Hungry school kids. Beneficiaries. Public servants. Those on prescription medicines. And now the disabled. Like some schoolyard bully, this new coalition government seems intent on beating the bejesus out whoever shuffles into its field of vision - just as long as they can’t defend themselves, and it can steal their lunch money off them.
The latest victims, the disabled and their carers, feel like the most heartless target yet, with Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds last week delivering a kicking that appeared to surprise even some of her colleagues.
In a thunderbolt announcement to a vulnerable community she is supposedly there to help, Simmonds said allowances to support carers of the disabled were being stopped because Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People - was “days” away from running out of money, something Simmonds reportedly knew was coming way back in December.
Shockingly, the decision was taken without any consultation with those affected, and it was announced, of all places, on social media platforms.
It’s hard to imagine how Simmonds could have make that situation any worse, but she did exactly that. In a classic schoolyard move, she blamed the victim, claiming carers of the disabled were essentially gaming the funding criteria and using taxpayers’ money “for massages, overseas travel, pedicures, [and] haircuts” for themselves.
Predictably, the reaction was quick and damning. Disabled people and their carers shared stories of how the funding changed lives and how it would hurt people when it was no longer available, while the Cerebral Palsy Society called the decision “draconian”. Within 24 hours, more than 10,000 people had added their names to a petition calling for the change to be scrapped.
However, Simmonds initially seemed quite unconcerned about her omni-shambles, although eventually, presumably after being caned by the headmaster, she and the ministry apologised, not for stopping the funding, but for the way it was communicated.
The Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher “Luxe” Luxon, also framed the omni-shambles as a PR cock-up rather than a capricious, out-of-the-blue decision to stop helping the people whom the disabled rely on most.
“It was poorly consulted and poorly communicated,” Luxon told the Herald. “And it’s right that she apologised for it. As by her own admission ... I don’t think it was handled as well as it could have been. I think it caused anxiety and stress for people.”
Finance Minister Nicola Willis, meanwhile, did a further clean-up job, indicating she expected Whaikaha would be getting “vast orders of magnitude more in additional funding for front-line services”. We’ll see.
But from there, things went from bad PR to weird PR. This week, it became clear Simmonds had been punished by being giving ministerial training wheels: in future, any final decisions on changes to disability allowances won’t be signed off by her, but by cabinet.
In other words, Simmonds’s ability to act as an independent minister of her ministry, at least when it comes to allowances, has been, well, disabled.
However, if you’re thinking any of this has shaken the PM’s faith in Simmonds, you’d be wrong. On Tuesday, Luxon told media that Simmonds was “doing a great job” -- which makes you wonder what a bad job looks like in Luxe-world.
Predictably, Labour called for Simmonds to get the sack, but that was never going to happen so early in National’s term. An omni-shambles might be bad PR, but losing a minister five months into government is far worse -- not to mention it being something National made great sport of when it was happening to Labour last year. So, Simmonds, dodgy judgment and all, is safe for now. It will be interesting to see what happens to her in any future ministerial reshuffle.
Until then, the net result of this whole, sorry affair is that the coalition, while promising tax cuts and offering new support for childcare with one hand, is again being seen using the other to beat up an already vulnerable group of New Zealanders.
What exactly is the meaning of the word “meaningful”? It is a question worth pondering once again after Nicola Willis delivered her Budget Policy Statement on Wednesday, a briefing that confirmed the government is definitely going to deliver its much-vaunted, how-are-they-going-to-pay-for-it tax cuts in May’s budget -- something you’d hope was the case given the frightening slash and burn that’s being engaged in to deliver them.
Willis also revealed the country’s economy is in a much worse state than when National promised the cuts. But no matter, in her list of the budget’s five priorities, she said she would “deliver meaningful tax reductions to provide cost of living relief to New Zealanders who have seen no change in personal income tax rates and thresholds since 2010″.
The word “thresholds” suggests Willis has listened to Act’s lobbying on that issue. But it’s the word “meaningful” that’s doing the heavy lifting in that sentence -- yet “meaningful” is an entirely subjective thing.
To one person, “meaningful” tax relief might be being able to finally afford to give your kid a school lunch, so you don’t have to rely on the government school lunch programme, which, in any case, is going to be cut by the very same people delivering the tax cut.
But to someone else, that same amount of tax relief might simply supply them with a slightly better class of plonk when out for dinner on Ponsonby Rd, something good for the palate, but hardly “meaningful”.
When it comes to tax, the word “meaningful” is actually meaningless, unlike “efficient”, “equitable” and “sustainable” -- words the International Monetary Fund just last week said were the three things our tax system could really benefit from being.
What we have here is a government that, in opposition and desperate to get into power, has made a poorly budgeted election promise -- most economists said so at the time -- that, in the face of recession and bad future economic forecasts, is going ahead anyway.
Come what may, there will be tax cuts this year and there is a single reason for that: National said it would do it, and to not do it would mean it can’t deliver, just like Labour.
For National to not fulfil its key election policy would be electoral suicide. So, the costs and consequences of keeping that promise don’t matter. At least for now.
