Point of Order: Budget 2023 sluice-gates are opened.....

.....$1bn will flow into cyclone recovery

Whoa there. Did Budget Day arrive several days earlier than Point of Order had been led to believe?

Five press statements from the Beehive landed in our email this morning, embargoed for release at 10.30 am.

The PM led the charge, announcing a billion-dollar flood and cyclone recovery package as part of Budget 2023 that covers the basics of rebuilding roads, rail and schools while preparing for future events with a big investment in flood protection measures.

Here’s how the dosh is being distributed.

Cam Slater: How Did We Get from Never Telling Lies to Lying Constantly?

Remember the 2017 election when Patrick Gower asked, “Is it possible to survive in politics without lying?” Jacinda Ardern put on a huge, sincere, toothy grin and announced, “I believe that it is possible to exist in politics without lying and by telling the truth,” and went on to assure Gower that she’d “never told a lie in politics”. Which, of course, was a big fat lie. The problem is that Ardern almost certainly believes that bull dust.

Kate Hawkesby: The PM's post-Cab chat yesterday was stomach churning

 

The PM’s post-cabinet chat yesterday was stomach churning in so many ways.

The lies, the disingenuousness of it all, the theatrics and the pretence that they’ve actually been active as a government on crime. Embarrassing. No one’s buying it.

This new fog canon measure is too late – they know it, we know it.

Worse yet, the PM tried to deflect all blame from her Government by saying that there’d be a delay on said fog cannons – due to a global shortage. This turns out to be an outright lie.

Mike Hosking: Government response to retail crime is soft

Some fog cannons and a council initiative.

That’s your cabinet response to a death at a Sandringham dairy.

The suggestion from the Prime Minister was that Cabinet had been speaking for some weeks about the so-called business crime package.

It is an odd clam to make, given when Chris Hipkins, the architect of the package, was peppered about it in the house last week he never mentioned it was being discussed.

Cam Slater: FFS! Why Don’t You Take Some Responsibility, for Once?

Chris Hipkins shamelessly tried to blame the National Party in Parliament yesterday

This Goverment has a terrible trait of never taking responsibility for their own policies and actions. They always seek to blame others for their numerous failings. Remember Ardern chucking a KFC worker under the bus, also Americold for various Covid outbreaks? Then there were the three women they defamed and attacked for travelling to Northland from Auckland. It’s never their fault, always someone else’s. We also mustn’t forget the constant refrain of “nine years of neglect” that they still regularly trot out.

Yesterday in Parliament Chris Hipkins shamelessly tried to blame the Sandringham dairy worker’s death – at the hands of a knife-wielding criminal – on the National Party.