Remember when John Key was promising that he would seek a mandate from the people at the election before starting to sell public assets and cutting Kiwisaver. It was only a week ago. And he’s breaking his promises already: the Kiwisaver cuts actually kick in on July 1, and the privatisation process is underway.
The law that National slammed through Parliament last week making the Kiwisaver changes law means that your tax credits from this July will only be paid at half the old rate. National claims its OK because we won’t actually get the diminished payments until next July, after the election. What rubbish. You see, your Kiwisaver member tax credits are accumulated throughout the year when you make contributions, but only paid out after the end of each financial year in July. It is this year’s tax credits you’re losing, even if it won’t be paid until next year. Your Kiwisaver has been cut without mandate.
You can hear Bill English making a poor attempt to excuse all this here.
Then there’s privatisation. It’s already underway with Genesis being forced to borrow half a billion, which ended up as a special dividend from Meridian to the Crown – like an asset sale but we get to keep the hollowed out company. National has promised not to begin selling assets in earnest unless it is re-elected but Treasury is already advertising for staff to start organising sales and this table from the Budget documents shows that National intends to have everything ready to go for sales starting from Feburary next year, if we are so foolish as to re-elect them.
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