Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the disability community will pay for the Government's "fiscal incompetence", with restrictions on funding for equipment and modification services.
The change, cited as due to financial pressures on Government departments, was revealed through a leak which was reported in Stuff.
It comes as the Government comes under increasing pressure over how it will fund its tax cuts
The email, from the Ministry for Disabled People Whaikaha, was accidentally sent to the wrong recipient and said due to "financial cost pressures" on Government departments, the ministry would now "actively" enforce a set budget cap on the provision of equipment and modification services.
"I wanted to notify you in advance that this is likely to result in some reduction in orders over the next few months," the email said.
The ministry has said it is not a funding cut, but was outlining new limits on what disabled people could purchase with their funding, as well as changes to prioritisation for wheelchairs and home modifications.
Today, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said during the election campaign Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis repeatedly assured New Zealanders that their numbers were "rock solid, that it all added up and they knew how to do numbers".
"Yet day by day we see further evidence that they didn't know how to do their numbers. Their numbers didn't add up but ultimately it's New Zealanders that are going to pay the cost of that."
He said the Government was billions of dollars short of being able to pay for its proposed tax cuts, and it needed to be upfront about how it was going to pay for them.
"The latest group of New Zealanders to pay the price is our disability community, who are having their entitlements cut because the Government, despite saying they weren't going to cut frontline public services, seem to be doing exactly that.
"The most vulnerable New Zealanders are the ones who are going to pay the price for this Government's fiscal incompetence."
He said it was "offensive" to the disability community to say cutting their entitlement to support was just a matter of "swings and roundabouts" - something Luxon had earlier said about the Government's approach to balancing the books.
Hipkins said disabled New Zealanders, like other New Zealanders who relied on public services on a day to day basis, "deserve to know that those public services are going to be there when they need them".
Regarding the Government's rebuttal the funding levels were simply returning to pre-Covid levels, Hipkins said it was difficult to critique the changes because the Government wasn't being clear on exactly what they were.
"But I understand one of the changes they've made is to more rigidly apply spending caps, when previously a needs-based assessment was determining what level of support was provided.
"Arbitrarily capping support - where there is a greater need than the cap allows for - is ultimately going to leave the disability community worse off."
Finance Minister Nicola Willis was reported by RNZ as saying there were no changes to the ministry's funding and it wasn't looking at cutting entitlements.
"We are not campaigning, we are not looking to cut any existing entitlements of people with disabilities," she said.
"We've put a proviso that Whaikaha, which is the ministry for disabled people - any savings they make in their back office will be put back into their frontline, because we realise there are significant cost pressures for that agency and actually they'll need more funding in order to meet those."
Today Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said there would be "no new taxes from what we've already previously talked about", besides from the Government's reversal on the so-called App Tax.
Asked if there could be new fees or levies - such as hiking car registration costs - he said there was "nothing intentional that we're working on".
"There's normally proposals for, for example, FENZ [Fire and Emergency NZ] levies ... that come through on an annualised basis that we actually have to make decisions around the annual increment."
"We've got a few big moving pieces that we need to work through as we pull the Budget together."
Asked if the Government would have to borrow in order to fund its promises, he said the Government's tax relief package was "fully funded with respect to revenue that's being raised, reprioritisation, and savings that are being generated.
"That holds, and there may be swings and roundabouts about how it's actually constructed but the principles remain intact."
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