Free iheart music6/12/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The advice helped to inform the Government decision - taken in December 2022 - to phase out the fuel subsidy in early 2023. In late November, the report was provided to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee which included Chris Hipkins, now Prime Minister, as well as Transport Minister Michael Wood and committee chair Finance Minister, Grant Robertson. The system for delivering the Winter Energy Grant was identified as a good vehicle for delivering relatively fast cost relief to these households. In their retrospective assessment, officials found that Government support supplied through the welfare or transfers system (outside the transport portfolio) would have been best suited to addressing the identified problem: the hardship created for low-income households by sudden fuel price increases. The assessment was not generated before the policy was decided, the usual course taken, because of the extreme haste in which the Government hatched its cost-of-living relief measures in early 2022 officials had a bare 24 hours to provide advice on the fuel tax reduction plan. The advice was produced by the Ministry of Transport in late 2022 some eight months after the Government first introduced the temporary plan to alleviate high fuel prices ( it has now been extended four times). A report by officials on the Government’s now year-long programme of reduced fuel tax and road user charges has found that a more targeted, lower-cost option would have been preferable to help New Zealanders most squeezed by spiking fuel costs. ![]()
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