Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern unveiled a childcare package aimed at reducing the cost of living while addressing the Labour Party's annual conference held in Auckland on 6 November 2022.
In effect, she reversed the policy decisions enacted by the National government a decade ago, centred around childcare assistance that saw the number of beneficiaries “ plummet by half.”
As a result, the number of children who benefited from support fell “from over 50,000 in 2010 to fewer than 25,000 this year,” according to the prime minister.
The Labour government’s new policy announcement is premised on the contention that women in Aotearoa cannot afford to seek employment (if they want to) because childcare costs are unaffordable.
In economic terms, this means women, faced with the pressures of motherhood, are “forgoing $116 million or more in wages each and every year.”
Ardern’s policy initiative to boost childcare support would indicate that New Zealand women, while being kept out of the job market, also face an intrinsic rights infringement in being denied the ability to choose whether to work or stay at home.
With an election year approaching, the prime minister would appear to be trying to gain traction on an emotive gender issue.
That appears to be the case when Ardern says she wants women to “stay home and be a primary caregiver if they choose to. Or work, if they choose to.”
Ardern seems to suggest her latest package of measures aimed at alleviating the cost-of-living crisis is also a means of ensuring restorative justice for women by restoring the right to choose for families who lost that choice in the economic dilemma forced on them by National’s child support cutbacks.
The Labour government’s subsidised childcare package, set to kick off in April 2023, will see 10,000 more children going to after-school care and pre-schools.
Family income thresholds will go up, making more families eligible for the subsidy. Children from families earning under $109,000 will be supported to go to early childhood centres and after-school care.
The income ceiling for families with three children goes up from $130,105 to $140,244. Two-child families with an income of $125,000 can claim childcare support henceforth.
The government says the lifting of income thresholds will align with wage inflation across the period since the previous National government froze those thresholds back in 2010.
But will these payments keep pace with rising prices?
Data shows cost rises are getting harder to keep up with on the ground. Prices of items on supermarket shelves are soaring with “no end in sight,” according to economist Brad Olsen, who oversaw a comprehensive study on commodity price rise. Items that never experienced volatile price rises are now doing exactly that.
Supermarkets are feeling the heat of negative statistics from agencies such as Stats NZ, which say food prices paid by shoppers are 8.3 per cent higher than last year, which marks a 13-year high.
While supermarkets are blaming higher supplier cost charges, it’s the consumers filling their supermarket trolleys with household items who are feeling the pinch.
But Ardern is upbeat about wages keeping up with prices, and is quick in ticking the boxes on behalf of Labour, for extending Paid Parental Leave, bringing in the Best Start Payment and the Training Incentive Allowance, and making changes to the In Work Tax Credit .
But imponderables such as fuel prices, international food prices, workforce shortage abetted by an ongoing exodus across the border as well as high inflation, all point to a grim cocktail unlikely to raise good cheer.