Key points of Key’s PM Statements

The full statement is here. Some extracts:

While circumstances may vary for individual New Zealanders, on average wages under this Government have risen considerably faster than prices. According to the official statistics, the price of goods and services has gone up 6 per cent since September 2008. Over this same period, however, the after-tax average wage has gone up 16 per cent. This year we will work to ensure that after-tax wage growth continues to outstrip price increases.

Which is greater than the real after-tax wage increase in the entire 2000 – 2008 period, off memory.

We have signalled that in this year’s Budget our new spending allowance will be reduced to around $800-$900 million. This compares to the average $2.8 billion per annum increase under the previous Labour Government.

Doesn’t sound like a lot, but if fiscal discipline can be maintained, that means $20b less debt over four years.

The government machine still consists of more than 80 Crown Entities each with their own Board, 38 Departments, more than 70 portfolios and more than 60 separate Budget Votes. The costs of running this machinery are still too high.

Clearly, there is more to be done to make the government bureaucracy smaller and better.

Therefore, I have asked for advice on further reforms to streamline and improve the performance of the government bureaucracy.

There is still a huge amount that could be done. I actually think one could reduce the number of departments to around 12 – 15.

We look forward to receiving their advice and anticipate making changes in three main areas.

The first will be changes to better support beneficiaries with children back into paid employment and to ensure they are fulfilling their responsibilities to their children.

The second will be new approaches to better support sickness and invalid beneficiaries back into paid employment.

The third will be new approaches for ensuring young people have the skills and support needed to escape the benefit system and, ideally, to prevent them from joining it in the first place.

The days of not having to look for a single job while on the DPB until your child is well into their teenage years, is soon going to end.

Not a lot of detail in the speech, but that I suspect is because details will be laid out on a regular basis during the year.