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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
Dear Mr Luxon,
On behalf of all New Zealanders who don’t have multiple investment properties and aren’t financially “sorted” like you, Another Kind Of Politics would like to make a grovelling, abject apology to you, the Prime Minister, for not celebrating what an amazingly prosperous, worth-a-bundle, well-to-do, well-heeled, rollin’-in-it, totally loaded superhuman success story you are.
It was unbecoming of us not to do so, and we are truly sorry for finding your humble bragging about being “wealthy” slightly obscene, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, after two years of recession and with unemployment and business closures rising. But like you said on Newstalk ZB this week, you “get it”.
So do we: you’re rich, we’re not; you’re the shizzle, we’re the fizzle.
We underachievers can see now that, while homeownership in New Zealand has fallen to its lowest point since 1945 and average mortgage payments now swallow more than half of the median household income, it is perfectly reasonable for you, the leader of this struggling country, to own seven properties, mortgage-free.
Oops. That’s not correct, is it? You haven’t long sold two of your seven mortgage-free properties, which means that you now have just five mortgage-free properties, which is also a perfectly reasonable mortgage-free, property-holding position, of course. We offer you another grovelling, abject apology for any confusion.
Mr Luxon, it has been reported that you have made, or will make, nearly $500,000 from the sale of these two properties, minus the usual real estate costs and so on — though not, of course, any nasty tax on your lovely profit.
In the past, we might have viewed this as a “bad thing”. But we have come to understand that it is perfectly reasonable for a person such as yourself, a prime minister who self-identifies as wealthy, and who owns multiple investment properties, to pay not a single dollar of tax on these property sales even though that roughly $500,000 ultimately amounts to income in the same way that your $484,200 prime ministerial salary does.
Of course, you do pay tax on your salary. Maybe that’s what you meant when you told Newstalk ZB you went into politics “because I want to add back to New Zealand”.
We would also like to offer yet more grovelling, abject apologies for thinking it looked like a sickening irony that, just a week after you put the boot into ANZ’s boss for backing a capital gains tax for New Zealand, you “earned” yet another substantial — but non-taxable — capital gain from the sale of what ultimately amounted to an investment property. We see now that it wasn’t a sickening irony, it was unhappy coincidence.
We now understand, too, that it is a completely reasonable for wealthy New Zealanders like you to endlessly generate more un-taxable wealth through property investment and speculation while so many still struggle to buy their first home.
It is also completely reasonable for you and every member of your cabinet — who on average own three properties a piece — to reject out of hand the idea of legislating for a capital gains tax on such significant wealth generation. After all, you are all giving so much to New Zealand. Why should people like us expect that people like you would change the law so that people like you must pay tax on your profits from property investment and speculation? Even though the country is struggling to afford things like a health system that works properly, such a move makes no sense at all.
Nor does it make any sense to be surprised that a government full of landlords would restore a $2.9 billon tax break for landlords. Of course it would.
Finally, we wish to make a grovelling, abject apology for thinking unkind thoughts when you said on ZB that “I’m a kid whose parents left school at 16, I went to university, did well in the world.”
What you didn’t say was that your father went on to be a general manager and your mother a psychotherapist and counsellor. Still, those of us born into intergenerational poverty, intergenerational renting, and who are now struggling to meet basic costs, including your car registration increases and your reinstated prescription medicines charge, know where you’re coming from. We get it.
In short, Prime Minister, we know it isn’t easy being rich. So please forgive us — including those of us who will never be able to afford to buy our own home — for not understanding that being financially “sorted” and owning five mortgage-free properties makes you deserving of our undying admiration, not of anger and opprobrium.
Signed,
The Previously Ungrateful People of New Zealand
Political question of the week for the PM: How can 35,000 people on the streets of Dunedin be wrong?
Shouting with Shane
Some might think it unedifying for a minister of the crown to stand in the middle of a busy Wellington street exchanging loud, angry words and abuse with activists, but not the Honourable Shane Jones.
When the Resources Minister this week happened across a small group of people protesting his proposed repeal of the country’s ban on oil and gas exploration, Jones did not walk away like an adult, but instead made what could only be called a spectacle of himself.
“If you’re going to dish it out to me, be prepared to receive it back,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report. Fair warning, one supposes.
The reason Jones is all for the lifting the ban is because, as he quite rightly says, the country has a growing energy crisis.
But it turns out he and the protestors may have been wasting their angry words: even when the ban is lifted, experts reckon it is unlikely any gas or oil will be found in the next decade, so we remain stuck burning foreign coal to keep the lights on in winter. In the meantime, we need to find other ways to generate more renewable energy.
Has any thought been given to building a wind farm next to Shane Jones’s mouth?
Peace, Love And A Telling-Off
Meanwhile the Honourable Shane Jones’s boss, the inestimable and Right Honourable Winston Raymond Peters, went to New York to give the world a piece of his mind.
His speech to the United Nation’s General Assembly was entitled “The Spirit of San Francisco”, but sadly turned out not to be about wearing flowers in your hair, smoking pot and getting laid at a love-in.
Instead, it was a homily about the need for UN veto reform and the failure of the “great powers” — the permanent, veto-wielding members of the UN security council — to live up to the spirit of the UN Charter, negotiated and signed in San Francisco almost immediately after World War II.
It was a good speech, pointed, but without Winston falling into his usual habit of strident lecturing, well almost.
While praising the virtues of peace, he seemed to get pissed off that his audience were talking while he was speaking, causing Winston the Peacenik to see red mist and mutter grumpily that another UN principle should be “when somebody is addressing you, the rest of the people in the room keep quiet”.
Not so much “The Spirit of San Francisco” then, and more “Winston to Planet Earth: Shut The F— Up”.
Political Quiz of the Week
Why are Act MPs Mark Cameron and Andrew Hoggard wearing gumboots in this picture?
A/ Because they think shoes are “woke”.
B/ Because gumboots are as effective as tinfoil hats.
C/ Because they’re hoping to distract attention from their terrible suits.
D/ Because, just like a cow paddock, their part of the House is full of shit.
