“It’s time Christopher Luxon took his own advice from Opposition and showed some leadership,” Hipkins said in a statement.
“Christopher Luxon should remove her as a minister altogether.”
He noted it was an “extraordinary step and a massive vote of no confidence” for the Cabinet to decide it would sign off on funding decisions as opposed to the minister.
“This has been an absolute debacle from the day we found out that some funding options for carers of people with disabilities were being cut and implemented on the same day, without consultation,” Labour Disabilities spokesperson Priyanca Radhakrishnan added.
“Penny Simmonds was warned as far back as December that there were issues, did nothing, then signed off on changes that would hurt the disability community anyway,” Radhakrishnan said.
Simmonds has been under fire after new funding rules around the purchasing of services were last week uploaded to the Ministry of Disabled People’s website with no consultation. Angry members of the community said they were “blindsided”.
Radhakrishnan accused Simmonds of failing to stand up to “communities that needed her”.
“She has blamed everyone but herself: Whaikaha – the Ministry of Disabled People, the previous Government and even the very carers who were losing the funding.”
Radhakrishnan said that was “disgraceful”.
“The Government should act immediately to fix Penny Simmonds’ mess and reinstate funding flexibility for carers and the disabled community.”
But, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Luxon said he thought Simmonds was “doing a great job”.
“What we want to make sure is any serious major change to frontline services does come before Cabinet. In this case, it didn’t.
“It was poorly consulted and poorly communicated.”
Simmonds, after initially ducking away from reporters on Tuesday, said funding guidelines had to be in place “to manage the sustainability of a very large fund of public money”.
While Cabinet has since agreed to give the struggling Ministry of Disabled People more money in a pre-Budget commitment, Simmonds said restrictions wouldn’t be lifted because “even with the additional funding there is still a real risk of them running out”.
Newshub.