I’m not a huge fan of Aotearoa’s three-year Parliamentary terms, mostly because it means the campaigning for the next election feels like it starts as soon as the last election is over.
I’m willing to amend my opinion, however, given just how destructive the new National/Act/New Zealand First Government is. Three years just can’t come quick enough for the opportunity to vote out people who only seem interested in massive handouts to destructive industries like tobacco, mining and oil and also subsidising landlords to the tunes of hundreds of millions a year.
Take the last one, for example. Yesterday it was revealed the cost of allowing owners of multiple properties to deduct the interest cost of their mortgage from their rental income again was going to cost $802m more than forecast, to total $2.915b over four years.
Ah, I hear you ask, if it’s a business, shouldn’t they be allowed to deduct the cost of business from their tax bill, like other businesses do?
Yes, I reply, but only if the profits are taxable. Which they generally aren’t unless you fail the bright-line test, which seems easy enough to get out of and doesn’t apply to properties bought before 2015.
Oh, and the 10 year rule for selling will be reduced to just two years by the new Government, making it even easier for owners of multiple properties to pocket massive capital gains without taxation.
It’s time for a CGT on all houses beyond a primary residence in Aotearoa. It’s that simple. Deduct your cost? Fine. Pay a fucking CGT then.
Anyway, back to the title of this piece. Of course this is driven by ideology, the same ideology that rolls back anti-smoking legislation, opens up conservation land to huge companies to profit from, laughs at environmental protection and is likely to end free lunches for school children.
According to The Spinoff, the last Labour Government budgeted $323.4m to fund Ka Ora, Ka Ako until the end of 2024, putting the cost at somewhere around $215m per year if you take that amount as funding the 18 months from the last budget to the end of this year.
That means the cost of allowing multiple property owners to deduct mortgage interest over four years could fund free school lunches for nearly 14 years.
That’s school lunches that ensure that hundreds of thousands of children actually get something to eat, to ensure they’re in a better position to learn. It also, according to international studies, increases attendance.
Ah, but Act leader David Seymour wants proof. In an interview with Business Desk he indicated that he wanted every intervention with students tracked so the value can be judged.
Except that’s utter nonsense because, while you can control somewhat the environment at school, you cannot control what happens outside of the school and that, arguably, has a bigger impact on outcomes than anything else.
I would argue Seymour wants this data to be able to use it to prove nothing works, furthering his pseudo-libertarian arguments and his belief in a charter school system for Aotearoa. In the way he expressed it, it simply can’t provide the proof he is looking for.
And that’s ideology. He’s not interested in finding out if it works, he wants proof it doesn’t. He wants to give massive amounts of money to the few and for thousands of children to go hungry.
It’s cruelty. Dressed up in a fancy suit and talked about in dehumanising terms of cost-efficiency and other bollocks, but it’s still cruelty.
I just hope enough of my fellow voters see through the charade and vote accordingly at the next opportunity.
Haud Yer Wheesht! 
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