What a difference a year makes! And a wide ocean moat and vaccines to save us from Covid-19.

So far, New Zealand has survived the pandemic and associated economic disaster far better than most commentators, myself included, expected.

This Budget, the fourth from Dunedin’s Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, is framed as a balanced Budget: neither profligate nor austere.

With the strongest mandate ever, in full control of the Treasury benches, the centrepiece of Mr Robertson’s Budget was the reversal of the benefit cuts of 30 years ago by his predecessor Ruth Richardson.

Mr Robertson talked about Ms Richardson a lot. Increasing benefits by between $32 and $55 a week now was ‘‘to right the wrongs of 30 years ago’’. Many of the party leaders in their subsequent speeches also talked about Ms Richardson.

To me, 1991’s Mother of All Budgets was starting to feel like the Ghost of Budgets Past. Such a metaphorical reference to A Christmas Carol, which Charles Dickens published in 1843 in response to Victorian social attitudes towards poverty, is apt given Budget 2021’s focus on the reduction of poverty, especially child poverty, in New Zealand.

After acknowledging the economic stimulatory effects on the rest of us by increasing the poorest New Zealanders’ incomes, Mr Robertson declares: ‘‘But, Mr Speaker, for me this is primarily a moral issue.’’

The interesting thing about invoking moral arguments is that everyone has different interpretations of what is moral and what’s not.

By the way, when you think about it, most of us are beneficiaries to some extent. I know I am.

What was missing from this Budget for me was a steer as to the way out of New Zealand’s serious problems. What to do about poverty (and the associated housing crisis), other than to increase benefits?

That’s the age-old question, right back to Dickens’ time and before.

 - Paul Hansen is a professor of economics at the University of Otago