Hipkins said other funding conditions would remain, including those giving fee transparency to parents and ensuring 20 hours ECE was genuinely free. The move was one of Labour’s attempts in the Budget to ease the cost of living pressures on families and was accompanied by a 4.6 per cent increase in the funding rates for the 20 hours.
Hipkins said services still had to provide clarity to parents about what they were charging for, and advise the Ministry of Education of their fees schedules.
Asked why they had not consulted with the ECE sector on it, Hipkins said it was because of Budget confidentiality.
“Ultimately this is a process we go through every year where funding is allocated and then we work through the details of implementation,” the PM said.
He said the election year might be the reason there was a lot of noise this year around the ECE policy, saying some in the early childhood sector were “not particularly supportive of the Government’s direction in early childhood education”.
Te Whatu Ora’s new equity score system
Hipkins said he had asked Health Minister Ayesha Verrall to look into Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand’s new system which requires health professionals to take ethnicity into account when prioritising surgeries and referrals, including prioritising Māori and Pacific Islanders over other ethnicities.
The Equity Adjustor Score uses an algorithm to prioritise patients according to clinical priority, time spent on the waitlist, geographic location (isolated areas), deprivation level and ethnicity.
Hipkins today said that scoring system would account not only for ethnicity, but for all groups which the data showed had to wait for longer to get the healthcare they needed.
“Māori, Pacific, rural and low-income communities have had to wait longer for their healthcare. I think it’s good that Te Whatu Ora are looking at how to address that,” Hipkins said.
However, he had asked Verrall to look at the model being used to make sure they were not creating a new discrimination in an attempt to fix an existing one.
“I’ve just asked [Verrall] to make sure we haven’t swung the pendulum from one extreme to another.”
He said data showed those groups fell to the bottom of waitlists and they stayed there longer, while others were getting treated.
“That speaks to systemic bias . . . Those who are arguing we should do nothing need to explain why they think we should expect those on low incomes, in rural areas and Māori and Pacific should wait for longer.”
National and Act have cried foul, saying ethnicity should not be a factor used to rank patients for surgery. National’s health spokesman, Shane Reti, urged the Government to drop the criteria.
“While there has been historical inequity that has disadvantaged Māori and Pasifika people, the idea that any Government would deliberately rank ethnicities for priority for surgery is offensive, wrong and should halt immediately,” Reti said.
“The way to improve Māori and Pasifika health is through better housing, education and addressing the cost of living, not by disadvantaging others.”
Paid parental leave
Hipkins also announced that paid parental leave is set to go up on July 1 by $51 a week for new parents - and $1327 for those taking the full 26 weeks of parental leave.
Paid parental leave rates are pegged to the average wage, so would lift by 7.7 per cent, Hipkins said today.
The minimum rate for self-employed parents will increase to $227 per week - equal to 10 hours of the minimum wage for an adult worker.
Some 56,200 people received a payment in 2022, and eligible parents can receive payments for up to 26 weeks.
The Budget will also mean that from mid-2024, new parents will receive a 3 per cent government contribution to their KiwiSaver while on paid parental leave, provided they continue their own KiwiSaver contributions.
Race Relations Commissioner’s resignation
Hipkins has also fronted for the first time on Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon, who spoke out again this morning about a resign-or-be-sacked ultimatum for inadequate disclosure of a conflict of interest.
Foon this morning said he had not yet resigned after all - but Hipkins said he had.
Hipkins read out an email Foon had sent him last Friday, which began “I am resigning”.
”When somebody tells me they are resigning, I take that as a resignation letter,” Hipkins said.
He said the advice received on it was that it was enough to be a resignation letter.
On whether Foon was treated more harshly than ministers Kiri Allan and Michael Wood, Hipkins said Wood’s indiscretion did not relate to disclosure, but to the management of a conflict of interest.
“Declaring an interest and putting it on a register somewhere does not amount to managing it,” he said.
Hipkins said managing a conflict was an ongoing process.
He acknowledged Foon’s “life of service to the New Zealand public” and said he had always found him to be a thoroughly decent person. However, he had failed to manage a conflict of interest.
He said Associate Justice Minister Deborah Russell had responded to Foon, accepting his resignation.
On whether the PM’s office had leaked news of his resignation, Hipkins said he disagreed.
“He emailed his resignation. We were receiving inquiries about it and answered those.”
Foon has still not tendered his resignation and told the Herald he was still waiting to be informed by Russell of the grounds on which she thought he had fallen foul of the Crown Entities Act.
Russell would not comment today.
In a statement last week, she said Foon had not adequately declared his interest in a company which received government funding for emergency accommodation while he was taking part in a report on that issue.
