“What we’re focused on is delivering a Budget at the end of May where we are very transparent and very up front about our investment, so there is certainty about those programmes that we are supporting that they’re fully funded,” Luxon said.
But by Tuesday morning he had walked back that statement, telling Morning Report, “there will be the odd incident where we’re actually putting more money into a programme where we’re testing or wanting to see the results before we follow it up with more”.
There would be a “handful of things where there might be time-limited funding, but again we’ll be transparent about that”, he said.
Luxon disagreed a handful of programmes with time-limited funding could also be described as a handful of fiscal cliffs – the name his government has given to programmes under the previous government which had not been funded beyond this year’s Budget.
Seymour, who is in charge of the programme’s review, is defending the funding approach the coalition is taking.
He said it was different to Labour’s, which was to say it would continue the programme forever but not funding it forever.