Budget week kicks off with early spending announcements

Major cash injections for cyclone recovery and forestry slash clean-up have already been announced. So what else can we expect on Thursday?

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday, May 15 by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: New poll confirms Te Pāti Māori’s kingmaker position; Brian Tamaki announces election run; OIA reveals ACC and NZ Rugby swapped notes on Spinoff CTE story. But first: $1b for cyclone and flood recovery, $10m for forestry debris – where else will budget spending go?

Photo: Hawkes Bay Civil Defence. Design: Tina Tiller.

A billion, and more, for cyclone recovery

On Friday we discussed whether $4b – the sum the government’s cost-cutting bonanza has netted – is or isn’t a large amount of money. The same question could be asked about the $1b announced on Sunday for flood and cyclone recovery. It’s a big number, but when put beside the estimated $9b-$14.5b in damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods it loses some of its impact. The suite of initiatives announced yesterday include a $100m flood protection fund for infrastructure such as stopbanks; $35.2 million for employment programmes; and $10 million to fund mental wellbeing support. Notes the NZ Herald, the package is “aimed at trying to ease the flow-on effects of the cyclone on people’s lives as much as the actual physical damage”. While welcoming the funds, Hawke’s Bay Today editor Chris Hyde notes the “one word missing” from the announcement: homes. “For those who’ve lost everything, there’s no budget rescue this year,” he writes, adding the package will also “leave a sour taste” for orchardists who sought $750m, and “have been given a mere fraction of that”.

A damning report on forestry slash, plus funding to address it

A second pre-budget announcement yesterday saw $10.5m earmarked for the clean up of forestry slash and other woody debris in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay. There is some 70,000 tonnes of woody debris in rivers and catchment areas on the East Coast, and forestry minister Peeni Henare says the clean up effort needs to start “straight away”. The announcement follows the release on Friday of Outrage to Optimism, the report from the "slash inquiry" headed by former minister Hekia Parata. The panel found that much current land use in the region is “unsustainable” and “the loss of soil is perilously close to being irretrievable”. Further, the forestry industry “has lost its social licence in Tairawhiti due to a culture of poor practices – facilitated by the Gisborne District Council's capitulation to the permissiveness of the regulatory regime – and its under-resourced monitoring and compliance”. Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz says the council is "extremely disappointed" in the panel’s finding and has “serious concerns with the unsubstantiated commentary in the report”.

Budget predictions kick into overdrive

This weekend’s focus on infrastructure will be reflected in Thursday’s full budget, says Mike Munro, former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern, who thinks its “political flavour“ will be “expressed through the four R’s — restraint, responsibility, recovery and resilience”. Writing in the Herald (paywalled), he says infrastructure spending is key to addressing New Zealand’s resilience deficit, particularly in light of the floods. Stuff’s Vernon Small thinks that “moves to lower everyday costs such as groceries, transport, fuel, housing, health and childcare” are most likely to make it into the budget. The Herald says “health is likely to feature strongly: it is one of the few big areas in which there has as yet been no pre-Budget announcement”. Economists Brad Olsen and Cameron Bagrie tell Stuff they both expect a “tightly-targeted boost to Working For Families​”, while their colleague Shamubeel Eaqab tells Toby Manhire in The Spinoff he wouldn’t be surprised by a budget in which “everybody gets a little bit, but nobody gets a lot”, all framed as “being responsible and prudent but doing what we can”.   

Stubbornly high food prices adding to government’s worries

Addressing the cost of living while “avoiding pumping much, if any, inflationary energy into the mix’, as Manhire puts it, will be the budget’s primary focus. But what of food costs, one of the main ways we all experience the cost of living crisis? The Herald’s Liam Dann (paywalled) notes that while the cost of commodities is dropping globally, the deflationary effect on food prices is taking a long time to arrive in New Zealand – and that’s a problem for the government: “A year ago we were in the same place as most other comparable economies. Attacks by opposition parties blaming Labour for inflation didn’t really seem to hold much credibility… [but now] the argument that inflation has been exacerbated by government spending is starting to hold more weight.”

The bank trying to make the workplace fairer for neurodivergent people

How do we make sure our workplaces are catering to neurodiversity? In partnership with Brain Badge, a local initiative that describes itself as ‘the world's first neurodiversity certification’, Kiwibank is on a mission to create a workplace that is far more friendly for neurodivergent people.

Read about what the partnership means for Kiwibank, and how they expect to be held to account on their goals, on The Spinoff now. (sponsored)

New poll confirms Te Pāti Māori’s kingmaker role

A Newshub’s Reid Research poll has Labour just ahead on 35.9%, down 2.1 points. National is just behind on 35.3%, down 1.3%. According to the poll, released last night, the larger minor parties are holding steady, with Act on 10.8% and the Greens on 8.1%, while Te Pāti Māori has gained 1.7 points to 3.5%. Writes The Spinoff’s Stewart Sowman Lund: “What these numbers show is that once again, no major party, even when coupled with their typical partner, would be able to form a government. Labour and the Greens would get 56 seats, while National and Act would get 59 seats. That means Te Pāti Māori sits in the prime position, and after last week, when National ruled out working with them, it would appear they’d fall in with Labour and the Greens and be able to form a government.”

Tamaki announces election run, is dropped from Newshub political show

Brian Tamaki has announced that he will be co-leader of Freedoms NZ, the umbrella political party born out of the parliamentary occupation, Toby Manhire reports for The Spinoff. His co-leader will be Sue Grey, the lawyer and current co-leader of the Outdoors and Freedom Party, which is joining Freedoms NZ to contest the election in October. Tamaki had been due to appear on Newshub Nation on Saturday, with Freedoms NZ initially agreeing to “standard requirements that they divulge the nature of the announcements they intended to make on the show”, Manhire reports, adding: “It was considered even more critical given Tamaki’s record of spreading disinformation.” When Freedoms NZ reneged on the undertaking, the interview was dropped. “Tamaki arrived in the Newshub car park around 9am, with an aide learning at reception that it was not going ahead.”

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ACC, NZR swapped notes on Spinoff CTE story – report 

ACC briefed New Zealand Rugby (NZR) on its planned response to a Spinoff investigation on sports-related degenerative brain injuries – and highlighted that it was rejecting a link between concussion and CTE, the NZ Herald’s David Fisher reports (paywalled). In March this year, independent journalist Dylan Cleaver contacted ACC with a list of questions regarding its decision to accept a claim of probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from one-game All Black and former New Zealand First MP Tutekawa Wyllie. “ACC provided to NZR a chunk of its response to Cleaver – minus anything related to Wyllie’s personal situation – but assured the sporting body ‘our full response does not suggest that ACC accepts a causal link between concussion and CTE’,” Fisher writes, in a story based on documents released under the Official Information Act (OIA). An ACC spokesperson responded: “Given the relevance of concussion and CTE to both organisations and increasing volume of research into CTE it is appropriate for ACC and NZ Rugby to share knowledge and information.” Read Dylan Cleaver’s story here. 

Click and collect

• George Hampton has been confirmed as Labour’s candidate for North Shore. Hampton is a Harvard-educated Fulbright scholar who until recently worked for the UN, and is also a part-owner of the New Zealand Mr Whippy franchise.

• Act candidate Andrew Hoggard told Q&A host Jack Tame he didn’t disclose his ties to Act while negotiating with the government in his role as Federated Farmers president, but that he acted ethically in all matters.

• New Zealand’s national security is at greater risk now than it was at the height of the threat from the Islamic State, said the NZDF, explaining to the NZ Herald why it wouldn’t release information on NZSAS recruitment it previously made public (paywalled)

• The average New Zealand worker should be contributing another 2% of their salary to KiwiSaver, according to a new report.

• Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger says council transport staff are “running amok” after they approved a cycleway under the guise of temporary traffic management, The Press reports (paywalled).

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.

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Right now on The Spinoff

Chris Schulz pays a visit to a secretive – and legal – weed farm in North Canterbury. Amy Hogan and Rebekah Graham explore the link between disability and poverty, and what can be done to break it. Amber Older explains why growing up with a cool mum isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Matthew Nash tells how John Fashanu, the world’s first openly gay professional men’s footballer, ended his career playing for a Wellington club side. Claire Mabey talks to Eleanor Catton about the influences behind her bestselling novel, Birnam Wood. And Perzen Patel shares her love letter to rice. 

Sporting snippets

• The All Blacks sevens have won the men’s World Series at the Toulouse Sevens, making it a Kiwi double with the Black Ferns, who lifted the women’s title.

• Members of Auckland’s Western Springs women’s soccer team are entering mediation with management after threatening a mass walkout over perceived inequities between the treatment of its men’s and women’s teams.

• NZ Rugby is in talks to hold the first-ever All Blacks test in Fiji next year.

How a council spat engulfed an entire town

The Gore council crisis reached something of a fever pitch in recent days, with Newsroom reporting on long standing bullying allegations, a delegation of councillors asking embattled mayor Ben Bell to resign, and a petition calling for council chief executive Steve Parry to resign instead garnering more than 2000 signatures in just over a day.

To top it off, TVNZ’s Sunday last night broadcast its own look at all the drama. Kristin Hall travelled to Gore to interview the key players – Parry eventually pulled out at the 11th hour – and came back with an absolutely riveting tale of “gossip, grievance, ulterior motives and ultimatums”. Watch it here.