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Hi Friend,
A new poll (and it's not good news for Chris Hipkins); even
more wasteful spending on "white privilege workshops" for
Wellington bureaucrats in this week's Taxpayer Update.
But first, we have to tackle the extraordinary
news that IRD officials have been caught uploading taxpayer data to
social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
🚨 IRD
Data Leak 🚨
Thanks to the hundreds of supporters who have contacted us
concerned about IRD's data leak that was first reported by Radio NZ on
Monday.
We
were as stunned as anyone that IRD staff have been caught extracting
data from tax returns to upload to social media companies and even
Google.
Names, addresses,
dates of birth, and even details on who has tax debts and overdue
student loans have been handed over to Google, Facebook, and
others.
Putting aside the questions about data sovereignty – these
companies are based outside of New Zealand and not under New
Zealand's legal/privacy jurisdiction – it is almost certainly the worst
breach of taxpayer privacy ever seen in this
country.
We've spoken to our counterparts in the UK, Canada, and Australia,
and this appears this is the worst data leak or privacy breach by a
revenue agency in the Commonwealth.
What's worse, the IRD have been trying to downplay and obfuscate.
They told Radio NZ that because the data is "hashed" there is nothing
to worry about.
Our IT experts say this is absolute nonsense. The whole point of
giving the data to Facebook and Google (among others) was for the
companies to identify you/taxpayers online and match the data to
profile(s).
It is so basic it shouldn't have to be said: taxpayers face prison if they don't
give personal information to the IRD. Taxpayers are entitled to expect
that information to be held in the strictest
confidence.
Literally uploading the information to social media companies (or
even using it for "marketing") warrants nothing short of a Ministerial
investigation and heads rolling.
To our astonishment IRD are reported as saying that taxpayers
cannot "opt-out" of having their information being given away. If that
is true, we will need to consider all legal options. We cannot take
this one lying down.
Friend, the whole team are working on this. We are still speaking
to IT experts, getting legal advice, and (most importantly) advice on
how to stop IRD from giving taxpayer information being given to social
media companies.
MONDAY UPDATE: I've just sat
down with David Buckingham, whose 'citizen journalist' efforts
uncovered what IRD have been doing. The more we learn, the more
alarming it becomes. Have
a listen
to my interview with David on our special Podcast episode
here.
I am hopeful that
within the next 24 hours we'll be able to give you a more thorough
update and advice on how to find out whether your personal information
has been leaked.
Keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow...
New Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll: good news for the governing
parties 📈📊
Despite what the media might lead you believe, the public are
behind Christopher Luxon's Government based on our hot-off-the-press Taxpayers'
Union-Curia poll.
Based on this month's numbers, the Government would maintain a
comfortable majority in Parliament if the elections were held
today.
National are up one point compared to our last (July) poll, to 39
percent. ACT are down a smudge (0.3 points) to 8.8 percent while New
Zealand First are down 0.5 points to 6.8 percent.
Labour are up one point to 27 percent, while the Greens are down
1.5 points to 11.0 percent, and Te Pati Māori up 1.5 points to 5.0
percent.
Translated into seats, this would give the centre-right bloc 67
seats (no change) and the centre-left bloc 53 seats (down 2).
But the real worry for Labour is that Chris Hipkins' support has
taken a big hit. Hipkins' net favourability (favourable less
unfavourable) has fallen 16 points since July, down to negative 10
percent. By comparison, Luxon's has risen 1 point to positive 7
percent.
And the drop is reflected in people's preferred Prime Minister.
Hipkins has dropped 6 points to 13 percent, although Luxon also
dropped 2 points to 33 percent.
The
full poll results are on our website here. Or if you're after all
the details that the PM and Leader of the Opposition get to see, join
our Taxpayers' Caucus for the datasets and
correlations.
Take the hint, Chris... 👀
At risk of doing a One News poll "Maiki spin",
wise readers of Taxpayer Update may conclude that it is no coincidence that the
same month Mr Hipkins has been talking about new taxes, his support
has nosedived. 👎
Perhaps voters still haven't forgiven the last Government for its
six years of wringing them dry with higher taxes, while the
quality of spending deteriorated as fast as the
quantity ballooned?
Here's a friendly tip for Chris Hipkins: focus on ideas about how
to get government spending under control and growing the economy,
before you keep talking about the next Labour government taxing New
Zealanders even more.
And they've really gone fill tilt. A capital gains tax is one
thing, but wealth taxes are such a backwards policy that even make
socialists blush.
Right now, New
Zealand is the single worst OECD country at attracting
investment (until recently we were only better than
Mexico, but even they are now ahead of us).
We need Her Majesty's Opposition to be leading debates on how New
Zealand can attract investment, quality jobs, opportunity and
growth – not taxes to chase it all away.
Wealth taxes: a sure way to for New Zealand to be poor 😔
Writing
for Stuff's The Post, Alex pointed out what happened in
Europe when wealth taxes were tried.
"In France, the
tax caused 10,000 people and $35 billion to pack up and leave. Not
only that, but the wealth tax cost European countries twice as much in
lost VAT (similar to New Zealand's GST). So with Hipkins' proposal,
the government can say au revoir to their sales tax take as
well."
Countries that have tried wealth taxes
have ended up poorer, tax revenue fell, and countries that aren't as
interested in economic vandalism are more than happy to scoop up all
the jobs looking for someone friendlier.
Come on Chris, you can do better.
But good news from The Post! You're all rich and
powerful 🎉🥳🎉
If you missed Alex's opinion piece, that
wasn't your only chance to see the Taxpayers' Union in the
papers this week.
Remember a few weeks ago, we dug out that MBIE had wasted $650,000
on 'white privilege workshops'? Well your humble Taxpayers'
Union kept digging, and surprise surprise found
more.
Another $300,000
has been pumped into the pockets of something called the Pakeha
Project. Bureaucrats at StatisticsNZ, the Ministry of Justice,
and - you guessed it - our ol' friends at MBIE have been getting
lessons in "questioning the algorithms of whiteness that
discipline our world.'
And guess who's paying for it all? You
the taxpayer.
Rather than spend your tax money on
quaint old fashioned things like government services, these
departments are pumping straight into a string of woke organisations
no one has ever heard of.
Naturally, the Pakeha
Project slung some mud back after we exposed their grift, saying
we at the Taxpayers' Union 'only
represented a tiny percent of taxpayers who had a lot of power and
money'.
So good news! Apparently, being one of
the 200,000 taxpayers who receive our updates, you're in the money!
Congrats .
We still say these pointless workshops
are a waste of taxpayers' money, and they're well past due to be
scrapped. Sign
the petition here to get bureaucrats out of these "white privilege"
workshops and back at their desks.
MFAT's failing grade for spending cuts 📚💰
The culture of waste goes much deeper than that though, and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been in the spotlight this
week.
It emerged that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had been personally
lobbying the PM to avoid cuts, making out that there was no way to
find savings without closing down a couple of embassies. MFAT's savings total the
grand sum of less than one percent of its budget.
Back in May, we called out MFAT's simple tech projects massive
budget blowout, which more than doubled the cost to $33 million.
This week, our
researchers also rooted out that MFAT has once again spent $5 million
on private school fees for diplomats' kids – often in countries with
public education systems better than New Zealand's own
schools!
There's no shortage of people queueing up to be diplomats. MFAT
aren't going to face a recruitment problem if they scrap some of their
gold-plated perks.
Why, when our education standards are plummeting, are we paying for
the silver-spooned families of diplomats to swan around in swanky
overseas boarding schools?
Fees in the USA, UK, Australia, and Belgium alone totalled over
$1.25 million dollars. Let us know what you think.
Wellington's Metlink wasteful spending has a bad smell about it
💲🚽🤢
If you thought MFAT were bad for flushing money down the drain,
Wellington's always there to show you that things could be worse.
Austin dug out Wellington's transport agency Metlink's latest
gold-plated project: building just seven toilets for their drivers,
costing whopping $1.3 million dollars. That's $185,000 per
loo!
No one's saying drivers don't need the loo, but
as David Farrar pointed out over on Kiwiblog, companies offer
commercial toilet blocks for less than a ninth of that cost.
The question is, why does every simple project in the capital
seem to cost an arm and a leg?
Talk about taking the... errr, let's not go there.
MP's in Depth: David MacLeod 🎙️
Just before he took off, Connor
sat down with National Party MP David MacLeod as part of
our Taxpayer Talk: MPs in Depth series.
David is the MP for New Plymouth and was elected at the 2023
general election. He spent 22 years on Taranaki Regional Council,
including 15 years as the Chair. he has also been a director of some
significant organisations including Port Taranaki, Fonterra and
Predator Free 2050. Early in his career, David was an electrician and
eventually took over the company he worked for and grew it to more
than 100 tradespeople.
In his podcast, we explore what drives David, why he wanted to
become an MP, and what he hopes to achieve during his time in
Parliament.
Listen
to the episode on our website | Apple
Podcasts | Spotify
| iHeart
Radio
Thanks for your support.
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Jordan
Williams
Executive Director
New Zealand Taxpayers’
Union
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