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Hi Friend,
We've been taking some big issues head-on
this past week, and we wouldn't be the Taxpayers' Union if we
didn't have a laugh while doing it...
Bouncy Council? Well someone had to be
the adults in the room 🦄🎉
Kids on Council. Enough said, right?
We've been banging the drum for years that unelected appointees should
not have voting powers on council committees – call us radical, but we
believe in democratic accountability at local
councils.
But even we didn't think councillors would be childish enough to
appoint unelected high-school kids to vote on council committees
controlling $3 billion of assets!
Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst used her
casting vote to put school-aged kids on the council committees that do
most of the heavy lifting at council – not even those covering
financial strategy and managing the recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle
are safe.
It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Councils aren't toys, but luckily instead we parked a new council
chamber for the councillors to play with right on their front
lawn!
So, we headed over to Hastings and held a
(firmly tongue-in-cheek) Council Committee Meeting in Hastings' brand
new Council Chambers. Hawkes Bay Today and the Hawkes Bay App dubbed
it the Bouncy Council.
And to their credit, a couple of the
(adult) councillors that voted against the Mayor's proposal came down
and joined the festivities. But all jokes aside, we're making a
serious point.
Friend, we have to stop the practice of
local mayors and councillors appointing unelected decision makers,
screwing the scrum and undemocratically changing voting numbers around
council committees. And we have to nip this one in the bud before the
idea of appointing school-aged kids spreads to other councils.
We need to force a u-turn in Hastings, and demand that your
local council doesn't try to do the same thing. It's common sense, but
school-age adolescents should not be appointed to governing roles at
councils.
Who wouldn't want a free trip to
Hawaii?! 🌊🏄
But we've not been the only ones having fun! One very lucky Member
of Parliament recently bagged herself some taxpayer-funded fun in the
sun.
It's hardly a great secret that more than a few MPs like to splash
around their expense accounts, but some MPs are worse than others. For
example, recently released figures show that one Te Pati Maori MP
spent more on flights than all ACT backbenchers combined and
63% more than the next highest spending MP!
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer spent $39,209 on flights in just three
months, including a junket to sunny Hawaii. Sun, sea, and surf - nice
work if you can get it...
Stuff asked Ms Ngarewa-Packer how she spent so much money, but the
response was *crickets*. And because of our broken, outdated
system, there's quite literally no way for the public to know what
their money was spent on.
Parliament has a special carve out from the Official Information
Act meaning that we only know the total figures for each MP,
not the individual amounts (as we'd be able to find out from
nearly every other agency within government).
Speaking
to the Sunday Star Times, I said:
"MPs should be upfront about how
they're spending public money, but taxpaying Kiwis shouldn't have to
stand around with the begging bowl waiting to see what scraps of
information MPs want to throw their way."
"They have a right to demand
answers on what...MPs are chucking on their expense
accounts."
"The Parliament Bill is hoping to
drag Parliament into the modern age.
"But it can't do that without
much-needed reform to let Kiwis finally call time on MPs playing it
fast and loose with taxpayers' cash. At the very least, MPs' expenses
need to be subject to the OIA."
It's time for a change, and your humble Taxpayers'
Union are happy to lead the charge on this one. Stay tuned...
It's about time bureaucrats kicked off the slippers 🛏️😴
And if you think it's hard to figure out what MPs are spending,
wait til you see how hard it is to work out where bureaucrats are from
nine to five.
Here in Wellington, the once bustling Lambton Quay cafes are dead.
And while the public sector unions make the bogus claim the problem is
the (relatively small number of) lay offs, in fact the real issue is
that tens of thousands of Wellington bureaucrats are staying in
bed.
When the Public Service Minister, Nicola Willis, told these
would-be shirkers that they might have to start putting some trousers
on from nine to five, all hell broke loose. Screams of "where am I
meant to park now that Wellington is more cycleway than
road" and "I used to look after my kids all day while I was
supposed to be working, what will I do now?" could be heard all
throughout the capital's suburbs.
Public sector productivity has been lagging since COVID. And that's
no great coincidence when so many public servants now crawl out of bed
at five to nine and spend the day sitting around in dressing
gowns.
In fact, the
latest batch of census data paints the clear picture. Between 2018 and
2023, the number of New Zealanders working from home increased 60%.
However, the increase in Wellington was over double that, at
125%.
Nicola Willis says enough is enough and it's time for the
bureaucrats to get back to the office. We say she's
bang-on.
This isn't going to be a one-stop fix for public sector
productivity. But it's a start, and breaking the culture of just
doing enough to get by is how we'll start getting value for our
tax dollars. So for getting the ball rolling, Nicola Willis deserves a
pat on the back for this one.
Bank CEO putting profits first? Surely not 🤯🤑
But whilst Nicola Willis is doing her best to get productivity
moving in the right direction, someone else was doing their level best
to tank it.
ANZ's Chief Executive, Antonia Watson, came out publicly last week
in favour of a capital gains tax. Naturally, RNZ took the bait and
span this as some benevolent rich-lister calling
for fairness. Well if a banker talking about fairness wasn't
a big enough red flag, let's work through why bankers are set to make
a lot of money if they manage to get a CGT.
Every capital gains tax proposal to date excludes the
family home. Politically, that makes sense for the left-wing
politicians who will pretend the tax won't hit middle-class
families.
But what that means is that investment and capital allocating into
jobs, businesses, capital plant and the very things New Zealand
needs to improve productivity (and therefore wages) is
disincentivised.
Instead, a capital gains tax would further encourage even more
money into residential housing! And who's New Zealand's largest
residential property lender that would benifit... One ANZ Bank (with a
shameless banker boss wanting a juicy bonus, it seems).
While some politicians have the audacity to claim that a capital
gains tax will ease the housing crisis, any basic analysis shows that
a CGT would make it even harder for young Kiwis to get on the housing
ladder.
New Zealand is the single worst country in the OECD at attracting
capital (after recently being overtaken by [checks notes] Mexico!).
That means our businesses and entrepreneurs are staved of capital. The
last thing we need is more taxes on the very thing we need more of to
grow the economy and wages.
If you're an ANZ
customer, join me in writing to Antonia Watson to tell her what you
think of her champing higher taxes on you and your
family.
Adrian Orr can't manage one currency, let alone two 📟📈
From one bank to another, and this time, it's the Reserve Bank in
the spotlight.
A few months ago, we said the Central Bank Governor Adrian Orr
should stop wasting time on trying to create a centrally controlled
"digital cash".
Orr's one job – keeping the lid on inflation – has been outside the
target range for 40 months. But instead of worrying about that, Mr
Orr's being working behind the scenes on making himself a new little
plaything.
We said it would be a blown-out expensive mess, and boy were we
right...
One of our keen-eyed young researchers, Rhys, went digging for the
project's financials. So far, the Reserve Bank have spent
nearly $2.2 million on scoping out how to press ahead with digital
cash, $2.15 million of which went straight into the pockets of some
very lucky Wellington consultants. And you can add another $1.3
million in staff costs for the project onto that as well.
But here's where it gets ridiculous...
Despite being in the project's fourth year, not even once
did they think to ask what implementing a digital cash scheme would
actually cost. They still have absolutely no idea and haven't
even bothered with a project plan, or budget.
And, taking a leaf from Yes Minister, the Bank has not
even considered assessing similar schemes being tried overseas to see
if New Zealand can learn from the mistakes of other central
banks.
How are these not the very first two questions on the list? It
boggles the mind trying to work out what these consultants have
actually been doing for the last four years, but what we do know is
they've been making an absolute killing doing it.
MPs in Depth: Suze Redmayne
This week on Taxpayer Talk is another episode in
our MPs in Depth podcast series where we get to know
Parliament's new MPs. In this episode, we sat down with National Party
MP Suze Redmayne.
Suze was elected as the MP for Rangitikei at the 2023 General
Election. Suze and her husband run an award-winning farm and sell
their lamb under their own brands. Suze shares her life story, what
drew her to politics and what she hopes to achieve during her time in
Parliament. Also discussed is a number of Members' Bill ideas Suze is
considering and what the role of government should be in the
economy.
Listen
to the episode on our website | Apple
Podcasts | Spotify
| iHeart
Radio
Have a great week! 😊
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James
Ross
Policy and Public Affairs Manager
New
Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
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