National Party leader Judith Collins blasted the annual budget presented by Finance Minister Grant Robertson, calling it a deep-red budget. In a post budget meeting with business and industry leaders and the media, Ms Collins said the government has done nothing for the businesses and industries in this budget. The event was organised by Business NZ and addressed by Judith Collins and National’s Finance & commerce spokesperson Andrew Bayly.

Ms Judith Collins was very critical of the budget and said the Labour government seem to have no vision for growing the economy of New Zealand and is only increasing country’s debts. The budget is a clear indicator that government is not working to increase the economy and creating any jobs but only increasing the benefits by putting an additional burden of 3.3 billion on the already over stretched economy. Ms Judith was particularly critical of governments allocation of money in the health sector and said government is spending half a billion only on re-structuring health system but on the critical Pharmac, the extra allocation is only 200 million which is just not enough keeping in view the increasing cost of some very essential drugs like for caner.

Ms Judith Collins emphasised that when National Party is back in government our focus would have been on building jobs. She said the cost of living has gone up under this government and government has completely failed to check the rising house prices. She also said that she is not against increasing the benefits for the some really needy people, but the focus should have been to bring the beneficiaries back into work force. There is no plan to create any new jobs or to bring the beneficiaries into workforce.

Ms Collins further said while we saw a big increase in benefit payments but government said no for an increase for another three years to the nurses and other medical staff, who are working tirelessly in these stressful times to save people’s lives. She said it is a slap on the face of some hard-working people. Ms Collins was also critical of cut on funding for police in Corrections and removing the funding to get prisoners into work when they leave. The post budget lunch meeting was held The Hilton hotel in CBD in Auckland and attended by a select number of business leaders and National party leaders. -Yugal Parashar

Judith Collin blasts annul-budget for 2021