MEDIAWATCH: Chloe Swarbrick vs David Seymour & why they are both wrong on Tax
ACT leader David Seymour clashed with Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick during a tense interview about wealth tax on Tuesday.
It comes after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to clarify her stance on a wealth tax on Monday. Speaking with AM on Monday morning, Ardern wouldn’t rule out a wealth taxdespite previously promising not to introduce one.
Her comments were met with swift backlash and the Prime Minister was forced to clarify yesterday afternoon that the Government has “no intention” to introduce a wealth tax “this term”.
Bu the Government is currently investigating the amount of tax New Zealand’s wealthiest people pay with Revenue Minister David Parker hinting a wealth tax could be the solution last week.
Swarbrick and Seymour joined AM on Tuesday to discuss a wealth tax but things quickly got tense between the opposing sides.
They are both wrong on Tax.
The Greens just want to include pollution into te cost of a product and allow the free market to do the rest while David just wants to be groped constantly by Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
Both are neoliberal depictions of late stage capitalism, both ignore the reality.
When I set MANA up with Matt McCarten, Hone Harawira, John Minto, Sue Bradford and the incredible Annette Sykes, there was an understanding that at the core of Left wing politics was a need to use the State to materially better everyone.
At the centre of that philosophical core was an understanding that the very tax system itself needed to be reset by taking the burden off the working poor and placing it out upon the wealthy.
MANA argued for a Financial Transaction Tax that would be a base rate on all automated bank transactions, it would raise enough tax to bring GST down to 10% while allowing the first $20 000 to be tax free. The extra revenue would allow for a mass State Housing rebuild plus free public transport plus more money for education and health.
The total tax take from workers would lower while forcing the Banks, Corporates and Speculators to finally pay for their greed.
This is why the Tax debate every fucking election is such a shallow and hollow joke. Labour says blah blah blah and National scream tax cut. They are both fighting over an ever diminishing pie!
It’s the Great NZ Tax Cut Scam that never actually fixes the problem!
We need a radical means to place the yoke of taxation onto those who are causing the most economic damage and greed – the Banks, the Corporates and Speculators!
The true political division in a Capitalist Democracy is not the colour of your skin or gender identity or genital tribalism, it’s between the 1% richest, their 9% enablers and the 90% rest of us!
Labour must think big on funding universal provision of services to survive the economic downturn and the new post-Covid reality in a climate warming world!
To fund these big services we need a new tax system. A Financial Transaction Tax penalises those who are the greediest while funding the services that benefit everyone.
-Free Public Transport: Rather than welfare increases that the cruel and insidious MSD clawback, put money back into the pockets of the poorest with free public transport, while reducing climate pollution AND making roads more free for those who need to use them. Free Public Transport would make voters care.
-Free Dental Services: Our lack of free Dental is a disgraceful outcome of free market neoliberalism over public health.
-Free Breakfast and lunches in all schools: Again, rather than welfare increases that the cruel and insidious MSD clawback, put money back into the pockets of the poorest with free Breakfasts and Lunches at school. With inflation and mortgage rates soaring even the children of the middle classes will benefit.
-Legalise Cannabis: FFS, it generates half a billion in revenue and justice system savings, just do it for Christ’s sakes you gutless wonders!
-30 000 State House Build: Rather than simply trying to fund flawed models of a rigged property market built for speculators, do mass State Housing builds for only State House tenants and owner occupiers with rent to own options. Build these on Golf Courses we seize back from Auckland and Wellington using the Public Works Act.
-4 day working week in all public services: Build a post growth movement by adopting it in the State sector first. Employ more state servants.
-Basic Pharmaceutical Industry: The continued post Covid world of geopolitical threats demands a level of self sufficiency we are no where close to.
-Tidal Energy Production: Towards our 100% renewable energy target.
-Universal Free Internet: Available through all Churches, Marae, Libraries.
-First $20 000 Tax Free: Most people earn barely $40 000, making the first $20 000 tax free would benefit the poorest first and most.
-Vice Tax on all Gambling, Tobacco & Booze: A special super tax on top of the total tax paid for products that are a blight upon society. Why should the Gambling Booze Vape Barons peddle their harmful products with the barest of responsibility?
-Sugar Tax: The Big Sugar Drug Dealers have been allowed to sell their highly addictive drugs directly to market with no penalty for too long. Time too pay punks.
-Remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables: Make healthier choices cheaper, works best with a sugar tax.
-30% Stake-hold in Supermarket Duopoly: The broken market is creating a million dollars additional profit each day to the Duopoly. Fuck them. A new supermarket chain will reduce cost and voters need to see that in an inflation explosion.
A Financial Transaction Tax, Sugar Tax and a taxed Cannabis Market could fund new services, old services PLUS take the tax take off the poorest and put it on the richest.
It’s time to be radical and Chloe’s fight to drag economics back into the debate on the Left after so much identity politics bullshit is admirable.
The Green Party result in recent Polling is poor when you consider the Housing crisis and the lack of real progress on child poverty and welfare reform.
Labour Left should be bolting to the Greens.
They are not.
Anything less than 15% at the 2023 election by the Greens should be seen as failure. The demographic of the electorate favours the Greens, the issues and lack of Labour action favours them and duh – climate change.
Green members should push for Chloe as leader.
Chloe is a unique talent. She speaks with the energy of the new voting generation in a language that empowers and challenges. She is an incredible communicator and if she had the Leadership, she could dominate political debate.
What could be more radical than the youngest Political Leader in NZ History?
Chloe as Leader is a 15% Party.
To be politically relevant, the Greens need to be needed by Labour. To do that they need to take Labour voters.
Chloe can do that. Marama and James can’t.
Chloe’s secret super power is her ability to do one thing that no other Politician can do – beat David Seymour in a debate.
With ACT and political radicalisation on the rise, she has the ability to front foot a fight with David Seymour that no one else can manage.
Today’s exchange on TV reminds everyone Chloe is one of the few who can fight it out with David, but today’s debate occurs right when the Greens madly decided upon a new non binary co-leader model.
The Greens have heralded their non-binary co-leadership model as progress, the wider electorate will see it as emblematic of a woke dogma that alienates far more than it can recruit at a time of peak economic anxiety.
Pure temple politics is fine until all the people you’ve denied into the temple are far larger than you can ever hope to be.
James will go, the new non binary co-leadership model will be adopted, 10 000 people will like it on Twitter and it will lead to the Greens limping home with 7% in 2023.
Chloe as a leader on her own could get 15%, winning it through a gerrymandered non-gender binary co-leadership model will rob her of the mana she deserves.
It just hurts all the time being a Green Party voter now.
What self respecting male would vote for this blancmange of virtue signalling woke dogma?
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On Chloe and David +1
“Both are neoliberal depictions of late stage capitalism, both ignore the reality.”
They are birds of the same feather, far woke elite thinking and far right elite thinking.
Both types of thinking are bad for the majority of people and planet.
It really is time for Mana to resurrect and become the king pin, not woke Maori party or Dino NZ First.
Mana is closer to combating Neo Liberalism and identity elite thinking.
Yes, return of Mana would be good.
“Free gingernuts in doctors waiting rooms”
Yeah but it’s not an ever diminishing pile is it, bracket creep means government claws more tax over time while workers lose more. And petrol tax take goes through the roof with higher prices.
So tax cuts are quite justified as a matter of course, until the dishonesty of bracket creep is tackled – greedy governments don’t want to do that though.
It’s interesting watching how this government discuss tax, they use their tried and tested method of turning people against each other, now we have to hate rich people apparently.
Just fix the holes in the current system that lets some exploit it.
Why don’t they just quietly fix the trust system where wealthy people can avoid tax, add a financial transaction tax and STFU about pointing fingers at yet another outgroup .
It is a shame that we cannot have a party like MANA that is purely focussed on wealth inequality for all Kiwis and not have any racial biases. This party would win the next election. It could be called The Kiwi Party.
If the big issue and energy sapper is to be a “non binary co-leadership model” it can be resolved when they’re on the Opposition backbenches after the election looking across at Luxon and Seymour in Government.
A vacant-land-tax would be acceptable.
A vacant-property-tax would be acceptable.
Such taxes could potentially increase available rental stock, make land cheaper and/or more productive.
Additionally, from a purely political perspective it would agitate less of the electorate.
Or Female
” at the core of Left wing politics was a need to use the State to materially better everyone.” This despite ample evidence to the contrary in the 20th century.
OK so you try to take money off the rich and give it to the poor, assuming that the rich will not reconfigure their finances to thwart you. Von Moltke said “The best battle plan only lasts as far as the first engagement” and so it is with tax. The rich have options, passports and tax consultants – worst case is they just take themselves and their assets somewhere else and NZ becomes a significantly poorer place.
I was brought up in post war UK under successive Labour governments that imposed swingeing wealth taxes. These steadily drove the money and the talent out of the country leaving British industry unable to fund product development and the purchase of new machinery. The result was that as a young engineer I was repeatedly laid off until I left the country for pastures new. So you can imagine my sense of déjà vu.
Get over the tone and listen to the intent. The intention is to “raise all boats.” 🙂
Even with that you just don’t even recognise capitalism.
That’s why I just don’t play nice when armchair economists come in with there sophist bullshit because they’ve got white character. Fuck off.
“I was brought up in post war UK under successive Labour governments……”
BUGGER!
I should have taken that bet with a colleague as to who and what various commenters here on TDB represent.
We never got as far as where in the UK you hail from.
I’ll bet you didn’t get where you are today either without some good hard work and application to decent personal values.
What Andrew, move somewhere with lower taxes on income? There wouldn’t be many OECD countries that would make that list.
I don’t agree with the concept of excessive tax on “wealthy” to “give to the poor” but reorganising the tax system so things like the first 20k is tax free is not charity. You still have to earn it. There is no point in talking about equity and then making things inequitable for those that have more but there has to be a sensible way forward.
I am not sure what reasonable looks like, but a tax system that makes it not worth the expense of spending thousands and thousands with lawyers and accountants to arrange your affairs might be a good start. No one ever seems to approach it from that angle. I guess the “set up” of your affairs may not be an on going/annual cost.
The FTT does nothing to change the system. The finance sector will pass it on to those who can’t afford it. No government will use it to pay for decent jobs, wages, health, housing etc. It will go on subsidising employers and land owners. We will still all be dead in 50 years as the climate collapses.
What is needed is a Workers party to represent the interests of those who produce the wealth (from wage labour to self-employed and family farmers who work for the banks) against those who live off that wealth.
Producers are the huge majority and have the potential power to decide what to do with the wealth they produce. If they did not produce the system would collapse. They do not need bosses and managers to run production. But they need a program do take control of the means of production.
A Workers party would nationalise the corporate ownership of land and assets without compensation. Banks who are parasitic on production would be expropriated without compensation.
The private wealth expropriated from generations of workers would become a wealth fund for combatting climate change and funding social and economic planning.
I sure liked all your suggestions Martyn and totally agree Chloe should be the sole Green Party leader, for all the reasons you stated. It cheered me up imagining her at all the election debates, going head to head with doofus Luxon and smug, smarmy Seymour. It would be educational and entertaining!
Chloe is an outstanding individual, her intellect rubs her up the wrong way with people who struggle with that intellect.
It’s what comes from a series of poor decisions. I’m hearing a lot of people saying they’ll bail on the place if nothing improves soon.
Chlöe can wipe the floor with the Epsom incel all day.
Those of us that vote Green will continue to do so regardless of what those that appear to have slipped their collars from Kiwiblog have to say here.
Yeah I am sorry but Chloe came off like a petulant child in this interview. 2500 x 300,000 people she said would get rid of poverty. This is less than the mental health budget so if throwing 750mil would end poverty then why hasn’t the government done this already? I am an extremely liberal leftist who has seen where the Greens are headed and am not impressed. Chloe just appears really angry and yelling at the camera. Her point was lost and she didn’t come out of this looking good. She appeared really weak and was sweating because David was making sense. I’ll never vote labour again and definitely would never support Chloe Swarbrick or the Greens ever again. This year I changed from a Bernie Sanders/Labour/Green fully left voter (never voted anything but left) to never voting Labour or Green again. We need practical solutions not pie in the sky BS. Chloe will never be PM and she is unfit to be. Set her up in a Mary-Jane dispensary and get her going there. This is where she fits best. I am queer, multi racial and a woman. I studied queer theory etc… if I am saying nah, then many more of us are walking away.
Yeah I am sorry but Chloe came off like a petulant child in this interview. 2500 x 300,000 people she said would get rid of poverty. This is less than the mental health budget so if throwing 750mil would end poverty then why hasn’t the government done this already? I am an extremely liberal leftist who has seen where the Greens are headed and am not impressed. Chloe just appears really angry and yelling at the camera. Her point was lost and she didn’t come out of this looking good. She appeared really weak and was sweating because David was making sense. I’ll never vote labour again and definitely would never support Chloe Swarbrick or the Greens ever again. This year I changed from a Bernie Sanders/Labour/Green fully left voter (never voted anything but left) to never voting Labour or Green again. We need practical solutions not pie in the sky BS. Chloe will never be PM and she is unfit to be. Set her up in a Mary-Jane dispensary and get her going there. This is where she fits best. I am queer, multi racial and a woman. I studied queer theory etc… if I am saying nah, then many more of us are walking away.
Basic Pharmaceutical Industry: New Zealand already has a basic pharmaceutical industry researching and providing animal vaccines and remedies. Pump a couple of billion dollars into this and convert it into and advanced pharmaceutical industry.
Vice Tax on all Gambling, Tobacco & Booze: You are advocating a fun tax which is no fun at all for the participants who pay it. The tabacco excise cancer tax has increased a pack form $13.00 in 2013 to $39.00 today. I assume it has stopped a lot of middle-class youth taking up tobacco but the unintended consequence is PI grown Chop is readily available in South Auckland at $10 a bag and cigarette ram raiding has become a thriving youth industry, along with the smuggling of Chinese cigarettes. Any vice tax needs to be a profits tax, a higher rate of income tax.
30 000 State House Build: How hard can it be to make a factory that produces 60 portable houses per week. 30,000 houses over 10 years. Or 2 factories to hit the target in 5 years. And use this expertise to create jobs and flat pack houses for export rather than exporting raw logs and aluminium. As for Golf courses, yeah nah. None of the few people I know who play golf are rich, in fact they are renters. Convert some golf courses to public parks but keep the green spaces.
Financial Transaction Tax: Cant happen too soon!