HoS on food prices

The HoS editorial is on food prices and tax cuts:

The voters of middle New Zealand, who have long waited for relief, will not stand for being denied it now. Yet answering the well-reasoned call of the child poverty lobbyists would demand every bit of the revenue that will be forgone in giving tax cuts. A party founded on the principles of social justice has no electoral alternative than to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to those identified by independent research as beneath the poverty line.

In the end, whatever tax cuts Cullen announces on May 22 may be too late to save Labour’s bacon since they would not come into force until after the election – although that increases the likelihood of a vote-buying instant-relief gesture on Budget night.

But whatever administration is installed in the Beehive by Christmas will face an enormous challenge: how to simultaneously satisfy the needs of the struggling middle New Zealanders who voted them in and look after the hundreds of thousands at the very bottom of the economic ladder.

I wonder if it has dawned on the Government what a monumental mistake it was to cancel the tax cuts announced in 2005.