Budget News Analysis: From The Left

by Dominic Szeker | 4:08 pm 11/07/2010

Last week, Finance Minister Bill English presented the “Don’t Be Jealous” Budget to New Zealand. Tax reform was the biggest feature. The spin-doctor at Crosby/Textor who came up with the tagline ‘Tax Shift’ probably got a nice bonus. Good frames don’t save bad paintings, though, and numerous voices have pointed out that it is not quite right.

Under the changes, 15 percent goes to the top one percent of earners. While the average earner will be worse off after 5.9 percent inflation is taken into account.

To National Party MP’s, a point of etiquette for future reference: it is in bad taste to cheer the income raise you just gave yourself.

Breaking your election promise not to raise GST is a little rude, too. Tax cuts are not the solution to society’s problems. But at least if you make them, make sure the majority of society is better off for it. Labour called the ‘Tax Shift’ a ‘Tax Swindle’. I hope that come election time, Phil Goff keeps this in mind and Labour presents a genuinely progressive tax option to New Zealand in 2011. If a 15 percent tax increase in goods and services is so bad, 12.5 percent cannot have been great either. Alliance is launching a campaign to remove GST on food. The Greens are proposing that your first $10 000 earned should be tax-free. Apart from the fact that these are fair, healthy, and progressive ideas, not getting taxed on that part-time job you juggle with uni sounds pretty decent to me.

I could not see any of the fresh ideas that National used to be buzzing on. The Greens proved to be far more innovative. Proposing progressive electricity prices could help out with heating your cold, dingy, unhealthy flat. Labour is still far more committed to funding research and development than National pretends to be – I hope future BSc graduates are paying attention!

The weirdest thing was how National chose to cloak their regressive policies in traditional Labour values. This Budget is “for the many, not the few.” Either National are incapable of expressing the unequal and stratified country they really want New Zealand to be, or they just want to be the new Labour.

Dominic Szeker writes the Green Finger column.

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