Rodney's Alternative Budget

Here’s ACT leader Rodney Hide's alternative Budget

* Drop income tax to 20%;

* Hold government spending in real terms;

* Deal to red tape through a Regulatory Responsibility Bill;

* Demand transparency and accountability for all government departments through Service Level Agreements that would see Department Heads fired for failure to deliver.

* Distributing shares in the SOEs to everyone;

* Dismantle Cullen fund with a dividend into everyone’s Kiwi Saver or an Education endowment

I especially like the idea of distributing shares in State Owned Enterprises back to their real owners, the citizens.

Had the economic reformers of the '80s done more of this, "privatisation" would not have the stigma it has today.

Service Level Agreements are a potential problem.

Currently the police top brass are tied to similar agreements. Their bonuses depend on low crime stats. So what do they do? They fudge statistics, ignore heavy and hard to catch criminals and focus on easy meat to make crime stats look good etc.

This approach has proved disastrous to policing and should be abolished forthwith.

Service Level Agreements would have to take the "corruption" factor into account and be very intelligently focused to be effective.