Harawira on Agenda
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 am by David FarrarAgenda hve the transcript up of their interview with Mairo Party MP Hone Harawira. First the good parts:
HONE Oh sure, I mean they have, to assume that they can simply sit there and pass an Electoral Finance Act when the whole world was saying this sucks and in fact it’s come back to bite them on the bum shows how disconnected they were with reality to try and ram through legislation at this late stage in the game is arrogant, it suggests that they are really only – and then to stack all of these quangos with their cronies suggests that they see themselves going out and they’re really just trying to maintain as much power as possible, that’s arrogant, that’s nothing to do with coalition building, and in fact the Labour Party has yet to come out clearly and say these are the sorts of things we’d like to do with the Maori Party.
Harawira is of course right with his analysis.
GUYON What about National then are you comfortable, could you actually work with National?
HONE Another difficult one there, but no more difficult than working with Labour as far as we’re concerned. People have this big fear of National and Maori in terms of oh they’d get rid of the Maori seats wouldn’t they, but my response constantly is always the greatest land theft of my generation has actually been the Foreshore and Seabed and that wasn’t stolen by National that was stolen by Labour, would you expect us to jump into bed with them happily.
That is a very different tune to a few years ago.
But some idea of the challenges ahead:
GUYON Let’s talk about a couple of the things that you said you want to do if you have influence over a government, you wrote recently in the Northland Age that you want to remove GST from food and abolish tax for people earning $25,000 and under, how much would that cost?
HONE Actually Guyon I couldn’t care less how much that costs, what I do know is this.
Guyon says Treasury worked the cost out for them:
GUYON Well we did something that you should have done, we asked Treasury how much this would cost, they said it would cost two billion to remove GST from food and three billion more to cut taxes for those earning less than $25,000. You want free health care for kaumatua and kuia too, where is the money coming from?
I have a figure of $2.4 billion for removing GST from food. The no tax on those earning less than $25,000 could be even more than $3 billion. That is the cost of zero tax for everyone who earns $25K or less. But if you read it as being zero tax on the first $25,000 of income (which you would need to do otherwise someone at $25k pays $0 and someone on $26K pays pays says $5k) then the fiscal cost is arouynd $11.4 billion (according to NZIER calculator).
HONE Well let’s say the tax off cigarettes for the last we’ll say five years, that’s five billion dollars. This isn’t very hard eh, this isn’t rocket science, the government is taking a billion dollars a year off tobacco tax, they could certainly spend it in this area.
Hone is correct that tobacco excise tax is around $1 billion a year. But that tax is already budgeted for.
Even if Hone was suggesting we double the excise tax on tobacco, that would bring in an additional billion a year at most. Probably quite a bit less as the amount of tobacco purchased would decline. But even if it was $1 billion that is not even close to the $5 billion to $13 billion cost of what he wants to do.
Tags: Agenda, GST, Hone Harawira, Labour, Maori Party, National, seabed & foreshore, tax rates, tobacco excise tax
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 am
The EFA really does suck!
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 am
Did you hear about that 6 year old who took $100,000 from his dads unlocked safe and went on a spending spree?
Was his name Hone too?
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 am
Harawira is a brown neck activist who obviously is appealing to the same constituency.
Although he does have a point about GST on food, especially in NZ where the majority of the population live of two fifths of fuck all thanks to laybores appaling attitude to productivity and GDP per capita growth.
perhaps by adding some incentives i.e. no tax on income OVER the benefit levels up to 50K, or whatever would make benes want to get off their arses and contribute.
In this respect I do respect Hone – just not his arrogant gimme politics.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
The real trick to getting New Zealand out of the economic malaise is to scrap WFF.
Incentives and hard work can then work their magic rather than creating and sustaining a large bludger class that cripples the New Zealand economy.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 am
We all agree with Hone about the EFA so no point commenting any further.
The GST on food is a different kettle of fish though. Hone has good intentions but is thinking about the problem from the wrong way around. We need a better economy where real wages are much higher than where they are now. Labour the party who is supposed to be for the workers but has done nothing about this in 9 years.
Two steps will help initially:
1. Get rid of Cullen.
Vote:2. Have some proper far reaching taxation reform.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 am
There was also an interesting comment from Hauraki-Waikato Maori Party candidate (Angeline Greensill) less than an hour later, on the same TV channel. Discussing the chance of Maori Party entering a coalition with National Party after the election, she said that at the moment “it’s not in your guys’ favour”. Music to Labour’s ears!
It seems Maori’s deep seated hatred of the “whiteys” in National (to quote Shane Jones), may yet trump any chance for the Maori Party to have a meaningful voice should National form the next government. For such a young party to hold such deeply ingrained prejudices shows that the baggage they carry will always limit their relevance.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
Well if nothing else Hone has very clearly detailed to us why on no accounts should the Maori party NOT be given input into New Zealands financial future. As he says, he doesn’t care where the money comes from.
Just print some more eh Hone?
No worries.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:06 am
On hearing Harawira’s comments on tax, I thought ‘ah, a supply-side economics guy, perhaps the Maori are kinda right wing’…NOPE, just unthinking populism! woohoo
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Maori *party*, that is.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 am
What a fucking idiot, fits the dumb uneducated Maori stereotype perfectly. Just saying it as it is, bub.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Once again our useless media fail to call Harawira’s comments for what they really are, this man is a racist and an apologist for all the ills that affect Maoridom.
This is the same media who went after Dr Brash for making comments that amounted to nothing more than the truth.
We face many problems at this point in time, both economic and social however there is one insurmountable hurdle that we have to smash before we can ever begin to start fixing those problems, the biggest problem we face in NZ is “sickly white liberalism”.
This liberalism stops us facing problems head on, it silences free speech and it hamstrings those who have the answers to the problems we face.
Vote:As an example, one only has to look at the issue of Black Power filing a treaty claim, the Maori party refused to condemn such a ludicrous claim and hid behind the “its about family” bullshit, not ONE member of our pinko media took them up on this, they (the media) are frightened of be labeled racist for asking the blindingly obvious questions.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
I think that no tax for those earning less than $25k would be a good idea, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about the GST off food.
I sugest that the Maori party really push this as one of the coalition points with National.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
I dont. And neither does the Maori Party.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
You got this from his talking about loweing taxes?
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
Either he is amazingly stupid or being mischevious. I am going with the former.
Harawira must be Harry Potter . Money is about resource allocation. Hones explanation is that is can create resources out of thin air, and we all know that only happens in Harry Potter.
Money does make the world go around and those who treat it with disdain are fools.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
“it would cost two billion to remove GST”
Vote:Cost? Shouldn’t that be “reduce revenue collected from tax payers by two billion”?
That would be a saving.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 am
Typical populist politician, says a lot of right things but would stuff the country up just the same as most of them if he was occupying the treasury benches.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Would you give him the foreshore and seabed, if he gave you a tax cut?
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
He can have the foreshore thats up my ass, same as he’s pulling this tax bonanza from his ass.
Apparently the Maori party DO believe in fairies.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Best thing for JK to do if the Nats govern alone is scrap the racists seats and put an end to this apartheid rubbish thats no better than Sth Africa was.
Vote:September 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Murray, hahaha!
Vote:September 23rd, 2008 at 3:43 am
I don’t think that will happen gd. It might have been on the agenda if Don Brash was the leader. Maoris would have a hissy fit. Labour would scream ‘racisim’. The MSM would do the same, and side with the Maoris. Most importantly, it would be too much like hard work for National.
Vote: