Provide clean water without any chlorine content
On reading Guardian of the Aquifer Pauline Doyle’s letter last week, it became instantly clear that the level of E. coli has been changed massively from 10ppm pre-Havelock disaster down to 1ppm. This massive reduction allows councils to dose water supplies virtually at their own discretion and enables them to move towards a mandatory chlorine treatment regime. This then removes their responsibility to provide healthy, clean water without any chlorine content. People’s health is being affected with skin conditions, scalp problems and who knows what else. Council, set your priorities and deal with all speed to rectify this intolerable situation. Stop spending on non-essentials like pavements and cycleways and get your priorities right. Peter Chatterton Greenmeadows
Easy fix for wage claims
The Government could head off the avalanche of wage claims that is coming at them like a runaway freight train by scrapping GST and replacing it with a transactions tax.
The wage claims, from nurses, teachers, police, IRD and MBIE staff, and others, have the potential to wreck the economy by kick starting inflation and pushing up interest rates. Private sector employers will likewise be under pressure to raise wages, increasing their costs substantially. The cumulative effect will be to drive up interest rates, causing a major correction in house prices and hundreds of mortgage defaults.
Replacing GST with a transactions tax at less than a quarter of one per cent (a quarter of a cent in every hundred dollars) on all withdrawals from bank accounts would give workers a substantial increase in purchasing power greater than they would get from wage rises.
It would generate roughly the same in tax revenue as GST, but with a substantial amount coming from the speculative sector of the economy.
That raft of financial transactions such as credit default swaps, debt securities, convertible and exchangeable bonds, currency trading, derivatives etc, currently avoid the GST net.
The recent introduction of GST on online purchases is complicated and messy and will produce minimal tax revenue, whereas a transactions tax is simple and would immediately put Kiwi retailers on an even footing with all overseas sellers.
Additionally businesses would be relieved of the burden of accounting for GST, filing returns, and audits.
It will be simple for the banking system to implement FTT, and very difficult for anyone to avoid payment.
Banks would deduct the tax automatically in the same way they already withdraw their own account fees and Resident Withholding Tax, and remit it straight to the IRD.
The removal of GST would contribute to a reduction in child poverty by putting more money in the hands of lower paid New Zealanders who currently pay tax far out of proportion to their incomes.
It would be fitting if Labour, the party that first introduced GST and unleashed the neo-liberal economic experiment on the country, were the ones that finally scrapped it. Richard Ryan
Hawke’s Bay