The past two budget pieces focussed upon the ABCs of analysing a budget and highlighting colonial racism when it occurs in budget-speak…. especially when they use the word “austerity” (which in coloniser speak is supposed to mean “we can’t afford extra expenses until we cut our national debt” but actually means “we’re going to make rich people richer, and make poor people pay for it”).
Today, we look at what a tiriti centered budget might look like.
Now, we could wānanga this for a long time. There are taxes that should be alleviated (like tax on settlement assets), that’s a whole wānanga in itself. This is just one approach that clarifies austerity as a political choice and a form of theft, shows us just a fraction of the extra revenue we could have as a nation, and how that might go towards funding just some of the measures that would make Aotearoa more tiriti centred and less racist.
I’m not an economist, in fact colonial economics do my head in – but I also know that racism, and the Doctrine of Discovery has always been an economic project, that the language of the Doctrine of Discovery is dollars and cents, and that it’s in the budget, not campaigns, that you see their real intentions. In the case of this government, the campaign line was that Labour was financially irresponsible, and that this government would get the nation “back on track”.
The budget has spoken very differently.
Since coming into power this government has CUT revenue (which could have paid for jobs, for programs, for housing etc). Not just by a little bit, by a LOT.
This government has cut nearly $5.5 billion dollars in revenue, and has only created $574 million.
It cut nearly TEN TIMES the amount of revenue it has created. And what kind of revenue did it cut?
| Revenue cut or foregone | Main Revenue Source | Annual cost |
| Income tax threshold cuts | High wage earners | ~$2.9B/yr |
| Landlord interest deductibility restoration | Landlords | ~$500M/yr |
| Bright-line test reduction | Property speculators | ~$300–500M/yr |
| Foreign Buyer Tax scrapped | Foreign buyers | ~$750M/yr |
| Digital Services Tax dropped | Big Tech | ~$120M/yr |
No surprises: It cut taxes for foreign buyers, it cut taxes for the wealthy, it scrapped taxes for BigTech, and it cut charges for landlords – and it cost us $4.8 billion from our budget.
Ok ok I know I said I’d get to the visioning part – but I needed to address that, first, so that we could be on the shared understanding of what can be afforded, if we choose to.
Then there’s capital gains tax. I wrote about it already in my first piece, but to reiterate: it’s a tax placed on the *increased value* of a primary capital asset (eg property) over time. 36 of the 38 OECD countries have capital gains tax, only New Zealand and Switzerland don’t. If we take the average OECD capital gains tax rate of 19%, that would provide an extra $5.1billion.
SO – if we re-instated the above sources of income, and established a modest capital gains tax of 19%, we would have an extra $10.4billion in the budget.
For that amount of money, you could fund everything that was recommended by the United Nations as a minimum measure of addressing racism in Aotearoa. You could actually implement WAI262 and advance constitutional transformation. You could restore the funding that was removed by this government and in many cases boost it. You could adequately fund Māori health, housing, anti-racist immigation support, a national program for food scarcity, you could fund a commission to drive work on an antiracist justice system which reduces racist hyperincarceration rates.
| Allocation Priority | Amount |
| National Action Plan Against Racism | $588,000 |
| National Program for Constitutional Transformation | $14,800,000 |
| Restore Māori Conservation* | $42,000,000 |
| Living wage for caregivers | $1,500,000,000 |
| Free universal primary healthcare | $1,200,000,000 |
| Adequate funding for Waitangi Tribunal | $35,000,000 |
| Adequate funding for settlement negotiation support | $45,000,000 |
| Adequate funding for Takutai Moana support | $55,000,000 |
| Restore Māori Research * | $35,000,000 |
| Māori language, culture and intellectual property protection | $365,000,000 |
| Restore Marae and Whenua Infrastructure * | $22,000,000 |
| Restore Māori Health * | $180,000,000 |
| Adequate Māori education funding | $531,000,000 |
| Social housing | $1,310,000,000 |
| Migrant and Refugee support services | $235,800,000 |
| National program to address food insecurity | $2,403,000,000 |
| Adequately fund survivors of state abuse | $530,000,000 |
| Decarceration program | $407,500,000 |
| Climate fund (including public transport) | $1,500,000,000 |
| TOTAL | $10,411,688,000 |
Now look – like I said, I’m not an economist, and this isn’t intended as a full budget, what it’s intended to do is show you what *could* be afforded, if the government simply chose Tiriti justice, and chose to be antiracist – rather than CHOOSING to extract from the many, in order to benefit the few – and let’s not overlook that this is just looking at what could happen with restoring 5 revenue streams and adding capital gains tax. Even a fraction of these measures would make a massive difference.
What this shows us is what is possible, when the government stops expecting us to absorb its financial racism by missing meals, becoming unhoused, skipping doctors appointments and eventually – paying for it with our actual life-spans.
What this also throws up is how amazing our people are, for what we have achieved, on a shoestring budget up til now, because the truth is we have never been adequately funded but we have forged ahead regardless, and we must continue to do that, whilst also holding this government to account on what it SHOULD be investing in.
And investment like this pays back – in reduced health system pressure, in reduced incarceration costs, in improved Māori institutional investment. The OECD has consistently found returns of 8–12% annually on educational investment through increased income, reduced health costs, and reduced justice involvement. Multiple international studies have proven that community based conservation is the most cost-effective in the long term. Compared to the current budget priorities, which create high-costs but push them onto the lowest-earning groups – a tiriti-centred and antiracist budget would provide significant savings, in this case, over a ten year period it would produce over $9.4billion in savings, and like I said that’s just with a bare surface level scratch at restoring revenue, that’s not even considering redirection of other expenses
A Tiriti centered and antiracist budget is absolutely affordable, it’s a matter of choice.
