The Government is scrapping the First Home Grant and using some of the money to fund 1500 new social housing places to be provided by Community Housing Providers.
In a pre-budget announcement Housing Minster Chris Bishop said next week’s Budget would allocate $140 million to fund the new social housing places.
“These new social housing places will only be allocated to CHPs, not Kainga Ora. The Kainga Ora independent review, which reported back earlier this week, shows that Kainga Ora is not financially sustainable in its current form,” Bishop said.
The money would fund social housing places from 2025, given the previous Labour Government’s funding comes to an end in June of that year.
Bishop said scrapping the First Home Grant scheme would save $245m from 2024 to 2028.
He said Kainga Ora was no longer accepted applications for the grants but would process those it had already received.
Genesis Energy has revised its underlying earnings for FY24 because of lower-than-expected production levels at Kupe.
It said that work at Kupe KS-9 had concluded and was unable to produce sufficient flow to sustain operation of the well because of reservoir pressure level and liquid inflows. Genesis said that may result in a $15 million to $20m reduction in FY24 ebitdaf (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, fair value movements of financial instruments, investment costs, realisations and impairments) from previous guidance of about $430m.
As a result, FY25 financial planning was underway and would include an assessment of updated Kupe production levels and reserves.
Chief executive Malcolm Johns said gas production across New Zealand continued to decline faster than expected.
“As previously stated, less gas means more coal.”