The Budget 2004 Overview
Strong, secure and sustainable New Zealand

Corrections:

$180 million over three years toward new prison construction.
$30 million increase in 2004-05, rising to $40 million from 2005-06, for staff training, property maintenance and prison health services.
$1.1 million in the current financial year and in 2004-05 for support services to the New Zealand Parole Board.

Biosecurity:

$46.5 million over four years to improve New Zealand's biosecurity defences, particularly marine biosecurity.

Core public service:

$1 billion to ensure departmental baselines are adequate to the task; including substantial increases to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Children Young Persons and Their Families Service, Corrections, Defence and Inland Revenue.
$5 million to increase Customs air and sea border surveillance.
$14.8 million over four years to fund secure online government services, including $240,000 capital funding.
$20.6 million broadcasting package.

Already announced:

$73.4 million to tackle court delays.
$3.5 million capital over two years for a new courthouse in Queenstown.
$40 million over four years to tackle the methamphetamine trade and organised crime.
$14.9 million over four years to set up Four Family Safety Teams to deal with domestic violence.
$9 million over four years to increase jurors' fees.
$14.8 million to form dedicated National Security Teams to counter terrorism.
$13 million to build and $1.8 million over four years to run a new Wiri police centre.
$381,000 over the next two years to support the work of Youth Offending Teams
$12 million over four years for the Pacific Security Fund.
$70 million over four years for Statistics New Zealand.
$2.6 million to allow more than 6000 low-income families to have their homes made more energy efficient.
Another six million carbon credits to be offered for tender for climate friendly projects.
$4 million over four years for research into recreational fishing.
$4.3 million over four years to increase surveillance against fisheries poaching.
$7 million over six years to eradicate pests on Secretary and Resolution Islands.
$3.22 million over four years for a radio communications network for fisheries compliance officers.
$1.5 million a year plus $60,000 start-up capital for a dedicated Pay and Employment Equity Unit in the Department of Labour.
$10 million a year for the NZ Film Commission
$380,000 a year for the NZ Film Archive
$12.6 million over the next three years for new memorials $600,000 a year for three years to the Music Industry Commission.

Further details post budget:

Additional $166 million over four years for a green package.
$24 million over four years to establish a digital repository at the National Library of New Zealand.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>