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An OUSA-run forum on the Government’s budget resulted in yawns for many on Monday. Speakers from the youth wings of most parliamentary parties were generally ambivalent, although Finance Minister Bill English’s latest effort attracted criticism from even the Government’s most ardent supporters.

The Government’s supporters were quick but lukewarm in their defence of the budget. Act On Campus spokesman and failed parliamentary candidate Guy McCallum thought that the Government’s subsidy toward house insulation had been “incredible” for reducing poverty, and Young National member Todd Dickens claimed the budget provided for “the betterment of the people,” and a “strong nation.” He praised the end of student allowances for postgrad students as “just one of those quite fair cuts,” but abandoned the party line in response to an audience question on changes to student allowance cuts for solo mothers, confessing that “what Paula Bennett has done … I can’t stand up here and say that I support that, because I don’t support that.”

Young Greens’ George Lellow and Nyssa Payne-Harker argued that the budget should have reduced New Zealand’s current account deficit, and that a capital gains tax should be levied. Labour’s Curtis Omelvena also offered detailed criticism of the budget, complaining that the Government should have found a way to reduce power prices. Speaking for Te Roopu Maori, Gianna Leoni thought that changes to tertiary education could unequally impact Maori students. Mana Party speaker Andrew Tait was the most critical of all, saying that the “charlatans” in government were transferring millions of dollars to a “cockroach capitalist class.” Tait believed that a “working class exodus” to Australia had been the only thing preventing serious economic difficulties, and that “if Australia goes into recession, we’re fucked.”