Yes, I am back to assess my performance in terms of the predictions made prior to last Thursday's first Budget by Bill English. To be honest, I was evidently wrong on some of my predictions but generally right on 60% of them.

My main predictions for last Thursday were:
*Scrapping of the 2010 and 2011 tranch of tax cuts (widely predicted - correct);
*Postponement of payments into the Super Fund (correct - it turned out to be an 11 year suspension);
*Calls for further 'efficiencies' within state sector spending (largely correct - the budget called for $2 billion of spending cuts to be made on what are deemed as non-priority items - but when does $55 million of Conservation spending get deemed non-priority? Only by National, of course!;
*A lowering of the new spending allowance permitted within each budget from around $1.5 billion this year to $1.1 billion in 2010-11 - which effectively amounts to a spending freeze.

On other scores though, I was wrong:
*The scrapping of the universal primary health care subsidy meaning that doctor's visits and prescription charges will go up for all non-Community Services Card holders and they will be held at their present rate for CSC holders;
*An extensive modification of the Student Loans Scheme interest free debt policy in that all borrowing undertaken from the 2010-11 year will again incur interest but there will be incentives introduced down the line for faster repayment by borrowers - however, this policy might not impact on borrowers who take out loans prior to March 31st next year;
*The Government will signal the privatisation within the next two to three years of what it regards as 'non-core assets' such as the Meterological Service, TVNZ and other smaller SOEs.

What matters is that the three predictions I made could still come to pass in future Budget statements. With Bill English so fixated on reducing the deficit and hence public debt, these types of policy moves could still be made, despite the public opprobrium that might attach to them.

Indeed English can afford to do so in a sense as Labour is, as I have contended all year, not acting as an effective opposition at all. It's response to last Thursday's Budget was akin to a drunk driver skidding all over the road in the dark. On the one hand, it introduced the first round of tax cuts in late October which were to be followed by further reductions in 2010 and 2011 as well. Convenient amnesia was the order of the day though as Labour attacked National for abandoning its promises on tax cuts while at the same time condemning the spending cuts that were there.

Bill English could afford to smile a bit too as he pushed spending up (albeit by small amounts) to sustain the health and education systems. The view of most ordinary people was that we got nothing out of the Budget personally but it could have been worse!

That's why the right-wing political and business commentariat hated it as much as the left did. In his strange way, English was, as one thoughtful commentator (probably my blogging space companion Peter Wilson) put it, walking a tightrope between pleasing the electorate on the one hand and the debt ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor's on the other.

Whatever one thinks of the Budget, then if Peter Wilson is right (and he might very well be) the next two could be just plain awful. And then (awfully perhaps) my predictions might come true.

My plea to Bill and John is please, don't make them so! But I don't like my chances of being heard.