National to target spending growth

I’m delighted to see National intending to campaign on issues such as the fact Government spending under Labour is increasing at seven times the rate of inflation. This will hopefully lead to a debate on quality of spending.

Undoubtedly some government spending is good, such as free immunisations to infants etc. But this leads many to think that this means all government spending is good. It isn’t. And every dollar of spending (funded by taxes) has an opportunity cost associated with it.

The health sector especially has had a staggering increase in funding, with minimal increase in outputs.

So the challenge is to identify spending which will deliver the greatest benefits, and reduce or eliminate the low quality expenditure.