Paula Bennett and the Ministry of ‘Yeah-nah’ – why she really hates a tourist tax
Paula Bennett rejects calls for tourist tax
Overseas tourists won’t be hit with a tax under Paula Bennett’s watch – at least not anytime soon.
The Tourism Minister has said she “doesn’t like” the idea of taxing foreign tourists because New Zealand is already expensive enough.
I think it tells us something about the failing landscape of journalism in NZ that the National Party can make hard right ideological decisions confronting the nation, and there isn’t the intellectual depth within our Press Gallery to even recognise and call it out.
It’s weird isn’t it when Paula just ‘Yeah-nahs’ the tourist tax idea. It seems like such an obvious solution, mass tourism mixed with opening the immigration floodgates so the property bubble remains afloat is creating gridlock stress on our infrastructure. Taxing those who visit the country to help build that infrastructure is a no brainer right? We are a premium tourism destination and a simple one off tax would generate hundreds of millions.
So why is National so against it?
Because what our corporate journalists never point out is that National are a hard right Party who masquerade that hardness with folksy ‘yeah nah’ popularism. National are hell bento in mutilating the State’s ability to raise revenue so that the State doesn’t have the resources to spend on social obligations.
National rule out a tourist tax because they don’t want the money because if they had the money, they would have an obligation to do something about the problem. National want the market to solve the problem, not them, so they rule out solutions if it requires an active Government.
Such naked ideological pursuit of policy would be called out for the wide eyed madness that it is in other countries by a smarter media. In NZ we just get Paula Bennett giggling, saying, ‘yeah nah’, and then we move on.
Paula Bennett is a tax in herself- on all the rest of us, that is!
Vote the Nat suckers out this coming September election !
They’ve caused more than enough damage over the last 9 years.
That woman, Bennett her name, I cannot believe that such a specimen of the human breed can get away with what she is getting away with. The Nats have NO standards, given she has made such a ‘career’ as Minister over years, first trampling on beneficiaries, then making climate change policy a laughing stock, and now the same for police and social housing, even ‘Deputy PM’, gosh, I must choke.
One of the best National have got, makes Winston NZF a good bet.
The question I have is why isn’t National devoting gst-take to tourism? If tourish is a ten billion dollar a year enterprise, that should be $1.5 billion that the Nats should be allocating to tourism. It sure as hell should not be coming out of DoC’s stretched budget!
Bennett is a slimy character. I still haven’t forgotten how she used the Training Incentive allowance to gain a free tertiary education and when she became minister, she stopped it. So it was good enough for her but not other solo-parents who followed after her. Hypocrite doesn’t begin to cover her selfishness.
She’s definitely the poster-girl for hypocrisy. When she was Student Welfare Officer at Massey University, she’d routinely slag off the National Party for putting the boot into students. And now she’s one of them. What a charmer.
She’s made a career decision, simple, there was money to be earned, and opportunity offered, so she signed up with them, just like many common NZers do day in and out now, which is why we have a totally corrupted society, and why any opposition is fighting an uphill battle, as too many have followed Paula’s example of becoming damned mercenaries, and do only stuff for cash.