On the bread and butter side there was the decision to boost benefits and superannuation by the rate of inflation, rather than the usual adjustment of the average wage.
Delivering the bread and butter did not come cheap for the Government – the increase will cost about $2 billion all up – and $311 million of that was a result of opting for the higher inflation increase.
It will only give those on government payments between $2 and $5 more a week than the wage-based adjustment would have got them – but it was a canny move.
It turned it from a sizable business-as-usual adjustment into something worth announcing - showing the Government was doing more than it had to for those on lower incomes.
The bonfire is slowly starting to starve National of things to attack Labour on. And Hipkins has more to come: pointing to the Budget in May as the next big announcements day. His early focus on those on low incomes suggests that middle-income earners may well get their bit then.
Luxon was predictably unimpressed with Monday’s offerings, saying Hipkins had simply got rid of ridiculous projects that should never have been started – while doing nothing to address the causes of inflation through real spending restraint, or offering cost-of-living relief to middle-income earners in the form of tax cuts.
He called the $1 billion in savings as akin to “a rounding error” and suggested Hipkins instead deploy tax cuts. That was not so much a suggestion as a way of reminding voters that National did have a tax cuts policy - and it was more generous than Labour’s was likely to be.
The bonfire has the double purpose of saving money to spend elsewhere and trying to save Labour’s bacon by removing policies that are unpopular or not worth defending.
The prime example of that double purpose in today’s announcement was the decision to scrap plans to lower speed limits on state highways around the country - other than the most dangerous one per cent of roads.
It will save a bit of money and is part of Hipkins’ attempts to show he is in tune with voters politically – polls have shown the plan to lower speed limits, especially on state highways, is not popular.
Only Three Waters has been less popular: and Hipkins is yet to deliver his own twist on those unpopular reforms. That will be for another day.
Hipkins was clearly keen to ensure he did not also burn political capital in Auckland on his bonfire by going too far in pruning big Auckland transport projects: confirming the second Waitemata Harbour crossing was still a go-go.
However, his pursuit of $1 billion in savings saw Auckland light rail moved from the slow track to the even slower track, lower speed limits all but gone, a programme to entice people to trade in old rust-buckets for electric cars is scrapped, deemed not worth the money or effort.
The bonfire was depicted as going too far by some (the Greens, who objected to scrapping climate-friendly policies), and not far enough by others (National and Act).
While Hipkins was frantically applying the bellows to his fire in a bid to make it look bigger than it was, Act leader David Seymour was trying to turn it into a right royal inferno by suggested he throw more onto it.
In the meantime, his announcements coincided with the Stats NZ’s latest release of the food price index – showing food had risen by 12 per cent – and fruit and veg by 23 per cent – over the last year.
Despite those grim numbers, it did at least deliver Hipkins an early victory in his bread and butter battle: the cost of a loaf of plain white bread had dropped five per cent and butter had dropped three per cent.
