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Idiot’s guide to the Budgie

Virginia Fallon virginia.fallon@stuff.co.nz Virginia Fallon is a Stuff senior writer and columnist.

Ioften run my column ideas past the person who sends me the most hate mail and this one was no exception. ‘‘I’m going to write about the Budget this week,’’ I told Mum on Monday as we were stopped at the lights. ‘‘Good,’’ she said, ‘‘god knows we could all do with a bit of light relief right now.’’

We were trying to get the baby to sleep by driving him around, having decided the cost in mental health trumped the cost in petrol, and frankly I was puzzled. ‘‘Since when has the Budget been light relief?,’’ I asked, struggling to be heard against the raspberries coming from the capsule in the back seat. ‘‘The Budget?,’’ she said, ‘‘I thought you said the budgie. People will like reading about the budgie more.’’

While I’ve long learnt that ignoring my mother’s advice usually ends up in tears before bedtime I’m yet to learn to follow it. We drove around a bit, talked about budgies, the baby slept, and I eventually dropped the pair of them home.

Later, pressing on, I texted a serious journalist about my intentions. ‘‘Oh god,’’ he replied, ‘‘you can’t bluff your way through this one. Give me a ring if you need help.’’

I did so I did, and told him what my mum said about budgies. ‘‘She’s got a point,’’ he said, ‘‘budgies are more interesting. Stick to what you know.’’

But knowing I know very little, he offered me a bit of advice for writing about the Budget: look for an issue I care about and see what the Government is doing to address it.

The problem with reading about anything to do with a new Budget is that it doesn’t mean a heck of a lot in isolation – you have to look back.

In 2021 the biggest Budget beneficiaries were rightly the people receiving welfare payments. The Government promised to boost benefit levels by between $32 and $55 an adult, per week. Sole parents were looking at a $36 rise and a couple on Jobseeker payments, with children, could expect a whole $55 more.

Back then the Government expected that would move up to 33,000 children out of poverty and, to be fair, 2022 statistics showed it achieved that for 66,500 kids. Despite that, it’s met just one of its three key measures to reduce child poverty, and Māori and Pacific children are the worst off. As always.

Fast-forward to the present day and the cost of living has soared to impossible heights. Those meagre benefit boosts of 2021 have been long soaked up on necessities like food, housing and petrol, with Kiwis spending an extra $4000 to $5000 a year on the basics.

Measures of child poverty might be trending down, but by the Government’s own measures as many as 1 in 5 kids is still living in it. How is that being addressed this year? I guess we’ll find out next year, eh.

So back to Monday when Mum and I spent a good part of her birthday pricing milk for our youngest family member. Like most New Zealanders we don’t think in fiscal years but week to week. Debt caps and emissions and ever-more policies are all well and good but a tin of formula that’ll save $10 a week is the sort of thing Kiwis really care about.

And while we did find that cheaper milk, I worry it might taste a bit sour, like everything else in New Zealand does right now.

Anyway, because Mum is always right, here’s a little bit about the budgie: his name was Samuel Peckett and Fleabus (the cat) ate him.

Opinion

en-nz

2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281874417012082

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