Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government is right to have limited the fuel relief package

If you were listening to the previous show - Tyler’s show - you’ll have heard that not everyone loves the package the Government has just announced to help families pay their fuel bills, because it’s not for everyone.

Pensioners have complained that they should be helped as well because they don’t have enough money. Beneficiaries have complained. Diesel users have complained because their fuel has actually gone up much more than petrol.

Then, there are also wealthy people complaining because they don’t have kids - they’re saying they’re once again getting nothing while the 'breeders' are and that they’re the ones subsidising them.

Now, I understand the sentiment from everyone. All of it is fair. But I think the Government is right to have limited this package the way they have because we are simply too broke as a country to shell out 50 bucks a week for everyone, including millionaires.

Plus, we’ve just spent four years fighting inflation. We know what that feels like, right? We know how hard that is.

The last thing we want to do is pump so much money into the economy that inflation goes up again and we have to start that fight all over.

So if you have to choose who you give the money to, you choose workers because they have to get to work - beneficiaries don’t. You choose parents because their budgets are much less flexible. They have added fixed costs they just can’t escape: childcare, dropping the kids off at school and so on.

I think the Government has actually done a pretty good job here of threading the needle with this package. It’s not inflationary if it’s only reallocating money that would have been spent in the Budget anyway. It’s not taking on any extra debt that wouldn’t already have been taken on because it’s in the Budget.

It also has an off-ramp: the payment ends after a year or when the price of 91 drops below $3 for four consecutive weeks - whichever comes first.
I think part of the reason so many people are complaining today is because Jacinda, Grant and Covid have got us addicted to Government help. If there’s a problem, we now default to expecting the Government to fix it, don’t we?

And often we expect the Government to fix it with money.

We need to get off that. We should have learned what happens next. When you turn on the Government money hose, you get inflation, then you get a recession.

Being more targeted and more disciplined - even if most of us miss out - ultimately does mean less pain for us all.

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