David Seymour has always come across as the affable uncle at a family gathering — jovial, witty and otherwise harmless.
As the election nears and he senses real power just beyond his grasp, he has now decided to unleash the beast within. Annoyed at being asked to explain the loss of four of his candidates for hopeless wingnuttery, he has decided that attack is the best form of defence. And what better trigger issue to focus on than tax.
Here’s what he said. The IRD is “a gang that steals more than anyone and they’re run by a big gangster called Grant Robertson . . . when you make an effort there should be reward and you should not have your reward stolen”.
The idea that taxation is theft is a fundamental belief among the hard right, as is the concept of small government. Regarding small government, hard-right US lobbyist Grover Norquist would rather go all the way and drown government in the bathtub. The ACT party wants to travel a fair way down that route by slashing $9 billion per annum for four years off government spending “without touching a teacher, firefighter, police officer, nurse or doctor . . .”
This is pure, hard-right fantasy. Anyone can see that slashing government spending by $36bn would seriously damage our economy — government spending is income to someone else. Take that income away and what happens? Unemployment shoots up and the lack of money circulating in the economy would cause widespread business failure and an almighty recession.
