New Zealand’s government is dumping a range of high-profile reforms and emissions reduction measures as part of its promise to refocus on “bread and butter issues”, using the savings to introduce a billion-dollar boost to welfare payments to relieve cost of living pressures.
Chris Hipkins, the prime minister, announced on Monday that the government would roll out increases for retirees, students, unemployed people, and parents, ranging from $19 to $46.20 a week. The government estimates that 1.4 million New Zealanders will benefit.
The government would fund those increased welfare payments by scrapping, shrinking or delaying a number of legislative reforms, including lowering the voting age to 16 years, reductions to driving speed limits, restrictions on the sale and marketing of alcohol, clean car grants, light rail projects, and road transport reforms designed to reduce New Zealand’s transport emissions.
Hipkins said New Zealanders were focused on cost of living pressures and recovering from Cyclone Gabrielle, and government priorities had to reflect that. “Stopping some of our plans and putting others on a slower track gives us the bandwidth to focus on those immediate priorities, while also saving some money so that we can provide a little bit of extra support to help families with increasing costs,” he said.
“Some of these things we’re delaying or stopping mean a lot to us as a government. But we’re taking the hard decisions because we know Kiwis are also making some tough calls.”
A number of the reforms scrapped by Hipkins had been focused on reducing emissions in the face of the climate crisis. One of the largest financial reallocations will be $568m from halting the clean car upgrade scheme, where households could scrap old cars in return for a grant for a cleaner, lower emissions vehicle, or to pay for public transport. Also delayed is the project to build a light rail system for Auckland, the country’s largest city, which will now be rolled out in stages. Earlier in the year, Hipkins scrapped rules that required fuel companies to add biofuels to their petrol, and announced extended tax cuts for petrol in light of high fuel prices.
Asked whether the government’s reprioritising meant it was abandoning its climate crisis ambitions, Hipkins said: “The climate policies that we’re talking about today would have made a very small contribution to our overall emissions reductions targets.
“We’re not changing our emissions reductions budgets – we are making some changes to how we will go about achieving those budgets.”
Also on the chopping block is lowering New Zealand’s voting age. Jacinda Ardern had committed in 2022 to introducing legislation to lower the voting age in New Zealand to 16, after the supreme court ruled the current law was discriminatory. Hipkins said while he personally supported lowering the voting age, that legislation would no longer be brought forward – although the government would bring in legislation to reduce the voting age in local body elections.
“I support a lower voting age at the age of 16 [but] there isn’t a parliamentary majority for that – so I don’t intend to progress a bill that’s doomed to fail, because ultimately, that would be an expensive exercise to make a political statement,” he said.
