It has been a master class in dreadful communication.
Poorly explained changes to the rules for disability support funding to apply forthwith were dumped on the Whaikaha website on Monday. This, despite those at the ministry and Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds knowing before Christmas the money for flexible disability support was likely to run out before the end of the financial year.
Reports suggest the ministry was within days of reaching its funding limits when the announcement was made.
It has caused considerable distress within the disability community as the disabled and their family carers have tried to make sense of how the restrictions would affect them.
Ms Simmonds seemed to be excusing this blunderbuss approach because it is a fledgling ministry with much to learn, a magnanimity curiously not applied by the coalition government to any of the perceived failings of the now disbanded Māori Health Authority.
It has not been Ms Simmonds’ finest hour.
Yes, she has admitted the ministry bungled the announcement, but she has added to the debacle.
Amid the public outcry about the restrictions, her attempts to clarify what would still be funded and what would not only served to add further confusion. Her chief executive, in an RNZ interview, seemed baffled by some of the assurances Ms Simmonds was giving about what would still attract funding.
Ms Simmonds will be well aware of the huge variety of needs within the disability community and that there will be many ways of meeting those needs. However, without providing any context, early on she suggested carers had been taking advantage of the lack of specificity around the funding to spend it on massages, overseas travel, pedicures and haircuts for themselves.
If there is evidence of the funding being abused, let us have the facts.
Ms Simmonds was insistent the priority for the funding must go to the person with the disability, not the carer.
She says that will not diminish "in any way the role of the carers".
This is semantic nonsense. How can it be argued that spending money on a little respite for a stressed-out family carer, which is apparently no longer allowed, does not assist the person with the disability?
If a carer has a massage because their back is affected by the frequent lifting of a heavy adult, is that unreasonable?
It will be hard for the public to swallow the argument that what Ms Simmonds and her ministry are calling a pause in the relaxation of the flexibility rules that had applied since the Covid-19 pandemic has nothing to do with the calls for cuts to public sector spending.
Nobody is saying how long this "pause", which is somehow not a cut, will be.
It is clear the allocation from the previous government was not enough for this demand-driven area, but could some ways have been found to provide interim funding? This would have allowed time to involve the community in assessing the way it was being used and establish whether limits were necessary and fair, and to make a proper case for a boost to funding if that was found necessary.
We are told a Budget bid is being made, but how well-informed will it be given that consultation with the disability community is yet to occur?
None of this will help the government’s image with those members of the public critical of its largesse towards landlords while simultaneously shoving its hands down the back of any couch it can find to fund promised tax cuts.
