Fighting out of the blue corner, wearing a pale pink jacket, a half hearted smile, and a lot of flack from the left and the right, it’s your Finance Minister - Nicola Willis.
Her challenger will probe the Minister for answers. Armed with boyish charm and tricky questions, the last remaining current affairs journalist on network television - it’s Jack Tame.
Let’s Get Ready To Obfuscate!
Jack began by congratulating the Minister, asking how difficult the process had been. Usually Nicola waits a while, perhaps until she gets into a spot of bother, or at least past the introduction of a long interview, before moaning about Labour - but not yesterday.
Right from the get go, the opening lines, it was all about mysterious holes and well signposted fiscal cliffs. How bloody tedious.
Good grief Nicola, it’s your first budget, with all the promise of a new broom before things inevitably hit the fan. Don’t you want to lead with something about what you’ve delivered, not yet another moan about your predecessor?
Cheer up Willis, it’s your big moment and you’re starting to look a bit like Muldoon. We can’t be having that - that’s Christopher’s party trick.
Jack said the interview would be divided into two parts, the first about “real people” - I wasn’t quite sure where he was going to go with part two - imaginary people?
Like those who got rent reductions after the budget? Or that incredibly rare species - people actually receiving a $250 per fortnight tax cut? Turns out Jack meant “macro big picture stuff”.
Show us the money.
TVNZ helpfully played clips of Christopher Luxon promising voters that the average family would get $250 per fortnight. I assume in case Nicola had forgotten, given that the average family will not receive anything like that amount in her budget, in fact almost no one will. Luxon said it again and again, it wasn’t unclear.
Jack held out a piece of paper saying he’d found nine examples of Luxon saying it and asked the minister how many families would be getting that much. Nicola didn’t blink and said what we all knew was coming, “just under 3,000”.
Either Nicola and Christopher straight out lied on a massive scale in order to get elected, or they just solved the housing crisis.
Based on their calculations of how many families there are in Aotearoa we must have hundreds of thousands of empty houses. Which does seem a bit unlikely, but do remember that one of those two options above is definitely true.
It gets better. Not only will fewer than 3,000 families get the amount that National said the average family would receive, but about 9,000 households will actually have less money - as a result of their tax cuts.
Nicola did not like the focus on families who were receiving less money, she wanted to talk about a family with children being $78 better off on average.
Personally if I’d promised the country that the average family was going to get $250, and I only gave them $78, I’d be shutting up about it. Hmm maybe it was becoming clear why she was so keen to talk about Labour?
Jack went back to repeating the fact that three times as many people would have less money as those who would actually get what was promised. I’m not a fan of repeating questions like that, not when an answer has been provided. Nicola Willis had looked uncomfortable answering those same questions, understandably, but she did provide honest answers, there was no need to badger her with it.
Jack wouldn’t let it go. He was a bit like a naughty school boy, delighting in the fact that he was making the Minister look silly by focussing on edge cases. I tended to agree with Nicola who said he was missing the big picture, although I suspect we meant different pictures, and I definitely wouldn’t have talked to him as she did.
You know that really condescending tone she gets when she tips her head to the side and talks to someone as if they’re a complete idiot? It must drive her caucus colleagues crazy.
Jack talked about a person without young kids, on the median wage, getting $17 per week. $34 in the fortnightly unit National seem so fond of quoting, to double the size.
Pointing out that $17 tax cut was, “at the same time as reintroducing prescription charges, increasing waste disposal levies, re-introducing first year tuition fees, increasing overall tuition fees by 6%, hiking interest on late payments for student loans, removing the public transport subsidies for children and young people, increasing vehicle registration fees, and introducing RUC for EVs”
Tax Cuts vs Cancer Drugs
Moving on Jack said that during the election campaign National had promised to fund thirteen cancer drugs. He asked what NZers would benefit from that fund? Nicola looked a bit shocked, perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her that things other than tax cuts benefit people?
The Minister replied that about a thousand New Zealanders were set to benefit.
Nicola became serious and said she wanted to tell those people that they would meet their commitment. Which was odd because the budget was only last week and that was surely the ideal time. It was certainly what people were expecting to hear.
Jack asked “when?” Nicola replied “with urgency”, then added that she thought they’d be in a position to make an announcement “really soon”. By the end of the year, she agreed nodding, they would have an announcement.
It’s not bloody good enough is it? If there was one thing that you’d think even National would put ahead of tax cuts surely it would be cancer drugs - that they’d promised to fund.
Nicola explained that there was a reason, this time she was calling them “fiscal bombs”. Apparently they’re the reason people who need these drugs have to wait, although as we know the same situation didn’t delay the $14.7b that Nicola confirmed for tax cuts.
I was going to make a bad joke about the taxpayer’s need for tax relief being more urgent, but I can’t. There’s nothing to laugh at here. It’s obscene to put tax cuts ahead of cancer drugs. To prioritise short term political expediency over people’s lives.
The Minister said it was all because of the way Pharmac had been funded by the last government. Jack said he’d gone back and looked at the way previous government had funded Pharmac and said the way the last government did so appeared to be the norm. Helen Clark’s government did the same thing, as did Jonathan Coleman, Health Minister under John Key.
Nicola had her “whatcha talkin bout Willis?” face on.
Then some chickens came home to roost when Jack asked about a quote, both of them knowing exactly who had said it. Tame looked as if he was enjoying proceedings about as much as the Minister wasn’t.
It’s not flash is it?
Not so much the hypocrisy but having to look cancer sufferers, who need those drugs, in the eye and say that while you disapproved of Shane’s re-election campaign being funded ahead of life-saving drugs you’re now quite happy to prioritise your own re-election, in the form of tax cuts we can’t afford, ahead of them.
Jack asked if her message to people that had been relying on the funding would be to start a Givealittle page? She said no, they were working with urgency to give people the reassurance they deserve. Which rather begged the question, that Jack of course put to the Minister, “well why didn’t you put it in the budget then?”
What was Jack expecting her to do? Come out and say they’d considered it but when push came to shove it missed out to tax cuts? That the coalition had agreed that these cancer drugs were a lower priority?
Helpfully Jack listed some other things they could have prioritised life saving drugs over. Like Shane’s Infrastructure Fund, or $3b in tax changes to landlords.
In her article on budget 2024 Newshub’s Jenna Lynch summarised the situation thus:
The promise to fund 13 new cancer drugs has been kicked down the road. The most generous tax cut - $25 a week - will not touch the sides for families paying $5000 a month for unfunded life saving cancer drugs.
Newshub spoke to a mother this week that told us that the decision for her was life and death. But she misses out.
Budget 2024 was not 'as advertised' for those who really, desperately needed it to be.
At that point Jack moved to talking about the poorest New Zealanders. I figured that if Nicola Willis wasn’t concerned about people with cancer, some of whom might well be middle class swing voters, then the odds that she gave two hoots for the poor were slim to none.
I didn’t much want to listen to Nicola justifying why it was good to give those with the least even less. How if they wanted to get ahead, if they aspired to things like food and housing, they should bloody well get a job. In a market with rising unemployment, caused to no small degree by Nicola’s funding cuts.
My apologies but I’d had enough. If you’d like to watch the full interview you can do so here:
I see so many people my age being struck by cancer. Facing the loss of decades with their partner, missing seeing their kids grow, parents losing children before their time.
Their ability to access these life extending drugs is dependent on what they can afford or perhaps the generosity of people with a Givealittle page.
If the choice is between delaying Tax Cuts, or funding Cancer Drugs that can suspend, even reverse, the progress of cancer, is it even be a question?
It’s certainly not a hard one.
King’s Birthday Honours 2024.
To finish with, I note that the King’s Birthday honours have been announced this morning. On first glance there seems to be quite an emphasis on National friendly corporate types.
Personally I’d prefer to see more recognition given for volunteering or long service in the public sector, more of a focus on the creative sector, but that’s just me. I tend to think retiring politicians or wealthy business people have generally done alright in terms of recognition already.
One name jumped out at me though. Women’s health advocate Sally Walker, who has fought so hard against the horrendous use of surgical mesh. To prevent the injury and pain, that she herself experienced, from happening to other women.
Sally’s advocacy has resulted in mesh surgeries being paused over safety concerns. It shows what one person can achieve and while there are no doubt other worthy recipients I’m so pleased to see her get this recognition.
Few years ago one of my close friends got a rare cancer and was given a few months to live, however there was a drug available, unfunded, which he and his family could pay $6000 a month for. You can imagine the distress within the family but they did scrimp and scratch around and paid for 3 months until miraculously, Pharmac started to fund it. The relief and joy in the family and amongst his friends was as you might imagine. His health improved to the point where he lived his normal life for another 4 years before the drug lost it's efficacy. Now some might say "4 years!? What's the big deal?" But that was 4 years of watching his beloved grandchildren grow, beautiful time with his own children, continuing love with his wife and great times with friends.
I weep inside for this banking on the fictional 13 drugs who could also have the benefits my friend did and for maybe (probably?) even longer.
Nicola Willis and her Government are a sad disgrace to our country and deserve all the attacks on them they are receiving.
One has to wonder at just what power over the Government these wealthy donors really have. Because to break a promise over cancer drugs, just to satisfy the financial demands of already wealthy people... Is something rotten in the state of Aotearoa?