Nickie Muir: Big Smile says 'Trust me'

Nickie Muir.

Dear friends,

We have a few trust issues. I've worked hard during my reign to use words such as "level playing field" and "free trade" a lot and I don't think it's been a problem that no one seems to know what they mean. It is important that the bulk of people don't intuit just how out of whack everything is because they'd start calling for things like: "National days of Inequality Awareness" which you and I know would strongly resemble national strikes.

Then how would we bottle the water that we pay pepper-corn rent for to these hick-town local councils and then export through our multi-national corporations?

How are we expected to fell the trees that we log for minimum wage while avoiding paying the high cost of value-added labour? How the hell will we continue to milk the cows? We all know that the farmers are much happier working as employees now and to be honest if we got really hard on the overseas investment you guys have all been so supportive of and foreign money was pulled out of the rural sector, there'd be carnage. We've been dancing hard these past few years and there are a lot of votes from those in Auckland houses that have effectively had the tax-free income of high court judges.

No one wants blood on the dance floor yet.

Besides, I've already made a sop to the whiners by initiating a tax on investors. Did you like that? I used the words "bright-line" a lot and the media picked it up.

Like any of us knew what that meant. Most of you have got around the two-year limit by waiting it out or buying "first-home properties" on behalf of nieces. Now that's initiative. When my lawyer asked the IRD to leave the foreign trusts alone, I called it initiative, too.

Not everyone does.

But it's getting embarrassing when China is asking us to hand over New Zealand residents who they want on corruption charges. Imagine if it turns out they own substantial property investments here.

It will look like the housing bubble in Auckland has been laundering money. If you're going to lose it anyway why not chuck an extra few hundred K at the auctioneer?

I can see the logic but you all know that this can't last. I know I made a firm commitment not to have any land taxes but when you've got New Zealand reality TV showing people in Customs with suitcases full of cash, having declared only $10,000 of it, someone, surely, will start asking questions.

You can only buy so many possum fur leggings and lanolin face soaps. We need to re-establish trust in Brand NZ. Land tax? Sorry but time to suck it up because, come the day when there really is a level playing field, we'll be the first to go.