Labour social development spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime has accused the government of quietly stripping back a last resort safety net for thousands of vulnerable households, after Budget 2026 confirmed the maximum rate of Temporary Additional Support will be reduced to save about 195 million dollars over four years.
Temporary Additional Support, known inside the welfare system as TAS, is a weekly hardship payment for people who simply do not have enough money left after rent, power and other essential bills to cover food, doctor visits and other basic costs. It is paid on top of a main benefit or low wage, and is reviewed every 13 weeks. The maximum is currently set at 30 percent of the relevant main benefit rate, which is why social development officials describe TAS as the bottom rung of the welfare ladder.
The government, through Social Development Minister Louise Upston and Housing Minister Chris Bishop, announced the change on Thursday as part of the wider social housing shake up. In the official release the ministers say the maximum TAS rate will be cut to better reflect what they call its original purpose as short term hardship support, not as something families come to rely on for years on end. The Treasury costing attached to the package puts the saving at 195.6 million dollars across the forecast period.
Prime told RNZ that the change had been buried inside the broader welfare shake up and would hit the people least able to absorb another knock. “Many families are relying on this to be able to access food, to be able to go to the doctor,” she said. In a separate Labour Party statement she said the reduction stripped vulnerable households of a last resort during a cost of living crisis. “Temporary Additional Support exists to help cover essentials when costs become unmanageable. Cutting it now shows just how out of touch Christopher Luxon’s Government is with what people are facing every day.”
The political fight is over more than the bottom line. TAS is the payment Work and Income reaches for once Jobseeker, Accommodation Supplement, Disability Allowance and food grants have already been tapped. Recipients are by definition people whose essential outgoings exceed their assessed income, and roughly two thirds of TAS recipients are sole parents, people with health conditions or pensioners renting in the private market. Reducing the cap by even a small percentage takes money out of the budgets of households that, by the government’s own assessment, have nothing left over at the end of the week.
The change does not sit on its own. It is part of a much larger rearrangement of housing and income support that the government unveiled together. From April 2027 social housing tenants will pay 30 percent of their income in rent rather than 25 percent, lifting weekly rent by an average of 31 dollars for around 84,000 households. That move alone is expected to save 387.5 million dollars, which Bishop says will be recycled into Accommodation Supplement increases of between 10 and 30 dollars a week for private renters. Around the same time Upston’s Social Security Amendment Bill will lift the homeowner threshold for Accommodation Supplement from 30 percent of income to 40 percent and apply a new parental assistance test for 18 and 19 year olds on Jobseeker.
Bishop defends the package as a rebalance rather than an attack on beneficiaries. He says the current arrangement leaves social housing tenants on a main benefit with about 105 dollars more left each week, after housing costs, than a comparable private renter receiving Accommodation Supplement. “We want a system that supports people who need help, while also backing people to move forward where they can and making sure support is available for others who need it,” he said in the Beehive release.
Labour’s argument is that the rebalance is one sided. Prime points out that the lift in Accommodation Supplement flows to private renters and homeowners, while the rent rise inside social housing and the TAS cap reduction both fall directly on the most heavily means tested group in the country. She told reporters Labour wanted the government to release advice from the Ministry of Social Development on how many households would lose money once the TAS reduction kicked in, and by how much, before the bill reached the House.
The Green Party social development spokesperson Ricardo Menendez March has previously called the TAS settings the canary in the welfare coal mine, arguing that any week in which a large share of beneficiaries qualify for hardship top ups is a week in which core benefit rates are too low. Te Pati Maori has signalled it will oppose any reduction. NZ First, the third partner in the coalition, has been silent on the TAS line so far, even as Winston Peters publicly pushed back against the social housing rent rise earlier in the week.
The Ministry of Social Development has not yet released its regulatory impact statement on the TAS change, which would normally show the number of current recipients, the average and maximum amounts paid, and the modelled effect of the new cap. Until that document lands, the public debate rests on the government’s 195.6 million dollar saving figure on one side, and Labour’s warning on the other that the saving is being banked from people who cannot afford to pay it.
With the 2026 general election now only months away, welfare and housing are shaping as one of the sharpest dividing lines. If you want to see where each party stands across welfare, housing, tax and climate before you vote, our voting tool walks through every policy in plain English.
Do you think Temporary Additional Support is a temporary payment that has drifted into a permanent prop, or a vital safety net that should be left alone? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
Leave a Reply