Nicola prescribes a tummy tuck

In this week’s episode of Newsroom’s weekly politics podcast, we peer over a fiscal cliff and search for the hits and misses of Budget 2024.-------This week's recommendations: Laura - Joel MacManus' hilarious Spinoff Budget debate sketch from the HouseMarc - Tim Murphy's view on Newsroom of Nicola Willis' big Budget speechTim – Tova O'Brien's story from the Budget lock-up revealing Willis overstated a crucial tax number -------So many numbers, so many claims and counter claims, and so much planned so far into the future that we might never see it bear fruit. This week's Raw Politics tries to sift the real from the risible in this year's Budget and to judge whether the coalition will get political bouquets or brickbats from the voting public.First, the panel of Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political writer Marc Daalder and co-editor Tim Murphy run their abacuses over the Budget's costly, broad-based tax cuts. Are the sums 'meaningful' as the finance minister hoped, or just 'not meaningless' for people's back pockets. Then we look at one aspect that Nicola Willis surely can't be happy about – a big increase and stubbornly high budget deficits for the next few years and a net debt refusing to budge down below her 40 percent of GDP target for the entire forecast period.We have a go at the game of find-a-pithy-name for the Budget, examine the political hypocrisy of ongoing 'fiscal cliffs' and nominate the big things conspicuous by their absence. -------newsroom.co.nz