Finally, after much hinting and promising and ooh, winking and teasing, Labour's revealed how it will fund the core pay equity policy it has been promising for the past three years.

Except that they didn't.

"In terms of being able to pay for pay equity, you'll see there's plenty of headroom within the fiscal plan that we've released today. We have a $10 billion unallocated amount of headroom. We've got multi billion dollars for health cost pressures and many of the pay equity claims are within the health system. So we're confident we will be able to meet the costs of pay equity within the flexibility that we've built into the plan."

That was Chris Hipkins at the launch yesterday. So under a Labour coalition Government from the 1st of January 2027, care and support workers, who are the ones who kicked off the whole pay equity drive and who are the first to have had their claim settled, would receive an immediate pay rise of $4 an hour.

That's $2.5 billion right there. But there is no mention of how the 33 other settlements waiting in the wings will be settled.

There was an allusion to the fact that the midwives and those associated with the health sector who have their pay equity claims waiting to be settled, that might be accounted for within the health budget, but not really because further along in the fiscal plan, Labour stayed pretty close to the National Government's party line. 

So the surplus is going to arrive in the exact same year as National promised it would. Core crown spending would continue to drop relative to the rest of the economy.

It would be slightly higher than National spending, but not much. And when it comes to health, cost pressures in health are forecast to be the same under both National and Labour and the narrow budget operating allowance is exactly the same.

When he says that they're going to be able to settle the healthcare workers' equity claims and he said, oh well and that will come in under health, well not really because if they're saying that they think that the cost pressures will be the same, that's if you don't take the pay equity claims into account.

That really is become an albatross around their necks. They have been promising this for three years. They excoriated the coalition Government for not settling the claims.

But I still can't see it myself. I mean, you might be able to. Chris Hipkins said, look, we've got $10 billion to play with and that came from PREFU and that's what the coalition Government said is around. But that will be it.

If you lead a Labour led coalition, there might just be the ability to settle equity claims, but there'll be nothing else. No money for anything else at all. And that includes anything that the coalition partners might want to spend on.

All very well and good to say - we're Labour and this is what we're going to spend every spare cent on. We're going to die on this hill. And that's fine. That's Labour's choice and that's the people who vote for them, that's their choice and that's great.

But what about the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and possibly the Opportunity party? I mean, the Opportunity party's not asking for much, just get us into Parliament please, anything.

But the Greens have got a shopping list and I can't imagine savvy political operators like Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson saying, oh yeah okay, no you settle those claims, that's absolutely fine.

Barbara Edmonds, Labour's finance spokesperson, says just because Treasury has costed pay equity claims at around $13 billion and rising, it doesn't mean that's what the bill will be.

She says it's all about negotiation and Labour's fiscal plan is credible because as she told Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, she knows her stuff.

"I'm absolutely credible. You've asked me a whole bunch of questions and I've answered them every single one. I'm absolutely credible. This is not my first rodeo, as another politician would say. This is my 17th budget I've had to analyse. I've been in tax for over 10 years. I know my stuff and this is why our fiscal plan is credible."

Well yeah, I mean she has got a great track record, but she can't sit there spinning and weaving and making gold out of straw, can she?  

If you've been taking an interest in politics, you'll have heard Labour's announcement over the weekend. Do you think it adds up? Nicola Willis doesn't, in a stunning revelation.

She says the release of the plan over the weekend was an opportunity for Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds to make Labour's numbers add up and they've failed. She says far worse than anyone could have expected.

She says Labour says the rest of the money to fully restore the previous pay equity scheme will come from cost pressure funding. 

If that's true, she says, that would mean taking almost every dollar of unallocated funding for the next four budgets, which will mean nothing for schools, police, prisons, defence and other frontline social services. So who do you believe?

Labour says they won't be putting up any taxes other than the ones they've already stated. Where's the money going to come from?

I'm sure Barbara Edmonds is a very savvy negotiator. I'm not entirely sure she can negotiate $13 billion and rising down to three or four billion. And even then it's still not much to come and go on.

If you are big on pay equity, do you believe in it sufficiently to have every last spare cent that the Government has spent on it? Is that how important it is to you?

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