OPINION
Remember when last week the media and the politicians joked about how Nicola Willis was talking about Grant Robertson’s big hole? Well, it turns out he does in fact have a big hole that needs filling. Labour’s crazy GST-off-fruit-and-veges had a quarter of a billion dollar hole in the calculations.
National’s Nicola Willis says Labour made a mistake in the costings of its GST policy, which meant the cost of the policy was $235 million more than Labour had claimed – an error Labour acknowledged was in its early material but was quickly rectified before the public release.
Labour said the error was only included in the first version of the policy document, which was sent to media before the announcement. It was not in the material released publicly on Labour’s website after.
The error was fixed on Sunday before that announcement, but media were not advised so the figures used in many news stories remained inaccurate.
The initial material said the four-year cost of it would be $1.985 billion and costed from the 2024/25 financial year – it is actually about $2.2 billion with $115 million of it being tied to the 2023/24 financial year.
Labour finance spokesperson Grant Robertson used the $2.2b figure and the correct years of spending during a press conference yesterday after the policy announcement.
“The correct cost of the GST policy has always been accounted for in our fiscals and was discussed in the media conference yesterday,” a spokesperson said.
“References to ‘holes’ or ‘uncosted’ by the Opposition are false.”
Willis said it was a “schoolboy error equating to quarter-of-a-billion-dollar hole”.
Claims of mistakes in the books are a common theme in election years as parties try to cast doubt on their opponents’ credibility.
Grant, pal, explaining is losing. You cocked up. But you know what: I reckon Nicola Willis started a rumour about GST off fruit and veges so they would rush it and screw it up. Which they have.
My cynical side is tempting me to wonder if these very basic ‘errors’ aren’t deliberate, designed to further undermine the policy, which can all be given as a reason, later on, to break their promise and not introduce it or campaign on it again.
It’s a dopey policy from a dopey bunch of economic vandals.
Mind you Grant Robertson learned all his book-keeping skills sitting on the knee of his fraudster father.
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