The government came under fire over some misdirected cost of living payments this week, but the more enduring story might be who it didn't pay, rather than who it accidentally did.
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Tova O'Brien listens to revenue minister David Parker in an interview on Today FM. Photo: MediaWorks
The National Party’s deputy leader Nicola Willis arrived at her media interviews on Monday morning affronted on behalf of the people contributing to the government's coffers.
"What a slap in the face for hardworking Kiwi taxpayers, who pay tax only for that to be given to people around the world who haven't been in New Zealand paying tax for many years in some cases."
Willis was capitalising on what were then new reports that the government’s cost of living payment had gone out to an unknown number of former New Zealand residents now living overseas.
It was her first salvo in what ended up a week-long assault on the payment's design and implementation.
Around the same time as her interview, Stuff was running a story about overseas Kiwis who’d been offered the payment incorrectly, including a scientist living in Salt Lake City, and chemical salesman who’d been in Switzerland since 2004.
The prospect of non-residents getting money from our government was met with rising anger among our cohort of media commentators.Over at Today FM, Rachel Smalley argued the payments showed Labour is unfit to lead.
"This could be the defining moment in Labour's leadership. It should be," she said. "It is inept. It is irresponsible. It's chaotic. It is economically and fiscally reckless."
Shortly after, her fellow host Tova O'Brien said it was "emblematic of the government's achilles heel" and told National's leader Christopher Luxon he might have already won the 2023 election because of it.
At Today’s talk radio rival Newstalk ZB, hosts Nick Mills and Heather du Plessis-Allan blasted the payments on their panel show The Huddle.
"It absolutely blows my mind. I think that why didn't they let the employers make the payment through the companies. That would have been a better way. Why didn't they give food vouchers out? That would've helped inflation," said Mills.
"They could have given us a tax break," replied du Plessis-Allan.
Some government ministers didn’t exactly help ease the tensions.
On Today FM, O’Brien was aghast as revenue minister David Parker accused an ineligible Frenchman who’d been offered the payment of criminal misdeeds.
"For him to get the payment, he would have to be acting fraudulently," he said.
"You're putting this on him?" exclaimed O'Brien, incredulously.
The pressure on the prime minister and her senior politicians kept ramping up.
After the stories about how the payment had gone to too many people, came another round of stories about how it had gone to too few after the IRD confirmed roughly 800,000 eligible people hadn’t received the cash when they were meant to.
National leader Christopher Luxon turned up to his media appointments on Wednesday morning with a pre-packaged zinger ready to go.
"It's a total shambles, and I just think the government's become a political version of The Office," he said on RNZ's Morning Report.
"It's becoming the political version of The Office, isn't it, this government?" he said on Today FM.
"You can't make this stuff up. It's become the political version of The Office," he said on The AM Show
Repeating the same joke three times in similar contexts is a bit like something David Brent might do on the UK version of the The Office TV show.
Still, on RNZ’s Nine to Noon BusinessDesk founder Pattrick Smellie argued the criticism is likely to stick even if the figures involved aren't massive, mainly because it was the type of story that voters can understand.
"If you say we're giving $350 to goodness knows how many people overseas - and that's the biggest problem for the government, that the IRD doesn't know the answer to that question - inevitably that's political poison. It just doesn't matter whether it's 20 people or 25,000. It's easy to understand. It makes you wonder what these clowns are up to - that sort of thing."
It's not ideal for a government to look at once profligate with its spending and unable to direct that spending accurately.
But the political impact of this scandal also rests on the underlying assumption that most New Zealanders will begrudge their former compatriots a few hundred bucks during a global inflation crisis. That's not been proven, despite much of the media taking it as a given.
On Scoop left-leaning commentator Gordon Campbell argued the benefits of a universal scheme outweigh the downsides of some misdirected dollars.
He said many of the New Zealanders living abroad who got the payout were paying off student loans or otherwise facing cost of living pressure too, wherever they live.
Others noted that New Zealanders abroad are hardly the only ones who have been lavished with arguably unneeded taxpayer cash in recent times.
Last week financial journalist Bernard Hickey took aim at the companies that have taken large sums in Covid wage subsidies, only to post large profits later without repaying the taxpayers who helped underwrite their gains.
One of the companies Hickey specifically targeted is NZME - the owner of the Herald and Newstalk ZB - which laid off 200 workers in 2020, took in $8.6m in wage subsidy cash, then later posted successive profits.
Despite that, isn’t opting to pay back what it took in taxpayer support and is in the process of paying out its shareholders $15m in dividends and share buy-backs.
It’s hardly alone in that approach. Fletcher Building for instance took $68 million in Covid support ostensibly to retain workers, then laid off 1000 of them, and announced a $227 million profit four months later. It hasn’t paid back its wage subsidy either.
Though the outcry over those taxpayer-backed corporate windfalls has been muted in comparison, they make the estimated $7.35 million in wrongful cost of living payments look like a rounding error.
Perhaps the more compelling criticism of the cost of living package came from people less concerned that the government has paid people who don’t need it, and more concerned that it has failed to pay those who really do.
On RNZ's Morning Report, The Salvation Army’s Paul Barber pointed out that beneficiaries were ineligible for the payment despite struggling the most with high rents and spiraling food prices.
"We're disappointed this additional payment didn't also go to the 345,000 people who are reliant on welfare, who have the lowest incomes. They're just as hard-hit by the cost pressures and in greater need in many ways."
He had a possibly surprising ally in a former minister of social development for National.
Paula Bennett, who once announced a welfare crackdown on solo parents by informing them that “the dream is over”, told Newshub that beneficiaries should have been first in line for the cost of living payment.
"I feel like I'm really privileged, and then you think about how other people on such limited incomes will be struggling so much more than you are. Quite frankly, if anyone needs a temporary payment for those exorbitant costs it is those on a benefit."
Bennett isn’t the only person using her media platform to home in the realities facing the poorest New Zealanders amid the cost of living crisis.
On last Sunday’s episode of Q&A, host Jack Tame grilled prime minister Jacinda Ardern over the government’s record on child poverty, which children’s charity Kidscan says is worse than ever.
"You'll still hear me talk about New Zealand as a place that should be free of child poverty, because anything less demonstrates that we don't believe that things can and do need to improve," said Ardern.
"Absolutely An A for aspiration, an E for execution," retorted Tame.
That echoes the findings of a special investigation into child poverty from TVNZ’s chief correspondent John Campbell in May this year. It criticised the government for failing to fully implement any of the 42 findings of its Welfare Expert Advisory Group from 2019.
National has also hammered the government over its record on poverty, with housing spokesperson Chris Bishop pointing out this week that the number of people recorded as living in cars has quadrupled to 480 since Labour took power in 2017.
However National's biggest policy to address cost of living pressures, a tax package which gives more to the rich than the poor, was the subject of confusion this week. It appeared to be dropped amid criticism from the left and right, before being resurrected within a day.
In the end, despite the week’s headlines, the more enduring point of attack for our media may not be our politicians’ accidental generosity, but rather their more deliberate stinginess.