Very little specific so far.
According to Stuff, National will increase GST to ‘up to’ 15% – which I take to mean 15%.
He has ruled out a land tax, capital gains tax, or tax on risk-free rate of return. That leaves just closing the loopholes that allow landlords to offset losses on investment properties against income tax.
Key says any income tax cuts will be across the board, but there are no details.
He claims that will allow New Zealanders to keep more of their income… but the changes are revenue-neutral, so don’t know what he’s talking about there.
He’s talking about using science and technology to generate more high-tech jobs but, again, no details – apart from some changes to how science funding is allocated. Seems like tinkering. He promises some more money for research in the budget.
Now, he comes to what I suspect is the meat of his speech – mining. ‘unlocking resources’. He says restrictions on mining will be weakened or removed, and encourage oil. Publicly-owned land will be removed from Schedule 4, allowing private companies to come and mine it.
Problem is, the result will just be foreign-owned companies coming in, digging up our national parks and making off with the profits. There’s no plan for keeping the profits in New Zealand. Mining is not a jobs intensive industry.
He is ‘intrigued’ by the idea of NZ becoming a hub for high finance. I’m not sure we want to be putting our eggs in that basket. But he’s a currency trader after all.
A real lack of vision here. Nothing big, nothing that is going to make a real difference to the economy.
He’s alluding to changes to the secondary school system. I didn’t quite catch the importance, but I bet there’s some fish-hooks in there.
In comes the beneficiary bashing, which has been presaged by all those anti-beneficiary stories the government has been leaking over the last few months. The rules for getting benefits will be tightened. That doesn’t do anything to eliminate poverty, of course. We know the vast majority of people don’t choose to be on benefits, but turn to the benefit in desperation. Denying them that safety-net will just make them poorer.
Very very weak. No big ideas. Talk of a step change but no notion of how to do it. I really thought he would have something up his sleeve.
No serious plan for jobs creation, not even lip service. Pretty sure Key didn’t even speak for his full allocated 20 minutes.
Hide and Turia aren’t speaking in support of Key’s ‘plan’, just going on about their own issues. Ouch, that’s not a vote of confidence.
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