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Speaker 1: Afternoon. It turns out that way fewer families have been

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Speaker 1: receiving National's main elections sweetener than they estimated. So they

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Speaker 1: said it would be twenty one thousand families who would

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Speaker 1: qualify for the seventy five dollars a week reback for

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Speaker 1: early childhood education, but actually it's just two hundred and

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Speaker 1: forty nine families who get it consistently. The Finance Minister,

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Speaker 1: Nikola Willis is with us. Nikola, Hello, I'm.

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Speaker 2: Going to have to correct you here the please do

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Speaker 2: Actually fifty six thousand families have benefited from the scheme

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Speaker 2: so far, and more than seventy thousand have registered for

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Speaker 2: the scheme, so it maybe about to make claims. And

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Speaker 2: what iid estimated and what we based our communications on

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Speaker 2: was that around one hundred thousand families would be eligible

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Speaker 2: for the scheme over the full year. We haven't completed

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Speaker 2: a year yet, so we do expect more families will

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Speaker 2: claim over the next few weeks and months. And families

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Speaker 2: do have up to four years to make claims for

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Speaker 2: the scheme, so some who are eligible for it may

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Speaker 2: not have made claims yet, so we're hopeful that there

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Speaker 2: will still be many more thousands of families that will

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Speaker 2: benefit from the scheme.

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Speaker 1: Is it wrong the reportage that I'm reading that says

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Speaker 1: two hundred and forty nine families have consistently claimed the

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Speaker 1: full amounts since the scheme began last July.

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Speaker 2: So what is correct is that fewer families than IRD

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Speaker 2: estimated have got the full amount of the claim, which

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Speaker 2: is for nine hundred and seventy five dollars every three months.

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Speaker 2: And that's because fewer families that IRD estimated are actually

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Speaker 2: paying more than three hundred dollars a week for early

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Speaker 2: childhood education costs. That's how much they have to pay

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Speaker 2: to be eligible for the full rebate, because the rebate

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Speaker 2: is based on how much you're paying an ECE fees

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Speaker 2: and what your household income is. And essentially IRD thought

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Speaker 2: that there were more people paying half fees than has

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Speaker 2: turned out to be the case. So we're now having

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Speaker 2: a look at the scheme. We always intended that these

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Speaker 2: dollars that we've put aside for family boost would end

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Speaker 2: up with families and their bank accounts helping them with

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Speaker 2: the cost of so I've asked IID for advice on

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Speaker 2: what are the tweaks we could make to make sure

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Speaker 2: that more people are benefiting more from this scheme.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you'll prepare to tweak it so actually more

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Speaker 1: people get it rather than bank the savings and use

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Speaker 1: it for something else.

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Speaker 2: Yes, because the government's intention was really clear. We think

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Speaker 2: that that time in life when you've got young children,

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Speaker 2: you've got high costs, is really tough, and that's when

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Speaker 2: the cost of loving bite's hard. And if you're working

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Speaker 2: and you're paying tax, we think giving you a little

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Speaker 2: bit of a boost to help with your early childhood

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Speaker 2: education costs is the right thing to do. We put

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Speaker 2: aside hundreds of millions of dollars for this policy. Because

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Speaker 2: the uptake has been lower than iid estimated, we're not

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Speaker 2: on track to actually get all that money out the door.

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Speaker 2: I want it in the back pockets of mums and

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Speaker 2: dads who need it, So that will require some tweaks

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Speaker 2: to the scheme, and I'm taking advice on what those

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Speaker 2: should be.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any idea how much money you've saved

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Speaker 1: across this.

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Speaker 2: It's difficult to estimate because, as I say, it hasn't

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Speaker 2: even been running for a year yet, and the budget

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Speaker 2: is forecast over the next four years. But at this

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Speaker 2: point we are not on track to have spent the

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Speaker 2: full one hundred and seventy one million dollars that we

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Speaker 2: were meant to be spending this year. So I want

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Speaker 2: to make sure that we're making tweaks so that in

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Speaker 2: future years we are getting this out the door to

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Speaker 2: more people.

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Speaker 1: I'm assuming the tweak's going to be in the budget.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, No. What we've done for the budget has made

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Speaker 2: sure that all the funding we initially put to one

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Speaker 2: side for the scheme is ring fenced, still available for

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Speaker 2: Family Boost. And then as we're continuing to track this

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Speaker 2: data that's still coming in, continuing to get claims, I

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Speaker 2: am at the same time taking advice on tweaks to

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Speaker 2: the scheme and I think that I will make some

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Speaker 2: announcements on that after the budget, probably in June.

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Speaker 1: Okay, cool, Hey, thank you very much as always for

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Speaker 1: your time. That's Nikolalla is the Finance Minister.

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