If the tax cut didn't happen would the new borrowing have happened?
Politics π³οΈ NZ Politics
- Thread starter wizard of Tauranga
- Start date
Depends if the govt insists on spending more than its revenue doesnt it?
defensivebomb
ποΈ
It all starts and ends with government spending. Thatβs the driver for tax and borrowing decisions, not the other way around
wizard of Tauranga
π
- Thread starter
- #25,104
Well put.
The dollars confuses things.
To put it in simpler terms, when people work in productive industries they allocate a percentage of their labour to the government via tax. The government uses the taxpayers labour to pay for government services converting it to govt employees labour via money.
A tax cut is simply taking less of the labour from taxpayers. The government doesnβt have as much productive peoples labour to invest in govt services.
When you think of it as labour then it opens up a whole lot of ideas around whereβs the labours best utilised? Who decides? How productive can we make that labour? Whatβs the opportunity cost of extracting to much labour from the private sector?
Spending isnβt a fixed law of physics, both sides of the ledger are choices.
If a government promises a tax cut before cutting the spending to pay for it, they have actively chosen to use debt as the bridge. You can't pass a revenue slashing law today, point at the unchanged baseline expenses tomorrow, and say 'spending forced us to borrow.'
The decision to cut the revenue creates the requirement to borrow. Pretending otherwise is just a semantic shield to avoid owning the net fiscal impact of the policy.
defensivebomb
ποΈ
Nobody pays for tax cut. Tax always flows from the taxpayer to the crown. If a government decides to require less taxpayer money, less money flows from the taxpayer to the Crown. No tax money ever flows from the crown to the taxpayer
the bridge is debt to pay for spending
Well, you can. Without spending, there is no need for borrowing.
Indirectly, yes, due to no other alternative source to pay for the spending. Everything is driven by the spending
Well, not really. Everything starts from spending. Otherwise, we wouldn't need to tax or borrow.
I get the indirect opportunity cost examples of trying to plug a revenue hole by borrowing, but that's not the mindset we should be looking at.
We should be looking at the government and saying:
- hey, every dollar of ours that you spend, take a hard look at it and make sure it is spent really wisely. Because we either have to borrow it, or extract it via tax. The only reason we extract it out of people via tax is because you are spending it. So spend wisely
I 100% agree with your last point. Every dollar the government spends should be looked at under a microscope to ensure itβs spent wisely, because it ultimately comes out of our pockets. But thatβs exactly why the 'spending only' argument fails here..
By passing a tax cut before making those hard decisions to cut or optimise spending, the government did the exact opposite of what youβre advocating for. They chose the easy political win of reducing revenue today while locking in the exact same spending levels tomorrow, knowing the immediate shortfall would be punted to the debt ledger.
If we want them to spend wisely, we can't let them decouple the two sides of the equation. Cutting revenue without cutting spending is kicking the bill to future taxpayers.
Here's the Herald, not even pretending anymore. Which is kinda good.
Another fine upstanding right winger in the ranks of NZ First
www.stuff.co.nz
Stuart Nash offers crude definition of what a woman is
The Labour minister-turned NZ First member was asked what a woman is. His answer left Winston Peters in disbelief.
www.stuff.co.nz
You still a bit excited over all this talk about lady penis?Another fine upstanding right winger in the ranks of NZ First
Stuart Nash offers crude definition of what a woman is
The Labour minister-turned NZ First member was asked what a woman is. His answer left Winston Peters in disbelief.
View attachment 17618
The pure corruption of this government is on full display. Giant polluters and lobbyists are DIRECTLY drafting New Zealand laws and this government is enacting them, no questions asked
There's silence from the right on here. This is your mob, the ones you champion. This government is rotten to the core, corrupt, swinging ever further right. Ever further Trumpian in their tactics.
I posted many links last night, here's Bryce Edwards
View: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10162974650547333&set=a.260169022332
HE LOBBYISTS WHO WROTE THE CLIMATE LAW
The story of New Zealand's climate law change is strange and damning enough on its own. Two weeks ago the Government announced it would retroactively strip citizens of the right to sue major polluters, while ignoring official advice to let the courts proceed. But it is no longer just that story. Yesterday the episode got considerably worse: it turns out the legislation may have been written, in essential form, by the very corporations standing to benefit from it.
When you strip the story down, the bones of it are these. Two of the countryβs biggest greenhouse gas emitters drafted, in actual statutory language, the law they wanted Parliament to pass. They printed it out. They walked it into the Prime Ministerβs office. Two years later, the Justice Minister announced that exact change as government policy. And the Prime Ministerβs office now says it has no record of any of it.
Some are suggesting that this is normal stakeholder engagement. It is not.
What the Governmentβs climate law change has exposed is a corridor of influence between the countryβs largest corporate emitters and the Prime Minister's office. The corridor was hidden from public view, missed by every official information request that went looking for it. It only came to light because a High Court judge refused to entertain the corporates' confidentiality claims and ordered the documents released.
The interesting story here isn't really climate policy. It's how laws get made in this country.
A TWO-SENTENCE WISH LIST
By now, this much is beyond dispute. In June 2024, a Fonterra government affairs representative hand-delivered a printed briefing note to a staffer inside the Prime Ministerβs office. About a month later, Z Energy did the same thing, with a substantially identical document, to the same adviser. Both companies have confirmed this. Both stand by the document. It has the appearance of being prepared in substantial part by Chapman Tripp, the elite law firm acting for the defendants in Smith v Fonterra, and was prepared on behalf of all of them.
The briefing did two things. It argued that legislative intervention was βnecessary and appropriateβ to wipe out tort-based climate litigation. And it proposed, in actual statutory language, a βtwo-sentence legislative amendmentβ to the Climate Change Response Act that would, in its own words, βresolve the uncertainty and risks posed by private law claims like Mr Smithβsβ.
The drafting wasn't generic. It was aimed. It would retroactively strip New Zealanders of any common-law right to bring climate damage claims. It would kill, mid-flight, the Supreme Court-sanctioned case that NgΔpuhi and NgΔti Kahu kaumΔtua Mike Smith has been trying to take to trial since 2019.
On 12 May 2026, Paul Goldsmith stood up and announced the Government would do precisely that. The Minister framed it as a matter of βbusiness certaintyβ and avoiding βuncertainty in business confidence and investmentsβ.
THE DISAPPEARING TRAIL
Here is where the story gets uglier.
In March 2025, Dr Matt Hall of the Environmental Law Initiative filed an Official Information Act request to the Prime Ministerβs office. He was not fishing. He was specific. He wanted all documents relating to Smith v Fonterra, all documents about any proposed legislative or regulatory response to it, records of meetings with industry stakeholders about the case, and internal policy discussions on it.
A request more clearly aimed at what would eventually be revealed is difficult to imagine. So is a properly functioning government office that could fail to find a hand-delivered briefing note from two of the largest companies in the country proposing the very legislative response the request concerned.
That, however, is what happened. The PMO took a 19 working-day extension to βconsultβ. It then released a limited set of heavily redacted emails and text messages. There was no mention of the June or July 2024 meetings. No copy of the briefing note. Not even a hint that the document existed.
A similar OIA request from Lawyers for Climate Action NZ returned the same kind of nothing.
The document only surfaced because the High Court forced it out. In December 2025, the court ordered the corporate defendants to disclose lobbying-related documents by 27 March 2026. They missed the deadline. It took Goldsmithβs 12 May announcement and an urgent intervention by Smithβs legal team before Fonterra and Z Energy finally disclosed the briefing in mid-May. Both then claimed confidentiality. On 21 May, Justice Peter Andrew ruled those claims could not be sustained and ordered the document released to the public.
Therefore, the information existed. The corporates had it. The PMO either had it or should have had it. Two OIA requests aimed straight at it produced nothing. The corporates missed a court deadline to hand it over. Only after the Government had announced its law change did the document fall into public view.
The PMOβs official response to all this can be summarised in two words: nothing happened. βWe have been made aware of these meetings and briefing notes via the media and have no record of either on file,β Christopher Luxonβs spokesperson told the press. Cabinet, he added, βmakes its own decisionsβ.
Cabinet always makes its own decisions. Cabinet decisions are not normally meant to mirror the precise wording of a privately printed corporate text that no one in the building can apparently remember receiving.
Either the PMOβs record-keeping has collapsed to the point where hand-delivered documents from billion-dollar emitters evaporate on arrival, or those documents were not disclosed when the law required them to be. There is no flattering reading.
A FAMILIAR SCRIPT
This isnβt a one-off. The Postβs Andrea Vance pointed to the precedent last night. She explained how in July 2024, the High Court set aside a pollution discharge consent for the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation scheme. Within weeks, three primary industry lobby groups, Beef + Lamb, DairyNZ and Federated Farmers, fired off a joint letter to Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard. The letter included their preferred statutory amendments to sections 70 and 107 of the Resource Management Act, designed to bypass the courtβs enforcement of environmental bottom lines. Within weeks, the Government amended the RMA under urgency. The catchments stayed degraded. The councils got the power to issue the consents the industry wanted.
Same year. Same model. Lose in court, draft the law you would prefer, slip it under the right ministerial door, and watch Parliament hand it back to you in legislative form.
Mike Smithβs reading of what has been done to him is therefore not paranoid. It is observational. He calls it βa co-ordinated campaign of secret lobbying, political interference and corporate influence at the highest levels of powerβ. He has called it a βcover-upβ. He has noted that βordinary New Zealanders do not get private access to the prime ministerβs office to discuss shutting down active court proceedings against them.β...
The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: βWhat was actually boughtβ, βWhat courts do that governments cannotβ, βA transparency deficit, againβ, and βA reminder, in case itβs neededβ.
There's silence from the right on here. This is your mob, the ones you champion. This government is rotten to the core, corrupt, swinging ever further right. Ever further Trumpian in their tactics.
I posted many links last night, here's Bryce Edwards
View: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10162974650547333&set=a.260169022332
HE LOBBYISTS WHO WROTE THE CLIMATE LAW
The story of New Zealand's climate law change is strange and damning enough on its own. Two weeks ago the Government announced it would retroactively strip citizens of the right to sue major polluters, while ignoring official advice to let the courts proceed. But it is no longer just that story. Yesterday the episode got considerably worse: it turns out the legislation may have been written, in essential form, by the very corporations standing to benefit from it.
When you strip the story down, the bones of it are these. Two of the countryβs biggest greenhouse gas emitters drafted, in actual statutory language, the law they wanted Parliament to pass. They printed it out. They walked it into the Prime Ministerβs office. Two years later, the Justice Minister announced that exact change as government policy. And the Prime Ministerβs office now says it has no record of any of it.
Some are suggesting that this is normal stakeholder engagement. It is not.
What the Governmentβs climate law change has exposed is a corridor of influence between the countryβs largest corporate emitters and the Prime Minister's office. The corridor was hidden from public view, missed by every official information request that went looking for it. It only came to light because a High Court judge refused to entertain the corporates' confidentiality claims and ordered the documents released.
The interesting story here isn't really climate policy. It's how laws get made in this country.
A TWO-SENTENCE WISH LIST
By now, this much is beyond dispute. In June 2024, a Fonterra government affairs representative hand-delivered a printed briefing note to a staffer inside the Prime Ministerβs office. About a month later, Z Energy did the same thing, with a substantially identical document, to the same adviser. Both companies have confirmed this. Both stand by the document. It has the appearance of being prepared in substantial part by Chapman Tripp, the elite law firm acting for the defendants in Smith v Fonterra, and was prepared on behalf of all of them.
The briefing did two things. It argued that legislative intervention was βnecessary and appropriateβ to wipe out tort-based climate litigation. And it proposed, in actual statutory language, a βtwo-sentence legislative amendmentβ to the Climate Change Response Act that would, in its own words, βresolve the uncertainty and risks posed by private law claims like Mr Smithβsβ.
The drafting wasn't generic. It was aimed. It would retroactively strip New Zealanders of any common-law right to bring climate damage claims. It would kill, mid-flight, the Supreme Court-sanctioned case that NgΔpuhi and NgΔti Kahu kaumΔtua Mike Smith has been trying to take to trial since 2019.
On 12 May 2026, Paul Goldsmith stood up and announced the Government would do precisely that. The Minister framed it as a matter of βbusiness certaintyβ and avoiding βuncertainty in business confidence and investmentsβ.
THE DISAPPEARING TRAIL
Here is where the story gets uglier.
In March 2025, Dr Matt Hall of the Environmental Law Initiative filed an Official Information Act request to the Prime Ministerβs office. He was not fishing. He was specific. He wanted all documents relating to Smith v Fonterra, all documents about any proposed legislative or regulatory response to it, records of meetings with industry stakeholders about the case, and internal policy discussions on it.
A request more clearly aimed at what would eventually be revealed is difficult to imagine. So is a properly functioning government office that could fail to find a hand-delivered briefing note from two of the largest companies in the country proposing the very legislative response the request concerned.
That, however, is what happened. The PMO took a 19 working-day extension to βconsultβ. It then released a limited set of heavily redacted emails and text messages. There was no mention of the June or July 2024 meetings. No copy of the briefing note. Not even a hint that the document existed.
A similar OIA request from Lawyers for Climate Action NZ returned the same kind of nothing.
The document only surfaced because the High Court forced it out. In December 2025, the court ordered the corporate defendants to disclose lobbying-related documents by 27 March 2026. They missed the deadline. It took Goldsmithβs 12 May announcement and an urgent intervention by Smithβs legal team before Fonterra and Z Energy finally disclosed the briefing in mid-May. Both then claimed confidentiality. On 21 May, Justice Peter Andrew ruled those claims could not be sustained and ordered the document released to the public.
Therefore, the information existed. The corporates had it. The PMO either had it or should have had it. Two OIA requests aimed straight at it produced nothing. The corporates missed a court deadline to hand it over. Only after the Government had announced its law change did the document fall into public view.
The PMOβs official response to all this can be summarised in two words: nothing happened. βWe have been made aware of these meetings and briefing notes via the media and have no record of either on file,β Christopher Luxonβs spokesperson told the press. Cabinet, he added, βmakes its own decisionsβ.
Cabinet always makes its own decisions. Cabinet decisions are not normally meant to mirror the precise wording of a privately printed corporate text that no one in the building can apparently remember receiving.
Either the PMOβs record-keeping has collapsed to the point where hand-delivered documents from billion-dollar emitters evaporate on arrival, or those documents were not disclosed when the law required them to be. There is no flattering reading.
A FAMILIAR SCRIPT
This isnβt a one-off. The Postβs Andrea Vance pointed to the precedent last night. She explained how in July 2024, the High Court set aside a pollution discharge consent for the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation scheme. Within weeks, three primary industry lobby groups, Beef + Lamb, DairyNZ and Federated Farmers, fired off a joint letter to Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard. The letter included their preferred statutory amendments to sections 70 and 107 of the Resource Management Act, designed to bypass the courtβs enforcement of environmental bottom lines. Within weeks, the Government amended the RMA under urgency. The catchments stayed degraded. The councils got the power to issue the consents the industry wanted.
Same year. Same model. Lose in court, draft the law you would prefer, slip it under the right ministerial door, and watch Parliament hand it back to you in legislative form.
Mike Smithβs reading of what has been done to him is therefore not paranoid. It is observational. He calls it βa co-ordinated campaign of secret lobbying, political interference and corporate influence at the highest levels of powerβ. He has called it a βcover-upβ. He has noted that βordinary New Zealanders do not get private access to the prime ministerβs office to discuss shutting down active court proceedings against them.β...
The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: βWhat was actually boughtβ, βWhat courts do that governments cannotβ, βA transparency deficit, againβ, and βA reminder, in case itβs neededβ.
And interestingly, this never made the NZ Herald. No surprises there.
Also no surprises - the right continue their concerted attack on those holding them to account
Anyone wondering where that Labour beatup came from yesterday? It was a preemptive move to counteract what they knew was coming
www.stuff.co.nz
Also no surprises - the right continue their concerted attack on those holding them to account
Anyone wondering where that Labour beatup came from yesterday? It was a preemptive move to counteract what they knew was coming
βIβd be careful saying that, John,β Luxon warns RNZ host during interview
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has given RNZ host John Campbell a blunt warning following a question about the potential influence of corporate interests on Government policy.
www.stuff.co.nz
Fantastic news. Stop professional agitators from destroying the country, just like the Pay Equity nonsense.
At least you're honest Frank. Well, about this anyway
Professional agitators. Like corporates who can buy the law.
Mike Smith is a hero
you trying to sell your services Frank?
