Labour to campaign with pledge cards

Helen Clark tells Grey Power's Dan Harris that she can take more questions. Picture / Amos Chapple

Labour will issue a pledge card at the start of the election campaign, a device it also used in the past two elections.

Prime Minister Helen Clark told a meeting hosted by Hamilton Grey Power yesterday that one of the pledges would be introducing a local body rates rebate scheme, which was announced in April.

The other pledges will be drip-fed over coming weeks and the card itself issued when Labour's campaign is launched four weeks from the yet-to-be-announced election.

Helen Clark said some pledges would cover already known policies while others would set fresh goals. The cards are modelled on a similar one used by British PM Tony Blair.

Helen Clark said Labour would again cover important policy areas including health, education and law and order. She said Labour pioneered the use of the pledge cards in New Zealand in response to the public distaste of years of broken promises by previous governments.

The rates rebate scheme would cover up to 300,000 households. Maximum rebates will rise to $500 a year.

Helen Clark said Labour's pledges would be responsible and fully costed. She attacked National for seeking to offer big tax cuts to "every New Zealander".

But National finance spokesman John Key attacked Labour's 1999 pledge card promise of no rise in income tax for the 95 per cent of taxpayers earning under $60,000 a year.

He said that promise went out the window because rising incomes meant 11 per cent of all taxpayers were now in the top bracket.

"On top of that businesses and consumers will be clobbered with a carbon tax, investors will pay a tax on shares held offshore and more than three dozen other taxes and levies have been created or have increased."