Policy.net.nz - Political Policy Online

The following is a summary of the 2007 Budget with comparisons avaliable back to the 2002 Budget.
For official information on how the tax-take is spent, the following is sourced from the 2007 Budget presented to Parliament in May 2007. It is available online at the official Treasury website from where all the following has been sourced.

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget2007/estimates/pdfs/est07sumtab.pdf

The categories used in the next table are those used in the menu to the left.
Eighty eight percent (88%) of all spending is in Transport, Law & Order, Defence, Education, Capital & Debt Servicing,Health, and Social Welfare. Click on these categories to find the details of this spending

Actual 2002/03	Actual 2003/04	Actual 2004/05	Actual 2005/06	Actual 2006/07		Budget 2007/08
NZ$ billions	NZ$ billions	NZ$ billions	NZ$ billions	NZ$ billions	Category	NZ$ billions	%
0.019	0.019	0.020	0.017	0.030	Communications	0.025	0.0
0.028	0.032	0.035	0.050	0.123	Treaty of Waitangi	0.029	0.0
0.065	0.079	0.072	0.076	0.084	Industrial Relations	0.080	0.1
0.108	0.128	0.146	0.167	0.163	Immigration	0.161	0.3
0.037	0.284	0.172	0.277	0.208	Energy	0.211	0.3
0.271	0.315	0.352	0.361	0.404	Arts and culture	0.439	0.7
0.546	0.328	0.324	0.603	0.679	Foreign policy	0.469	0.8
0.358	0.415	0.427	0.449	0.481	Special Interests	0.513	0.8
0.496	0.551	0.557	0.626	0.647	Science and research	0.660	1.1
0.428	0.615	0.607	0.684	0.739	Economy	0.753	1.2
0.423	0.505	0.578	0.676	0.799	Government	0.774	1.2
0.638	0.748	0.631	0.642	0.747	Environment	0.784	1.3
0.349	1.099	0.647	0.773	1.009	Housing	0.910	1.5
0.633	0.641	0.667	0.746	0.819	Justice	0.950	1.5
1.543	1.647	1.514	1.677	1.919	Law & Order	2.136	3.4
2.073	2.452	2.007	2.141	2.533	Defence	2.224	3.6
1.477	1.602	1.520	1.693	2.319	Transport	2.298	3.7
7.754	8.613	8.087	8.539	8.613	Education	9.553	15.3
8.003	10.111	8.121	10.477	9.815	Capital, Servicing Debt & Collecting Tax	9.760	15.6
8.368	9.624	8.800	9.657	10.465	Health	12.020	19.2
14.876	15.211	15.356	16.020	17.034	Social Welfare	17.695	28.3
--------------	-------------	-------------	--------------	--------------	--------------------------------	--------------	---------
48.492	54.929	50.642	56.351	60.079	Total Spending	62.464	100.0

These numbers are sourced from Budget tables with the following delightful titles:

Actual 2002/03	Actual 2003/04	Actual 2004/05	Actual 2005/06	Actual 2006/07		Budget 2007/08
19.398	21.134	20.550	22.415	24.634	Output expenses	26.580
16.082	14.747	15.012	16.101	17.379	Benefits and Other Unrequited Expenses	17.784
2.624	2.549	2.553	2.678	2.418	Borrowing Expenses	2.133
5.837	6.117	6.413	9.617	9.252	Other Expenses	9.742
3.431	8.826	6.077	5.480	6.312	Capital Expenditure	6.152
0.000	0.000	0.036	0.060	0.084	Intelligence and security dept expenses and capital expenditure	0.073
1.119	1.558	0.000	0.000	0.000	Repayment of Debt	0.000
----------	---------	---------	----------	----------	------------------------------------	----------
48.492	54.929	50.642	56.351	60.079	Total Spending	62.464

Source: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget2007/estimates/pdfs/est07sumtab.pdf