Poll reveals housing as key budget priority

Ahead of Thursday's budget, a new poll puts housing as the top priority of New Zealanders with economic growth and tax reform way behind

Poll reveals housing as key budget priority
The government needs to make sure it has some answers to current housing issues when it unveils its new budget this Thursday.

Housing is the clear priority for the budget among New Zealanders polled by Ipsos for Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand; 22.7% said it was the thing they most want Steven Joyce to tackle.

Healthcare is also a high-ranker with 19.9% and Peter Vial, New Zealand Country Head of Chartered Accountants ANZ says that it is likely to replace housing at the top in the near future.

“While housing may eventually die down as an issue, healthcare is here to stay. In fact it is only going to get bigger,” he said. “It will be the number one issue sooner rather than later.”

Poverty, while a distant third as the top priority of respondents, was a top 3 issue for 26%, just behind education on 30% but beating out employment (24.8%), immigration (19.8%) and crime (18.7%).

Tax cuts are always going to be popular and 48.6% say lower taxes is very important with another 39.5% rating them moderately so. Most want these to be achieved through cutting rates while raising thresholds.

Almost three quarters say that tax cuts should help the lowest income earners and more than half say middle-income earners should benefit. 

Interestingly, most respondents say that the government surplus should be used for other things rather than cutting taxes. Only 3.7% put tax reforms as their top priority.

“Our poll shows that the Government will have to tread a fine line between delivering on demands for both tax reductions and also channeling greater spending into healthcare, education and poverty reduction measures,” Vial said.