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Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Mike Hosking: Ardern falls for Luxon's trap


Chris Luxon was having a good week until he caught Covid.

His tax ideas will be welcomed by most hard-working New Zealanders. The idea that you can earn the average wage yet be in one of the top tax rates is absurd and keeping more of your own hard-earned money is actually something all governments should aspire to.

It's the classic problem for left-wing governments when such debates arise, because what it exposes is their belief that they spend the money better than you. But, 99 times out of 100 that isn't true.

But what was particularly clever of Luxon was the trap he set on the cost of living that the Prime Minister walked right into. Saying we have a cost-of-living crisis puts pressure on the Government of the day who don't dare admit it, because it makes them look bad.

But by not admitting it, they look of touch, which is where our current Prime Minister now finds herself. Having said on television that since their time in office wages have outstripped inflation, we have since shown you, it's simply not true.

It's especially not true at the moment and hasn’t been overall for four years, but particularly bad in the past six months, and it's only getting worse. The first three months of this year, for which we don't have numbers yet, will show without a shadow of a doubt that we are going backwards at a rate of knots.

Claiming the opposite, the way she has is damaging. Because you can't argue with facts.

You can argue wastage of expenditure is renovating marae with Covid money and giving every kid at a school lunch, whether they want it or not. Is that wasteful? Most of us say yes. The Government will say no and run you round the mulberry bush until you are bored witless. But the stats don’t lie.

Wages are not keeping up with inflation, life is getting more and more expensive, and the numbers back up what we see and feel every day.

National have a partial solution to that, and the Government doesn’t.

The Government's defence is to pretend it isn't a crisis by using false facts and when they do that, they look out of touch.

When Prime Ministers on half a million a year say there is no crisis, they get a "let them eat cake” stigma. That is particularly dangerous for a left leaning government who previously couldn’t spend enough of the money they never had in the first place on the poor and dispossessed, the very people who are feeling the cost-of-living crisis most acutely.

Telling your support base who can't make ends meet that their lot is not a crisis is about as damning an insult as you can fire - and yet Jacinda Ardern has fired it.

She created the crisis, denied the crisis, and all that’s left is their hope that the people who live it every day, are so punch drunk they don’t wise up to the con.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.

1 comment:

RRB said...

Chris Luxon in his recent State of the Nation speech claimed he would repeal some of Adern tax's but no other repeals were mentioned.
Some of the repeals he left out; the Foreshore and seabed grab, the Waitangi Tribunal scam, 3 Waters grab, the 3 strikes rule for consistent crime offenders, the shutdown of fossil fuel exploration, the banning of Critical Race theory in our schools and universities, the gifting of crown land to specific races. etc.etc...
On top of this and taking Ukraine into consideration, Restoration of our air defense, the upgrading of our navy and Fiji's army is larger than ours.
Taking China into consideration and as we don't have any serious defense alliances with anyone since David Lange dumped ANZUS, a new alliance with Australia, Canada, Japan and the USA.
I could go on but the speech sounds like more of the same old, same old from Jim Bolger days when no one could tell the difference between National and Labor's policies. The country is in worse condition than the National Party appears to acknowledge and unless they get their act together and sort themselves out the NZ citizens are going to get even more of the same retard crap from the Marxists running Labor.
p.s. I wonder if Mr Luxon knows NZs contribution to the worlds 2% man-made Co2 emissions? (China built 240 coal fired generation stations last year).
Nothing in Luxons speech to stop the wealth creators seeking better places to live and do business.