwards with not even inflation adjustments. The 2025 child and youth strategy report shows that over the year to June 2024 the number of children in material poverty continued to increase, there were more avoidable hospitalisations, immunisation rates for babies declined, and there was more food insecurity.

Human costs all around us
We can see the human costs all around us in homelessness, food insecurity, and ill health. Already we know we rank at the bottom among developed countries for child wellbeing and suicide rates.

Abject distress existing alongside where homes sell for $20 million-$40 million is no longer uncommon, and neither are $6 million helicopters of the very rich.

At the start of the year, Helen Robinson, CEO of the Auckland City Mission, had a clear warning: “I am pleading with government for more support, otherwise what we and other food relief agencies in Auckland can provide, will dramatically decrease.

“This leaves more of Auckland hungry and those already there become more desperate. It is the total antithesis of a thriving city.”

The theory held by this government is that by reducing the role of government and taxes, the private sector will flourish, and secure well-paid jobs will be created. Instead, as basic economic theory would predict, we have been handed a long and protracted recession with few signs of growth and prosperity.

Budget 2025 signals more of the same.

It would be a mistake to wait for simplistic official inequality statistics before we act. Our current destination is a sharply divided country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty with an insecure middle class.

Underfunded social agencies
Underfunded and swamped social agencies cannot remove the relentless stress on the people who are invisible in the ‘fiscally responsible’ economic narrative. The fabricated bogeyman of outsized net government debt is at the core, as the government pursues balanced budgets and small government-size targets.

A stage one economics student would know the deficit increases automatically in a recession to cushion the decline and stop the economy spiralling into something that looks more like a depression. But our safety nets of social welfare are performing very badly.

Rising unemployment has exposed the inadequacy of social protections. Working for Families, for instance, provides a very poor cushion for children. Many “working” families do not have enough hours of work and face crippling poverty traps.

Future security is undermined as more KiwiSavers cash in for hardship reasons. A record number of the talented young we need to drive the recovery and repair the frayed social fabric have already fled the country.

The government is fond of comparing its Budget to that of a household. But what prudent household would deliberately undermine the earning capacity of family members?

The primary task for the Budget should be to look after people first, to allow them to meet their food, dental and health needs, education, housing and travel costs, to have a buffer of savings to cushion unexpected shocks and to prepare for old age.

A sore thumb standing
In the social security part of the Budget, NZ Super for all at 65, no matter how rich or whether still in full-time well-paid work, dominates (gross $25 billion). It’s a sore thumb standing out alongside much less generous, highly targeted benefits and working for families, paid parental leave, family boost, hardship provisions, accommodation supplement, winter energy and other payments and subsidies.

Given the political will, research shows we can easily redirect at least $3 billion from very wealthy superannuitants to fixing other payments to greatly improve the wellbeing of the young. This will not be enough but it could be a first step to the wide rebalancing needed.

New Zealand has become a country of two halves whose paths rarely cross: a social time bomb with unimaginable consequences. It is a country beguiled by an egalitarian past that is no more.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The central narrative of New Zealand’s Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is ‘There is only so much money to go around’. (For example, her interview on RNZ on 20 May, Willis on her second Budget, price of butter. The interview also covers, in the usual subservient way our media addresses these issues, Willis’s diversionary narrative to scapegoat supermarkets.)

A false zero-sum narrative

This zero-sum narrative about money is virtually uncontested, certainly in the mainstream media. Yet it’s not only sub-standard economics, it is also sub-standard theology. It is appropriate to debate whether ‘God made Man’ or ‘Man made God’; there should be no such contest about ‘Money made Man’ versus ‘Man made Money’.

Money is not (or should not be) God. The one fundamental truth about money, is that it is a human creation; Man made money. Money is a social technology, not a fundamental poverty-imposing constraint. In modern capitalism, central banks supervise the money supply, and can create money at will. The creation of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 1934 was a critical component of the post-Depression recovery and expansion from 1935 to 1940.

In modern capitalism, central banks act as lenders of last resort and governments as borrowers (and insurers) of last resort. The process of central bank lending and government borrowing is the engine of global capitalism, just as the sun’s energy is the engine that makes ongoing life on Earth possible.

Japan versus Germany

It is instructive to compare the economic fortunes of Japan and Germany this century.

Japan developed the new macroeconomics during its ‘horrible decade’, the 1990s. Its economy has thrived since 2000. The basis of its success, in a country with a financially conservative middle class and low inequality, is to borrow from its large pool of savers, rather than to overtax them. Japan has a stable public debt, sitting at around 240% of GDP since before 2015. And it has a stable fiscal deficit of around 4% each year. It has had interest rates around zero for more than a decade; currently 0.5%. Inflation peaked at 4% in 2023 (in the context of a falling Yen), up from 1% in early 2022. Japan’s current unemployment rate is 2.5%, having peaked at 3% in 2020.

Germany has taken the mercantilist line, which – in essence – posits money as God. It has imposed fiscal austerity on itself since 2010, and on the European Union which it then dominated. And it’s now in a state of socio-economic crisis, with a similar economic growth profile to New Zealand. In its last election (in February), using MMP, only 45% of voters voted for the two major parties. In the more recent opinion polls that support has fallen to around 40%. In the former ‘Communist’ East Germany, support for the two major parties combined is under 25%.

Germany, like most countries in the west, has stubbornly refused to learn from Japan. Fiscal counternarratives are effectively suppressed.

Debt ceiling?

New Zealand, when Grant Robertson was Minister of Finance, decided to impose a de facto ‘debt ceiling’ of 50% of GDP. Nicola Willis – inspired by Ruth Richardson’s (now entrenched) 1994 ‘Fiscal Responsibility Act’ – is entrenching this 50% debt ceiling. Thankfully for our great-grandparents, Michael Joseph Savage (and his Finance Minister, Walter Nash) did not operate similar ‘debt ceiling’ policies.

A policy to cut-back on government spending also has the effect of cutting back government revenue. That’s very basic Keynesian macroeconomics. If we buy less, we produce less, we earn less, and we pay less tax than we otherwise would. The combination of reduced government spending and reduced government revenue is anti-growth; pushed to its limits it represents a capitalist death spiral. The western world found a way out of such a spiral in the 1930s; before World War Two (WW2), but too late to prevent that war and the megadeath which came with it.

A true zero-sum identity

In a world in which the private sector – businesses and households – collectively chooses to run financial surpluses (choosing saving and debt repayment over borrowing), then governments must run deficits. When the world is divided into two sectors – private and public – the successful achievement of a surplus by one of those two sectors must be accompanied by a deficit in the other of those two sectors. In essence, governments can only – and have only – run surpluses or ‘balanced Budgets’ when businesses are running financial deficits. For the global economy as a whole, by definition there can be neither a financial surplus nor a deficit; financial balances add to zero, as an accounting identity.

Business sector deficits were substantially the norm in the twentieth century, but not since about 1990. Government balanced budgets were possible – though not normal – for much of the previous century. Japan met its new challenge in the 1990s, at a time when Japanese businesses were forced by their creditors to run substantial financial surpluses; substantial government deficits were a mathematically necessary part of the solution.

Inequality and increased private risk

The twenty-first century is characterised by high – and often-growing – levels of inequality in the western capitalist world. It is also characterised as a period of growing private risk, including the risk that even rich people (eg the ‘ten-percenters’) will struggle to afford life-saving medications for cancer and other ills. This twenty-first century private risk-profile means that the household component of the private sector is trying to run bigger surpluses. This is a kind of insurance situation; people feel they need ever bigger amounts of contingency savings to cover personal or familial ‘rainy days’. Japanese people led the way in this respect, in the 1990s.

This drive for ever bigger private surpluses – which includes things like debt repayments and retirement savings – means that, for capitalism to survive, governments must run bigger deficits; indeed ‘structural deficits’, in the way that Japan does.

Government spending on big guns.

In one sense the capitalist world – belatedly – is saving itself in this way through fiscal expansion; though only by trying to destroy itself in another way. Hitlernomics – a mutation of Keynesian economics – maintains de facto or de jure debt ceilings for civilian-oriented public spending, while allowing for virtual unlimited military spending on ‘big guns’ and ‘golden domes’. Germany explicitly moved in this direction in March 2025, by using a voted-out ‘lame duck’ parliament to authorise the removal of the de jure debt limit for military spending (and limited ‘infrastructure’ spending).

Urgent need for contestable democratic counter-narratives

We urgently need a democratic counter-narrative, which promotes public debt at least as a stabilising force (and in some cases to take priority over private debt). And a complementary counter-narrative promoting public-equity over pay-equity as an efficient means to correct destabilising inequality, given that excessive inequality is also a deathknell of capitalism. Capitalism depends on selling wage-goods to wage-workers.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

With the sudden departure of New Zealand’s Reserve Bank Governor, one has to ask whether there is a pattern here — of a succession of public sector leaders leaving their posts in uncertain circumstances and a series of decisions being made without much regard for due process.

It brings to mind the current spectacle of federal government politics playing out in the United States. Four years ago, we observed a concerted attempt by a raucous and determined crowd to storm the Capitol.

Now a smaller, more disciplined and just as determined band is entering federal offices in Washington almost unhindered, to close agencies and programmes and to evict and terminate the employment of thousands of staff.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Much has been and much more will be written about the looming abolition of USAID.

It’s “the removal of a huge and important tool of American global statecraft” (Konyndyk), or the wood-chipping of a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” (Musk) or, more reasonably, the unwarranted cancellation of an organisation that should have been reviewed and reformed.

Commentators will have a lot to say, some of it exaggerated, about the varieties of harm caused by this decision, and about its legality.

Some will welcome it from a conservative perspective, believing that USAID was either not aligned with or acting against the interests of the United States, or was proselytising wokeness, or was a criminal organisation.

Some, often more quietly, will welcome it from an anti-imperialist or “Southern” perspective, believing that the agency was at worst a blunt instrument of US hegemony or at least a bastion of Western saviourism.

I want to come at this topic from a different angle, by providing a brief personal perspective on USAID as an organisation, based on several decades of occasional interaction with it during my time as an Australian aid official.

Essentially, I view USAID as a harried, hamstrung and traumatised organisation, not as a rogue agency or finely-tuned vehicle of US statecraft.

Peer country representative
My own experience with USAID began when I participated as a peer country representative in an OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) peer review of the US’s foreign assistance programme in the early 1990s, which included visits to US assistance programmes in Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as to USAID headquarters in Washington DC.

I later dealt with the agency in many other roles, including during postings to the OECD and Indonesia and through my work on global and regional climate change and health programmes, up to and including the pandemic years.

An image is firmly lodged in my mind from that DAC peer review visit to Washington. We had had days of back-to-back meetings in USAID headquarters with a series of exhausted-looking, distracted and sometimes grumpy executives who didn’t have much reason to care what the OECD thought about the US aid effort.

It was a muggy summer day. At one point a particularly grumpy meeting chair, who now rather reminds of me of Gary Oldman’s character in Slow Horses, mopped the sweat from his forehead with his necktie without appearing to be aware of what he was doing. Since then, that man has been my mental model of a USAID official.

But why so exhausted, distracted and grumpy?

Precisely because USAID is about the least freewheeling workplace one could construct. Certainly it is administratively independent, in the sense that it was created by an act of Congress, but it also receives its budget from the President and Congress — and that budget comes with so many strings attached, in the form of country- or issue-related “earmarks” or other directives that it might be logically impossible to allocate the funds as instructed.

Some of these earmarks are broad and unsurprising (for example, specific allocations for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment under the Bush-era PEPFAR program) while others represent niche interests (Senator John McCain once ridiculed earmarks pertaining to “peanuts, orangutans, gorillas, neotropical raptors, tropical fish and exotic plants”) — but none originates within USAID.

Informal earmarks calculation
I recall seeing an informal calculation showing that one could only satisfy all the percentage-based earmarks by giving most of the dollars several quite different jobs to do. A 2002 DAC peer review noted with disapproval some 270 earmarks or other directive provisions in aid legislation; by the time of the most recent peer review in 2022, this number was more like 700.

Related in part to this congressional micro-management of its budget — along with the usual distrust of organisations that “send” money overseas — USAID labours under particularly gruelling accountability and reporting requirements.

Andew Natsios — a former USAID Administrator and lifelong Republican who has recently come to USAID’s defence (albeit with arguments that not everybody would deem helpful) — wrote about this in 2010. In terms reminiscent of current events, he described the reign of terror of Lieutenant-General Herbert Beckington, a former Marine Corps officer who led USAID‘s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) from 1977 to 1994.

He was a powerful iconic figure in Washington, and his influence over the structure of the foreign aid programME remains with USAID today. … Known as “The General” at USAID, Beckington was both feared and despised by career officers. Once referred to by USAID employees as “the agency’s J. Edgar Hoover — suspicious, vindictive, eager to think the worst” …

At one point, he told the Washington Post that USAID’s white-collar crime rate was “higher than that of downtown Detroit.” … In a seminal moment in this clash between OIG and USAID, photographs were published of two senior officers who had been accused of some transgression being taken away in handcuffs by the IG investigators for prosecution, a scene that sent a broad chill through the career staff and, more than any other single event, forced a redirection of aid practice toward compliance.

Labyrinthine accountability systems
On top of the burdens of logically impossible programming and labyrinthine accountability systems is the burden of projecting American generosity. As far as humanly possible, and perhaps a little further, ways must be found of ensuring that American aid is sourced from American institutions, farms or factories and, if it is in the form of commodities, that it is transported on American vessels.

Failing that, there must be American flags. I remember a USAID officer stationed in Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami spending a non-trivial amount of his time seeking to attach sizeable flags to the front of trucks transporting US (but also non-US) emergency supplies around the province of Aceh.

President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller has somehow determined to his own satisfaction that the great majority (in fact 98 percent) of USAID personnel are donors to the Democratic Party. Whether or not that is true, let alone relevant, Democrat administrations have arguably been no kinder to USAID than Republican ones over the years.

Natsios, in the piece cited above, notes that The General was installed under Carter, who ran on anti-Washington ticket, and that there were savage cuts — over 400 positions — to USAID senior career service staffing under Clinton. USAID gets battered no matter which way the wind blows.

Which brings me back to necktie guy. It has always seemed to me that the platonic form of a USAID officer, while perhaps more likely than not to vote Democrat, is a tired and dispirited person, weary of politicians of all stripes, bowed under his or her burdens, bound to a desk and straitjacketed by accountability requirements, regularly buffeted by new priorities and abrupt restructures, and put upon by the ignorant and suspicious.

Radical-left Marxists and vipers probably wouldn’t tolerate such an existence for long. Who would? I guess it’s either thieves and money-launderers or battle-scarred professionals intent on doing a decent job against tall odds.

Robin Davies is an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s (ANU) Crawford School of Public Policy and managing editor of the Devpolicy Blog. He previously held senior positions at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and AusAID.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New research shows that more than half of New Zealanders are struggling financially.

The annual survey by the Retirement Commission found the number of people in financial difficulty increased by 17 percent since their first survey in 2021.

A total of 55 percent reported being in a financially difficult position – including many Pacific Islanders.

Of those surveyed, 51 percent reported they were “starting to sink” or “treading water”, while a further 3.5 percent reported they were “sinking badly”.

Personal Finance lead Tom Hartmann said women, Māori and Pacific Peoples were being hit the hardest.

The survey found 61 percent of women were financially struggling in contrast to 48 percent of men.

Sixty percent of Māori and 58 percent of Pacific Peoples also reported feeling financially stressed. Those aged 18-34 were also more likely to experience financial stress.

Hartmann said it was concerning that so many New Zealanders were feeling the pressures of cost increases.

Long-term consequences
“We have now tipped into more than half the population feeling squeezed financially. This significantly reduces people’s ability to grow their money for tomorrow, which has long-term consequences for their future financial well-being,” he said.

The survey found that more people were borrowing money, but also that more people were budgeting and saving.

It also reported that the gap was widening for women compared to men in terms of optimism, financial sentiment, personal savings and savings for retirement.

The main source of data for the information came from the Retirement Commission’s online population survey of New Zealanders aged over 18 which is run by market research agency TRA. The commission said the sample was nationally representative of New Zealand based on age, gender and region.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Auckland councillors crossed swords, singling out one another and raising impassioned concerns on debt borrowing, rates and selling council’s shares in Auckland Airport before deciding on their annual budget.

Elected members ended yesterday’s meeting undecided but council reconvened this morning to hash out amendments to Mayor Wayne Brown’s budget proposal, before finally voting to approve it.

The governing body of the city with the Pacific’s largest Polynesian population spent the majority of the day going back and forth on many of the points previously raised at the initial meeting yesterday.

The morning finished with council voting to reject the first tabled amendment, going back to square one.

Councillor Chris Darby said if the discussion was like “eating rats”, then council had rat flesh in its teeth.

It was a tense atmosphere in the council chamber, with much back and forth and very little compromise from councillors.

As the meeting dragged on, two members of the public gallery began to speak up, urging councillors to think of the impact the budget would have on the community.

They yelled at council to listen to them, and to spend time in their communities to see the impacts of their budget first hand.

The mayor adjourned the meeting briefly and ordered the two women be removed from the council chamber.

The meeting came to a head, as the council voted to pass the mayor’s proposal, which meant selling about 7 percent of the council’s 18.09 percent shareholding

It also means an average residential rates increase of 7.7 percent.

During the meeting, Christine Fletcher said the discussions held around the budget would serve as good lessons for the governing body.

“There are some magnificent opportunities for all of us to provide leadership,” she said.

As the vote was cast, another member of the public called out, “shame on all of you”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Young families are the clear target of Labour’s election-year Budget, but its flagship promise – cheaper childcare – will not kick in until next year.

The 2023 Budget — billed as a “no frills” affair — is set against a volatile economic backdrop with the government now forecast to return to surplus a year later than expected.

In a statement, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said his first Budget would provide relief from the sharp cost of living without exacerbating inflation “as tax cuts would”.

“Budget 2023 isn’t fancy, nor should it be . . .  it’s a carefully calibrated package that deals with the here and now pressures, while also laying the foundation for real long-term benefits.”

‘Support for today’
The Budget extends cheaper childcare to parents of two-year-olds, giving them access to 20 hours a week of free early childhood education (ECE). That support currently kicks in for children from the age of three.

For eligible families, the extension could save them more than $130 a week in childcare costs for an extra year.

They will have to wait, however, until March next year — critically after the election — for the $1.2 billion package to come into effect.

Speaking during the lock-up at Parliament, Finance Minister Grant Robertson told RNZ the delay was primarily due to administrative reasons.

From July this year, public transport will be made free for all children under 13 and will remain half-price for passengers aged 13 to 24. That initiative is costed at about $327 million over four years.

The existing discount on bus, train and ferry fares will expire for most other people at the end of June, except for Community Service Card holders. As signalled, the accompanying fuel discount will finish at the same time.

Most prescription medicine will be made completely free from July, with the government scrapping the current $5 charge at a cost of about $619 million over four years.

‘Building for tomorrow’
The government has committed $71 billion of infrastructure spending over the next five years — that is money for building schools, hospitals, public housing, roads, etc. The spend is up about 60 percent from the $45 billion spent over the previous same period.

On top of that, another $6 billion has been set aside for a National Resilience Plan with an initial focus on future-proofing road, rail and other infrastructure wiped out by extreme weather.

Three new multi-institution research hubs will be set up in Wellington at a cost of $451 million. Each will focus on a different subject: Climate change, health, and technology.

A new 20 percent rebate will be made available for game development studios who spend at least $250,000 a year in New Zealand as an incentive to keep them from moving abroad. Individual studios will be eligible for up to $3 million a year in rebates.

Tax, tax, tax
As promised, the Budget does not include any major new taxes or tax cuts, but it does increase the trustee tax rate from 33 percent to 39 percent — in line with the top personal tax rate.

Revenue Minister David Parker said the discrepancy was currently allowing super-wealthy taxpayers to funnel their income through trusts to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

Both Inland Revenue and Treasury had recommended the change when Labour introduced the new top personal tax rate in 2021.

The trustee tax hike is estimated to raise about $350 million a year, beginning in April next year.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has delivered his second budget with a heavy focus on cost-of-living relief for Australians who are struggling due to persistently high inflation and rising interest rates.

While Chalmers says the economy should continue to create jobs and unemployment is expected to remain historically low, inflation remains the top economic concern.

Chalmers says the budget is aimed at providing relief to Australians while trying to prevent adding to inflationary pressures (though some economists have expressed doubts that this will be possible).

The clear highlight of this budget is the government’s $14.6 billion cost-of-living relief spending plan, which includes some of the major measures listed below.

The government is also forecasting a “small surplus” of $4.2 billion in this financial year, the first time it’s been in the black in 15 years. However, this is expected to be followed by a deficit of $13.9 billion in 2023-24 – and forecasted deficits over the following three years.

Here are five charts to show how the current budget fits in with historic economic trends and other economic indicators. Following that is a breakdown of notable spends and cuts in the budget across specific portfolios.

– ref. Budget 2023 at a glance: major measures, cuts and spends – https://theconversation.com/budget-2023-at-a-glance-major-measures-cuts-and-spends-205211

A $14.6 billion four-year cost-of-living package will be the centrepiece of Labor’s second budget, which seeks to balance spending restraint with its election commitment to not leave people behind.

The latter days of preparing the budget – which was printed at the weekend – have seen mounting pressure, including from outspoken members of the Labor caucus, for greater help for the disadvantaged.

A strong revenue flow, including from a pick-up in wages, appears to have made it possible for the government to do somewhat more on welfare payments than it originally intended.

There was speculation at the weekend, which the government refused to confirm or deny, of a possible modest across-the-board rise in JobSeeker. Earlier, the JobSeeker assistance was expected to be confined to those 55 and over.

At the same time the budget is tipped to see a surplus this financial year, although Treasurer Jim Chalmers constantly stresses the pressure it will be under in later years.

The government says its cost-of-living plan, which includes already flagged relief on power bills and cheaper medicines, will not be inflationary but will directly lower price pressures and the CPI in 2023-24.

On Sunday Chalmers, who did a round of media interviews, said five and a half million households would get help with their electricity bills, as would about a million small businesses.

Asked the maximum price relief on energy bills, Chalmers said, “people will be getting several hundred dollars if they’re on pensions and payments or a small business.”

The government has struck deals with states and territories and the relief will vary in different parts of the country.

There will also be investments in energy efficiency.

About 40% of the upgrade in revenue comes from strong employment growth and a pick-up in wages growth. Some 20% is from higher commodity prices, and the rest comes from other sources including higher company profits in the non-mining and finance sectors.

Read more:
Budget shows real wages expected to start growing early next year and promises effort to ‘shift the needle’ in disadvantaged communities

The Treasurer said the budget would be “in the best Labor tradition – help for the vulnerable with cost-of-living pressures, an eye on the future, and responsible economic management”. It would have substantial savings, substantial spending restraint, and “modest but meaningful tax changes”.

Among the tax changes will be an extension of the petroleum resource rent tax that will mean the offshore LNG industry pays more tax, earlier. Deductions will be limited under the changes. This will increase receipts by $2.4 billion over the forward estimates.

The Australian Petroleum & Exploration Association reacted benignly.

APPEA chief executive Samantha McCulloch said: “The changes aim to get the balance right between the undeniable need for a strong gas sector to support reliable electricity and domestic manufacturing for decades to come and the need for a more sustainable budget”. She said the announcement would “provide greater certainty” for the industry.

Meanwhile Opposition Leader Peter Dutton faces fresh pressure with another byelection looming, following the weekend announcement by former minister Stuart Robert that he will quit parliament soon.

Robert, who is shadow treasurer, holds the Gold Coast seat of Fadden. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Robert has suffered some bad publicity relating to various controversies, and was one of the ministers with oversight of Robodebt, on which a royal commission report will come down mid year. He admitted to the commission his serious doubts about the scheme – which was found to be illegal – but argued he had to defend it because of cabinet solidarity,

Read more:
Government to spend $11.3 billion over four years to fund 15% pay rise for aged care workers

Though spooked by the loss of the Victorian seat of Aston at a byelection, the Liberals would be confident of holding Fadden, which is on a margin of more than 10%. Queensland is a strong state for the Coalition and Dutton’s home state.

Nevertheless Dutton at the weekend stressed the importance of getting a local as the Fadden candidate. One – though not the main – factor in the Aston loss was that the Liberal candidate came from another part of Melbourne.

“We’ll preselect somebody who understands that part of the Gold Coast, and we should be in that seat, frankly, preselecting somebody who can be a future cabinet minister or a leader of our party. So, we will work hard with the LNP in Queensland to make sure that we do win,” Dutton said.

There is also an expectation that former prime minister Scott Morrison will resign from parliament before long.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: Budget ‘centrepiece’ will be $14.6 billion cost-of-living package – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-budget-centrepiece-will-be-14-6-billion-cost-of-living-package-205192

Papua New Guinean Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey has clarified that the miscellaneous item of K2.6 billion in the budget will be spent on settling superannuation payments for government employees, unpaid rental bills and final entitlements to retired public servants, among other expenses.

“The budget is broken up into many lines of expenditure,” he said.

One of these is Division 207, which refers to “miscellaneous” expenditure by the Treasury and Finance departments.

“Frankly, these are often pretty boring payments, dominated by required payments by government where the funding is centralised rather than given to individual agencies,” Ling-Stuckey said.

He was responding to the PNG Post-Courier’s editorial comment on the budget on Tuesday December 6, asking him to provide an explanation on the “whopping” K2.6 billion miscellaneous expenditure, which represented 10 percent of the total 2023 budget.

“We are no financial genius nor do we claim to be an expert in budget matters but one thing that sticks out and deserve comment from everyone, however has not drawn one single line from the Treasurer, Ian Ling-Stuckey, or the Shadow Treasurer, Douglas Tomuriesa and other experts around the country.

The editorial read in part:

“An amount of K2,561,000 million of the total 2023 budget has been parked under this expenditure head.

“This is more than the money allocated to education (K1,383 or 7 percent), Health (K2,335 or 10 percent), law and order (1,385 or 7 percent) and transport (K2,226 or 9 percent) – all key socioeconomic sectors in the country that took just under 10 percent of the budget respectively.

“There are no notes in the budget documents that detail the areas for the expenditure of the K2.5 billion, and the Treasurer, Ling-Stuckey, does not make mention of that money at all in his budget speech.

“We, however, understand that miscellaneous expenses are also costs to government that do not fall into a specific category but to put away a whopping 10 percent of the total budget is just too much and unacceptable.

“It is not too late to demand that the government, through the Treasurer, provide a detailed report on the miscellaneous cost in 2022 and the expenditure plan for the miscellaneous budget for 2023.”

Ling-Stuckey said: “Contrary to the Post-Courier’s allegations, the details for the K2561 million in “miscellaneous” expenditure is clearly set out in the budget.

“Over 10 pages of detail are provided in the budget documents — for the 2023 Budget, see pages starting at page 227 of Volume 2A, and page 236 in the same volume for 2022.

“The largest item for expenditure under ‘miscellaneous’ is superannu­ation payments for public servants, teachers and police.

“This consists of K325 million in superannuation payments autom­a­tically paid each fortnight to Nambawan Super, K300 million to fund the program to finally retire teachers and other public servants that had been left on the public payroll for years without the funding to formally retire them even though they were aged more than 65, a further K200.

“K1 million in exit payments to public servants when they retire through exit payments to Nambawan Super to deal with all current retirees as well as four smaller superannuation payments for other schemes.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Despite total borrowings reaching $11.1 billion, the Auckland Council Group’s latest results show it has managed to weather the worst of the storm created by the covid pandemic.

But the super city’s statement to the NZX shows it will face some tough times ahead as it seeks to balance its next budget.

In June the council with New Zealand’s largest Pacific population — almost 250,000, more than 15 percent of the city’s total of 1.7 million — agreed to defer $230 million in capital works over the next three years to address a $150 million per annum shortfall in its operating costs.

South Auckland projects affected included a new Flat Bush multi-use centre, the upgrade of the Papakura park and ride and the Ōpaheke Park sports fields.

Auckland Council finance and performance committee chairperson Desley Simpson said a number of projects were impacted on by the cutbacks, but increases in revenue and operational savings meant it was now in a stronger position.

“The key point we considered when preparing our Recovery Budget last year was to provide significant support to the economic recovery of Auckland,” Simpson said.

“This proved to be crucial, with our ongoing capital investment programmes helping to counterbalance some of the anticipated economic pressures in Auckland, as well as supporting future infrastructure growth needs for the region.”

Council’s results ‘positive’
The council’s debt increased $757 million to $11.1 billion in the 12 months to June 30, while its revenue grew by $361 million to $5.7 billion.

Manurewa-Papakura ward councillor Angela Dalton said the council’s latest results were positive.

“I think considering the last few years we’ve had, they are pretty good,” she said.

“But I think the future budgets are going to be really tough for us and we are looking at some challenging times ahead.”

Dalton said the results need to be looked at in the context of the Auckland Council Group’s total asset base, which grew by $9.7 billion to $70.4 billion in the past year.

“Considering the huge drop in revenue we’ve faced we’ve still been able to build our city and work on capital projects like the Central Interceptor and City Rail Link. They are the big game changers for Auckland.”

Some council projects were delayed, but it still spent $2.3b on capital works, including over $1b on transport-related assets, $815m on water, wastewater and stormwater and $384 million on other assets.

Climate change funding juggle
Simpson said whoever won Auckland’s mayoral race would have to juggle funding for climate change initiatives, infrastructure and transport spending, community facilities and parks and reserves.

She said while some projects that were deferred might be brought back from the brink, some may be consigned to political history.

“We’ve come through the worst period any Auckland Council has had to deal with. But it’s not going to get any easier.”

Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s final budget was announced in June and included $600 million for new bus services, funding for electric ferries and buses and completion of key links in the city’s cycling network.

The budget’s climate change package will be funded by a targeted rate, generating $574m over 10 years, with plans to seek a further $482m in funding from the government and other sources.

• The political campaign for mayor is being keenly contested with a Pacific candidate, Fa’anānā Efeso Collins, narrowly leading opinion polls for the October local body elections.

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air. Asia Pacific Report is an LDR partner.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning — who is also head of the country’s Covid-19 National Control Centre — has placed United Nations agencies on notice that they must reveal how they have spent virus emergency funding over the past two years.

Manning said Prime Minister James Marap and other Members of Parliament, and independent organisations such as Transparency International, have all called for the release of information on how covid-19 funds have been spent and they have been ignored.

“Unfortunately, these United Nations bodies have refused to provide financial information to the government and people of Papua New Guinea,” he said.

This matter has now come to a head with the Controller writing to the World Bank Acting Country Director in Papua New Guinea, Paul Vallely, on March 29, advising that he would no longer endorse any further increase in allocation of funds, or disbursements, under the PNG Covid-19 Emergency Response Project.

“I have repeatedly requested both directly and through auditors, acquittals of previously disbursed funds under this and other similar projects,” the Controller said in his letter to the World Bank on the loan money.

“The recipients of these funds have refused to provide any reasonable account for these monies.

“There is over US$1.3 billion (K4.5 billion) identified on the self-reporting donor tracker as being committed for managing the covid-19 pandemic in PNG.

‘How are UN agency funds used?’
“What our people need to know, and the global community needs to know, is how are these UN agencies using the funds allocated to them.”

Manning advised that the project is to receive no further funds until he is satisfied that previous disbursements have been acquitted.

“Enough is enough, I have called for the past year for this expenditure to be acquitted and they have refused, so now I am demanding compliance with transparency requirements in PNG,” he said.

“With the country going through the height of the pandemic, these agencies were provided with some leniency, but we have heard enough excuses and misleading information.

A substantial part of the funds being spent by these UN organisations had also become a part of national sovereign debt that must be repaid by future generations of the Papua New Guinean people, he said.

“But the terrible irony is that we do not even know what they spent this money on, particularly in areas such as communications and awareness in which they have failed.

“Details that have been revealed on the Covid-19 Donor Tracking Dashboard shows that UNDP, as one example, has facilitated the following funding of their own activities in PNG to an amount of K9 million (US$2.6 million).

“This is one just source of funding that is shrouded in secrecy and there are several others for which we have demanded information but is being ignored by this global body.”

Outraged by wording
Manning said he was outraged by the almost identical wording from UNICEF, WHO and UNDP in response to his requirement for an independent auditor to access their records, in which these agencies essentially said they would ignore the request.

In documents seen by the Post-Courier, UNDP Resident Representative Dirk Wagener and UNICEF PNG Representative Claudes Kamenga wrote to Manning with the same “contemptuous and arrogant” language stating that: “We would like to inform you that UNICEF, as a United Nations Agency, is submitted to the ‘Single Audit principle’ that gives the exclusivity of external audit and investigation to the United Nations Board of Auditors (UNBoA) founded in 1946 through the UN resolution 74 (I) of 7 December 1946.”

Manning said what UNICEF and UNDP were saying to PNG is that they would spend funds that were intended for the people, and they would not tell how they used this money.

“In other words, if these agencies have wasted money that was intended for our people, they claim they can keep it a secret,” Manning said.

“This is exactly what we have seen with the way UNICEF uses public funding for communications and awareness and delivers limited results.

“This is a matter that must be addressed at the highest level of the United Nations, because if this lack of transparency is happening in PNG, you have to ask how many other smaller developing countries are being treated with such contempt.”

The Controller said he would ensure the PNG public and international support partners were kept aware of developments in the matter and if acquittals were forthcoming.

Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The first female premier of a Solomon Islands province is appealing to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to help her country manage covid-19 in the community.

People travelling between Honiara and Isabel Province were being tested for the virus at four testing centres, and if they test positive they were isolated at a makeshift centre.

The Isabel Premier, Rhoda Sikilabu, said she was desperate for funding to make improvements to the isolation centres because “they’re filling up and are run down”.

“I really, really need support. We have no place to … isolate these people,” Sikilabu said.

She wants New Zealand to provide funding for improvements for the centres.

“I, as a woman and a mother, I have so many worries and concerns for families offloading with babies, children,” she said.

“I really, really need support in covid. Please I would like to appeal to the Prime Minister.”

Focus on environmental and women’s issues
Sikilabu plans to focus on environmental and women’s issues, and is hopeful of bringing changes to her region as well as transform old mindsets.

She wants women to have authority to speak about their land and property in regards to resources.

“Reforestation is one of the priorities that I will tackle and maybe I can impact more on how women can address or say more on their property, their land ownership,” she said.

”The environment is very, very important to women just now.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

After previous calls for the Samoan Parliament to convene so a national budget can be passed, the ruling FAST Party now says there is no real need to rush to convene Parliament.

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said last Saturday that Parliament would meet “in the first opportunity” this week to pass a budget.

The Samoa Observer reports Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as saying cabinet needs more time to screen and review the financial arrangements used by the former government of Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi and his Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP).

The Ministry of Finance was instructed to prepare a budget using an article that allows 25 percent of the previous budget to operate until a full budget is prepared for Parliament to pass.

The Tuilaepa government had been using this provision since the 2020/2021 budget ended on 30 June which amounts to about 220 million tālā.

According to Fiame, wiith 25 percent, there is a figure, but there is a lack of supporting details even though the processes seemed to be followed for payments under the Emergency Budget.

She explained that the Ministry of Finance wanted cabinet to use the budget they have prepared and announced by the caretaker prime minister last month.

“We still want our own Budget to deliver what the FAST Party has in place in its manifesto,” said Fiamē.

Fiame said Parliament would likely meet in September.

Meanwhile, a FAST spokesperson says the legitimacy of the HRPP candidates who were not sworn-in within the required 45 days is still being determined as it has never happened before.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz