Our country currently has decrepit schools, underpaid nurses, and hospitals with sewage in the walls. To fix this massive social and infrastructure deficit, the government needs to spend more money - which means eventually collecting more money. The new government's tax working group, which is looking at taxing the land, wealth and capital gains of the rich, is an obvious way of solving this problem, and there's public support for doing so. Instead, Labour seems to be forgoing this opportunity and suggesting that any changes will be "fiscally neutral":
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says it is "entirely plausible" that any tax changes stemming from the tax working group could be balanced by tax relief elsewhere.
In a video with Stuff political editor Tracy Watkins, Ardern not only repeated that there would be no tax changes in the first term of Government, any changes which came as a result of the tax working group could well be "neutral".
"We've ruled out any changes to, you know, significant new tax changes in this first term. It was a big issue during the election and it was one that we very openly worked through," Ardern said.
"We've said we'd set up a tax working group, we have, it'll report this term, but anything it suggests wouldn't take effect until a new term and people will have a chance to vote on it, but it could be entirely plausible that it could be fiscally neutral."
Because you can always rely on chickenshit Labour to ignore a golden opportunity to do the right thing. They're so scared of National criticising them - something that will happen regardless of what they do - that they are pre-emptively taking major policies off the table, and effectively pledging to continue right-wing austerity forever.
Labour needs to decide what it stands for: social services, or austerity. And if its the latter, then they might as well not be in government. All they'll really be standing for is a different bunch of arseholes getting the big salaries, while ordinary kiwis keep on getting fucked over.
