Cam Slater: They Really Think We Are Stupid

The Dumb and Dumber of New Zealand politics, Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson, must really think we are exceptionally stupid. They are bravely forging ahead with their GST-off-fruit-and-vegetables policy, despite denying they were going to have this as a policy just a few short weeks ago.

You will remember that Nicola Willis announced Labour were going to do this, and Robbo and Chippy both denied it. Now they’ve launched it, hoping we’ve forgotten about their previous denials.

Labour will remove the GST from fruit and vegetables and make changes to Working for Families that will benefit about 160,000 families.

Chris Hipkins is revealing the party’s tax policy and has confirmed no changes to income tax levels and no introduction of new taxes such as a Wealth Tax or Capital Gains Tax.

The In-Work Tax Credit will be raised by $25 a week to $97.50 and the Working for Families abatement threshold will be raised, but not until 2026, to $50,000 to reflect wage growth.

Hipkins said removing GST from fruit and vegetable was “fairly simple” and would come into effect on April 1.

NZ Herald

Fairly simple? No it’s not, and we know it isn’t fairly simple because they’ve also announced that they will create a new “role”, an “expert panel” to figure it all out, despite numerous “expert panels” previously finding that it was all too hard, and the simplest thing to actually do is leave GST alone.

We’ve had the simplest GST regime in the world and it has been effective ever since Roger Douglas introduced it. Successive governments haven’t tinkered with how it works, but they have adjusted the rate – the most recent being John Key raising GST from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent.

But now it has become a political football, and all for about $5 a week to the end user, if that ever materialises.

Hipkins said many low and middle-income Kiwi households would be $30 a week better off next year under the party’s tax policy.

Hipkins said New Zealand was starting to come out of a tough economic cycle, but acknowledged people still faced challenges.

He acknowledged food was a big cost for families, saying he’d seen families putting items from the supermarket back because the cost was too high.

New statistics released by Stats NZ show food prices rose 1.6 per cent in June on the month before, the biggest monthly rise since the start of the year.

That includes an overall 8.1 per cent increase on fruit and vegetables.

“I can’t control the weather, but I can do something about food prices,” Hipkins said as he announced his GST removal off fruit and vege after citing the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle on food prices.

“A lot of the people who oppose these changes aren’t the ones worrying about their weekly food bills. This policy is aimed at New Zealanders for whom every dollar at the checkout matters,” Hipkins said.

The cost of taking GST off fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables was estimated at $2 billion over four years, while increasing the in-work tax credit and lifting the Working for Families abatement threshold was expected to cost $1.4b over four years.

NZ Herald

By announcing both the Working for Families package and the GST policy together, it rather begs the question that, if GST is going to save a household $5 a week, why they just don’t ditch the GST policy and add the $5 a week to the Working for Families increase, thereby bypassing the need for an “expert” group and introducing complexity into the GST system?

If National’s policies were too expensive, then how on earth are these multi-billion dollar election promises any different? That’s another thing they seem to have forgotten as they gaslight us into believing that you can reach heaven but you don’t have to die to do it.

This lot have beggared our nation, and now they are putting doodads on the country’s credit card.

They are nothing other than economic vandals.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE