Labour always seems to do this. They launch a policy with no substance, no detail and finances wrapped around it.
People then set about filling in the substantial gaps. Typically their plan is destroyed within days and this is what is happening with their anti-rural water tax proposal.
After their biggest mistake, of gifting large wads of cash to Maori, the next is the lack of substance.
Neville Gibson at NBR explains:
The introduction of commercial charges for water offers a solution to a problem that largely doesn’t exist.
Labour is making it an election promise in response to lobbying that has identified “foreigners” making “profits” for a national resource that is sent overseas in plastic bottles.
The problem is that this resource – unlike, say, natural gas or fossil fuels – is continually produced at no cost to anyone. Like sunlight, it is also abundant and unlikely to disappear.
Both are essential to life and, in some circumstances, can be converted into electricity.
While these resources are free to everyone, there is a cost to how they are used.
The other day about $3000 of water dumped onto my house, and straight into the stormwater system, where I had to pay the council to take it away, in pipes I’ve already paid for. Labour launched their tax on water policy the very same day.
Labour’s policy will complicate the existing management of water, and certainly add new layers of costs. The arrogance is that the policy is mainly about fulfilling an emotional need.
The lack of detail is telling and so is the policy’s discriminatory nature – Labour is targeting only certain users, such as bottlers and farmers who depend on irrigation. But this logically includes virtually all food and drink producers.
It also raises the question of ownership where none exists at the moment.
Raising costs on food production, like their fuel tax idea, will simply be passed on to consumers and will hit the poor more than anyone else. At the same time Labour are campaigning on lowering cost of living expenses. The disconnect is incredible.
Jacinda Ardern has never had a real job, never employed anyone, never made wages and paid PAYE while going without and she mostly certainly hasn’t had to scrabble for the last cent to meet the power bill. She has no idea about business, costs and the costs of production, and neither do any of her other fellow travellers.
They simply see a bunch of rich pricks and line them up like Labour always does. This time however they are using townies to do the pitchforks and cross-burnings. This is yet another envy tax.
They might save the rivers..but since when has a tax ever saved anything…but they will simply lumber even more costs onto the poor.
Sure there are some water shortages in some geographic areas, but by and large water is everywhere in this country. A farmer with a crop or stock needing water will pay anything, sure, but they will pass on those costs. The alternative is to let the crop or stock die…then we enter Venezuela type food supply issues.
Labour never think these things through, then again why would they, their leader loves Venezuela and has made plenty of speeches waxing lyrical about the fantastic socialist paradise it supposedly is.