Labour’s fiction on operating allowances

The Herald reports:

The plan is incredibly tight, however, with the next three budgets each promising less new spending than any budget in the last term of Government.

The operating allowance (a Treasury term for new day-to-day spending) will be $3.5b next year, $3.25 the year following and $3b in the two subsequent years.

That is well below the three operating allowances this most recent term of $4.8b, $5.9b, and $4.8b.

This all comes down to credibility. Labour has never ever kept spending to a level they promised. In 2017 they promised to keep spending to under 30% of GDP and now it is forecast to reach 33.5%. The difference by the way is around $14.5 billion a year.

Their spending in 2023 is more than $20 billion greater than they forecast in their 2019 “wellbeing” Budget.

So the notion that they can magically somehow do three more years in Government (with the Greens and Maori Party) and announce almost no new spending is farcical.

This is in contrast to National when Bill English actually did manage to keep expenditure under control with no increase in overall spending in a couple of years. And with much better health and education outcomes.