The political question NZers need to ask themselves in wake of new Panama Paper revelations

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
21
0

Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 6.47.39 am

The evidence is in, NZ is a tax haven and John Key has helped build that tax haven.

We are allowing the rich and powerful to hide their wealth in NZ so that they don’t have to pay taxes and help build schools and hospitals in their own countries. Key says that’s not his problem and that the entire thing is just another conspiracy against him by well known Communist, Nicky Hager.

I call several shades of bullshit on that.

Claiming it is ‘legally compliant’ means nothing if the crooks and the elites write the bloody laws!

Past Key’s sophistry, the simple political question for NZers to ask themselves is this…

Are your over inflated property portfolio’s worth the mass surveillance lies, dirty politics and Tax Haven corruption that Key has built? Are your capital gains worth the rest of the world looking at us as if we are crooks?

That’s the question NZers need to ask themselves. Once upon a time I would have said NZers would reject Key’s style of political corruption, but after the 2014 result, National voters showed me how little issues of ethics and abuse of political power matter to them when house prices rise 10% a year.

Will NZ being a tax haven be enough to shame National voters to change?

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

21 COMMENTS

  1. Little word of advice to young New Zealanders heading off on their big OE this year….

    Don’t say your from NZ if any one asks , – say your from Tasmania or something… and that you will be returning to a job with the Australian Financial Review when you go back home….

    • You’re being hysterical.

      A review of major offshore papers of the calibre of the NY Times/Washington Post etc shows no interest in these ‘revelations’ re NZ and tax havens.

      Your average punter in the US/Europe/Australia etc couldn’t care a less about NZ’s role in any of this.

      As someone said earlier today this ‘scandal’ is world famous in NZ (alone)

      • ‘ As someone said earlier today this ‘scandal’ is world famous in NZ (alone) ‘

        Well… that’s interesting…

        I should think any country picked up as a possible tax haven or having it implied as such by the OECD and having articles written by the Australian Financial Review then having it splashed around the global media would be mildly interested in the destruction caused to its international reputation…

        But then again,… perhaps staff at the OECD and AFR were bored that afternoon and decided to have a little belated Aprils fools joke on the public of NZ.

        You just never know…. do you now..

        • 1000% Wild Katipo,

          I feel dirty as I spent my years abroad working on three continents as a proud respected kiwi but now am feeling so dirty.

          This corrupt treasonous John Key has soiled my pride and self respect and dragged me down to his dirty little con artist grubby little fast talking slimy deals he engages in all the time as a leach.

            • Ocon – well, isn’t that a clever response on your part? (note sarc)

              Feel free to expand your views and tell us why you disagree with Cleangreen rather than a few words which tell us nothing.

              • I disagree with Clean
                Green because his/her response is completely out of touch with reality.

                If you review major global media outlets today – print media such as the Washington Post/Guardian; television outlets like the BBC/CNN and so on, there is no mention of this apparent major NZ ‘scandal’. There is no evidence of any damage to NZ’s reputation out there.

                And so in reality if CG chose to he/she could engage with the citizens of other countries on the same basis as he/she always did.

              • Frank

                See my earlier post.

                There is no evidence that NZ’s reputation has been damaged.

                To claim that it has is nothing more than hysterically making stuff up.

                CG has no need to feel so wretched about interacting with his/her internationalist colleagues as he/she implies. They’re extremely unlikely to perceive him or NZ differently now than how they have always perceived him/her and NZ

                • Hi OCON. How are you?

                  Good I hope.

                  Listen.

                  I was looking for a tax mentor to help me with setting up a trust and seeing as you profess to know more than Frank about such things I was wondering if I could hire your services.

                  I’m not joking. I’ll give you $100k if you would set up an NZ based charitable trust for me.

                  There’s only one catch.

                  Before interviews commence I would like you to prove to me that you have implemented proffesional tax strategies and made money from it. Should be a simple feat with some one of your leaner end opinion.

                  Please get back to me

                • It could be a while before the vultures come home to roost…

                  We have enough good will in the decency bank to hold out for a while. So long as the drips stop landing and eroding that same goodwill we’ll be allowed our sticky little affair with a rascal.

                  However, memories can be inconveniently long among the movers and shakers. They’ll remember. Doesn’t matter about the froth of words, they will remember and transactions may become a little more effortful.

                  Just hope it’s not any of our hardworking exporters that feel the bite, eh?

  2. Making this about Key is a mistake. It should be pursued as something to be shut down because it’s poor global citizenship for NZ to scrape a few bucks together by helping people dodge taxes in their own countries. Let Key embarrass himself if he wants to make himself look bad defending and minimising it, and it will have far more impact than acting like he’s in the centre of all this when we probably aren’t going to find him in the middle of it. In fact, we’re actually making it easier for him to avoid damage by going about it this way.

    • I agree with you Cemetery J. at first, I wondered if Corruptjohn was going to be implicated, but it seems not. the Prime Minister of Iceland was a high profile casualty, and it happened early. I think if the PM had been involved in the same way, he would have been exposed by now. It seems to me that, yet again, although lightning is striking all around Key, and much of it is of his own making (either by design or because of his casual attitude), that nothing is going to actually hit the bulls eye. So, if the opposition want to get traction on it, it shouldn’t be about Key, no matter how much some may want that. But I won’t be sorry if I am wrong….

  3. It might be famous in NZ alone… That doesn’t make it alright. I still want an executive that’s up front and answers it’s constituents directly instead of repeatedly sliding sideways into leagalistic bullshit and political doublespeak.

  4. The thing about Key is who he is in sum total a dodgey money trading hitman for the banking cartels
    Who ever in this country thought he should be PM shouldn’t be living here because the mess he has created will enslave us for generations while he gets a fuckin kthood along with that prick Crosby
    Fuckin wake up NZ the bastards are fascist sellouts

  5. So Key calls Andrew Little “angry Andrew because he is” in front of an Auckland business lobbying group and say’s Little’s reactions are knee-jerk. The hypocrisy with that, is that Key states N.Z. is NOT a tax haven, yet hasn’t seen any evidence to support his own comments. Key may have been rather knee-jerk with his comments.

  6. I am reminded of Richard Nixon’s gabbled defence “I’m not a crook….”
    John Key is the chief crook of a very crooked government.
    He can stand, smile, smarm and slander till the day he dies and he is still a crook.
    It will be to our country’s credit that the majority of us wake up to this fact soon and demand his resignation.

  7. Yes Lefty,

    The buck stops with Key sorry Andrew, and others.

    Remember when Key attacked Phil Goff and later David Cunliffe when he called them unfit to govern NZ as Prime Minister??

    Well Key, are you fit now to govern? yesterday you admitted this, “New Zealand is the ‘wrong place to be secret’, John Key says.

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/panama-papers/303380/nz-'wrong-place-to-be-secret'-pm

    Since you and your lawyer were heavily implicated right in the heart of the tax haven project within your Lawyers operation of promotion using “Antipodes & Mossack Fonseca ????

    This morning 10th May the new list of your operatives (four Lawyers) were actively “Lobbying the Minister Todd McLay back from 2012/3 for continuing this Ponzi scheme.

    You must be bought to account just like Goff and Cunliffe were by your critical assessment!!!!!I now you have dirtied and rubbished our once proud NZ – shame on you.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/79714914/the-panama-papers-new-zealand-link-revealed

Comments are closed.