Senior NZ First MP Shane Jones slams National’s foreign buyers’ tax

Senior NZ First MP Shane Jones has cast doubt on National’s ability to get its foreign buyers’ tax across the line in coalition talks.

Speaking to Radio Waatea on Tuesday, Jones said tax changes that could worsen housing affordability were not in NZ First’s DNA.

“The north, the west, the east, and the south - they recall that we have in our DNA a deep aversion to tax cuts if it worsens the prospect of Kiwis getting on the property ladder and those things were well and truly aired during the campaign,” Jones said.

It appears Jones misspoke slightly. The foreign buyers’ tax is technically a tax hike and not a tax cut, but NZ First backs National’s main property-related tax cut promise: allowing property investors to write-off interest costs from their tax bills by reversing a change made by Labour in 2021. NZ First included this promise in its manifesto.

The same manifesto is silent on National’s plan to return the bright line test, a form of capital gains tax, from ten years to two years.

National wants to earn $2.9b from a foreign buyers’ tax over four years, money the party would direct into funding its tax cut plan. During the campaign a hose of economists cast doubt about the assumptions underpinning the tax’s revenue forecasts.

Jones took aim at other Maori MPs in Parliament, particularly those on the left of politics, saying that too many Maori MPs looked at issues through a prism of “imperialism and colonial guilt”.

He said issues like imperialism were being mingled with Green climate-related issues to form a kind of Green imperialism.

“We now have a green colonial guilt. You’ll never hear Winston [Peters, the NZ First leader], give any precedence to that,” Jones said.

He took aim at the amount of attention Te Pāti Māori had received in political commentary, noting that only 88,000 people gave the party their party vote (although 107,000 people gave the party their electorate vote).

He said this was a drop in the ocean compared to the 270,000 people on the Māori roll and the 2.9m votes cast in the election overall.

“It is really time the commentators crystallised how small that figure is. People have other more dominating priorities,” he said.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.