Bill English will present his seventh budget tomorrow. He will declare his seventh deficit in a row. There will be no surplus. There will be a small surplus next year, but that is kind of wishful thinking.

When you get $7 billion ripped out of the economy where inflation is low and interest rates are low English didn't have a hope in hell of presenting a surplus despite the jumping up and down from Labour and the Greens.

Tomorrows Budget will be pretty bland I suspect. That is the way Bill English does things. Steady as she goes.

There will be a lot of stuff missing that I think should be dealt to but this Government doesn't do bold and daring.

There is much expectation that there will be some initiatives to assist with what they call "child poverty".

One of the more interesting ideas comes from the Children's Commissioner Russell Wills.

He wants more targeting of universal benefits. In particular, he wants to cut pensions and divert that money to needy children.

I have no issue with targeted assistance to needy families and removing Working for Families tax credits from those families who don't need it. Its preposterous.

I'd gut Working for Families completely but that's another story.

There is no reason why doctors visits have to be subsidised for wealthier families either.

But Wills wants to dock wealthier pensioners to give to parents to reduce "child poverty".

I don't see "child poverty" in this country, there may be some but I think its exaggerated.

I see a lot of bad parents making bad choices.

Transferring old peoples pensions into welfare, which is what it is, will hardly fix the problem.