Will the Ardern Govt carry on with its blunders?
Ardern government ministers must have been pleasantly surprised by the latest Roy Morgan political poll showing Labour has 35% in support. Not so happy would be the 20 or so backbenchers who would lose their seats if that translated to the outcome at the election next year.
National MPs who may have thought their party has been consolidating its advance since Christopher Luxon took over would have been disappointed, too. Their party’s support at 35% means that – even in coalition with ACT – it would fall short of the number of seats needed to outgun the parties on the Left including the Maori Party.
So Labour at this point has time to reinvigorate its base support, if only it can reduce the rate at which it is chalking up political blunders. That rate has become quite spectacular.
The latest, relating to its move to close the loophole which allows KiwiSaver fund managers to escape GST on their fees, followed the delivery of cost-of-living payments to people overseas, not to mention some who had passed on.
These followed the government’s failure to solve the housing “crisis” on which Labour was so vocal before it was elected, or to eliminate child poverty.
As other commentators have noted, the health system is in disarray. It is short of 4000 nurses, yet foreign nurses have not been given a priority consideration for automatic residence, so they are leaving.
Another disaster the Ardern government created has been with the polytechnic system, now in disarray after a $200 millin merger, its chief executive gone after months being “on leave”.
Eric Crampton, chief economist with the NZ Initiative, speaks of “excessive government”. As he puts it,
The irony of the GST debacle was that the aim could be justified. It was to achieve consistency with how GST should be charged on a provider’s fees, consistent with many other fees that incur GST. Look, for example, at an invoice from a builder, accountant or solicitor.
As one wise commentator put it, if the KiwiSaver industry is genuinely concerned about the future value of your investments, they should begin to reduce the scale of their fees.
Anyway National and Act had a field day criticising the government’s rapid reversal, and days later the Prime Minister was still having to defend the attempt to impose GST on KiwiSaver fees.
There she was saying KiwiSaver was “incredibly important” to them as a Labour government.
Ardern said it was an attempt to “even up the playing field for fund managers”.
Ardern said there were mixed views, for example, larger fund managers might not have already been applying GST on their fees and services while others already were.
The view from IRD was that there was cause and reason to even out the playing field, she said.
But there was a
National was fiercely critical of the tax with Luxon describing it as a “retirement tax”.
With that backdrop, it’s understandable why Labour might see the Roy Morgan poll as a positive outcome.
But how many more blunders will it take before Labour finds the polls are telling a different story?
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
The latest, relating to its move to close the loophole which allows KiwiSaver fund managers to escape GST on their fees, followed the delivery of cost-of-living payments to people overseas, not to mention some who had passed on.
These followed the government’s failure to solve the housing “crisis” on which Labour was so vocal before it was elected, or to eliminate child poverty.
As other commentators have noted, the health system is in disarray. It is short of 4000 nurses, yet foreign nurses have not been given a priority consideration for automatic residence, so they are leaving.
Another disaster the Ardern government created has been with the polytechnic system, now in disarray after a $200 millin merger, its chief executive gone after months being “on leave”.
Eric Crampton, chief economist with the NZ Initiative, speaks of “excessive government”. As he puts it,
“… the failures of letting government aspirations unanchored from reality are becoming difficult to ignore. Doing a more limited number of things well might just be better than failing at many things simultaneously”.
The irony of the GST debacle was that the aim could be justified. It was to achieve consistency with how GST should be charged on a provider’s fees, consistent with many other fees that incur GST. Look, for example, at an invoice from a builder, accountant or solicitor.
As one wise commentator put it, if the KiwiSaver industry is genuinely concerned about the future value of your investments, they should begin to reduce the scale of their fees.
Anyway National and Act had a field day criticising the government’s rapid reversal, and days later the Prime Minister was still having to defend the attempt to impose GST on KiwiSaver fees.
There she was saying KiwiSaver was “incredibly important” to them as a Labour government.
“It was a Labour government that brought it in,” she said. “We’ve seen millions of New Zealanders take up that opportunity to make sure they’re preparing for their retirement. We don’t want to do anything to undermine that.”
Ardern said it was an attempt to “even up the playing field for fund managers”.
“The very strong feedback we got was that they did not believe that’s what it would achieve. We heard that, we listened.”
Ardern said there were mixed views, for example, larger fund managers might not have already been applying GST on their fees and services while others already were.
The view from IRD was that there was cause and reason to even out the playing field, she said.
But there was a
“… very strong reaction to what was meant to be an initiative to support better competition” and the government did not want to “undermine the basic premise of KiwiSaver”.
National was fiercely critical of the tax with Luxon describing it as a “retirement tax”.
“You cannot trust Labour on tax and this is evidence of that,” Luxon said.”
With that backdrop, it’s understandable why Labour might see the Roy Morgan poll as a positive outcome.
But how many more blunders will it take before Labour finds the polls are telling a different story?
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
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