OPINION
Labour and the Greens, in fact, the political left globally, are addicted to two things: tax and spend. The more they tax, the more they spend. So we end up as a country like a dog chasing its tail because the tax take, no matter how much, is never enough to cover the spending. What’s worse is that much of that spend is wasteful.
If Grant Robertson were to treat his household budget in the same way he treats the country’s budget, then it would be difficult to see how he could manage to pay the supermarket bill. As it is, under his stewardship, food price inflation is sitting at 9%.
It’s interesting to look at the tax tables provided by the IRD and compare the company and individual tax paid at the beginning and end of the last National Government’s term and the current Labour Government. The figures are in millions.
National entered office in 2008:
Company tax – 9,104
Individual tax – 23,769
National left office in 2017:
Company tax – 13,743
Individual tax – 29,124
If we take Labour’s tax numbers over five years they are:
2018:
Company tax – 13,622
Individual tax – 31,218
2022 :
Company tax – 19,862
Individual tax – 43,146
What these figures tell us is that while Labour has only been in power for about half the time National was, Robertson has managed to increase both the company tax and particularly the amount of tax paid by individuals by far more than the Key Government did. Add on his other revenue streams, e.g. GST, and it is still not enough to cover his manic spending. Of our population of just over 5 million, 3.38 million are currently individual taxpayers.
You can see from the above that constraints are needed when it comes to ‘maxing out’ the country’s credit card. Grant Robertson has shown no constraint and has gone off on a reckless spending spree using Covid-19 as an excuse. “We’ve saved lives”, he says. Even if you accept that lame excuse, how many have died through not being able to access medical attention and surgery because of his government’s ridiculous lockdowns? It’s like saying we’ve increased the police numbers by 1800 but not saying how many have left, or giving unemployment numbers and excluding job seekers.
This is why National and ACT are considered better managers of the economy. It’s obvious from the different language used by the left and right in this election campaign. The right talk of reining in wasteful spending, reducing red tape, trimming the public service, canning light rail, prioritising spending on much-needed infrastructure and giving people the tax cuts they so desperately need. These are all things that indicate better economic management.
Labour doesn’t believe in any of that. Therefore the choice this election is pretty clear: vote for a party on the right that will get enough votes to rid the country of the most unskilled, inexpert, amateurish government this country has ever suffered.
National and ACT are releasing some good policies deserving of consideration. We need to give this bunch of incompetents a bloodier nose than what the polls are suggesting.
Labour, this election, is looking like the rejig party, like they’re suddenly going to spend money on roads just like last time when, once re-elected, they cancelled all but one project. They’re not to be believed. Don’t be taken in. The last thing we need on election night is to find all we’ve achieved is the rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. As voters, we need to replicate the iceberg and sink the ship of fools.