ACT’s cost of living plan to ease the pain

The ACT Party has released a costof-living package that it says would ease the sting of inflation pressures.

Among the changes proposed are scrapping New Zealand’s remaining tariffs, exempting overseas supermarket chains from the Overseas Investment Act and significantly liberalise the Accredited Work Visa Scheme.

Taking aim at a Government under pressure over the elevated level of inflation, which it claims is mostly global in nature, ACT would also cut taxes by simplifying the tax system, return the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy to solely targeting inflation.

ACT leader David Seymour says that the changes are practical steps that would reduce the cost of living, emphasising ACT’s branding of being the party of ‘‘practical solutions.’’

‘‘This is the bold change New Zealanders need. They’re sick of hearing the blame game where the prime minister refuses to take responsibility. They’re sick of Labour blaming everyone from supermarkets, to fuel companies, to Vladimir Putin.

‘‘Kiwis shouldn’t have to just accept that New Zealand is too expensive. ACT doesn’t accept that and with the right policies and the political will to make them happen it doesn’t have to be.’’

The politics of cost-of-living has become contested political terrain in the past few months as inflation has spiked, inflation for the March quarter was 7.3% according to Stats NZ figures released this week. An effective campaign to highlight the issues by the National Party is widely believed to have contributed to National’s recovery in the polls.

Despite being a free trade country, New Zealand does still have tariffs (taxes) on a limited range of goods, which ACT would scrap, including on chocolate, clothing, Chardonnay wine and railway locomotives.

‘‘The reality is that tariff levels barely factor into our FTA negotiations now. They no longer apply to most agricultural products anyway, and the rest of our market is small enough that offering the carrot of reduced tariffs is unlikely to make an impact,’’ ACT’s trade spokesperson Brooke van Velden said.

In immigration, ACT proposed getting rid of labour market tests (has an employer tried to get someone locally to do a job) and immediately put all occupations of the Government’s green list on the fast-track to residence, removing the ‘work to residence’ requirement.