Budget Policy Statement (BPS) 2024

Summary

• The Salvation Army Te Ope Whakaora welcomes Budget goals to lift real incomes and increase opportunities for all New Zealanders. It is important that Budget 2024 delivers meaningful increases in incomes and opportunities for those facing hardship and those on the margins of our society.  
• The current recession is already causing too much harm in the communities where we work and now is not the time to deepen hardship with cuts to crucial social spending. A genuine social investment approach to Budget decisions is needed that links spending with improvements in outcomes like reduced hardship or more affordable housing.
• Improving overall outcomes and reducing the sustained disparities Māori experience must be a focus for the Budget. We urge the continued use of He Ara Waiora as an important framework to measure overall changes in outcomes from Te Ao Māori perspective.
• A government spending target of 30 percent of GDP lacks an evidence base. Comparisons with other wealthy countries suggest higher levels of government spending are needed to achieve better outcomes. Higher levels of spending can be supported by widening the tax base to include taxes on capital gains or other forms of wealth taxes.
• The nine Public Service Targets recently announced need to be funded through Budget allocations that genuinely resource social change in areas such as employment, school attendance, youth crime, violence, and homelessness.
• Other areas not included in the Targets must also be seen as priorities: mental health and addictions, prison remand and reintegration, problem debt and financial hardship are examples from the work of The Salvation Army that need Budget investment.
• Child poverty reduction needs continued priority to achieve government targets and the Budget needs to include a plausible plan to achieve them. In the face of rising food insecurity, this must include continued funding to core food security initiatives such as the Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches programme and the New Zealand Food Network.     

 

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