Imperator Fish has a fair point about Billy Bob’s complacency about Australia’s just-announced tax cuts:
“Bill English told Radio NZ he's not worried about the plan by the Australian Government to reduce company tax to 28%.
“Remember when he was the Opposition finance spokesman? Last decade the Australian Government dropped taxes a number of times (usually during election time), and each time there were howls of outrage from the Opposition benches when New Zealand did not follow suit.
“So why isn't Bill worried now?”
Why isn’t he worried now? Simple. He’s now in power—and it’s still eighteen months until the next election.
When you’re in opposition you can make as many promises as you like about tax cuts. But when you’re in power—with an opposition as weak as this one, and with coalition partners eagerly voting for your spend-up—you can tell voters to go to hell. Like this one has been.
But there’s yet more grounds for NZers to worry.
Now more than ever, the NZ economy is being kept up by the Australian economy—and in these difficult times the Australian economy is having its head kept above water largely by its mining industry.
So Australia’s mining industry is the life-preserver to which both our economies are presently clinging.
So what do you think will happen to all of us when Kevin Rudd imposes his $3 billion "Resource Super Profits" tax grab on mining companies to fund his company tax cut (and to make up the shortfall they’d planned on extracting with their now-abandoned ETS)? Two-thirds of Australian mining budgets are already being spent offshore—what proportion do you think that will be by 2014, when the Krudd Government is hoping to extract around $9 billion from miners?
The Australian government. Just another government trying to evade doing what needs to be done, and killing their golden goose to do it.
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