Better put more aside for the mortgage too, because Goldman Sachs economists say National’s tax plan would increase inflation, and their policy to flog off houses to foreign investors would mean higher house prices, meaning higher interest rates. Not to mention that their policy to get rid of the Reserve Bank’s full employment mandate means the Reserve Bank would be free to raise interest rates further and ignore the job losses it causes.
Look forward to higher petrol prices, too. Chris Luxon has said, “The idea is that emissions are capped and the price goes up over time. We want the ETS scheme to do the heavy lifting.” A higher carbon price means more pain at the pump. And don’t think you’ll just buy an EV or take public transport, instead – because National’s planning to cut the Clean Car subsidy and remove half-price public transport for young people.
Prescription charges would be back, as well. I can’t work that out, myself. It’s just such a mean, penny-pinching thing, to charge sick people $5 for a prescription. Pharmacists say that since Labour removed the charge, a lot of people who couldn’t afford the charge are now picking up their meds, which means they’re less likely to end up in hospital. Putting the charge back on, which means more people ending up in hospital is what they used to call “penny wise, pound foolish”.
Be prepared to reach into your pocket to help out your local foodbank or your whānau who are down on their luck, too. National’s planning to suck $2 billion out of benefits, hurting the incomes of solo mums, disabled people, people with chronic illness, and people out of work. How a political party decides it’s going to take money from those who have the least is beyond me.
And that’s before we get to Act’s wish list: fees-free training – gone; first home buyer grants – gone; winter energy payments - cut back; school lunches – gone; minimum wage – frozen.
Me, I’ll be all right. As a landlord, National wants to shovel thousands of bucks in tax breaks my way. But I’m scratching my head over how this is meant to help the famous squeezed middle.
That’s the heart of it – all these cuts that National is promising wouldn’t be needed, except they have an ideological fixation on giving tax breaks to landlords, and the money for that would come from making things more expensive for just about everyone else.
I was talking with a mate about this and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Winnie won’t let any of that happen.”
Maybe, maybe not. Winston Peters is famously unpredictable. He voted for more income support in 2019, but there are no guarantees he wouldn’t vote to roll it back in 2024.
The problem is, what could National, Act and New Zealand First agree to between them?
New Zealand First would probably block National’s plan to bring back foreign house buyers. Good, but that just leaves an even deeper hole in National’s budget – and that means more cuts to things like health and education.
Peters and Shane Jones are proud of their investments in the regions with Labour, and would probably demand a new Provincial Growth Fund as part of any deal with National – but National railed against the PGF, calling it a slush fund. If National did agree to it as the price of getting New Zealand First on board, where would the money come from? Yeah, more cuts.
It’s hard to see how a National-Act-New Zealand First government would be anything but chaos. You only have to look at how they’re constantly at each other’s throats on the campaign trail to imagine what they would be like in government.
Yes, Peters might put a stop to some of National and Act’s meanest cuts and wouldn’t let them sell assets – but that doesn’t bring them any closer to balancing the books. The three parties would seriously struggle to agree on enough to put together a Budget. Maybe they would simply have to borrow more to make each party happy.
After the disruption of Covid and then the global inflation spike, I reckon we all feel like we could do with some stability and a bit of relief. Truth is though, we won’t find it with a National-led government that would be fighting among itself – and pushing through policies that mean higher rates, higher mortgage payments, more expensive transport, costly medicine, and cuts to income support.
Well, this is my last column before election day. Regardless of your political hue, let’s all get out and vote. Voting is a privilege and a responsibility.
Whakatūturu, whakarongo, whakatika i te pōti.
Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour Party activist.
