Jacinda Ardern is trying to rule out even discussing a wealth tax if she gets re-elected. But if she gets re-elected, it will be by voters who support one. A Newshub poll shows that nearly half of all voters - and 60% of labour supporters - support a wealth tax:
The Newshub-Reid Research poll asked voters if Labour should have gone further in taxing the wealthiest New Zealanders.(There's a Herald poll from a few days ago which shows majority support, but Twitter being down means I can't find it).Opinion was split, but more voters - 48.7 percent - said yes while 43 percent said no and 8 percent didn't know.
A majority of Labour's own voters - nearly 60 percent - wanted them to go further, while a third of National voters think so too.
As with climate change, Labour is ignoring its voters on this issue, preferring to chase soft centre voters with inoffensive mush. But if you treat your voters with contempt like this, they may go somewhere else - and that late rise in polling for the Greens suggests that that may be happening.
Again, this is a pretty funny thing for a "Labour" party to want to die in a ditch over. But their opposition is also hugely wasteful. Its hard to see a better time than now, when people recognise the need for solidarity and the government clearly needs revenue to pay for the pandemic, to make the rich pay. And its certainly not going to be easier in some far-off future when politics has returned to normal. Again, its hard to escape the conclusion that Labour politicians - all of whom are paid at least $180,000 a year, and if not already rich, probably hope to be - aren't really interested in properly representing their supporters at all, but just exploit them to support the unjust status quo.
