Muldoon was a master of manipulation. The former Tory Prime Minister was also the custodian of the country's purse strings and as his Budgets approached he'd pucker his cheek and predict a dire budget deficit.

On the night he stood to read his ramble in Parliament's bear pit, and in those days Budgets were always delivered at night, he'd have sufficiently softened up the great unwashed and would return a more healthy deficit, if there is such a thing. At least it allowed him to grunt about things being better than he'd expected them to be.

And anyway The Grunter maintained the public wouldn't understand a deficit if they fell over one in the street.

Fortunately we're a little more economically literate these days. We're no longer happy to sit back and listen, without question, to the drone from The Beehive.

In that vein you'd have to ask how has such a miraculous turnaround been achieved by the Accident Compensation Corporation which just six years ago was being described by its then Minister Nick Smith as being insolvent? With the reinvigorated state insurer the Dipton Drawler Bill English's Budget next week will see ACC levies cut by half a billion bucks over the next two years.

Truth is the organisation wasn't in the dire straights the minister claimed it to be in. Its investments were suffering, but then so was everything when the global economy was in turmoil.

Nick Smith was on his ideological high horse, galloping towards the privatisation of ACC. But just a few years back they realised that to open it up to private insurers, levies would have to rise, and that would not only be unpalatable to the punter but would more than likely mean those who most needed cover for workplace accidents wouldn't get it.

As it is ACC's investments have picked up and they've become much more stingy than they used to be meaning there's more money in the pot to give back. In reality they're recycling the money you've already paid in.

As The Dipton Drawler sends his seventh Budget to the printers, the ghost of the chuckling Muldoon hovers over the presses.

English will be presiding over yet another deficit next week and there's now some doubt that he'll even get the books into the black next year.

Failure to make that much promised surplus will for the Finance Minister achieve the unenviable record held by Muldoon of eight deficits in a row!