Finance Minister Grant Robertson has reassured the Otago business community that the Government will continue to support it.
Yesterday, Mr Robertson and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke at a post-Budget lunch hosted by the Otago Southland Employers Association in Dunedin.
Mr Robertson said the Government thought it had got the balance between social welfare and business investment "about right".
"About 200,000 jobs are forecasted from this Budget and we are keeping a lid on debt ... but it was time to move on inequality in our society and I think it is good for all New Zealanders when we do that, he said.
Last week’s Budget had a strong social welfare focus, with increases to major benefits.
The Social Unemployment Insurance (SUI) scheme would support workers to retain about 80% of their income for a period after they lose their employment.
It also announced it would invest $44million over the next two years into continuing the Digital Boost scheme that would help with business training courses for SMEs, and a new digital advisory service.
The pair were asked the direction of the Government’s immigration policy after a speech last week setting out where it might head.
Ms Ardern made it clear the Government "was not going to turn the tap off" to the migrant workforce and admitted it was important to New Zealand.
"Just like what we are doing with tourism, it is going through a reset, now is the opportunity to reflect on our immigration settings.
"By having an open and honest conversation as a nation as to whether we have those settings right," she said.
The Government wanted to ensure immigrants to New Zealand had fair and equal opportunities to contribute to the local economy, while decreasing the country’s reliance on the temporary workforce, Ms Ardern said.
In recent times businesses have faced a rise in costs partly caused by an increase in the minimum wage, Mr Robertson was asked where the cost for the SUI would fall.
The SUI was in the design phase and it would not be happening if Business NZ did not put its hand up to design it, Mr Robertson said.
"The payoff from this is the access to skilled staff and we are also looking at ways self-employed people can access it as well.
"I think we are at extraordinary time in New Zealand’s history in terms of the partnership with government and business, we have been a lot more involved over the last year or so but it was the right thing to do.
"We now need to make sure we make the best of that," he said.
Mr Robertson asked the business community to support the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out to the wider public from July.
"We really need businesses to really be supporting that, giving the time for your staff to be vaccinated or even being a vaccination site if you have a large enough site.
"It’s so important to have that done by the end of the year and it will give us so many more options around the borders," Mr Robertson said.
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The party of working groups and unfulfilled promises. When are we going to get the houses and vaccinations?
We are ahead of target with the vaccinations and had no need to rush and bypass normal approval procedures because of the job done to date. As for housing, yes kiwibuild failed but that was more the lack of buy in from the private sector that the govt tried to bring on board. However through housing NZ the govt is building more than anytime since the 70s and is on track to build the 18k places contracted in the next for years. Which is a good indication of what could have been achieved if the private sector got on board with kiwibuild from the start.
As for their other promises most have been enacted and there's still time for the others since they said from the start it would take time and that was before white island, the mosque massacre, and covid.
For example they mostly stopped foreign purchase of housing which national said was impossible, restarted Cullen fund contributions, raised min wages and benefits, raised wages of public servants like teachers, police and nurses including pay parity increases among said workers, have enacted several items that were announced but not allocated funding by national ie roads, chch anchor projects, hospital builds, defence upgrades etc
Released 20% of the prison population with no plan, hence creating an explosion of gang problems, doubling the annual rate of violent assaults.
Economist Michael Reddell's bleak assessment of this Government "creating structural deficits for years to come – discretionary deficits actively chosen by today’s government larger than any such cyclically-adjusted deficits run in New Zealand at any time since at least the end of World War Two. It hasn’t been the New Zealand way. But it appears to be so now."