What Budget 2025 says about our Government 🫠
Plus: Creative writing courses with author Dominic Hoey 🧑💻 🐕
Kia ora rā! 💰
Unless you’re completely jaded by the news, which is completely fair enough, you’ve probably heard that this is a big week for money. Yesterday, Budget 2025 was announced.
For Budget 2025 disability-related initiatives, check out Whaikaha’s summary. Earlier in the week, Prudence Walker, Disability Rights Commissioner, called for a human rights lens on budget decisions.
Responsible budgeting does not mean setting people in competition with one another for meagre rations. Investing in the rights of disabled people, in disability support, care equity, or inclusive systems is nation-building. Rights and equity are not frills, they are what hold our economy and communities together.
Walker added that budgets reflect who Government thinks matters and by how much. So what does the budget say about those who put this budget together? From what we gather:
1. They’re out of touch with what constitutes as support for the cost of living. It includes the oddly specific coverage of teacher’s registration and practising certificate fees. Let’s not forget, the Teachers’ Pay Equity Claim, covering over 90,000 teachers was one of the 33 claims that were scrapped.
2. ‘Defence’ is really important to them. Up to $9 billion of new money (which is 2% of the country’s GDP) will be spent over the next four years for “combat capable with enhanced lethality and deterrent effect”.
3. Social welfare and pay equity is a lower priority. $2.7 billion each year will be ‘saved’ from stopping pay equity claims, and fewer 18 and 19 year old Jobseekers and parents on Best Start child payments will be able to receive financial assistance.
4. They’ve forgotten about (or ignored) their responsibility to uphold Te Tiriti. Massey Business School’s Matt Roskruge (Te Atiawa, Ngāti Tama) said, “it feels a lot like the government is holding firm to the line that what’s good for the general population is also good for Māori and Māori don’t require any specific or targeted funding”.
Disappointingly, no accessible formats of the Budget were published but The D*List has requested these from Treasury. Meanwhile, what questions do you have about the Budget? Let us know in the comments below or reply to this email! 🙋
💸 The Spinoff published a guide to the 2025 Budget for people who hate budgets. It explains where the money comes from and the difference between operating allowance and capital allowance. And importantly, it crunches the numbers on things that might impact you directly, such as the reduction in KiwiSaver government contributions, and extended prescriptions to 12 months, and puts this against what has been cut.
🚨 $164 million allocated over four years to after hours urgent care clinics for Counties Manukau, Whangārei, Palmerston North, Tauranga and Dunedin. While this top up is welcome, concerns have been raised on how effective this will be and how the services will be staffed, RNZ reports.
💫 In November last year, StarJam closed, but volunteers and parents from the Hawkes Bay banded together to form HB Jammers, a newly funded charity which ran five weekly workshops in Greenmeadows, Hastings and Havelock North. Kayla Van Zyl told the NZ Herald: “I was very excited when I found that they were back. I think I even screamed.”
🗳️ The Electoral Commission has re-opened the Election Access Fund, a fund which first opened in October 2022 for the 2023 General Election. The fund can be used to pay for disability related costs if you are a disabled person seeking to be a candidate in a parliamentary general election or by-election. You can apply here.
🌱 I spoke to Dominic Hoey about the backbone of his storytelling, following the recent release of his novel, 1985. Hoey didn’t pursue writing as work until his 30s and says that if it weren’t for his lack of money and his disabilities, maybe he wouldn’t have gone down that route. He also spoke about the importance of lived experience to be told in truth:
“All artists have responsibility, especially once you get a profile,” says Hoey. “I think it would be easy to sort of be like ‘ah fuck it’ and just maybe write books that I know would probably sell more and get me awards.” But Hoey’s not interested in giving the industry what it wants. “They want you to do poverty porn, and they want it to be cartoony and moralistic, and I think in general, what they want is just middle class stories… I’m not saying that those books shouldn’t exist, but I do think that our obsessions with those is at the detriment to the wider community, because to a lot of people, that’s not the stories they’re going to tell.”
He also brought along his blind pomeranian called Chilli, who may have been our first disabled furry friend at the D*List! 🐾
🪞🍎 Vikram Wagh reviews the 2025 live action rendition of Snow White. It’s been a minute since the original Snow White (1937) charmed its viewers on screen for the first time.
In the end of the most recent remake, there were moments that resonated with me. But overall, I felt it missed what Snow White was truly meant to be: a story of courage, kindness, and finding light in the darkest places. The new film tried to reinvent the tale, but in doing so, it lost much of its heart.
📝 In collaboration with bestselling novelist, Dominic Hoey, The D*List is hosting a free eight week creative writing course to support and amplify the next generation of d/Deaf and disabled creatives. Register your interest by 26th May. Online options are available too!
That’s it for this week! Kia pai te toenga o te wiki!
Eda 🦞
