Todd Talks with Todd Muller National MP

So by the time you are reading this we will have had this Government's second to last budget.

Although I don't yet know the detail, significant debt funded cash has signalled to be spent on their ill-fated health reforms. No one doubts our nurses, midwives and local DHB staff need more support, in terms of salaries, but I have no confidence that the billions announced in health will make its way to those who need to most – our front line staff. Instead, it will get absorbed into another centralised bureaucracy.

But in many ways the numbers -- the billions, the debt -- the clamour of action of this week is a failed attempt to distract us from a searing truth – that the wheels are falling off this Government.

I am not saying this to make a cute political point, but wherever we look: law and order, health, cost of living, truancy, immigration, housing, roading, it's just words now.

Real delivery, actual results simply are beyond them – and that is a crying shame for our region.