Business Editor-at-Large Liam Dann talks to journalists Isaac Davison and Dubby Henry about the budget's effects on welfare and the education system.
Video / NZ Herald
More than two million New Zealanders will get a $350 cash payment as part of a series of temporary measures to cope with a "global inflation storm".
The cost-of-living payment will be available to anyone earning less than $70,000 and who is not eligible for the winter energy payment.
Cuts to public transport fares, petrol excise duties and road user charges have been extended for another two months. For Community Services Card holders, half-price public transport will be permanent.
"While we can't control global inflation forces, our job is to take the hard edges off it for Kiwis," said Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
The measures would cover what was expected to be the peak of the inflation "storm", he said. Inflation was expected to ease in 2023 before dropping back to about 3 per cent in the following years.
The House went into urgency last night to pass legislation on the new relief payment, which would be paid in monthly installments of $117 between August and October.
There was immediate protest from charities and NGOs which said the poorest households had been unfairly excluded. It was a "slap in the face" for beneficiaries whose payments had not kept up with inflation, said Auckland Action Against Poverty co-ordinator Brooke Stanley Pao.
Most beneficiaries already receive the winter payment, worth up to $700, and were not eligible for the cost-of-living payment.
Robertson said the relief measures were carefully targeted to those who needed them most.
"Anything too broad could make inflation worse", he said, noting that this included National's proposed tax cuts.
While calls to lift core benefits for the second successive Budget went unheeded, there were some more targeted measures for those on lower incomes.
Grants for urgent dental care were lifted from $300 to $1000, fulfilling a Labour election promise in 2020.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the cost of living measures had to be targeted or they would worsen inflation. Photo / Marty Melville
And a law change would ensure child support payments went directly to sole parents as income, rather than to the state to handle. The change would be worth around $24 a week to parents from mid-2023 and would lift an estimated 14,000 children above the poverty line.
There were medium-term measures to address the price of food, in the form of an urgent law change to stop the two large supermarket chains from blocking new retailers from entering the market.
Asked why he was not doing more, Robertson said the legislation was something the Government could do quickly - and would allow new entrants to plan to enter the market. Further action would be announced in the coming weeks.
Carl Pynenburg, a primary school teacher in Seatoun, Wellington, welcomed attempts to address the cost of living - even though neither he nor his partner, who works at Weta Digital, would qualify for the new payment.
He said rising costs of housing, petrol, energy and food were hard to ignore in their community. For some of the children at his school, price rises might be the difference between whether they had food on the table or not, he said.
Pynenburg, who has been searching for a house for two years, had also hoped for measures to make housing or renting more affordable. He and his partner paid $550 in rent, but said if they moved they would pay $700 for a similar property.
Carl Pynenburg, a primary school teacher, said he was concerned that first home buyer grants would quickly be cancelled out by interest rate rises. Photo / Supplied
While eligibility criteria for first home buyers grants was loosened in the Budget, Pynenburg said these grants of up to $20,000 would be quickly absorbed by interest rate rises.
"Our incomes don't keep up with the amount we need to save for a deposit. And then on top of that, being crippled by rising interest rates, repayments just aren't affordable."
In other housing measures, the Government will spend another $1 billion on public housing, though this will not create any more houses but instead support existing, large-scale construction and pay for vulnerable people to stay in motels until these houses are built.
NGOs who build affordable rental properties will also be able to get grants from the Government as part of a new $350 million fund.
