Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Cash-back offers are not what New Zealanders want

So welcome to the fuel crisis — which is starting to feel a bit like COVID Junior.

The government is apparently developing targeted support for low-to-middle income households facing rising fuel prices because of the ongoing international fuel crisis. Australia is already launching these measures.

They’re focused on delivering aid quickly through the tax and welfare system. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s another tax-credit scheme.

Now the problem with that, and with so many other tax-credit schemes National has come up with, is that it’s such a faff. 

Who can actually be bothered, in our busy lives, to jump through all the hoops to get a few dollars back? Does anybody, in this day and age, really take advantage of all those cashback offers?

Gosh, it’s hard work.

Take FamilyBoost - it under-delivered, cost more than expected and benefited higher-income families more than lower-income ones. 

Nearly a quarter of the money allocated went on administration rather than to families.

So now Nicola Willis is thinking about another tax-credit scheme on fuel prices. She says the scheme needs to be simple. But New Zealanders want something even simpler. They don’t want to have to apply to get money back. They don’t want to leave the money in the pump in the first place.

They want it to stay in their wallet — not have to apply to get it back later. 

They want the price at the pump to go down, but Nicola Willis won’t touch the existing fuel excise tax, nor will she reduce the fuel-tax increase coming later on. What is it — 18 cents a litre?

Nor will National suggest working from home or subsidising public transport because they’ve taken such a hard line against those policies in the past. Of course, Chris Hipkins came out and floated that.

What Nicola Willis has been doing today is talking to fuel companies, and will that really be any more effective than the fireside chats she had with the supermarkets, or with Fonterra over the price of butter?

It really is starting to feel a little bit like COVID 2.0, isn’t it? Wacky schemes to get your money back, promises that you’ll get your money back, but somehow you never do.

And, the government flapping its gums while nothing really happens.

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