National’s tax cut figures have always felt rubbery.
Their calculations always seemed wooly. And their headline figure, that an average household with kids would receive a $250 a fortnight tax cut always seemed to be optimistic.
Craig Rennie at the CTU has been performing sterling work on the issue. He has crunched the figures and concluded that very, very few families would qualify.
His analysis was that for a family to receive this level of benefit it would have to be spending at least $300 per week on childcare and the family would have to be a two income family and each adult would have to be earning between $53,500 and $66,000.
Very few families have these features. The estimate is that only 0.18% of families qualify.
The CTU provided the figures to Amelia Wade who sent them to Chris Bishop seeking a response so she could complete a story.
This is where it gets interesting.
Bishop decided to go all conspiratorial on it.
From a National Party press release:
“Today, the CTU has attempted to launch another attack on National’s tax relief plan.
[Snip]
The CTU ‘economist’, Craig Renney, was most recently advisor to Grant Robertson. Rather than take responsibility for providing abysmal advice to his Minister that has driven high inflation and high interest rates or advocate for his members who would be better off under National’s tax relief plan, he is spending his days peddling nasty attacks on National.
Serious questions should be asked about the extent to which Labour is laundering attacks through the CTU and Capital Government Relations.
It seems there is no limit to how low Labour will go with their campaign of misinformation and gutter politics. But why anyone is taking them or the CTU seriously at this point is beyond me.”
Shock horror. Highly qualified PR professionals who know how to analyse and cost policies and who want to create a better world provide support to the trade union movement.
Bishop should address the substance of the CTU’s argument. It is telling that he refuses to do so but instead sees conspiracies.
Amelia Wade was not amused by Bishop’s use of the material.
A few hours later National changed tack and admitted that the figures were actually correct but if anyone had misunderstood it was their fault, not National’s. From Michael Neilsen at the Herald:
National leader Christopher Luxon says they knew just 3000 households – 0.18 per cent of the country – would get the full $250 a fortnight headline figure in their tax relief package, but claimed it wasn’t misleading to advertise it as going to the “average-income family”.
The crucial part was that the party had included the words “up to $250” in their tax package document, Luxon said.
The revelation came amid a day of campaigning dominated by strong accusations by both main parties over their tax plans.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins accused National of a “scam” as he pointed out multiple speeches, interviews and press releases where National had simply stated the average income family with children would get the full amount, with no “up to” mentioned.
“National will provide tax relief to working New Zealanders, with an average-income family with young children receiving $250 a fortnight under our plan,” said finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis in a September 21 press release.
Of course the publicity was deeply deceptive and arguably just short of an outright lie. And Luxon’s and Willis’s clumsy presentations have converted what was deeply deceptive into a falsehood.
The basic lesson from all of this is that you cannot trust National. Its flagship tax cut policy is in tatters. It cannot justify some herculean assumptions about how much the new taxes will earn and the promised benefits have been well and truly overstated.
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