National’s reaction to their Tax lie tells you everything about how they will be in Government

Media shift blame for misleading tax policy headlines

After the CTU claimed only about 3000 whānau would benefit to the tune of $250 a fortnight as advertised by National (and amplified in many headlines), Newshub’s Amelia Wade was clearly frustrated when trying to confirm the 3000 households claim.

“We sent the Council of Trade Unions’ numbers and workings to the National Party today in good faith so that they had adequate time to respond. But instead of responding they fired off a conspiratorial PR … trying to pin that on the Labour Party,” she reported on Wednesday. 

The next day her political editor Jenna Lynch accused National of “smearing the source” rather than answering Newshub’s questions and published the defensive responses Nicola Willis had sent her by text message. 

When Willis did eventually confirm the CTU’s figure on RNZ’s Midday Report on Wednesday, she insisted the National Party had been careful to say all along that households would get “up to $250 a fortnight.” 

Note how National’s first move when confronted on their tax lie was to claim victim and paint the question out as loaded and therefore false?

Note how National move and publicly smear the news organisation asking the questions.

Note how they are defensive throughout.

Note how when they are forced to concede anything, it’s all minimalized weasel words.

Note how it is only once they are force fed their own falsehoods via news media montage that they change and apologise, and then hilariously use the exact same deceitful tactic that they just apologised for…

Election 2023: Christopher Luxon apologises for tax policy inaccuracies – immediately repeats error

National leader Christopher Luxon has apologised for not always being accurate in saying who gets what in National’s tax package, but then immediately repeated his error.

The party has been under fire for selling the tax package as delivering “up to $250 a fortnight” for a family with kids on the average income, but sometimes omitting the words “up to”.

Labour says this would have led the average family to think they would be $250 a fortnight richer under National, but that was a “scam” given only a fraction of 1 per cent of families would qualify for that amount.

While campaigning in New Plymouth today, Luxon apologised for when the words “up to” had been missing, which even happened in one of the party’s official press releases

“If I’ve missed that a couple of times, I apologise for that.”

He then immediately made the same mistake in explaining what the policy meant for certain people.

“If you think about the 130,000 families that actually will be entitled to our family boost tax care rebate to deal with the early childhood costs that they have – that’s another $150 a fortnight. Think about an average median income, single earner, that’s $50 a fortnight.”

Prompted by media about whether he should have said “up to”, Luxon replied: “I said ‘up to’, up to $150.”

…Jesus wept, he’s just not very good at this is he?

All he has is the projection of confidence, that’s it.

He repeats the same talking points with no vision whatsoever.

When he’s confronted with evidence that his cray bullshit won’t work, he just grins and says he’s positive it will happen. When pushed he gets angry.

This is such a clusterfuck.

We can’t seriously be electing this muppet?

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