‘Nice to haves’ phrase back with a vengeance
THE Budget saw National’s Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon reach into the greatesthits album of past National governments for the catchphrase they are now using with abandon: the ‘‘nice to haves’’ line.
The first out of the blocks on the list of things National took aim at was Labour’s move to drop the $5 cocharge for medical prescriptions.
That call came from finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis, who described it as a ‘‘nice to have’’ and said National would restore the charge.
She may have quickly regretted using that ‘‘nice to have’’ phrase.
It was used by former finance minister Bill English when he was delivering his tightwad Budgets during the Global Financial Crisis, trying to get the books back into the black and saying no to anything he deemed unnecessary.
It has now come back with a vengeance as Willis and Luxon try to winnow out enough nicetohaves to pay for their tax cuts programme — and to offset it.
Of the Budget 2023 offerings,
National also decreed the extension of 20 hours’ free early childhood education to 2yearolds was a nicetohave item, as was free public transport for children under 13.
It was, however, happy to keep the tax rebates for the video game industry.
And all parties — even Act — seem happy with kapa haka festival Te Matatini getting $34 million.
As a general rule, before using the phrase, a politician should weigh up whether voters — especially your own voters — would consider a specific measure to be a ‘‘nice to have’’.
On that scale, it should probably not be used for a basic health initiative.
In this instance, it looked like pennypinching, not least because most people would have seen the $5 figure rather than the overall costs of $618 million over four years.
It would benefit more than 700,000 superannuitants — as well as those in rural areas or provincial towns who don’t have a local Bargain Chemist, where there is no $5 cocharge.
That group presumably includes a fair chunk of National voters who may not react well to being told prescriptions their citydweller friends already get for free are only a ‘‘nice to have’’.
National clearly realised that. The next morning, Luxon moved to ‘‘clarify’’ that National would do something to offer free prescriptions to some people — but it would be targeted at those such as community services card holders.
The lack of specifics around eligibility shows very much it was policy on the hoof forced by the Budget.
Labour, meanwhile, were thanking their lucky stars for National’s response. It fed in nicely to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ description of a NationalAct coalition as a ‘‘coalition of cuts’’. And it gave Labour ammunition for its claims that National would cut important public services which people needed, for the sake of paying for its tax cuts — which will benefit a lot of people who don’t necessarily need them.
Labour’s Budget and National’s response was a rehearsal of what will be the soundtrack of the campaign.
National’s chorus will be accusing Labour of wasteful spending and doing nothing to trim its own spending to try to dampen inflation.
Labour’s will be that National will cut into public services for the sake of paying for its tax cuts policy — and tax cuts will only worsen inflation.
National and Labour neatly proved each other’s point over the Budget.
Grant Robertson had to defend going over his preset spending limit (he put it down to the cyclone and inflation).
He also had to defend finding little in the way of savings by scotching old things to pay for new things. Labour was never going to go too far on that latter point — it hopes voters would think maintaining services was worth the slower return to normal inflation.
National’s aim, on the other hand, is for voters to blame Labour in the likely event interest rates get bumped up again — and possibly again.
But National also faces questions in the aftermath of the Budget.
It criticised the prescriptions and extension of childcare subsidies to 2yearolds for being untargeted — yet the tax cuts policy is the mother lode of untargeted moves.
National is yet to set out how it would pay for those — and how it would prevent adding further to inflation.
That is partly because it cannot do the full exercise until and unless it gets into government. What it is planning to do is another exercise used by Bill English: a linebyline review of government spending to decide what is worth keeping and what to shed.
Luxon is confident they will easily be able to find at least the $1.8 billion or so they estimate the tax cuts package will cost in that. He has a point, given even Labour managed to find $1 billion in a similar exercise of its own books. He is also confident National will do more and better with less than Labour.
Those vague answers won’t suffice in the heat of an election campaign.
People will want to know whether National does indeed plan to cut services they benefit from.
Working for Families will be a big question for National — it is looking at whether to change the abatement rates because it believes people are turning down fulltime work for fear of losing their entitlements.
Even the Act party — which does have the guts to set out where it would makes cuts (a vast swathe of them) — wants to know what National will cut.
National cannot simply accuse Labour of being ‘‘addicted to spending’’ when the bulk of its own policy rollouts so far have all been policies that cost money rather than save money.
So far all it has presented on that front is vague mutterings about specific projects it will scrap or defer, such as light rail, and its phonyfund from its pledge to cut consultants and contractors from government work.
That hypothetical fund is estimated at $400 million a year. It has already allocated about $308 million of that for childcare rebates and to repay the student loans of nurses and midwives.
It remains uncertain how much it will save from its more targeted approach to free prescriptions, since that was clearly policy on the fly and it doesn’t even yet know who it will target.
Savings from halting Labour’s plans to include 2yearolds in the 20hoursfree scheme for early childhood education will also be negligible.
Labour’s move to include 2yearolds will cost $300 million a year. National’s proposal of childcare rebates for parents earning under $180,000 will cost $250 million a year — and is in addition to continuing with the existing early childhood education subsidies.
National might want to remember another catchphrase in the greatesthits catalogue which could be turned against it: John Key’s 2011 call to Phil Goff to ‘‘show me the money’’.