Spare a thought for Casey Costello.
Fresh from her being elected to Parliament and rushed into Cabinet she has spent the first few weeks getting used to the job.
And making a complete hash of it.
On January 25 Radio New Zealand revealed that the Government was considering halting increases to excise duties on tobacco. Currently the tax on tobacco increases by the rate of inflation. The Government decided to investigate the implications of freezing increases for the next three years.
On top of previous news that the Government was going to wind back smoke free policies this was big news of itself. But what attracted attention was Costello’s attempt to hide what was happening.
From Guyon Espiner at Radio New Zealand:
RNZ has learned Costello is proposing a three year freeze on CPI-related excise increases for smoked tobacco.
But when RNZ put that to her in an interview Costello said she hadn’t looked at it.
“I’ve had no discussions on that at all. Like, that’s – it’s not even something I specifically sought advice on,” she said. “I haven’t looked at a freeze on the excise at all.”
But RNZ has seen a Ministry of Health document, sent to Costello, which says the minister is proposing to freeze the excise tax.
“The additional information you provided to us proposed also to freeze the excise on smoked tobacco for three years,” the document says.
While Costello told RNZ she had not asked for advice on the issue, the Ministry of Health document appears to contradict that.
The document sent to Costello asks: “whether you would like advice in January 2024 to include implications of a three year freeze on CPI-related excise increases for smoked tobacco.” The ‘yes’ option is circled in the document, which was signed by Costello on 20 December, 2023.
This was incendiary. It appears that the Government needed the extra income from selling of smokes and an increase in lung cancer so that it could pay for tax cuts for land lords. And it looks like Costello had tried to hide this from the media.Costello’s attempted justification for telling what was on the face of it a mistruth was that this was only one of a number of options she wanted looked at and had not “specifically” sought advice on. But this stretches the meaning of the word “specifically” beyond breaking point or at least is really, really disingenuous.
Then more infomation came out.
In messages to the Public Service Costello claimed that nicotine was no more harmful than caffeine. I guess if you only look at it and don’t ingest it that is probably correct.This particular claim led to other ministers engaging in extraordinary linguistic manoeuvres to try and agree with her. Sort of.
Costello pushed for the removal of tobacco excise off “less harmful smokeless tobacco products”. It is NZ First policy to stop subsidising nicotine gums, patches and lozenges which could be regarded as being competitors for these products
And she claimed, without proof, that the Tobacco Industry was on its knees.
To top things off she has been unable to say who wrote policy notes that she provided to Ministry Officials. A cynic would think that British American Tobacco wrote the policy. As time goes by this seems to be more and more of a distinct possibility.
Because Costello has rather strong links to BAT.
She was previously acting chair of the Taxpayers Union. BAT has admitted that it has supported the Taxpayers Union.
From the Guardian:
New Zealand Taxpayers Union has repeatedly opposed plain packaging, which removes branding from cigarettes packs. Dozens of Atlas thinktanks, including the New Zealand Taxpayers Union, signed open letters to the World Health Organization opposing plain packaging in 2016 and 2018. In response to questions from the Guardian, British American Tobacco said it currently supports this organization.
There is no clarity about the Taxpayers Union funding. This has increased dramatically over time and for the year ending December 31, 2022 it received $2.826 million in income and had nearly a million dollars in cash in its bank accounts. Who knows how much it received last year and how much was provided by its corporate sponsors.
And Costello is not the only person associated with the Government to have links to the Tobacco Industry.
Costello clearly has a lot of explaining to do. And if it can be shown that her briefing notes to the Ministry of Health came from British American Tobacco then her future looks shaky.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress