Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, standing among slightly loud young children, said it was difficult to understand what National’s position on the prescription payment measure announced yesterday in Budget 2023.
Hipkins is addressing media this afternoon for the first time since yesterday’s Budget - his first as Prime Minister.
The prime minister is speaking from Hamilton, where he is making a series of visits which include the opening of the new Kirikiriroa Family Services Trust Rangatahi Hub, and meeting with local community organisations to mark the expansion of the youth crime prevention programme, which formed part of Budget 2023.
He said the Government was mindful not to add to inflation through the Budget.
Hipkins said there had been a “really positive” response from parents on the extension to free early childhood education (ECE) for two-year-olds.
“They’ll know what a big difference this will make.”
He said scrapping the prescription payment would save the health system money given how it could improve people’s health.
On Kohanga reo, the funding mechanisms were different to ECE but Hipkins said work would be done to make sure the free education was extended to Kohanga reo.
There was a “real drive” within Te Whatu Ora to get waiting lists for planned care down, he said.
“It is an area of real focus.”
He acknowledged GP access differed across the country and said more GPs were needed, but would take time to train.
Hipkins said more could be done to help intervene when young people committed a crime and cited the success of the circuit breaker programme the Government initiated last year, which is why it was expanded in Budget 2023.
There was more work to do on how the criminal justice system operated equitably, Hipkins said.
On youth offending, it was about responding to local needs in a local way, Hipkins believed.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution here.”
Speaking on his conversations with Hamilton mayor Paula Southgate regarding youth crime, Hipkins said her request was a collaborative approach between central and local government to deter offending and how to stop it in the first place.
He said he was open to expanding the circuit breaker programme further if the evidence said it would be useful.
Yesterday, National leader Christopher Luxon accused the Government of a “blowout Budget” and “more wasteful spending” after it revealed a multi-billion dollar spend-up.
Hipkins duly responded in the House, saying the biggest blowout he’d seen was the “hot air” coming out of Luxon.
The National attack came after Finance Minister Grant Robertson delivered the multi-billion-dollar spending package that some believe might threaten to undermine the Reserve Bank’s attempts to tackle inflation.
Robertson will face questions over whether the Budget will fuel inflation when he addresses a crowd of business people at an annual post-Budget lunch in Wellington today.
Each year, ANZ bank hosts business people in Wellington to hear from the bank’s chief economist, Sharon Zollner and the finance minister about the Budget.
Robertson is already facing questions from some economists about why the Budget increases spending to the extent that it does.
The Budget adds $4.8 billion in additional spending this year, and $3.5b in subsequent years. It also approves funding for a massive capital works programme.
Robertson told the Herald he believed a prudent balance had been struck between investing in public services and keeping a lid on debt.
“I believe where we end up will be a balanced position,” Robertson said.
“There is not a lot of discretionary spending ahead here. There is a choice there - people can decide that they don’t want to fund health and education properly, we took the choice to say that we did want to do that [fund them properly],” Robertson said.
Luxon today slammed the Budget as “reckless”.
“There will be more debt and higher interest rates,” he said.
ANZ’s economists have published a first take on the Budget, warning that it did risk higher interest rates.
In a note published after the Budget, ANZ economists cited a Treasury document saying an additional stimulus of 1 per cent of GDP would cause the OCR to rise by an additional 30 basis points.
“All up, it may be a ‘no-frills’ Budget insofar as its focus is a little narrower than recent Budgets, but there are frills here in a macroeconomic context, with increased government spending adding to an already too strong inflation impulse, and a little more government dissaving adding widening pressure to an already too-wide current account deficit,” the economists said.
National has already come under attack for promising to repeal Labour’s abolition of $5 prescription charges.
Speaking to TVNZ’s Breakfast this morning, Nicola Willis said they preferred a more targeted approach that would see people with a Community Services card or a SuperGold card being helped another way - so that they can afford their prescriptions.
“At the moment, the country is spending a huge amount of money - and every dollar that we spend is adding to the deficit. It’s adding to the debt,” she said.