KEY POINTS:
Parliament yesterday witnessed the unfamiliar sight of Michael Cullen not only performing a pretty faithful rendition of the old Bill Birch standard tax-cutting Dance of the Seven Veils, but doing so with seeming Salome-like enthusiasm.
This was no April Fool's Day prank. Even allowing for Cullen's wickedly caustic sense of humour, such trickery was never on with something currently so politically sensitive as tax cuts.
For starters, the Minister of Finance subscribes to the tradition that the pranks stop at noon on April 1 - otherwise the joker is deemed the fool. And it was long after midday when Cullen began the latest instalment of what promises to be a slow striptease, revealing more and more detail of his tax cuts in the lead-up to their formal unveiling in next month's Budget.
Cullen was deadly serious for another reason. He has already indulged in one too many April Fool's Day jokes in the form of his infamous "chewing gum" tax cuts. Yesterday would have been the day those cuts - announced way back in 2005 - would have taken effect had they not been subsequently cancelled.
National has often reminded voters that not only has Cullen never cut personal tax rates, he failed to follow through even when he promised cuts through the raising of income thresholds at which rates cut in.
So yesterday was all about Cullen consigning that "chewing gum" tax cut - it would have been worth all of 67 cents a week to low-income earners - to the past by dropping tantalising hints of the tax cuts to come.
Cullen first let slip that he intended putting Parliament into urgency on Budget Day to give legislative effect to his tax package. That raised the obvious question. Did that mean the first phase of Labour's tax cuts will take effect from October 1 - thereby feeding extra cash into taxpayers' pockets over several crucial weeks prior to election day?
Cullen's next move was to use the word "significant" in the same sentence as "tax cuts". It is a word that will come back to haunt him if he is not seen to deliver. However, Cullen seemed of a mood yesterday to play up his cuts, rather than follow his usual inclination to play them down.
Finally, and most tantalisingly, he allowed a glimpse of how large his cuts might be. Over their three-year phase-in period, they would in each of those years exceed what taxpayers would have got back through indexing tax thresholds to inflation. That does not necessarily mean that much. The "chewing gum" tax cut, based on similarly indexing tax thresholds, would, depending on income, have amounted to $10.26 extra a week at most.
Cullen has long flagged his initial tax cut will be worth at least $10 a week for all taxpayers, probably more.
The exact figures are still hazy. But they already add up to one thing. Cullen may have conceded his tax cuts will not match in size those National ends up promising. But he has no intention of coming second in milking his for all they're worth.