Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics: Poll reveals most NZers find Budget coverage ‘boring’

Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly, mostly satirical column on politics that appears on listener.co.nz.

Most Kiwis would rather watch the All Blacks lose 50-nil to Australia than suffer through any kind of Budget coverage, a new poll has found. The snap survey revealed that the majority of New Zealanders dreaded May, not only because of the Budget and the sound of Finance Minister and Feminist of the Year Nicola Willis strangling vowels, but because of the deluge of reporting and commentary before and after the event.

When asked about how they felt about the Budget and its coverage, 87% of people polled found it was “a bit boring”, “mostly boring”, “very boring” or “completely and utterly boring”, while 12% reported it was “a bummer”. Only 1% of those surveyed, most thought to be MPs, economists, political lobbyists, journalists or public servants fearing the chop, said they were interested in the Budget and believed the level of media coverage was justified and “about right”.

When those surveyed were asked to rank a list of things they would rather do than read, listen to or view coverage of the Budget, 33% said watch the All Blacks lose at a World Cup final, 23% said “live in Auckland”, while 5% said they would prefer to die.

Asked whether they favoured Budgets that were “a lolly scramble” or “not a lolly scramble”, 11% said yes to lollies, 9% said no to lollies, 21% said it depended on the type of lollies and 59% said they didn’t know or care and could the surveyor please just go away.

On the question of which party’s budgets were responsible for generating the most boring coverage, National or Labour, 93% said it was hard to tell. The only entertaining budgets, according to respondents, were the joke ones released by the Green Party.

Vox pops with random people on their lunch break in a windy square in Wellington found that most people agreed with the poll’s findings. “I reckon Budget coverage is even more boring than stories about house prices or polls outside election years about political party popularity,” said a sad man having a sandwich with no butter, cheese, lettuce or meat in it because they’re all too expensive due to past budgets.

Another said she supposed that the appalling high level of budget coverage inflicted on New Zealanders was “the price we pay for living in a liberal democracy, even if that price, like everything else these days, is way too high”.

Parliament’s “powerful” Privileges Committee has issued a complete list of penalties for misconduct and bad behaviour by MPs in the House. The committee released the list following widespread condemnation of the proposed punishment given to Te Pāti Māori MPs for performing a haka on the floor of the House following the first reading debate on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill in November.