Stuff reports:

National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis says she’s been leaked details of a Labour Party election tax policy to wipe GST from fresh fruit and vegetables.

But Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would not confirm nor deny the plans. GST is the 15% tax on goods and services, which is applied to most purchases in New Zealand.

“I’m not announcing our tax policy today,” he said on Thursday.

Nicola has good sources. She said for many months the Government had been looking at asset taxes, and she was proven right. I suspect she is dead right on this also.

On her way into question time on Thursday, Willis said she understood this was Labour’s tax policy, and that Finance Minister Grant Robertson had raised “serious concerns” about it.

“Despite the serious concerns having been raised, Chris Hipkins is no longer taking his finance minister seriously, and intends to announce this policy despite the serious concerns,” she said.

Our GST is the envy of most of the world as it is so simple. Keeping GST simple has been bipartisan policy for the last 30 years, but it looks like a desperate Hipkins is about to change that.

He ruled it out just three months ago incidentially:

Chris Hipkins has ruled out cutting GST from fresh food as New Zealand continues grappling with a cost of living crisis.

“Don’t expect to see anything in that space between now and the election.”

Hipkins’ comments were in response to questions from Bridge, who pointed to emails from AM viewers calling for the change.

The Māori Party has long-called for the change to remove GST from healthy food.

But despite those calls, Hipkins said it wasn’t something the Government was working on.

So Hipkins will have lied if it turns out this is something they are announcing.

But in May, before the Budget, Robertson said it would be too difficult to exempt food from GST.

“It’s a very, very challenging thing to administer,” he said, adding that he thought supermarkets would likely benefit more than consumers.

On this, Grant is right. But looks like he has been over-ruled.

The reasons this is a terrible idea are:

• Benefits supermarkets more than consumers
• Bastardises a clear Get system
• Leads to huge legal cases about hat qualifies for no GST. Are mushrooms a fruit or a vegetable? Technically neither as they are a fungi. But expect a huge boon for tax lawyers
• Generally any sort of removing GST on food benefits wealthier families more than poor ones
• Is very untargeted

The problem in NZ isn’t that we have GST on fruit and vegetables. It is that thanks to the Government we have had 18% inflation in the last three years.

The BBC report:

The boss of NatWest has admitted a “serious error” in talking about Nigel Farage’s relationship with its private banking arm Coutts.

Dame Alison Rose said she was wrong to respond to questions from the BBC about Mr Farage’s account being closed.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has “significant concerns” about the conduct of Dame Alison, BBC News has been told. 

She has faced calls to resign from Mr Farage and several Tory MPs including former cabinet minister David Davis.

The ex-UKIP leader had demanded NatWest explain how his financial information was made public as the row over his bank account closure escalated.

NatWest said it still had full confidence in Dame Alison at the helm.

Dame Alison’s apology comes after the BBC apologised on Monday for its inaccurate report earlier this month which said Mr Farage’s account was closed because he no longer met the wealth threshold for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. 

Mr Farage later secured a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered.

The banking group has been under mounting pressure to explain how information about Mr Farage’s account closure had been disclosed.

In her first admission that she had been involved, Dame Alison said in conversations with BBC business editor Simon Jack “she had confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and he had been offered a NatWest bank account”.

This is both scary and scandalous.

Farage was leader of the pro-Brexit UKIP. His bank decided to dump him as a customer because they didn’t like his political views on several issues.

Access to banking services is pretty essential in society. The thought that banks can refuse to allow you to bank with them, because they don’t agree with your politics is horrifying. Allowing you to have a bank account is not endorsing you. It is allowing you to bank.

Farage is controversial, but within the mainstream. Numerous polls have shown around 20% to 25% of Brits approve of him – a higher percentage than approved of Jeremy Corbyn.

Imagine the outrage if banks dumped Jeremy Cornyn as a customer because they don;’t like his views on the Middle East?

Not only did the bank close his account for political reasons, they lied to the BBC and briefed them off the record that it was nothing to do with politics, but he simply wasn’t wealthy enough anymore.

So they made a political decision, they lied about it, and then they leaked his personal banking information to the BBC to discredit his claims. We only know this because the bank’s internal notes were leaked.

Think about where this could end up. How would you feel if your electricity supplier decided they would no longer supply you electricity because they dislike your political views?

hopefully Dame Alison will be looking for a new job soon.

The Māori Party have released their tax plan. Its aim appears to be to encourage as many New Zealanders as possible to leave NZ. It includes:

• Two new income tax rates of 42% and 48%
• An asset tax of up to 8% per annum
• Increase company tax rate to 28%
• A 2% financial transfer tax on overseas transfers
• A 33% tax on undeveloped land
• A 33% tax on rental houses without tenants

They claim this will allow everyone else yo pay no tax on their first $30,000 of income. The actual impact will be so many fewer people living in NZ, that the poor buggers remaining will face increased taxes.

It is worth noting that no poll has shown Labour can form a Government without the Māori Party. They will have to agree to at least some of their policies to form a Government.

Stuff reports:

Police dogs were used to track Labour MP Kiri Allan’s movements after she was found about 500 metres from her crashed car on Sunday evening, The Post understands.

So the Minister of Justice drove over the limit, hit a parked car, did a runner from the scene leaving her car abandoned. Incredible.

The following things can all be true, and are not contradictory:

• You can admire Kiri Allan greatly as a person, her friendliness, her sense of humour, her open style, her battle with cancer, her down to earth nature.
• You can have great empathy for her mental health issues, admire she is open about them, and understand how hard that can make life.
• You can also accept that there have been so many reports of bullying type behaviour (three different agencies raising concern, a backbench Labour MP, and VIP Transport) that how she deals with people is sub-optimal. This doesn’t negate the first two. I know several former National Ministers whose treatment of staff was also sub-optimal, but I also regard them as friends and good people. No-one is perfect.
• While having empathy for the mental health challenges, it is legitimate to point out that poor judgment in areas (speech at RNZ, not disclosing as a conflict a donation from an official who reports to her, treatment of others) probably contributes to the already high stress you are under. It can lead to a vicious circle where the more under pressure you are, the worse your judgment becomes.
• No amount of poor mental health excuses any MP, let alone the Minister of Justice, from fleeing the scene of a crash. This is an issue of huge public interest, and that doesn’t just stop with the resignation. Of course Parliament debated what happened. How could they not?

Gareth Hughes has written an excellent piece on the pressures of being an MP. The long hours, the late nights, the time away from family and the pressure from the media and the public. He also points out “One of the hardest things for me was that while politics is a team sport, often it’s your colleagues who you are in competition with”.

I worked in Parliament for eight years. I was only a staffer, but even at that level the job wasn’t great for mental (or physical) health due to the pressures of work. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the job and it was a privilege, but I am a much happier person now.

There is still a lot not known about the crash and the arrest. Again, despite the resignation, it is still a matter of legitimate interest about the circumstances around the then Minister of Justice being arrested. In my opinion it would be far better for Kiri Allan if a full statement was made about what happened. Otherwise, there will just continue to be story after story as details get drip-fed out.

Louis Holbrooke writes:

New data from KPMG suggests organised crime will the biggest winner from new measures targeting cash-strapped smokers.

The share of tobacco consumption sourced from New Zealand’s black market has increased to 12.1%, up from 9.2% in 2017, according to KMPG’s latest regular inquiry into illicit tobacco consumption in New Zealand.

While the total size of the black market has shrunk in kilogram terms, this is in line with wider reductions in the smoking rate as savvy smokers switch to vaping.

The worrying sign here is that among those Kiwis who continue to smoke, the black market is normalised as a source of affordable durries.

A taxed and regulated pack of Marlboros now costs $43, and the vast majority of that is tax. With smokers being disproportionately lower-income it’s little surprise that they’re jumping at the opportunity to buy homegrown tobacco leaf or cigarettes smuggled from China and Korea.

Artificially high legal tobacco prices create massive profit margins for illicit importers and growers of tobacco — profits that can be used to fund further criminal activities.

The obvious risk is that with an illicit market already thriving, new measures to make legal cigarettes less appealing and proposed crackdowns on vaping products will only fuel illegal activity. We need only look at Australia, where vapes are effectively prohibited and a study estimates a massive 23.5% of tobacco consumption comes from the illicit market.

Customs are concerned, telling the NZ Herald they’ve seen a “significant increase in the smuggling of tobacco products over recent years. . .The illicit tobacco market in NZ is already substantial and Customs expects demand for illicit tobacco to increase.”

Right now, smokers pay more than enough tax to cover associated health system costs. But if Labour follows through with plans to slash nicotine content and availability of legal cigarettes, or if National pursue a signalled vaping crackdown, the tobacco black market will boom, cratering tax revenues and normalising crime.

Louis Houlbrooke is the Taxpayers’ Union‘s spokesperson for lifestyle economics issues.

That a staggering amount of staff.

I’m sceptical of the effectiveness of the Maori Health Authority, but willing to be persuaded. If they genuinely can improve health outcomes for Maori, that would be great.

But I just can’t imagine what 400 staff are going to do. That nearly three times as many as Pharmac.

The number of two year old Maori children that are not fully vaccinated has increased from 7% (in 2017) to 35%. This is a potential disaster. Is the Maori Health Authority going to turn this around?

National managed to lift the rate for Maori children from 73% to 93% without an MHA.

What will be the metrics on which we will judge if the MHA is doing a good job with 400 staff?

(Sorry – tried to embed the link but couldn’t get it to work. Please click on below).

https://rcrrealtalk.podbean.com/e/alwyn-poole-on-what-is-happening-in-education-who-is-ultimately-responsible-what-parents-grandparents-can-do-20-jul-2023/

One News reports:

The question in the latest poll asked: “Do you believe race relations are getting worse or better or staying about the same in New Zealand?”

Only 14% say it’s getting better, 35% believe it’s about the same, and 47% say race relations are getting worse. 

I’m surprised as many as 14% said it is getting better. The Government is pushing through radical policies without a mandate, and gaslights New Zealanders about them.

NewstalkZB reports:

New Zealand First is promising to adjust income tax brackets to inflation, as well as offering tax incentives.

This means National, Greens and NZ First have all come out in favour of indexing tax brackets to inflation. We only need Labour, Maori Party and ACT to agree to have it unamious.

Doing so will be a simple to legislate. Basically all you need is a bill along the lines of:

• The Chief Statistician will sign a certificate by 31 January every year stating what the inflation rate was for the last calendar year
• The Commissioner of Inland Revenue will by 28 February every year apply that inflation rate to the existing thresholds and publish a statement saying what the new thresholds for each bracket will be, from 1 April.

If in 2010 you were earning $55,000 a year, then your tax would have been $9,520 or 17.3% effective rate.

If your income had stayed the same in real term, it would be $74,713 today and your tax would be $15,575 or 20.8% effective tax rate. So you have had a 3.5% increase in tax, purely due to inflation.

If the law required the brackets to move with inflation, then your tax bill today would be $12,925 only and you would be $2,650 a year better off.

Benefits get increased in line with inflation, and it is mad that tax brackets do not. You get penalised for earning income, and the higher inflation is, the worse off you are and the better off the Government is.

So pressure Labour, Act and the Maori Party to join National, Greens and NZ First in supporting this.

A year ago, these were the Labour Ministers and what has happened since

1. Jacinda Ardern – resigned
2. Grant Robertson – still there but no longer Deputy PM
3. Michael Wood – sacked
4. David Parker – still there but resigned Revenue in a huff
5. Poto Williams – retired
6. Kris Faafoi – resigned to become a lobbyist
7. David Clark – retired
8. Kiri Allan – sacked
9. Meka Whaitiri – defected
10. Phil Twyford – retired
11. Stuart Nash – sacked
12. William Sio – retired
13. Carmel Sepuloni – still there
14. Peeni Henare – still there
15. Damien O’Connor – still there
16. Megan Woods – still there
17. Willie Jackson – still there
18. Jan Tinetti – still there
19. Priyanca Radhakrishnan – still there
20. Kelvin Davis – still there
21. Ayesha Verrall – still there
22. Andrew Little – still there
23. Nanaia Mahuta – still there
24. Kieran McAnulty – still there
25. Chris Hipkins – still there

So in just 12 months, of their 25 Ministers we have had:

• Three sacked (would have been sacked if not resigned)
• Two resignations from Parliament
• One defection
• Four retirements
• A new Deputy PM (and PM)
• A senior Minister who quit Revenue because the PM over-ruled him

That is a huge amount of change in just 12 months.

Stuff reports:

A teen Mongrel Mob member who broke into the home of a pregnant woman and indecently assaulted her in the bed she was sharing with her child has been sentenced to 12 months home detention.

Napier man Stevie Taunoa, 19, thanked Judge Gordon Matenga after receiving the sentence on Thursday morning then walked from the dock into the police cells and yelled “Cracked it”.

He seems genuinely remorseful doesn’t he. I am sure he will never reoffend, eh.

My latest Stuff column is at The Post, and is on the impact of last week’s mass shooting.

The Herald has a lengthy profile of Christopher Luxon. Well worth taking the time to read.

1. Audrey Young: it will be a miracle if Chris Hipkins can rescue his Government from this
2. Barry Soper: Dame Jacinda Ardern left Chris Hipkins to clean up the mess she created. “The Ardern/Hipkins Government have failed on so many fronts, despite their unbridled power, the strongest majority since the first Labour Government of Mickey Joseph Savage 1935 …This Government has left a lawless, impoverished, struggling country, longing for relief.”
3. Jenna Lynch: Kiri Allan’s sudden departure leaves Labour fighting for political survival, public confidence
4. Fran O’Sullivan: The Government needs to be put out of its misery with an early election.
5. Kerry Woodham: The Government is a rudderless ship.
6. Felix Desmarais: Did Labour just lose the election?
7. Jonathan Milne: Labour’s car crash of an election campaign

You have to agree with Fran that the humane thing to do would be to put the Government out of its misery.

Over the next three months I will profile all 72 electorate races, including a prediction being one of safe, likely, leans or too close to call. These will all be exclusively on my Patreon (sub needed).

In 2020 I went from North to South. In 2023 I am going to go alphabetically, so am starting with Auckland Central.

I’m including this initial one on Kiwiblog, so people can see what they will get if they subscribe.

The race for Auckland Central 2023

2020 Results

Majority: Gre 1,068 (64/72) or 3%
Nat Party Vote: 21% (51/72)
Lab Party Vote: 46% (49/72)
Gre Party Vote: 19% (4/72)
Nat Candidate Vote: 28% (46/65)
Lab Candidate Vote: 33% (68/72)
Green Candidate vote: 35%
Nat Candidate Vote/PV: 130%
Lab Candidate Vote/PV: 70%

2023 Candidates

Green MP Chloe Swarbrick won the seat in 2020, after the retirement of Nikki Kaye. Prior to Kaye winning it in 2008, it had been a safe Labour seat. Swarbrick is standing again.

The 2020 Labour candidate Helen White, who was widely seen to be lacklustre, now is standing for the safe seat of Mt Albert. The new candidate is Oscar Sims a software developer and urban housing activist. Labour selected him over List MP Naisi Chen, when could be a mistake considering a third of the electorate is Asian.

National’s candidate is Mahesh Muralidhar, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is running a high profile campaign, and has good links into the large ethnic community in the seat.

Also standing is Ted Johnston for New Conservatives and Damian Sycamore for TOP.

Demographics

Auckland Central is a seat for the young and childless. It has the lowest proportion of children in the country and the highest proportion of 25 to 35 year olds.

33% of the electorate are Asian and it has the highest proportion of Middle Eastern/Latin American/African residents in NZ at 5%.

Only 45% of the electorate were born in New Zealand – the lowest percentage in the country.  A third of those born outside NZ have lived here for less than two years, so are probably overseas students.

40% of residents have lived at their current address for less than a year – the most transient population in the country. 

A key issue may be turnout for those who are new to New Zealand. Historically their turnout is less than those here longer term.

2023 Outlook

Auckland Central is a red seat. It was held by the left for 90 years and votes left on the party vote. Labour and Greens got 65% of the party vote last election, the 20th highest in the country.

Incumbent MP Chloe Swarbrick has huge name recognition nationally. She often polls up to 5% as Preferred PM, and is in the media often, including as a columnist in the NZ Herald. 

Labour’s candidate is not well known, but likely to perform relatively better than Helen White. However Labour is far less popular than in 2020.

National’s Emma Mellow came third in 2020, but that was on the back of a disastrous performance for the party nationally. With another good candidate in Mahesh Muralidhar, they could end up in at least second place.

Overall I rate the seat as Likely Green hold. Swarbrick is popular with both Labour and Green voters, and enough Labour voters will choose her over Sims that she should hold on.

The Herald reports:

Justice Minister Kiri Allan has resigned as a Cabinet minister after being charged with reckless driving and resisting arrest in Wellington last night.

Allan was taken into police custody on Sunday night after a car crash in Wellington and “is assisting with inquiries”.

A statement from Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said that Allan was taken into custody and held in Wellington Central Police station after the crash on Evans Bay Parade in Wellington at 9pm last night.

She was charged with reckless driving and resisting arrest and was released custody at 1am Monday, Hipkins said.

What a sad end to a political career.

A car crash could happen to most people, but to have a Cabinet Minister resist arrest is almost unheard of, let alone the Minister of Justice. She’s obviously been under considerable pressure, but it is hard to fathom how she could have done this.

UPDATE: The information given out by Chris Hipkins was incorrect. Allan was only charged with careless driving and was not charged with resisting arrest.

The Herald reports:

Two of Act’s current MPs are keeping a stiff upper lip following their recent demotion on the party’s list, which risks them missing out on another three years in Parliament.

Chris Baillie and Toni Severin were the biggest losers in Act’s list for this year’s general election, released on Sunday. Baillie, ranked fourth in 2020, fell to 17th while Severin dropped from ninth to 14th.

Baillie, speaking to the Herald last night, admitted he hadn’t been expecting to drop so far down the list but said he was largely unfazed by it, citing additions of high-profile candidates such as ex-Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard and former National MP Parmjeet Parmar.

“I sort of suspected that there were a few others in the wings who would be really good contenders, so yeah look, I’m not bothered,” he said.

“I’d love to spend three years actually having a bit of say in the legislation as opposed to these three years, but if [I don’t get in] then I certainly won’t begrudge anyone for that.”

Severin, Act’s Corrections and ACC spokesperson, accepted it was a slight blow to drop five places in the rankings but she was nevertheless confident on a return to Parliament.

“I don’t see it as a step back at all, this is just what happens when you have new talent coming,” she said.

“Like everything, we’ve all got egos [and] it took a bit of a hit but, in general, I’m pretty happy.

“I’m pretty certain this time around that I will be back in and [I’m] looking forward to working with my new teammates.”

Severin didn’t believe any of the current MPs would feel resentful and said people of her and Chris’ vintage were no strangers to a bit of adversity.

“Chris and I are both probably of an older group that we’ve had probably tonnes of knock-backs in our lives, but you just pick yourself up and move forward and, you know, you can’t compete when you get high-calibre people coming forward to join the party.”

This shows remarkably good discipline and loyalty within ACT. As I said the list ranking was quite brutal on incumbents, but none of them have had a tantrum. In fact they are saying they understand the need to bring in fresh blood.

Compare that to the Greens where one MP was so distraught she was *only* ranked No 4, she was openly plotting to undermine the No 3 candidate. It was classic ego over party.

Luke Malpass writes:

But after that there were a series of questions which neither Hipkins nor Davis were able to satisfactorily answer.

In fact, by the end of the press conference it wasn’t very clear exactly what the facilities were for, what age young offenders they would cater for and there was no idea about the cost. …

Either way, by the end of the press conference the only thing that was clear was that there would be new secure buildings built in – most likely – Christchurch and Auckland. It was just about the worst press conference performance from Labour ministers in this term of office.

Almost as if this was a policy dreamed up on the back of a napkin, like Kiwibuild!