National promised a “back pocket boost” when it unveiled a tax package before the election, and now in Government in tough economic times its Budget next week will sort the easy promises from reality.

The tax bracket changes and other in-work and family payment adjustments might need to land with a thump rather than a flutter for hard-pressed Kiwi households – but that isn’t easy to achieve.

-------

Recommendations:
Tim - A great exchange in the House on housing between Kieran McAnulty and Chris Bishop. Watch here.
Emma - David Seymour’s inner circle, by Audrey Young in the Herald.
Marc - The Return of Evan Price, by Emma Hatton on Newsroom.


-------

The Raw Politics panel this week, Newsroom senior political writer Marc Daalder, politics and business writer Emma Hatton and co-editor Tim Murphy, look ahead to a Budget that will put the confident Finance Minister Nicola Willis and her new Labour counterpart Barbara Edmond to the test.

The panel weighs the gains and losses from the mass layoffs in the public service as the coalition parties make good on their promise to cut what they called a bloated sector. Do back-office cuts really allow those in the front line to keep doing their jobs effectively? The example of the corporate world would suggest not.

Our reader question asks why the National-led Government axed the first home grant suddenly (spooked by a Newshub scoop that it was going). And the panel discusses former PM Bill English’s radical proposals to change our public housing landscape. The bottom line is we won’t have as many state houses, or as much Crown-owned housing land after this process is underway.