NZ First leader Winston Peters walked into the debating chamber with Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping blaring from his phone. Photo / NZ Herald
NZ First leader Winston Peters walked into the debating chamber with Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping blaring from his phone. Photo / NZ Herald
OPINION
It’s time for Peters to put the kibosh on unaffordable tax cuts.
I’ve got a suggestion for Winston Peters. How about you drop the self-indulgent fights with journalists and the silly comments about Nazi Germany? Instead, why not use the power that the voters have givenyou to stand up for the ordinary Kiwis who are getting smashed by this government in its relentless pursuit of cuts to pay for unnecessary and unaffordable tax cuts? Why not say ‘no’ to National’s tax cut fixation and insist that money is spent where it is needed, instead?
We all know that Christopher ‘Seven houses’ Luxon, who thinks a trainee cop earns $90,000 a year, is out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders, but Winston Peters has always claimed to represent the Kiwi battler.
Is he really going to stand by while the government hikes car rego fees and hut fees on the Great Walks, reinstates fees on prescriptions, and doubles bus fare for kids? How’s that helping the cost of living for ordinary Kiwis?
Even worse is what’s happening to disabled people and their whanau. When I wrote before the election that National seemed to have it in for disabled people, some people said I was scaremongering. Well, it doesn’t look like scaremongering now, does it? Not when respite and travel funding for disabled people and their carers has been canned, benefit increases have been reduced, and the care workers are still waiting for their pay equity settlement.
These cruel cuts make already difficult lives harder. The Enabling Good Lives principles were meant to let disabled people and their whanau decide for themselves how best to spend their funding to improve their lives. An idea right out of National’s Bill English’s playbook – people are in the best position to decide how to get best value for money for themselves.
NZ First leader Winston Peters arriving for his State of the Nation speech in Palmerston North, March 17. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Problem is, this government is putting every cent into tax cuts, so the money’s dried up. Now, disabled people are being told they can’t spend that money on what they need.
A friend of mine, Rachel, who’s in a wheelchair, told me what these cuts mean to her: “Essentially this means now I can’t attend a work conference in Wellington or a tangi up North, because I can’t afford to pay personally for support to go. If your wheelchair breaks, you’re going to be stuck in bed for two weeks, unable to work. Taking away our freedom to work and parent and stay healthy while threatening and imposing tighter restrictions if we can’t work and go on a benefit. It’s an absolute disgrace.”
How about it, Winston? How about being the champion of people like Rachel, and ensuring that they have the support they need to live good lives with dignity.
Because, let’s be clear: these cuts are not happening out of necessity. The Government has enough money to fund support for disabled people, and decent pay rises for cops, and everything else, if it chooses to.
No, these cuts are happening because this government is prioritising tax cuts above all else. It has committed to the most expensive tax package of all time (not that most of us would even notice the amount we would get). It has a multi-billion gap between its pre-election plan to fund the tax cuts and reality and it is desperately searching for public services to cut to pay for them.
Peters is clearly unhappy with this approach. In the speech that he so completely overshadowed with his Nazis ad-lib, he lambasted neoliberalism, he talked about the importance of not leaving people behind, and he promised that his priority was New Zealand First policies, while implying other parties’ policies (ie. the tax cuts) are unaffordable.
OK, then. Time for actions to match the words. Time for Winston Peters and New Zealand First to say: ‘no, we won’t vote for a Budget that makes the lives of disabled people harder, that cuts the staff that support our Police, that under-invests in schools, that shakes down families through higher fees.’
Time for Peters to use his veto power to insist on a Budget that drops the hyperfixation on pointless tax cuts, freeing up billions of dollars for things that are actually important.
It is not hard to invest in supporting our disabled whanau and in the public services we all rely on in different ways. It is certainly not unaffordable. There’s $14b earmarked for tax cuts that can be better spent elsewhere.
It just needs someone with the numbers in Parliament to put the kibosh on the ridiculous tax plan and direct that money where it is needed, instead. Time to step up, Mr Peters.
