PM plays to the crowd in post-budget address

In front of the “biggest Cabinet Club of the year”, John Key delivered a rousing post-budget address in Auckland this afternoon. It was a top-drawer performance from the Prime Minister, earning full marks from the business leaders who had shelled out $500 to attend.

“The bottom line of yesterday’s budget is, I think, the fruition of five and a half years of hard work by the Government, businesses and New Zealanders across the country,” said Key. Pointing out the challenges that his government has faced, Key was confident in what English had delivered.

“It ‘s an acceptance that we had to both change and and contend with some very serious issues. Whether it’s the recession in 2008, the Global Financial Crisis and the Christchurch Earthquake.”

“That’s what the country has had to contend with. The real story for me behind the budget is just the strength of those macro-economic numbers.”

“[The surplus] is of enormous significance even if it’s not that big, because it’s a sign to New Zealanders that things are coming right. We are getting through the worst of what we’ve seen, but the books are back in order.”

“It also reflects where we should be. We are a small country at the bottom of the world. No one owes us a living and if the chips are down, no one is necessarily going to lend to us. So having our books in order and having debt at acceptable levels for a small country at the bottom of the world, is a very important issue. If you don’t get that, in the end it’s called Greece. That is the bottom line.”

After extolling the budget’s virtues, Key was quick to seize upon the opportunity to sow election-seeds to a fertile audience.

“When we came in, in ’08 the Treasury essentially said to us ‘look, the numbers are awful. Carry on spending the way you are, inheriting the programs you are and debt will be 60 per cent of GDP by 2020.The budget is now on its way to have debt at less than 20 per cent by 2020. That is a massive difference in debt – about $90 billion less debt than this country would have had if we hadn’t changed the course, and that’s a really important thing for future generations and for the confidence of the country.”

“One of the debates which has come out of the budget that the opposition really want to run is income inequality. Fair enough, you’re in opposition and you have to argue something. But is it real? Is that actually the case that we are becoming more unequal?

“My argument would be that it’s not. Over the last decade, New Zealand has not become any more unequal. Maybe at the margins, slightly less. in fact it hasn’t become any more unequal in the last fifteen years.”

“2 per cent of New Zealand taxpayers pay 22 per cent of all personal tax. On a household basis, 12 per cent of New Zealand households pay 76 per cent of all the enxt tax in this country, even before you start including payment made for Super.The question I have is, if that 12 per cent isn’t paying enough, how much is enough?”

Watching Key reminded me how easily one can be sidetracked by the ‘average kiwi bloke’ persona Key has crafted for himself in the public eye. On his day Key can be a master politician, and in a room full of his former-contemporaries from the financial sector – it was on full display. Softening his audience with some well-chosen anecdotes and a sprinkle of self-deprecating humour, the sell-out crowd was eating from the the palm of the PM’s hand well before he reached the real crux of his address.

The best – Key retold how Bill English had been disappointed that the Budget had been supplanted as the headline by 8pm on a major news site. Upon finding out that it was a video of a cat saving a child from a dog, the PM quipped, “I was quite relieved because I thought it could be yet another story about Steffie Key taking off yet another item of clothing”.

As Key laughed with business leaders inside, protesters tried to create chaos outside. About 60 turned out to protest National’s ‘war on the poor’, with police forming human barricades across Sky City entrances on Federal Street. If Key was even the slightest bit perturbed by the rambunctious lot, he didn’t show it.

“I’m sorry you had to navigate our friends outside,” said Key. “They did organize the protest before we had even read the budget, so it might be an indication that they should go away and have a look at it and consider what they’re actually protesting about.”

It was a telling performance from the Prime Minister. After a difficult month for his party courtesy of Maurice Williamson and Judith Collins, the Budget was an important step to getting back on track as the September election fast approaches. Beating Labour to the social welfare punch fired the first real shots across the bow, but yesterday made it abundantly clear that if Key is just rounding into election-year form, Labour might just need a miracle.