The Labour Party has come under fire for tenuous claims some of its advertisements and MPs have made about National and Act.
The spat reached a new level of absurdity on Thursday when Labour was found out for claiming National would repeal a policy that does not even exist.
A recent Labour attack ad warned that National would “cut free public transport for disabled Kiwis”.
The ad referred to allowing users of the Total Mobility scheme, which subsidises driving services for people with disabilities.
The confusion appears to stem from a poorly-worded and inaccurate press release from the May Budget.
In the Budget, Labour announced it was making public transport free for children under 13 and half-price for “under 25s, Community Service Card Holders and Total Mobility Users”.
This was interpreted by most people - including apparently people working for the Labour Party - as meaning Total Mobility Users would get half-price public transport.
When National promised to cut that initiative to fund its tax plan, Labour published an attack ad claiming National would cut free public transport for disabled people.
Labour also made the claim in a press statement shortly after National released its tax plan, claiming the party was cutting “free public transport for children, students, and low-income and disabled Kiwis”.
Total Mobility users are not eligible for free public transport as Labour’s attack ad claimed, nor are they eligible for half-price public transport, as Labour announced at the budget.
“I do understand that… some of the communication has been mixed up and so I have made sure the team has gone back to correct that,” Hipkins said on Thursday when asked about the blunder.
“I have asked the team to go back and make sure that anything they have done in that space is completely accurate,” he said.
When asked whether disabled people had free public transport in New Zealand, Hipkins told media that they did, so long as they had Community Service Cards.
But this too is wrong, people with Community Service Cards only get half-price fares.
Hipkins later set the record straight, saying he never claimed to be perfect.
“In an interview, sometimes you do get the odd thing wrong and I’ll always try and correct that if I have.”
He was confident Labour would be across the detail of other parties’ policies.
Hipkins today said the team behind the ad had conflated the Community Connect package with the Total Mobility scheme.
“I think the team didn’t get their facts right in putting the ad together. I’ve made it clear to them that I wanted them to do a better job of that,” he said.
Labour did increase the funding for Total Mobility in the budget, making half-price fares for people who use that service permanent.
Minister for Disability Issues Priyanca Radhakrishnan said at the time that “Total Mobility is a bespoke transport service for people who are unable to use public transport due to an impairment.
“Making this half price permanently is another measure to help disabled people deal with cost of living pressures,” Radhakrishnan said.
National has promised to axe the latest round of public transport subsidies from the Budget in order to fund its tax plan, but said it would not axe the Total Mobility scheme.
The blunder comes on top of several days of criticism about Labour’s ads and MPs spreading false or misleading claims about the opposition.
Senior Minister Willie Jackson in the heat of the moment in a debate on Tuesday night said National and Act would “get rid of the minimum wage”.
Jackson quickly corrected himself, but only to say that National and Act would cut the minimum wage, which they have said they would not do.
Senior Minister and former leader Andrew Little said in a Facebook post that National and Act would “flog off the schools and sack all the teachers”, again something that is not part of either party’s policy.
Hipkins said on Wednesday that he would have a look at the post and talk to Little about it.
“Certainly I think we should make sure that the statements that we are making stack up,” Hipkins said.
National MP Simeon Brown told TVNZ’s Breakfast that the mistakes made it look like Labour was desperate.
“When you’re saying things like Andrew Little was saying - ‘National is going to sack all the teachers’ - which is completely untrue, that’s the kind of misinformation this government’s being trying to say they’re campaigning against.
“Actually they need to send a very clear message to all their candidates to stop putting fake news on their social media,” Brown said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.