Leading into the 2017 election the then Labour Opposition campaigned on several major policies that were billed as transformational, such as Kiwibuild and light rail in inner Auckland. Once they were joined in Government by NZ First the Provincial Growth Fund and the One Billion Trees Programme were added to the list.

Fast forward three and a half years and having weathered the economic shock which was COVID-19 yesterday’s budget announcement contained no ground-breaking ideas. The closest thing to anything out of the ordinary for a centre-left Government was the appropriation for the repeal and replacement of the Resource Management Act (RMA), although this was largely flagged in previous announcements. There was a lot in the Budget for those in the lower socio-economic classes, most notably various levels of benefit increases. There was, however, no flagship policy that could be defined as out of the box thinking.

The lack of anything transformational suggests one of two things, the first is that the Government is gun shy from previous high profile policy flops. This is unlikely due to the personal popularity that Jacinda Ardern and this Government enjoys, so they certainly have the political capital to spend. The second and more likely is that having tried and failed at the big, bold ideas and now enjoying not having NZ First as the handbrake on anything drastic the Government is happy to go back to what it knows. This takes the form of traditional policy tools, such as taxation and reallocation of wealth to drive the outcomes it is seeking to achieve. In doing this they are making maximum use of a rare MMP environment where one party enjoys total control.