As we say goodbye to 2024 and welcome in 2025, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of some of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to business, these are some of the voices and views our audience loved
Government faces death by a thousand cuts - Matthew Hooton
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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Matthew Hooton
Matthew Hooton has more than 30 years’ experience in political and corporate strategy, including the National and Act parties.
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Luxon is right that Labour removing interest deductibility for businesses renting out existing homes created an anomaly compared with other businesses’ tax rules.
But Labour has a point in that allowing them interest deductibility but not ordinary owner-occupiers – at least those without complicated ownership structures – was anomalous too.
It’s a worthwhile debate. But, after 20 years of politicians tinkering with the tax system for electoral purposes, it’s not like this particular anomaly stands out for urgent reversal. Treasury says it won’t reduce rents.
Even if it does, it’s still eccentric for a landlord tax cut to be Luxon’s first big fiscal move, with his Government’s books now forecast to permanently spew red ink. Despite dropping the bizarre retrospective element of the tax cut, $2.9b is still a lot, about $800 million more than National budgeted pre-election.
To pay for it, spending ministers must find 145 cuts of $20m each, most carefully designed by bureaucrats to be maximally politically damaging. Read more >
US entering most dangerous period since 1861 - November 6, 2024
It was the Mexican peso that first indicated Donald Trump was winning the US election.
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From 7pm to 9pm (New York time), the peso fell 1.4% to US$0.0489, its lowest all election season.
By 10pm, it was down further, to US$0.0485, a 2.3% fall over the three hours.
The peso is seen as the most straightforward “Trump trade”.
The world now enters its most dangerous period since World War II, with Trump threatening to abandon Ukraine, withdraw the US’s security in Europe which will encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to expand his ambitions westward, launch a global trade war and collapse the World Trade Organisation.
Trump has also promised to jail his political opponents, and the US Supreme Court has ruled presidents cannot be prosecuted for actions in office.
The US enters its most dangerous period since 1861, the start of the Civil War. Read more >
NZ must mine its way out of economic ruin - June 14, 2024
God help us, but NZ First’s Shane Jones and Act’s Simon Court may be our last hope.
It’s irrefutable New Zealand has put itself on a path to bankruptcy since 2008.
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Since 2008, NZ will have increased gross debt by $212b. As a percentage of GDP, it’ll be up three-fold. There is no credible projection that doesn’t have it continuing to grow indefinitely after 2030.
To be fair, as much blame lies with voters. Whenever the political right waves a $20-a-week tax cut before median voters, they take it. Yet whenever the left promises another handout or more cash for health and education, they take that too.
I was among the first but certainly not the last to describe this as voters wanting Singaporean levels of taxation but Scandinavian levels of handouts. It can’t add up, and hasn’t for the last 16 years.
Here’s where Jones and Court fit in.
Fifty years ago, Norway decided to assure the sustainability of its generous welfare state and low taxes by drilling for oil.
It established a 100 per cent state-owned oil company, Statoil, with the Government also owning 50 per cent of every production licence.
Profits went into Norway’s equivalent of our Super Fund.
Given climate change, some New Zealanders are squeamish about drilling for oil.
Yet Norway achieved economic security producing just 2 per cent of the world’s annual oil.
Act might prefer the private sector profiting most from expanding mining but NZ First’s very name demands the Norwegian model. National would go either way, depending on the polls.
But if New Zealanders won’t vote for serious spending cuts or tax increases, study harder or accept Brash-style microeconomic reform, then there’s really nothing left except finding and extracting the wealth beneath us, putting the money into the Super Fund, and then tidying up after ourselves, by rehabilitating and reclaiming the land and seabed. Read more >
National and Act fail the good-faith test over Treaty Principles Bill - January 26, 2024
Act thinks National’s attitude to its Treaty Principles Bill risks breaching paragraph 21 of their coalition agreement. That says both must use good faith and their best endeavours to achieve consensus on policy.
Act has a point. On Tuesday, Christopher Luxon again described not just a referendum on the Treaty principles but the bill itself as “divisive and unhelpful”.
He confirmed National’s long-standing opposition to a referendum and that it has no intention to support the bill becoming law.
Even though paragraph 21 means Luxon wouldn’t give absolute assurances National would vote against the bill, Act would be right that his comments wouldn’t pass a good-faith test in employment negotiations.
But National would be perfectly entitled to say Act isn’t demonstrating good faith either. It knew National’s position before coalition negotiations, making it cheeky to raise it, especially as a bottom line. Read more >
Apologies needed for Labour to be taken seriously - January 5, 2024
Labour still has the rump of a minimally credible Government. Its wise heads – or, more accurately, its not completely incompetent heads – have an obligation to keep it that way, at least until it’s clear Christopher Luxon’s coalition will make it through three years.
Chris Hipkins, while decisively defeated, still secured 27 per cent of the party vote, just one point less than Helen Clark in 1996, three years before leading Labour to nine years in power.
Even more encouraging for Labour’s optimists, Luxon was hardly elected enthusiastically. His 38 per cent was just three points more than Jim Bolger’s 35 per cent in 1993, after cutting benefits, putting cash registers in public hospitals and breaking solemn promises to superannuitants.
Nor is there a Luxon honeymoon. National’s polls suggest that were an election held now, it would come down to four seats.
Especially given the tensions between Act and NZ First – not to mention a National backbench still sceptical of whether their leader and his inner circle truly know enough about New Zealand and government to do their jobs – Labour has a better chance of returning to power in under three years than most new oppositions.
Voters appalled by the previous Government’s incompetence won’t want to hear it.
For those who want the next Labour Government to achieve more than the last – or anything at all – it will need people with experience in Cabinet and some idea of how to operate the levers of power. Read more >
