course

Session One: The economist would explain and answer questions about how budgets have been built, like factoring in the money that has already been committed, as in big projects like the ferries!!!! 2025 Budget documents would be provided.   Session Two: Depending on our numbers we would divide into spending ministries like Health, Police, Education, Conservation, etc., and working from the 2025 budget, work out what we wanted to include for 2027, plus new projects. We would try to have small groups of two or three U3A-ers, using some of the retired public servants amongst us plus others, to help in each small group. We might not have enough participants to cover all ministries.   Session Three: We would meet in groups of like-minded departments, such as all those with natural resources: conservation, environment, biosecurity, agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, and review each of our budgets, and which “new “ projects won support. And you might have police, courts, prisons ……   Session Four: Another exercise in supporting or cutting, although this time each small group presents their budget to the whole group. And we settle on what we can, or should, support.   Session Five: So how do we pay for this? Taxes? Dividends? Specialist charges? We would bring in a tax expert or two to explain the different ways of a government raising money and we would divide into groups, depending on size.   Either in Session Five or a final session we would review the pros and cons of our decisions and whether there was a better way of building a budget.   The sessions would last 75 minutes at most. We would have them once a fortnight, say in April/May. This should be a fun exercise, as well as a sobering one. But the emphasis will be on fun and we will get some “experts” to help us. The shape of the different exercises will depend on the numbers who want to try this out: it is an experiment!!!!