Why Paula Bennett really turns down the Tourism 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.
The tourism tax 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 tourists 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 bent on 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. If they had the money, they would have an obligation to do something about the problem. National philosophically want the market to solve the problem, not them, so they rule out solutions if it requires an active Government.
This is why homelessness has exploded. This is why housing affordability has exploded. This is why 305 000 kids live in poverty. This is why 1600 die each year from the cold. This is why our suicide rate is 3 times higher than officials claim.
National leave this for the market to work out, that’s why their budget simply gives everyone $20 a week in tax cuts and does nothing about the collapsing social infrastructure.
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.
Yep , it’s pretty damn depressing.
We have this absolute thicko clown, who has about as much cultural capital and intellectual fortitude as the Housewives of Hollywood at a sex toy party…. and she is our deputy and sometimes Prime Minister for God’s sake!!
She doesn’t know anything and has only ever been slightly tested once when interviewed by Jack Tame on N.Z’s role on climate change….It was toe- curlingly embarrassing to watch…. She was so far out of her depth….had no knowledge of the subject and resorted to the same old corporate bullshit platitudes and cliches….”it’s very hard to quantify , wide ranging measures right across the board, going forward,” blah blah blah!!
Remember the National Party’s biggest donators are 4 Chinese billionaires…Several Chinese Airlines are now cattle freighting group tours of tourists here like you wouldn’t believe…. onto buses …blur tour of the South Is….Waitomo Caves , Rotorua and out they go….
This is big business and the Chinese don’t want their bottom line affected in anyway shape or form… otherwise there could be ‘milk powder consequences’…..The Chinese own the Airlines , the buses and some of the Hotels…most of the profits go back to China….We get the G.S.T .
We are being manipulated and controlled whether we like it or not….
And people wonder why Winston Peters is gaining traction….
I actually disagree with Bomber on this one, and not because I’m against taxes. I’m all for well thought out taxes but I don’t think this is one of them. Firstly, a tourism tax is a consumption tax, like GST, and like GST it would take the most from the travelers on the tightest budgets. Raising the cost of spending time in Aotearoa wouldn’t magically increase the amount of money most travelers can afford to spend here, it would just reduce the amount of time they can afford to do so, or the quality of their experience. This would just be poor hospitality, and I believe it would discourage some tourists from coming here to spend their leisure $ at all.
Secondly, little if any new money would be brought into the country by a tourism tax. Money travelers bring here with them flows through various businesses as travelers spend it, and those businesses spend it on wages and stock, before returning to the state in the income taxes of those businesses and their workers. A tourism tax would just shift some of this money directly to the government, short-circuiting all those businesses, and pushing many already marginal seasonal hospitality businesses to the wall, and their employees into unemployment. This is bad both for tourists visiting Aotearoa, and for the workers employed in providing for their needs and wants.
Thirdly, blaming our decaying infrastructure on tourists (or immigrants) is blatant scapegoating. They are not to blame for 30+ years of wealth being taken from workers and public spending (including public infrastructure), and given to corporate investors, consultants, and parasitic financial “services” ponzi schemes. A tourism tax would not fix the real cause of the problem, it would just provide more state funds to be bled off by the corporate cancer blooming its bowls.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the NatACTS are right on this one.
In tourism everything is a commodity. Everything is monetised. So when guests pay a premium at the door. They expect a premium experience. My suggestion is if you are going to raise a tourist tax, it’s good to build the service first and then charge.
So what we want to build on top of taxes should never be an after thought.