Budget 2022 editorial: Finance Minister Grant Robertson calls time on Covid fight

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson during the release of Budget 2022 at Parliament. Photo / Marty Melville

EDITORIAL

In January, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said there was enough money in the Covid Response and Recovery Fund for the costs of the Omicron outbreak but warned more money might be needed if the country required a fourth round of vaccinations.

That fourth round of doses, if it is needed, will need to come from the $1.2 billion set aside for Covid-19 costs this year, after the Covid-19 fund was wound up in last Thursday's Budget.

Its final $3.2b was divvied up between the Government's cost-of-living payments and offsetting Budget 2022 investments, leaving $1.2b for Covid-19 costs that arise between now and next year's Budget.

The $1b cost-of-living package included a new temporary payment totalling $350 for about two million workers who earn less than $70,000 and who don't receive the Winter Energy Payment.

That payment was passed into law under urgency on Thursday night and the $814 million for it will come out of the now disestablished Covid Response and Recovery Fund.

The Opposition has been baying for this to happen after highlighting earlier decisions to channel Covid response funds to install cameras on fishing boats and fund art therapy. National and Act MPs had said the funds would be better spent easing the impacts of inflation.

Certainly, the deployment of the funds onto relieving inflation pressures is within the remit of the Covid fund, which was introduced in response to the pandemic to keep Kiwis safe and help the country's economic recovery.

Using the fund to inject money into households to offset inflation has been described as a "masterstroke" but how clever will it look should the current pandemic plateau trend upwards again?

The cost-of-living package will be gone in three months. Will Covid be over then?

The cost of the first vaccine campaign came in at over $1b - and that excludes the booster campaign that followed. A fourth dose will likely be cheaper; overseas, fourth shots have been targeted at the people particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.

Nevertheless, the pandemic is far from over and there's no guarantee a new, deadly and therefore costly variant of the virus won't crop up between now and next year's Budget. Such a variant is likely to cost the Government much more than $1.2b.