Hi John, 

This week, I made some significant announcements and I wanted to make sure you heard the news.

My focus is on the big issues that matter most to New Zealanders. Right now, this means tackling the cost of living and supporting communities following the recent extreme weather.

That’s why I’ve announced a cost of living package that will give pensioners, students, parents, and those on main benefits a boost to their income from next month.  

I know every little bit counts when making ends meet. These changes will help approximately 1.4 million New Zealanders afford the things they need:

• Superannuation will rise. A couple who are both aged over 65 receive $102.84 more in total a fortnight and a single person living alone receive an extra $66.86 each payment.
• Families will see increases to Working for Families, including an extra $4 for Best Start Payments taking it to $69 per week and an increase of $9 for the eldest child rate of Family Tax Credit lifting it to $136 per week. 
• More people will be eligible for Childcare Assistance due to the increases to the income thresholds.
• Tertiary students will get a boost, with those receiving student allowance or student loan living cost payments getting around $20 extra each payment.

This follows our decisions to increase the minimum wage by $1.50 to $22.70 an hour from 1 April, as well as cutting the cost of petrol, and making public transport half price until the end of June – and permanently for Community Services Card holders and tertiary students.

When I took on the job of Prime Minister, I made it clear that the Government was doing too much, too fast. I made a commitment to reassess our priorities to ensure we’re focused on the bread and butter issues, like the cost of living.

That’s why this week I also announced that we’re cancelling or delaying a suite of programmes, to free up funding and resources for where they’re needed most.

This includes deferring a range of transport programmes so Waka Kotahi can focus on post Cyclone road recovery, and rolling out Auckland transport solutions in stages. Reducing transport emissions is critical to achieving New Zealand’s climate change targets, but we need to focus our efforts on the areas where we can achieve the greatest reductions, such as our biggest cities.

We also won’t be introducing legislation to lower the voting age to 16 for general elections – instead, we will shift focus to lowering the age for voting in local body elections, which has stronger support in Parliament. These aren’t the only decisions I announced this week, and you can learn more here.

Some of these things we’re delaying or stopping mean a lot to us. But we’re taking the hard decisions because we know Kiwis are also making some tough calls. These policy changes will help to provide greater bandwidth for the Government to ensure we’re doing all we can to support families and businesses in the here and now.

This is the second tranche of government programmes being stopped or delayed, and, when taken together, the two lots of reprioritisation will save about $1 billion, which will be reallocated to support New Zealanders with the cost of living.

I’ll be back in touch soon with another update on our next steps. 

Thanks,

Chris

P.S. You can read more about our cost of living announcement here.