Budget 2021 - Auckland Business Chamber

The budget aimed to balance ideology and compassion with practicality to carve a pathway to recovery through investing in infrastructure and housing, the catalyst to create jobs, growth, and transformation.

“Compassion won,” says Auckland Business Chamber CEO Michael Barnett. “Business got nothing”.

“I don’t have difficulty with Government fulfilling its election promises to address child poverty and incomes. It is right to help those people who cannot work and create the environment to get people working.

But with lower than forecast unemployment and more jobs than people, it is disappointing that the Budget gave no relief to tourism, hospitality and accommodation operators who need working holiday and seasonal worker visas extended urgently to employ the labour needed now to deliver the quality of service and experience to visitors, their lifeline to survival from the opening of the Trans Tasman bubble.”

“If we are to increase prosperity it must be for all and be measured in increased productivity not just the size of our mortgages.

Infrastructure projects must be more than plans on a table.”

© Scoop Media