The first feature of the 2018 Budget is the allocation of $100 million to the America’s Cup.  The politics of this are not hard to understand, but the myth of prioritising within an economically-binding fiscal constraint is exploded. Explicitly prioritising the America’s Cup above mental health and Maori development leaves

The 1989 Public Finance Act adopted a new approach to the presentation of the government’s accounts. Its purpose was to enhance the government’s management of financial flows by combining them all into a single set of accounts. But as so typically happens, a measurement system for one purpose is used

The neologism ‘Austerian’ is a portmanteau of ‘austerity’ and ‘Austrian’ (School of Economics). It became extensively used after the Global Financial Crisis. It describes the policies of those countries which had to restrain public and private spending because lenders were unwilling to provide the funds for their budget deficits. Their