How do you know that Labour is thinking they are about to win the election?

They are talking openly about soaking you for more taxes.

The Labour Party says it won’t rule out extending a new capital gains tax to the sale of a family business or farm.  

Its finance spokesperson, Grant Robertson, said it was unfair that property speculators could make profits buying and selling without being taxed.

Labour has ruled out taxing the sale of the family home, but, speaking on TVNZ’s Q + A, Mr Robertson wouldn’t rule out taxing other family concerns.

“What we want to do is to address the fact that we’ve got a huge imbalance in our tax system between hardworking people who go to work every day and pay their taxes and people who are speculating in the property market who don’t … what we’re not prepared to do is shy away from hard issues.”

Labour hates people working hard, sometimes over decades and then selling their business or farm. They ignore the years of going without, they ignore the huge financial risk of farming and business…no, they just want to soak the “rich”.

If Labour are prepared to soak people for daring to sell their family business or farm, how long before they change tack and soak you for selling your house?

Labour really are the party of taxes.

This bill will amend the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 so that the core obligations will also apply to real estate agents, lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, the New Zealand Racing Board, and some high-value dealers, and also establishes the Department of Internal Affairs as the relevant anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism supervisor for these entities.

High Value Dealers you say?

That would definitely include high value art dealers and art auctioneers.

Do we have another repeat of Labour’s usual penchant for trying to sneak more money in without letting the law get in the way?

Labour, the party that brought us the Electoral Finance Act, has been busted laundering donations and misleading over who the true donors are:

The Labour Party is hiding tens of thousands of dollars in donations behind over-inflated art auctions – and naming the artists as donors instead of the secret individuals handing over the big bucks.

The artists had no idea the party was naming them as the donors – they never saw a cent of the money. They say their works are auctioned off at well above market value to wealthy benefactors who want to keep their support for the party secret.

Labour says the practice complies with electoral rules. But one party operative described the practice as “whitewashing” – a way to keep big donations private at a time when corporate contributions to political parties were falling because of public scrutiny.

“What’s the value of a painting?” the operative asked. “It’s hard to put a price on it, not like a car or an airfare or something that can easily be valued. But a painting can’t be valued, and that’s exactly how auctions are used to launder the money.”

Naming someone other than the true donor should be fraud. They are signing statutory declarations that the donations was received by someone who had no idea that they were named as a donor.

Labour has hosted at least three art auctions in the past year – two in Auckland and one in Wellington – selling pieces from esteemed artists such as Dick Frizzell, Bill Hammond and Judy Millar.

The works were assigned valuations before going under the hammer, where they sometimes sold for thousands of dollars more.

After sale, the values were recorded as party donations from the artist – even though the artist never saw the money and often had no idea what was going on.

The difference from any auction price remained secret unless it surpassed the $15,000 disclosure threshold. So, the party could sell a painting valued at $20,000 for up to $34,999 before anyone other than the artist was disclosed as a donor.

Two such artists have appeared on Electoral Commission returns this month, listed as giving donations exceeding $30,000. Neither had seen a cent of the money, and neither was aware the donation had been listed in their name.

That is just dishonest, misleading and thumbing their nose at electoral laws.

Wellington artist Karl Maughan provided Labour with two paintings for auction in the last year. He said he gave them to campaign staffer Barbara Ward, who works for Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.

“Once I’ve given them the painting, that’s it, I don’t have anything to do with it then,” he said.

Maughan said he was a Labour supporter and understood his paintings were being sold to raise funds, but questioned the transparency of the process.

“I didn’t know they used my name when declaring the donation,” he said. “I guess the donation should be in the person’s name who bought it because it’s their money.”

One of his paintings was listed as selling at auction last month for $36,000, he said, a “few thousand more” than it usually would.

Dead right. The real donor should be named.

Labour hasn’t yet declared who the donors were behind Matt McCarten’s slave Labour scam either.

Auckland artist Stanley Palmer also provided artwork. According to the Electoral Commission register he had donated more than $39,000 to Labour since June.

“I suppose it’s from both the artist and the buyer. Labour get something and I end up with nothing.”

Palmer said he unaware he had been listed as a big party donor, but wasn’t concerned by the disclosure.

Labour general secretary Andrew Kirton said the party usually notified artists like Maughan and Palmer if their names were made public.

“It’s so bloody complicated. Barbara is often in touch with them. I know in the past that’s been the case. I’m not sure exactly what’s gone on in this situation, but usually we’d let people know if they’d tipped over the $30,000 disclosure limit. And a lot of them are aware of the situation.”

Artworks could sell for more or less than market value, Kirton said. Some buyers paid more than $15,000 above market price at auction and were disclosed in the party’s annual returns.

The party consulted art dealers, and sometimes the artist themselves, to set a price for each artwork, Kirton said. Considering that amount to be a donation from the artist was fair, he added.

“Those are the rules at the moment . . . A donation can be cash or it can be goods or services in kind.

“In this case it’s a piece of art and it’s basically what they would usually get if they gave it to a dealer who then sold it at auction. Whatever the artist gets back, that’s essentially what they’re forgoing in income by donating the piece to us and therefore that’s what we record from their end.

“It’s sort of similar to some of our local party members will bake a cake or sell little badges at a market stall somewhere. People are buying them for $2 or whatever, they’re not really donating. The concept of selling things at market value is not new. Essentially an auction is probably a more exacerbated form of that.”

More weasel excuses from Andrew Kirton, who is yet to properly answer questions over Labour’s slave labour scam.

And the scam on these donations goes right to the top, with the missus of David Parker, who also works in Jacinda’s office deeply involved in the laundering scam.

Wellington artist Karl Maughan is listed as donating $60,000 to the Labour Party in less than a year, the proceeds from the sale of two of his paintings.

This month he was listed as donating $36,000 to Labour’s election campaign, slightly more than the $24,000 he pledged in October last year.

“My friend Barbara Ward is a woman who works for the Labour Party in Auckland,” he said. “I give her a painting which goes up for auction at Labour event and whatever the painting makes is donated to the Labour Party.

“I’ve always been a supporter of Labour, I like their policies and what they stand for so I’m keen to help out where I can.

“I have donated before, always through auctioning off one of my paintings.

“I was already donating before Jacinda was in, but now she is in I think it’s fantastic. I feel good that it might happen for Labour this time around – I hope it does.”

He said he handed over the paintings to Barbara Ward, who was the partner of Labour frontbencher David Parker and helped run Jacinda Ardern’s campaignsin Auckland.

“I just give them a painting and say ‘here, go for it’. I tend not to go to auctions for my own work, it feels weird being there because sometimes it sells, sometimes it doesn’t.

“I’m not sure who attends these auctions, I guess Labour has certain people who are really keen supporters of the party and are keen, I’m guessing, into giving to the party.

“I didn’t know they used my name when declaring the donation. I guess the donation should be in the person’s name who bought it because it’s their money. But I guess I have given them the painting to sell so I don’t know.

“I don’t mind they are using my name on the donations list, I’ve never said anything different, but they should probably identify who it was that donated the money. I hope they do tell you who it was.

“Once I’ve given them the painting that’s it, I don’t have anything to do with it then.”

Maughan’s painting he gave for the July auction sold for $36,000, which he says it sold for “a few thousand more” than it would usually would.

“It was a painting I had already here, I didn’t paint it for the auction particularly.”

Labour have been busted and frankly Jacinda Ardern’s claims about needing “a balance between transparency and bureaucracy” is rather hollow from the party that introduced the Electoral Finance Act. Labour are being sneaky and furtive about their financing. They need to come clean.

The Labour Party want to:

Prime Minister Bill English has shrugged off a poor poll result, insisting “there’s nothing new about a tight election”.

National was down three points to 44 per cent in last night’s One News-Colmar Brunton poll.

Labour under new leader Jacinda Ardern has rocketed up to 37 per cent – an increase of 13 points.

Equally galling for English is the fact that he and Ardern were neck and neck in the preferred prime minister question, both scoring 30 per cent.

Asked about the poll results today, English said he wasn’t “particularly concerned”.

“There’s nothing new about a tight election,” he said.

“This was always going to be tight and now the choices are a bit clearer as the campaign’s started.”

English said National had originally planned for a “tough campaign” even before Ardern replaced Andrew Little as Labour’s leader.

“So now it’s pretty clear we are at the start of a campaign, the dust settled on the leadership changes and now we get to have a clear debate about what sort of government people want.”

If National’s campaign is free of controversy then 43% is about right.   But that doesn’t leave a lot of fat to cope with any electioneering tussle.

One thing is for sure – every party is focused on increasing their party vote.  The Greens for survival.  Labour to not need the Greens.  NZ First to regain some traction.  And National not to drop any further.

There will be no love lost between any of them.    Let’s do this.

You may prefer National to be running the economy.  But it’s coming at a price.

“National provisioning Koha for Consent is as bad as Labour’s food and production tax on water,” says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland, Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“Both will add to what hard working Kiwis have to pay at the supermarket checkout.

“While Labour’s numbers on water are all over the show – from $58.3 million to $500m, and half a trillion arising from their October 21, 2015 statement – National has given certain Iwi a secret deal.

“It is all in Minister Chris Finlayson’s attack on the Labour Party in today’s NZ Herald, that is the moment any political party crosses the Water Tax Rubicon, Iwi will be first to line up and benefit – the leaders will but the people will get nothing.

“Instead of environmental improvements, money will fill the coffers of those who make up the Freshwater Iwi Leaders’ Group.

“This is as serious as it gets. The two old parties has National selling out and writing race-based water ownership into law whilst accusing Labour’s proposed water tax of being the trigger to justify it. The two old parties are constructing a nightmare for the New Zealand economy.

“A morally weak National Party has agreed to a ‘market-based regime for resource allocation’ and to ‘establish a regime of tradeable rights or tradeable permits in water’ – all based on race.

“All it needs is what Labour is proposing with its food and production tax on water. From the price of cabbages to electricity prices, families – many of them Maori who are up against it – will see what little the two parties have transferred to enrich big Iwi and government coffers. All the while the export wealth creators of this country are being attacked by certain politicians.

“New Zealand First cannot and will not support more racial separatism and more expensive food and power prices from either party. We are certain that New Zealanders when they know more about this will have had enough,” says Mr Peters.

Don’t vote for Winston, because he’s not to the right of National anyway, huh?

If you care about water not being given to Maori through any kind of mechanism, but especially through race-based legislation, it seems a vote for NZ First is the best way to throw a spanner into that particular works.

Water isn’t National’s or Labour’s to give away.  If nobody owns it, they certainly must not be allowed to generate money from it that only goes to Maori interests.  The stuff falls freely from the sky.

Apparently, it is now a school’s role to ensure that kids get their drivers licence…that’s the least you can take from Labour’s new policy for youth. They clearly think parents have no responsibility for the upbringing of their children so are now going to make schools extend their curriculum even further to offer driving lessons.

Labour is promising funding for all secondary students to be taught to drive, budget, and understand the political system to help them transition into work and the community.

Leader Jacinda Ardern announced the policy on Monday morning, which the party calls a “school leavers’ toolkit”.

“Having a driving licence so you can get to work, knowing how to fit into a workplace, knowing how to manage your money, and knowing how to take your place in the community – these are all important skills in adult life, and we need to do more to ensure our young people are equipped with them,” Ms Ardern said.

Key points from Labour’s new policy:

• All secondary students would be offered five hours of free driving lessons, a defensive driving course, and free testing for their restricted and full licenses before they leave school
• The party is taking aim at the decline in voting among young people, and will teach civics education in all high schools
• Courses on budgeting and financial literacy would be available in all high schools
• Every high school will have careers advisors

Ms Ardern said the policy was developed after its Future of Work Commission found that secondary students needed to be better equipped when they left school.

“Labour’s School Leavers’ Toolkit will help students learn to drive, understand practical budgeting, be equipped with workplace skills, and learn how our political system operates through civics education at school,” she said.

The policy will be funded as part of the $4 billion Labour has committed for the education sector.

In the sound bites, stupid Jacinda said not having a drivers licence was “criminalising” our youth. Yes, really, she said that.

But here is the real kicker. The Labour party is spending billions on Auckland public transport and then promises to put thousands of students into private cars, on the road and also is going to pay for it.

Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right one is doing.

These sorts of things are what any good parent should be doing as a matter of course. We taught our kids to drive, we paid for a Defensive Driving Course for both of them, we paid for driving lessons to polish them up for their licences and both kids passed their licence first time.

Green Party candidate Leilani Tamu

I know we all view the world through a filter to some degree but one Green politician has the remarkable ability to filter out all the facts and only see skin colour. Where we see a failed political stunt, fraud and deceit she sees a challenge to the traditional political system and racism.

…In describing politics as a blood sport our political writers and commentators, by default, condone a distinctive kind of political morality that is commonly known as Machiavellian.

…Listening to and reading some of the vitriol that has been levelled at Metiria Turei since disclosing she claimed more benefit than she was entitled to when she was a solo mother has made me wonder how some parts of our society are completely comfortable with Machiavellian politics, especially when it comes to punishing anyone who has the guts to say they’ve done something wrong.

She wasn’t punished for admitting to wrongdoing she was punished for not paying it back before she came clean. She disgusted people because she came across unrepentant and proud of her fraud. It upset people that she justified hers and other’s fraud on the basis that it was government’s/ taxpayer’s fault for not being a better provider.

She upset people for helping the father of her child to avoid taking financial responsibility by refusing to name him. She upset people when it was revealed that she had good emotional and financial support from her child’s father’s family and was not in a desperate situation at all like she had claimed.

It is taken for granted that politicians are all dishonest but the number one rule is to never admit it. Metiria committed the ultimate Machiavellian sin—she admitted to having been dishonest to cast light on the hardships of others. Then, according to Audrey Young and other commentators, she didn’t appear sorry enough for it. Let’s face it, what they really wanted to see was a Māori woman on her knees begging for mercy in front of the predominantly Pakeha media scrum. And she refused to do it because she wasn’t playing Machiavellian politics. She was demonstrating the opposite: honesty.

When Pakeha politician Todd Barclay was hounded into resigning by the “Pakeha media” scrum no one blamed his skin colour or the colour of the skin of the media pack for what happened. It is very disappointing to see the race card being played by Leilani Tamu. I would call it Machiavellian politics except that Machiavelli was very clever and playing the race card is neither clever or original.

…I’d like to contend that yes, politics is a blood sport. But from here on, for as long as I’m involved in it, I’m going to redefine what that means. Because power isn’t everything. Standing up for what is right and what you believe in is what’s important. And for women—especially for Māori and Pasifika women—the significance of blood is much greater than war and violence on the battlefield. Blood is core to new life, to our babies, to our ancestral ties, and to the legitimacy of our values—where family and the environment are treasured and supported. And, most importantly, blood represents unity—a unified Aotearoa, where everyone who bleeds is represented and every voice counts.

What a cheek and how racist to on the one hand talk about every voice counting and a unified New Zealand but on the other hand infer that Maori and Pasifika women’s babies and values are ” much greater” than those of women from other races. How dare she be so racist as to lump every non-Maori and non-Pasifika woman into the stereotype of a race that only sees the world through “war and violence” tinted glasses.

Labour are really piling on the taxes, Grant Robertson has let the cat out of the bag for Labour to bring back their capital gains tax.

Finance Minister Steven Joyce says the opposition are “dodgy on tax” but Labour says it’s continuing to leave a number of tax issues open, saying they will be resolved by a tax working group after the election.

“They’re refusing to say about the capital gains, they’ve mentioned a water tax last week, but they won’t tell us how much it is, and then, of course, they’ve got a regional fuel tax they won’t talk about where it goes beyond Auckland,” Mr Joyce told TV3’s The Nation programme on Saturday.

Labour’s finance spokesman Grant Robertson wouldn’t rule out a capital gains taxin the first term of a future Labour government because a tax working group would consider tax issues.

“I can’t pre-empt what that group says, but here’s the important point – right now today we have something called the bright-line test that the National Party brought in.

“It says that if you sell a house that’s not your family home within two years, you’ll pay tax on it.”

See…there is the tax working group that they’ve talked about for the last 3 elections. Robbo is so lazy he still hasn’t worked out his tax schemes. Instead he wants us to trust Labour.

He said that was a form of capital gains tax.

“What we’re going to the election with is a commitment that if you sell a property that is not your family home within five years, you’ll be taxed for that,” Mr Robertson said.

Many, many people have multiple properties. Labour really are intent on touching third rail polices this election. They are loading up the taxes on middle NZ for sure.

Mr Robertson also would not rule out taking on the Green Party policy of a top tax rate of 40 per cent on incomes over $150,000 but said “I don’t think we will be going for that”.

Labour have been criticised for unveiling plans to charge for water without saying how much.

“The water levy? Look, what we’ve said there is for every thousand litres of water that’s used in irrigation, perhaps one or two cents,” Mr Robertson said.

I’ve heard a much higher percentage for the top tax rate from Labour circles…like 49 per cent.

Robbo is still short on details for his water tax…note he says levy…to hoodwink stupid people into thinking they aren’t raising taxes.