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A lot to cover this week: we expose yet another Government
department's wasteful spending and #FactCheck Radio NZ on its
[dis]reporting of a poll.
And, we reveal November's
Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll.
But first, what happens when you threaten to expose MPs' spending
rorts?
Parliament hits the panic stations, but eventually accepts 'Open
the Books' submissions 🔥🚨
Last week we asked supporters to back our campaign to Open the
Books at Parliament and bring MPs' spending into line with Ministerial
spending and open to the public.
We were delighted that 18,397 of you backed the campaign
and made a submission at OpenTheBooks.nz in just five days.
Plus, more than 200 have asked to present orally to the Select
Committee and ask MPs to their faces why they think taxpayer-funded
expenses should remain hidden.
It wasn't smooth sailing, first Parliament banned email
submissions, so we printed them out to take down to Parliament. It
took five of us to carry them all, and stacked up they were taller
than Jordan.
 Watch
the video over on Facebook.
Suddenly (when it looked like they might have to do some work!) the
Select Committee Officials were very happy to accept a digital copy
of the responses after all. What a surprise!
This fight's not yet won, but if the reaction by MPs is
anything to go by, we have certainly made a splash.
Yoga retreats and vegan platters? Stick it on the taxpayers' tab
😂🧘🥕
MPs aren't the only ones living it large on the taxpayer tab.
In just six years, bureaucrats at the Ministry for the
Environment blew north of $2 million on staff retreats, planning
summits, and team-building workshops.
Now we're all for team building here at the Taxpayers' Union, but
what's wrong with a quick round or two of minigolf? At the Ministry,
it seems putt-putt golf has been replaced with golf resorts – at
least in terms of budget...
Back in 2018/19, the budget for staff jollies, sorry, training was $98,000. But
by 2022/23 the figure blew out to more than $822,000. That's
an eight-fold increase in just five years.
Right now, Ministers are readying their 'budget bids' (and
nominations for saving money) as part of the annual budget process. No
prizes for guessing a department we will be nominating for a
haircut...
Media not giving context: Those "nasty cuts" you heard about on
RNZ? More like paper cuts actually... 📝✂️
 With more than 18,000 extra
bureaucrats hired over the six years of the last Government, there's
plenty of scope for the Government to cut spending and reallocate
resources to front-line services.
The Department of Internal Affairs has listened to the Ministers'
calls and decided to make some cuts in its latest reshuffle.
The
public sector unions and the media are upset about a restructure that
results in a net reduction [checks notes] of just 17
jobs!
But they fail to give you the context: in the five years to
June, the same agency increased their staff count by 477
roles. 🤦
Radio NZ #FactCheck – Do 65% of Kiwis really support a
Capital Gains Tax? 🗞️
Last week, the IPSOS Issues Monitor survey results were
released, including on whether New Zealand voters want some form of
capital gains tax.
We raised our eyebrows when we heard Radio NZ's Guyon Espiner
putting it to Prime Minister Luxon that "recent polling showing [that]
a majority supported a capital gains tax".
Here's the write-up that got us thinking:
That certainly doesn't match the polling we've had conducted. So we
did an investigation of what was behind Radio NZ's claim.
If you don't like the answer, change the question... 👀
It's actually quite clever, albeit extremely misleading.
Because Radio NZ can't find a poll to back their campaign in support of
reporting on introducing a Capital Gains Tax that supports
their "unbiased" position, they've combined the number of
voters who supported any particular kind of tax on capital
gains!
So they asked in the poll whether the voter supported introducing a
capital gains tax on:
(a) investment property;
(b) the sale of a business;
(c) the sale of other assets; or
(d) the sale of the family home
Radio NZ then summated the responses (i.e. you only needed
to support just one to count as supporting 'a capital gains tax') to
produce a highly misleading claim that "two-thirds" of voters support
a capital gains tax!
The question is also highly misleading. Because of the bright-line
test, a capital gains tax already applies for investment properties
bought and sold within a defined timeframe, property
bought with an intention to sell it, and for those who deal in
property.
Let's apply Radio NZ's methodology 😂
As ever, your humble Taxpayers' Union strives to be
helpful to our friends in the media. Let's look again at those poll
results:
57% support a CGT on investment
property.
43% support it on the sale of
a business.
22% for the sale of other
assets.
Only 13% support a CGT on the
sale of a family home.
In the same way Radio NZ interpreted the above, they could
just as easily run the line to Mr Luxon that "recent polling shows
that 90 percent of Kiwis oppose a capital gains
tax"!
And by the way...
Just to break the media narrative further, our own polling
shows that only 29 percent – less than one in three Kiwis – wants to
see a capital gains tax increase the overall tax burden. Even
those who do want a capital gains tax want to see other taxes cut or
abolished to compensate.
Very clearly, the takeaway from this is that the vast majority of
Kiwis think they're already taxed enough. It would be nice if
the media reflected it.
BREAKING: New Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll: National bounce back,
but Labour keep climbing 📉📊
This
month's exclusive Taxpayers'' Union-Curia Poll is
here.
National is up 3.9 points from October to 38.8 percent while Labour
is up 1.2 points to 31.5 percent. The Greens are down 1.1 points to
9.3 percent, while ACT are down to 8.5 percent (-1.2 points). New
Zealand First is down 1.1 points to 6.5 percent while Te Pāti Māori is
down 0.5 points to 2.5 percent.
Translating this into seats, National is
up four seats on last month to 48 while Labour is up one seat to
39.
The Greens are down two to 11 while ACT
is down one on last month to 11 seats. New Zealand First is down one
on last month to 8 while Te Pāti Māori is unchanged on 6.
On these numbers, the current coalition would be able to
form a Government with 67 seats, compared to the Centre-Left bloc's
56.
As a follow-up to last month's release of our "Major Voting Issue -
Top 3" results, there's been a major swing this month.
37.9 percent of respondents named the Cost of Living as one
of their top three issues. However, Health fell 8.1
points down to 27.4 percent, putting it in third place behind Economy
more generally at 31.1 percent.
See
the results, including preferred Prime Minister, on our website
here.
Your Taxpayers' Union needs you! 🫵🥸
The team here in Wellington are like truffling pigs, digging
through the Government's books rooting out all the waste we can find.
Some of the biggest stories we've broken over the years have come from
you guys.
If you have a tip you'd like to share with us, we want
to know about it!
Our tipline is completely anonymous. But the work we do here
wouldn't be possible without the help of people tipping us off to the
worst excesses of waste in Wellington.
So if you're reading this and have any info to share, just
point us in the right direction and we'll bring the waste to light.
Happy hunting!
That's all for this week, on to the next one!
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James
Ross
Policy and Public Affairs Manager
New Zealand
Taxpayers' Union
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