Nats forcing Labour ever further left
Key might have won three elections but where is the vision?
What a difference eight years makes. Last week, with Bill English safely overseas, Steven Joyce seized the wheel as acting finance minister to make a peculiar announcement.
He boasted of the Government’s ‘‘significant income redistribution after tax reforms’’ – confirming that the top 10 per cent of earners were now paying 37 per cent of tax – even more than in 2008 under Helen Clark.
This comes off the back of figures showing 42 per cent of households receive more in benefits and tax credits than they pay in income tax.
It was in 2008 that John Key described Helen Clark’s policies as ‘communism by stealth’. So what’s happened since? Now, National don’t just harbour a socialist streak – they’re boasting about it.
National has traditionally campaigned as a party of low taxes, private enterprise, and aspiration. But between elections, they act more like a classic centreleft government, greeting every problem with new taxes and regulations, and spending our taxes like Monopoly money.
Since 2008, National has failed to abolish the welfare schemes it opposed, like Working for Families and interest-free student loans, while also being the first government in decades to raise benefits. They’ve introduced a kind of capital gains (or ‘bright line’) tax, and refused to adjust tax brackets for inflation, meaning half of all taxpayers will soon be in the top tax bracket.
No wonder Labour languishes in the polls – National has completely colonised their territory. This raises the question: what is even the point of electing a National government?
To be fair, John Key has won three elections and kept the Labour/Green/NZ First coalition out of power. We’ve retained stable government, and it’s hard to overstate the value of this for anyone trying to do business in New Zealand.
And some of National’s weakness in reform can be attributed to electoral reality – they can’t rely on just ACT to pass reforms, they also need Peter Dunne or the Maori Party to achieve a majority, and that means watering down any substantial initiatives, such as reform of the Resource Management Act.
But ultimately, the role of a political party isn’t to simply hold power – it’s to advance a set of principles in Government. On this basis, National is failing.
National’s hugging of the centre now pushes Labour even further left, into the arms of the Greens. Eventually, these parties will make it into Government. Then, National won’t just have its own feeble program of reform to answer for – they will bear responsibility for pushing the entire spectrum of Parliament leftward.
Six of Parliament’s seven parties now pursue bigger government, more tax and more red tape. Jacinda will no doubt say this is a fair representation of the views of New Zealanders, but when I speak to families, workers, and businesspeople across the country, I hear of real appetite for a New Zealand in which individuals are free to achieve and innovate without getting beaten down by a politically correct, tall-poppy state.
In the real world, that’s a common sentiment. But in Parliament, ACT stands alone.