Kerre Woodham: The New Zealand political system David Parker wants

Long serving Labour MP and former Minister David Parker gave his valedictory speech in Parliament last night, where he gave his colleagues across the House a list of things to do, among his thank yous and goodbyes.

Chief among them was closing the gap between the very wealthy and the middle class. It could be done, he said, with a tax on capital income, a wealth tax, some form of interest deductibility ban with rules for deductions to avoid double taxation. He said this would pay for a tax-free threshold for income earners up to $10,000 with the next 10,000 subject to lower tax rates.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The Hypocrisy of Leftist Economists....

The Hypocrisy of Leftist Economists, including Nobel Laureate Krugman regards Trump's Tariffs, is disturbing.

Lets cut to the chase and expose the rank contradictions of left-wingers harping on about how awful are Trump's tariffs. Lets first zero in on NZ Labour Party Hypocrite Number One, my mate David Parker. He doesn't seem to mind me getting stuck into his economics, and why shouldn't I when he's a lawyer? We meet up around once a year to take each other on, he reads this Blog, and I admire his willingness to debate, so here goes.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: David Parker replies to our Blog referencing capital taxes....

Former Revenue Minister David Parker replies to our Blog referencing capital taxes, which will likely dominate debate at the next election.

A few days ago we ran a column headed, "(One of) Kamala Harris' Big Mistakes: Taking Rubbish Advice from former NZ PM Jacinda Ardern". Since writing that Blog, Harris gave her Concession Speech at Howard University, telling Americans "kindness" was the answer to making the country a better place. This Blog observed that it is belief in the "American Dream" which is behind taxes being set quite low in that country, and inequality being high, since Americans want to be well rewarded in the market place for their efforts.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 3/5/24

Winston Peters delivers a speech about NZ’s relationship with China but media focus on Bob Carr’s talk of legal action

Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council.

One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS.

Robert MacCulloch: Labour Party contradictions

David Parker Contradicts Megan Woods who Contradicts Andrew Little on Foreign Buyers

There's nothing wrong with National's proposed 15% tax on foreigners buying houses in this country selling for over $2 million. But Labour's propaganda machine & our mainstream media's quoting of so-called "top economists" and "leading academic tax experts" to discredit National has gone into overdrive.

John MacDonald: When did ram raid bragging become free speech?

I know David Parker’s got a job to do. As Attorney-General, he’s got a job to do and part of that job is to run a fine-tooth comb through new laws to see if they stack up and won’t be more trouble than they’re worth.

What I mean by that, is making sure they don't have so many holes in them that anyone who wants to could get all legal on it and either get away with whatever the law is designed to stop, or haul the government off to the likes of the Supreme Court.

Cam Slater: Clearly Not a Happy Camper

It is becoming more and more apparent that David Parker is not a happy camper in Labour’s tent. He has taken on a surly demeanour, more so than his usual negative disposition. Recently he quit the post of Revenue Minister, and now he is being sullen with talk about Labour’s GST plans.

Bryce Edwards: Can David Parker push Labour back onto a more progressive path?

Cabinet Minister David Parker recently told the Spinoff he’s reading “The Triumph of Injustice – how the wealthy avoid paying tax and how to fix it”, by Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. The book complains that leftwing politicians throughout the world have forsaken their historic duty to innovate on taxation and force wealthy vested interests to pay their fair share. The authors say governments of both left and right have capitulated unnecessarily to the interests of the wealthy in setting policies on tax and spending.

Point of Order: Parker resigns as Revenue Minister

Stamps himself as a politician of principle

New Zealanders should be standing up and giving a round of applause to a politician who this week set himself apart in the House of Representatives as a person of principle. Such politicians are highly uncommon these days, so Point of Order will be leading the cheering for David Parker who this week resigned as Minister of Revenue because the Prime Minister had over-ruled him and dismissed the plan to introduce a wealth tax “while I am Prime Minister”.

Robert MacCulloch: An inconvenient truth about capital gains taxes that Labour and the mainstream media covered up

The Attorney General David Parker presented the Inland Revenue "High Wealth Individual Research Project" to a gullible mainstream media that swallowed the political purpose of the report hook, line and sinker. For example, the NZ Herald did a video to explain to its readership of several million Kiwis that the reason why the "super rich" are paying an effective tax rate of 9.4%, compared to 20.2 % for middle earners, is because the wealthy get their "economic income" mostly from capital gains which are not taxed in NZ.

If economics was only that simple. The conclusion that our Attorney General, Minister of Revenue & Herald jumped to was incorrect

Bryce Wilkinson: When debating tax, don't forget spending quality

An IRD report on effective rates of tax attracted much public attention last week.

It was launched by the Minister of Revenue, David Parker.

In proposing that high income people are not taxed enough, Parker asserted in the report’s foreword that: “New Zealand is not a highly taxed nation”.

This claim is false.

Chris Trotter: David Parker’s Tax Ammunition: Use It, Or Lose It.

Nicola Willis, somehow managing to keep a straight face, claims to be the defender of working people. That the deputy-leader of the National Party, by no means a stupid woman, is prepared to offer up such a ludicrous proposition indicates just how deranged our politics have become. That there are working-class voters out there who will take Willis’s claim seriously should not, however, be received as proof that National has quietly embraced socialism. Rather, it should be taken as a measure of just how emphatically so many of Labour leaders have rejected it.

Not all of Labour’s leaders, however. Not while David Parker remains a member of Chris Hipkins’ Cabinet. Parker is a stern critic of economic inequality, most particularly of the way New Zealand’s tax system allows the über-rich to avoid paying their fair share of tax. For nearly two decades he has championed the introduction of a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) finding sufficient support among his own caucus colleagues and Labour’s rank-and-file to embed the policy in a succession of Labour election manifestos.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's clear there's a tax coming

There’s a tax coming, there’s definitely a tax coming. 

And out of morbid fascination, I can’t wait to see how Labour goes about trying this one on. 

David Parker today released his research into how much tax Kiwis paid and he's got the headlines he wanted. They’re all screaming that 350 of the richest Kiwis pay half the rate of tax that the rest of us do. Only 8.9 percent, compared to our 20 percent.

Now this is where it gets tricky for David Parker, because he’s counting capital gains that aren’t  realised.

Roger Partridge: Why Hipkins should call time on RMA reforms

In combination, these principles promise a worse quagmire than the RMA they are intended to replace.

At 11:59pm on Sunday, submissions close on Environment Minister David Parker’s Natural and Built Environment Bill.

One minute to midnight on the Sunday of Waitangi weekend is a strange deadline for submissions on a once-in-a-generation proposal to reform the Resource Management Act.

Yet Sunday is the extended deadline for submissions on the Bill. The extension followed howls of protest as submitters scrambled to respond to an 810-page Bill introduced into Parliament only shortly before the summer holiday recess.

But undue haste is not the main problem with Parker’s Bill. The more fundamental issue is incoherence.

Roger Partridge: New planning regime worse monster than RMA

According to Greek legend, the Chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature with three heads. It is usually depicted as a lion with the head of a goat protruding from its back and a tail with the head of a snake.

“Chimeric” may prove an apt description for the trifecta of new statutes Environment Minister David Parker proposes as successors to the existing Resource Management Act.

Introduced into Parliament last week, the proposed new statutes are, respectively, a new 810-page Natural and Built Environment Act, a modest 46-page Spatial Planning Act, and a yet-to-be-released Climate Adaptation Act. These statutes will be supported by detailed National and Regional Plans that must comply with a yet-to-be-developed National Planning Framework.

Chris Trotter: David Parker Rejects Co-Governance.

On his Politik website, Richard Harman reveals how Environment Minister David Parker upset the co-governance project. Labour’s Māori Caucus saw co-governance becoming a central feature of Parker’s Natural & Built Environments Bill – the legislation poised to replace the Resource Management Act. On the all-important regional bodies established by the legislation, it was assumed that 50 percent of the seats would be reserved for Māori, leaving the rest for the rest.

According to Harman, Parker refused: successfully facing-down the opposition of Nanaia Mahuta and the Māori Caucus “in what may be seen as a defining move by the Government, which has been under fire over the Three Waters co-governance proposals.”

Heather du Plessis-Allan: People power- saving our retirement funds

 

It is a good day in New Zealand. The Government has backed down on their plans to tax your Kiwisaver. 

Is this the fastest back down in the history of backdowns in this country? 

Somebody needs to check David Parker for whiplash, such is the force with which he slammed the brakes on his own tax plan.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: How do “we” fairly tax the rich?

Last week, Inland Revenue Minister David Parker gave a speech titled “shining the light on unfairness in the tax system”.

His speech defended an Inland Revenue investigation into the “tax paid by the wealthiest New Zealanders relative to their economic income”. He is proposing a Tax Principles Act in this context.

Parker assured us that this was in the interests of fairness, not envy. Yes, really.

In arguing that the tax system should probably soak the rich more, he asserted that:

Bryce Edwards: Why Labour won’t introduce a radical wealth tax

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been perceived as “softening her line on wealth taxes” – and therefore being open to the introduction of a new type of progressive taxation on the rich. This was the description published yesterday by leftwing wealth researcher Max Rashbrooke, who was reporting on the fact that Ardern would not rule out introducing a wealth tax when interviewed on breakfast TV.

His interpretation was shared by many on the political right, who also stated that Ardern and Labour were obviously considering a new tax on assets. This then led to a lot of excitement on all sides about an alleged U-turn or broken promise on Ardern’s stated disavow that she would ever introduce such a policy.

Wishful thinking by left and right

Heather du Plessis-Allan: A wealth tax from Labour is definitely on the cards

 

No surprise. We weren’t imagining it last week. 

A wealth tax from Labour is definitely on the cards. 

We now know this because the Prime Minister was given plenty of opportunity to rule it out this morning but refused to. 

Do you need any more proof? 

You’ve got David Parker dedicating $5m to investigating how much tax the wealthy pay in New Zealand. You’ve got him giving a speech on it last week. You’ve got him refusing to rule out a wealth tax at the next election, only saying he has no plans to introduce it this term.