Six months ago, I thought Labour would be returned at the next General Election – as a result of National losing.
Today, I reckon National will gain the Treasury Benches – as a result of Labour losing.
No well-timed celebrity marriage can, in my view, stop the slide to the Back Benches for Labour.
Putting aside Jacinda’s fairy tale promise of free tertiary education, there are simply too many dumb policy proposals and failures, to turn back the swing away from the Government.
Putting aside the cheap housing build (Yeah Right m8) fiasco and political guillotine proposals for capital gains tax, the latest proposal to remove the 90-day tenant removal right from landlords, is a bridge too far.
The damage this would do to availability of rental properties!
Like the damage capital gains tax would do to aspiring young people who work hard for their first house and then harder for the second better situated (higher eco socio zone) abode!
Like the elevation in our taxation to pay for the neighbour’s kid to get “free” tertiary education!
Nothing is free in politics. That is shorthand for, “We, the taxpayers, get the bill”.
For a political party to ignore the reality of politics, oblivion is inevitable.
The biggest beneficiary with be Winston.
The deputy PM may be a lot of things, but he is not stupid. Canning the 90-day removal, like canning capital gains and so many other astute (or cunning – depends on you point of view) tactical manoeuvres by Winnie, is what political survival is all about.
Ross Meurant is a former Police Officer, Politician and author. His current book is available to purchase here…
I think we may well find out that it is in fact workers 30 years from now who will pick up the tab for all the free education from 30 years ago. (Me: laughter) suckers, lol.
For the average person like myself its all bad news one way or the other. In my opinion Labour who appear to behave like National are kidding themselves if they think traditional sensible left wing voters will go on supporting them. They fail to appreciate too that a lot of middle class people I know have a rental property as a retirement nest egg with super moved further and further out of their reach. To come after this nest egg is about the stupidest move imaginable and will result in predictable voter backlash as you rightly point out.
So the failure of this government will let National back in and we will have more of the same neo liberalism one way or the other.
I don’t agree with you, I believe NZers remember the last 9 yrs of pain under national it was not nice especially for Maori and PI so national wont be getting many votes from these groups but national don’t CARE about them anyway and many know this now under soimon you will not make it sorry keep the benches warm for another 3 years and bring on the next wanna be leader for the national party its now there turn to be like labour leaderless for a while
National supporters saw how Labour suffered under a constant change of leaders driven mainly by the union led faction and voters are now starting to realize without a good team no matter how popular the leader is the country will slide backwards and them with it.
I will be the first to admit after 9years National took their eye off the ball in a few areas but this lot have never got off the starting block and any good moves are hampered by their partners. This was supposed to be the year of delivery . What have they delivered ?
You must live under a rock
Cancer reform!
What the failure to introduce a capital gains tax tells us is that middle NZ is utterly consumed with retention of personal wealth over almost any other consideration. The collective decision to reject creating a fairer and less fragile tax base by lifting the sole responsibility for government revenue from the shoulders of productive assets and ordinary workers displays a level of economic ignorance that permeates NZ’s middle class like a comforting fog.
It astounds me when the media in NZ media (the same media that shat it’s collective pants over CGT) reports almost every single day on the failures within our health system or when main stream economists chastise the government for a lack of infrastructure spending. WTF? Surely these things follow logically from an underfunded state.
What is it exactly that middle NZ wants? To me the entire situation is summed up by St Johns ambulance – a public service that pretends to be a private charity. Another classic example is the private health sector and insurance companies. If you’ve got private health take a look at the caps on every single treatment or GP visit. People are paying premiums for a product that will dump them and their families faster then you can say ‘it’s OK I’ll sell my house to pay for that’ should they become seriously ill.
And if you want to know why people are dying of cancer or selling all of their assets to stay alive – you need look no further than private health. For private health to make returns to investors it is a marketing necessity that people die unnecessarily through the limitations of the public system.
But it’s OK one persons death from cancer is another persons un-taxed capital gain. It really is that simple.
Why we have a Labour government that is incapable of explaining the simple mathematics of tax revenue and the delivery of public services and wider government support for the economy is beyond me.
What was wrong with the capital gains tax, is that it was gamed to fail because the capital gain relied on ‘taxable income’ not the actual gain of the asset, and taxable income is how so many people in and out of NZ don’t pay any taxes in spite of being asset rich.
If you were bringing in a capital gains tax then you don’t then fuck it up by having it assessed against taxable income!!! Doh!
The CGT was a dog’s breakfast of a joke just like the 30 community groups that created the fake Meth standards, and many people knew the billionaires who pay nothing would continue to pay nothing in taxes in NZ and probably get tax breaks, while the middle class teachers and police officers who worked hard to have a retirement plan which traditionally has been through a 2nd property (that traditionally they rent out so help government with housing) would have been the only ones hit so wipes out 33% of their asset in taxes in one go.
I’m all for more taxes on those that own huge assets in NZ in particular multi million dollar assets in NZ, but it should be based on the amount of the asset (aka stamp duty or wealth tax and taxing gross income as a minimal tax rate).
The 33% of a tax rate proposed is too greedy where as yearly micro tax of 1% on a multi million dollar asset, would be fair but not Greedy, and bring in a micro tax on gross income not taxable income if there is millions of income but somehow results in 0% taxable income!
Australian tax office says 36% of big firms and multinationals paid no tax
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/07/australian-tax-office-says-36-of-big-firms-and-multinationals-paid-no-tax
Adani: $0 tax paid on $724m revenue.
Chevron: $0 tax paid on $2.1bn revenue.
ExxonMobil Australia: $0 tax paid on $6.7bn revenue.
Origin Energy: $0 tax paid on $11.9bn revenue.
IBM: $0 tax paid on $3.6bn of revenue.
Ansell: $0 tax paid on $326m of revenue.
Glencore: $44m in tax paid on $24bn of revenue.
Ikea: $11m tax paid on $1bn of revenue (its first tax paid in the last three years).
(Look how many are also energy companies also contributing to climate change!)
They took their eye of the ball in a few areas for 9 years what a sad and lame excuse trev what happened to our brighter future instead we got homelessness, inequalities, mass immigration, run down state services, high suicide rates, hospitals leaking and the list can go on ……
As for the 90 day law for renters, it’s like some sort of bizarre self sabotage of government trying to get as few rental properties available as possible with the current ‘reforms’ – when the wastewater shows the Meth levels and usage of NZ is so high, most tenancy claims are for unpaid rent, It seem any body with a cheap rental and doing someone e a favour these days it comes back to bite them and there has been 3 murders of landlords since the war on landlords began, as well as 2 WINZ workers because accomodation is not available to many high risk people…
I personally think Labour will scrape through next election if they don’t do anything really stupid against middle NZ… but who knows, what brain fart might pop up next to feed the tiny but vocal woke community…
same goes for the Greens, they are jettisoning their loyal followers for the tiny but vocal woke community, who in dirty politics might not exactly be real and probably don’t feel the need to vote anyway, because everything must be perfectly their way.
I don’t want the Natz back, 9 years destroying NZ was enough for me. But hopefully Labour/Greens get some people a bit more in touch with mainstream society and think of the risks before announcing new policy that sounds good to the woke, but is not very practical aka the 90 day rental law proposals in a meth/wage and housing crisis.
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