‘TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
With the budget fast approaching, National is finally being forced to do something about a government sector that has grown far too big. According to Treasury, since 2005 “government spending has ballooned by about 50 percent – twice the rate of Government revenue growth and twice the rate of economic growth”.[1] As a result, core Crown expenses that were an affordable 29 percent of the economy in 2005, have now blown out to an unaffordable 35 percent.
The Minister of Finance outlined the problem this way, “The Government has now become the driver of the growth in our debt to foreigners, and our total public and private debt to foreigners is the highest in the world. We are already borrowing $300 million per week and borrowing more than that would be totally irresponsible. New Zealand’s total indebtedness to the world is up there with Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain at about 85 percent of GDP. A better level would be somewhere around 60 percent of GDP, which is about where Australia is, and internationally regarded as low risk.”[2]
….There is no doubt that over the last decade the encroaching machinery of state has expanded into every corner of our business and personal lives. There are bizarre stories: business owners in Christchurch who haven’t been allowed to retrieve the crucial materials they need to restart their enterprises; business owners in provincial New Zealand wanting to relocate to bigger business premises getting slammed with a whopping $20,000 in council and consultant fees and ordered to comply with a landscape plan that required the planting of 80 trees on a quarter acre section! Big government is holding back people with initiative, yet these are the very people the country needs to get the economy growing again..’
And that’s a fraction of it. Muriel’s newsletter gives some jaw-dropping examples of government waste and Soviet-level bureaucracy. Read it and weep.
