Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before travelling to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
What’s Labour leader Hipkins’ record? Never-ending Auckland lockdowns that tore us apart, inflation, bureaucracy and suffocating red tape. Education wrecker.
Hipkins was PM when failed Reserve Bank Governor Orr was reappointed in 2023. He knows how to pick ’em. Never fear, Hipkins is making a comeback on the back of the talentless Labour’s caucus. It’s hard to find anyone to replace him.
His cunning plan is to propose new (capital) taxes, probably sold as a ‘tax-neutral’ redesign of our tax system. Yet Hipkins said those same (capital) taxes were not the answer in his election campaign 18 months ago. His new plan will be the oldest in the book – use the politics of envy to drum up support for a raid on hardworking Kiwis who have built up savings and assets of their own.
In the other corner, we have the current National Party PM. He rejected ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill but presented no alternative. The nation looked to him for a compromise deal that united us. There was none. He’s now telling overseas investors NZ is the world’s most politically stable nation, when no one can answer our most fundamental questions of nationhood – like do our rights and freedoms depend on ethnicity? Ask the PM for a ‘yes-no’ answer to that question and you will get mumbo-jumbo.
A large part of NZ’s population believe our parliament has no right to pass laws that apply to them. Elsewhere, the PM lost the Cook Islands to China. He’s National Security and Intelligence Minister but still has no clue what’s going on there.
Luxon is presiding over the deepest, longest period of economic stagnation experienced by NZ for 30 years (the Covid slump was briefer). He got back John Key’s mate, Lester Levy, as Health Commissioner, and asked Key’s other medical mate, Peter Gluckman, to provide answers for the healthcare crisis. Both had none.
Don’t tell overseas investors – but NZ has never been more domestically politically unstable – with Kiwis living in a region of the world that has never been more geopolitically unstable. No wonder the polls are close.
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
