Our new coalition Government kicks into gear, rates rises and axed cycle lanes in Auckland’s proposed budget and why medical students here can’t afford to finish their degrees in the latest NZ Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald / AP Video / Getty
The tax cuts National campaigned on will go ahead, but they will no longer be funded through a tax on foreign buyers.
Instead, amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990, which underpin New Zealand’s world-first Smokefree laws, will be repealed.
Luxon told Morning Report there were “some practical issues” with the amendments to legislation passed last year that National, Act and New Zealand First disagreed with, such as reducing the number of retailers that could sell tobacco.
The amendments, parts of which are yet to come into force, would have reduced the number of places that could sell tobacco products and created a generation of young New Zealanders who would never legally be able to buy them.
“To say that actually, you can concentrate all that distribution in a few shops and you have one smoke shop in one small town in New Zealand, you can’t not tell me that will be a massive target for ram raids and crime; there will be an increased black market - an untaxed black market - for [cigarettes],” he said.
“The issue is the component part of the programme - how does it ultimately get enforced? A 36-year-old can smoke, but a 35-year-old can’t smoke down the road? That doesn’t sort of make a lot of sense.”
Fair pay agreements and Labour’s replacements for the RMA are also on the chopping block.
And the parties have agreed to introduce a Treaty Principles Bill and support it to select committee stage.
National has also promised New Zealand First and Act legislation on a referendum to extend the Parliamentary term to four years will be introduced.
Luxon will be sworn in as New Zealand’s 42nd prime minister today.
