Government freeing up money to help cost of living

Te Whanganui-a-Tara - A tranche of government projects are being stopped or delayed to focus more time, energy and resources on Kiwis battling with the rise in cost of living, prime minister Chris Hipkins announced today.

It will give ministers and wider government more bandwidth to deal with cost of living issues and the cyclone recovery.

This will save about $1 billion, which will be reallocated to support New Zealanders with the cost of living.

“That’s in addition to more than $700 million in savings reallocated to fund the petrol excise cut and half-price public transport extension through to the end of June,” Hipkins says.

The projects being reprioritised include:

•            Saving $586 million by stopping the clean car upgrade scheme, where households can scrap their old cars in return for a grant for a cleaner vehicle or to pay for public transport.

•            Refocusing a goal of increasing and improving public transport as an alternative to driving to the five main centres of Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch.

•            Significantly narrowing the speed reduction programme to focus on the most dangerous one per cent of state highways, and ensuring Waka Kotahi are consulting meaningfully with affected communities.

•            Stopping the social leasing car scheme. The scheme was to provide leasing arrangements to low income families for clean cars but was proving difficult to implement. And several of the communities where it was to be trialled have been affected by the recent weather.

•            Deferring advice on the second part of legislation looking at alcohol reform that relate to pricing, sponsorship and advertising. This will now be pushed back to April 2024, rather than come to Ministers in March this year.

•            Not introducing legislation to lower the voting age to 16 for general elections. Instead, government says it will shift focus to lowering the age for voting in local body elections.

•            Deferring work on the container return scheme that would see small refunds for returning containers. It’s estimated it will add a small cost to the average household and we don’t want to be imposing additional costs on families at this time.

•            Deferring public consultation on a new test to determine who is a contractor and who is an employee. A recent employment court ruling has significant implications on the legal definition of a contractor, so rather than pushing ahead with our proposed consultation on changes we will put our work on hold until all appeals of the case are heard.