Kerre Woodham: Are these new changes the end of the world?

Big day today. Paid parental leave increases in line with increases to the average weekly earnings, so if you're about to go off on maternity leave, you will have an increase in parental pay for up to 26 weeks.

Regional fuel and diesel taxes gone, saving the drivers of Toyota Corollas - those fairies of the land, the wakas of the whenua – about $6 every time they fill up, but you will need that $6 because that's going to go somewhere else.

Higher rates are kicking in. In Auckland, Watercare is raising water bills by 7.2 percent, so that's going to hit households and the $5 prescription charges are back for those who are eligible. And I saw a lot of woe is me, end the world stuff.

Honestly, watch the Biden-Trump debate, that is the end of the world. The prescription charges at $5, not so much because there are exemptions for people 13 and under. There are exemptions for people holding a community services card or a dependent child of a community services card holder.

If you're 65 and over, you get an exemption and if you hold a prescription subsidy card you don't have to pay. And once you hit twenty prescription items that you have to pay for in a year, you don't have to pay any more.

So the end of the world as we know it and the decline of health of all New Zealanders - no, unlikely.

And there are plenty of places where you don't have to pay, where the chemists will absorb the charges, so I don't think it's quite worth the hysterical column inches that have been written about it.

What else changes today? We've got the reduced brightline test kicking in, meaning people who sell residential investment properties within two years of purchasing will have to pay tax on any gains receive. After two years, you're sweet. If you sell after three years, you won't be taxed on any profits.

Try and make a profit in this particular climate, and you'll be doing well. Also new rules for property loans apply as of today. Under the new Reserve Bank, debt to income rules, the majority of property buyers can only borrow up to six times their annual income from banks. If you're an investor at 7 times.

So what is that going to mean for you, if you are looking to buy a property? Yes, houses have come down in price, they're not at that those ridiculously overinflated prices they were immediately after Covid. And yes, the average wage has gone up.

Is that going to be enough for you to be able to get into your own home? I really do think this is a good investment in families having the parental leave. They get precious little, you know, by the time you've paid off student loans and you're trying to save for your deposit on your house and what have you.

We need new babies, otherwise we have to import them from overseas. So we either grow our own or import them, and we need more because the numbers of older people are growing and growing and growing and there aren't going to be the young workers, the tax base, to support all of these people who are now out of work. And who will need care and who will need health care.

So I'm all for the parental payments. Brightline tests -does that seem reasonable? Let get you back into the market. The prescription charges, I mean that was such a nonsense, the hoohah over that really and truly. You would have to work quite hard to find a chemist where you had to pay.

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