Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So it is now officially the silly season as Christopher Luxon finally got off his State of the Nation speech and released his first policy in the election year. And who saw that coming? National has promised it would give households with a joint income of up to 180-thousand dollars a year a 25 percent rebate on their child care costs. Now strangely enough the last politician to use an early education bribe was Jacinda Ardern. And that was only last November and the new settings come in next month. National has taken that policy a bit further.  It's a classic case of not staying in your lane, hijacking another party's policy to swing some of their supporters your way. And that makes it good politics. The policy is not cheap at $249 million dollars. But National says it will claw that money back from the amount consultants currently charge the government.  There's a certain irony that National will fire consultants to give tax rebates so that parents can hire consultants to look after their children. Now painti