Budget 2020, COVID-19 elimination, and the new normal
The New Zealand Minister of Finance, Hon. Grant Robertson, delivered the budget on 14 May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the original budget had to be scrapped. The new budget is dubbed "Rebuilding together" and its main focus is on jobs.
The main budget item, whose cost dwarfs all others by an order of magnitude, is the $50 billion COVID Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF). Most of the money is to save businesses with wage subsidies and tax relief, and launch a number of major infrastructure projects to create more jobs. About $30 billion of this fund has already been committed. This also includes ongoing costs associated with keeping COVID-19 eliminated from New Zealand. Everyone entering the country is put up, for 14 days, in hotels which have been repurposed as quarantine facilities. People are tested twice during quarantine - near the beginning (day 3) and near the end (day 12) of the quarantine period, before being cleared to enter the country proper.