It is a political strategy as old as time. Scare the public with tales of disaster and stampede them into supporting your ideological agenda because they believe There Is No Alternative. Yet, if the NZ economy truly is as “fragile” as PM Christopher ...
Great write-up.
In fact, the line “Labour and National had broadly similar fiscal approaches...” is worth repeating.
So the default position we should be applying to the current government is – where is all the evidence for the claims that Luxon is making?
Their tax cuts, or more accurately bracket adjustments, will mean more money for almost everyone in NZ. Where did this "ultra wealthy" thing come from?
Don't hold your breath on the bracket adjustments actually happening; the only ones that are certain to go through are the back dated landlord subsidies.
The amount of extra money the average earner will get is negligible, while the amount of public services that are getting cut to lay for it will leave most people worse off in the long run.
Their tax cuts, or more accurately bracket adjustments, will mean more money for almost everyone in NZ
It absolutely will not. People on low incomes get nothing, people on low to middle get $2 a week, only around 3000 families meet the highly specific targeted criteria for the $250 per fortnight that was misleadingly flashed around during the election. The rest goes to upper incomes and that's before the landlord handouts.
Then a whole bunch of these people will be directly financially worse off from removal of public transport and prescription support, big rates increases from abandoning 3 waters with no replacement and so on and so on.
Gordon Campbell has been putting out brilliant articles for years now (decades probably!). He's got a bias that appeals to me, but is very fact based in his analysis so its hard to dispute what he's describing, perhaps some could argue against what his suggested actions are.