A spokesperson for Finance Minister Bill English today gave a broad hint that this year’s Budget would outline a Massive Restructuring of New Zealand’s welfare system.

“The Budget is likely to outline massive restructuring of New Zealand’s welfare system,” spokesperson Con Tittle-Twyse said, giving journalists the chance to contenterise two sentences where one should suffice.

“We have been crunching the numbers for some time,” he went on. “Not only do they not dunk as well as gingernuts, but it seems the Government isn’t providing welfare funding where it’s needed in a cost-effective way. So we’re going to stop it completely.”

Instead, people wanting a hand-out would set up a Givealittle page. “We’ve been trialling this already, in conjunction with the S&P section [Sop and Pap] of the Herald and it seems to be working well,” Mr Tittle-Twyse said. “Mystery illnesses, stolen laptops, a new leather steering wheel cover for the BMW – all the things you’d expect WINZ to shell out for can be better sourced from the crowd. Plus, it would give the Herald many more self-generating pages each day, allowing some of their content-assembly team to spend that free time cutting and pasting tweets from all over the world but mainly the boring parts.”

Although the new system was expected to work flawlessly from day one, there was still the problem of how to prevent shortfall, Mr Tittle-Twyse said. “But we think digging deeper pits outside WINZ offices will sort that out.”

The nation’s roads will also be taken in a new direction, thanks to a bold initiative that will see the NZ Transport Agency disestablished and all design and construction work handed, on an over-sized plate with realistic yolk stains, to Weta Workshop.

“The Government feels that Sir Richard and his team have the necessary skills to create a roading system that will look really good on the big screen and attract crowds of tourists,” Con Tittle-Twyse told WWNews on condition we stop eating the tarmac samples. “Weta is going to approach the whole system from a completely different angle, as will we all when it’s finished.” Sir Richard was unavailable for comment due to his scarf taking a lot longer to knot than usual.

The nation’s bus and train stock will be scrapped, Mr Tittle-Twyse continued, with all future public transport vehicles supplied from Sir Peter Jackson’s private stock. “Sir Peter is currently designing and building a fleet of huge plywood coaches to handle the main routes,” he said.  Sir Jackson didn’t return our calls, reportedly because his fingernails kept getting in the way whenever he tried to use the phone.