Budget 2024: Light at the end of the tunnel

Flicking through the Order Paper for this week you will notice a good chunk of it is dedicated to something called the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill. That is Parliament speak for the main bill of the Budget. The word 'appropriation' is finance lingo for the authorisation of government spending, and given the Budget is looking forward, the word estimates is used.

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The public perception of the Budget that most people have is largely of Budget Day in May with the theatrics of the media lock-up, cheese rolls, and the Budget Debate.

You might have thought it was all done and dusted months ago, but Parliament is pretty careful with giving away pocket money. More than just something in the diary or a single document with lots of spreadsheets, the Budget is merely a convenient phrase that refers to the anthology of processes involved in government's management of money.

It is now mid September, and what do you know, Parliament is still trying to pass the Budget bill. That is not unusual. In fact at any one time, Parliament's financial scrutiny process is pretty much always occurring - either proactively or retrospectively.

One hundred and 10 days ago, Finance Minister Nicola Willis stood up in the House and delivered the Budget Statement. Her speech essentially kicked off the second reading of the Appropriation Bill.

There is not any first reading given the need for a Budget bill is pretty much agreed by all parties. After the Budget Statement from the Minister of Finance comes the eight-hour Budget Debate, which can take a few weeks due to interruptions.

In the following 10 weeks after the Budget has been delivered to the House, select committees have the job of examining the individual spending proposals of specific areas, which are called votes. For example Vote Transport, Vote Police, Vote Forestry and so on.

That brings us to where we are at this week, in the midst of the Estimates debate. The committees have reported back to the House, and Parliament is now engaged in 11 hours of debate where all MPs have the chance to speak on spending proposals. The Estimates Debate is broad and is organised portfolio by portfolio rather than by specific votes.

So, for example on Tuesday, one of those portfolios was Education. The minister, Erica Stanford, had the job of applauding the government's spending in the sector.

"In Budget '24, the government boosted Vote Education by $2.93 billion over the next four years to improve student outcomes despite very tough fiscal times. We are a government that is committed to improving services for everyday New Zealanders, and education is one of those extraordinarily important services. This Budget is about taking a coherent, considered, and evidence-based approach to education."

Then a question from one former education minister to a current one. Jan Tinetti asked how the government reconciles cuts with maintaining a thriving education system.

"How [can] those really important programmes, which do make a difference for young people who have a complexity of needs, carry on with the fidelity that they are supposed to be delivered with when cuts are happening within the Ministry of Education."

The minister employed that age-old parliamentary tactic of morphing the answer into a dig at the previous government.

"I was astounded at the fact that previous ministers in the Labour government never went through that exercise of going, "Hey, ministry, give me a line by line of everything we spend in learning support."

As I am sure you have surmised by now, the Budget process takes a while.

The Appropriations Bill must be finalised within four months of Budget Day (which was May 30th), so it is pretty much crunch time this week. When the Appropriations Bill is finally passed, the House has essentially agreed to the main Budget for that financial year.

But hold on - if the Budget has taken just under four months to be agreed but the financial year started on 1 July, how has the government been able to spend money?

In order to keep the lights on, parliament passed the Imprest Supply Bill at the end of June. This allows them to actually spend the money needed to keep the country running until the Appropriations Bill is approved.

If Parliament does not approve the Budget, the government has lost the confidence of the House, and an election would likely occur (the chances of this happening though are almost zero).

After the bill is passed there is little time for a smoko though. The government has to validate unappropriated past spending (things that were not listed in the previous Budget), and also confirm spending from the previous year (the Supplementary Estimates Bill and Confirmation and Validation Bill). Oh, and they will have already begun preparing for the whole thing all over again for next year.

RNZ's The House, with insights into parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.