Labour admits Cunliffe speech was wrong

3 News reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe has admitted he got a key detail wrong when announcing his $60-a-week baby bonus policy.

Mr Cunliffe said in a speech on Monday that 59,000 families would get the bonus for a full year, but the actual number is closer to half that.

The baby bonus debate hit question time today with all the focus on that key line in his State of the Nation speech.

The fine print reveals 26,000 parents will be ineligible for six months because they get paid parental leave. This means only 33,000 will get it for the full year. …

Mr Cunliffe has been forced to admit he got a key part of his State of the Nation speech wrong, and that has given the Government a clear attack line and a major distraction on an otherwise popular policy.

Related to this, Claire Trevett tweeted:

the fact sheets handed out to reporters at the speech were not the fact sheets that contained the PPL bit.

So was it incompetence or a deliberate attempt to mislead?

UPDATE: It seems there is no doubt now it was deliberate. Below is the advertisement that Labour tweeted:

Note that it shows the paid parental leave being concurrent with the Best Start payment, when in fact it is one or the other.  I suspect a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority would be successful on the grounds it is misleading – as it appears it was designed to be.