Lifting incomes, backing Tairāwhiti workers

 Kiri AllanMP for East Coast

Opinion

A number of changes kicked in at the start of this month to lift incomes and to provide extra support to workers and families. These measures won’t fix everything but they will help to ease some pressure and I wanted to make sure people here in Tairāwhiti heard a bit more about this cost of living support.

From April 1, over a million New Zealanders started receiving a bit more in their pocket to help make ends meet. This included an inflation-adjusted lift for superannuation, benefits, veteran’s pensions and student supports, benefiting many in our community.

Working families in Tairāwhiti will now receive extra support through increases to Best Start payments and the Family Tax Credit. Changes to childcare have also come into force, meaning more than half of New Zealand families with kids are now eligible for subsidised childcare assistance. This makes childcare and before-and-after school care more affordable for more families.

People in Te Tairāwhiti should be confident that they can get ahead and create the life they want for themselves and their families through hard work. But right now, as global inflation is causing costs to rise around the world, it can feel pretty tough.

To support those workers who are really feeling the bite from the rise in the cost of living, we’ve increased the minimum wage by $1.50 to $22.70 an hour from Apri 1. This will see a fulltime minimum wage worker earning an extra $60 a week and around $3120 extra each year, before tax.

I’m also really pleased nurses in aged residential care, hospices, home and community support services, along with those in Māori and Pacific healthcare, will start receiving up to 15 percent more in their take-home pay. This boost follows the recent historic pay increase for hospital nurses which made our nursing wages competitive with Australia.

On top of that, from July 1 additional funding will ensure pay rises for eligible nurses working for Plunket, Family Planning, school nursing services, mental health and addiction, rural hospitals and in telehealth. All of these increases will help to keep nurses and healthcare workers in important roles here in Tairāwhiti, which is good news for everyone in our community.

To further back workers, we’ve also made changes to safeguard sub-contractors who are often the first to miss out in the event a construction company becomes insolvent. We believe everyone should have confidence that they will be paid for their hard work.