The best label for this year’s announcement by Bill English might be the ‘Bare Minimum Budget’. It does the bare minimum to defuse potential political damage in a range of areas – homelessness and health are prime among them – but almost nothing to address the country’s most deep-rooted, systemic social problems.  Indeed the Budget…

New data from the IRD shows that the share of taxable income going to the richest New Zealanders has not changed under National. However, that share is still very large, indicating significant income imbalances. The IRD data shows that the richest tenth of taxpayers got one-third of all taxable income in both 2008 and 2014….