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# Tax – A Burden We Don’t Need
- URL: https://goodoil.news/tax-a-burden-we-dont-need/
- Published: 2026-09-14T21:00:52.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T21:00:52.000Z
- Description: We have to keep the tax gatherers well away from the seat of power. The coalition may not have given us all we voted for but they are certainly preferable to those occupying the opposition benches. This is why tactical voting has come to the fore and why it is so important.
- Author: JC
- Tags: NZ Politics, Election 2026

Three articles from the *Weekend Herald* caught my eye. All were on the subject of tax. One was an opinion piece from John Key, the second was the fortnightly contribution from Bruce Cotterill and the third was Fran O’Sullivan writing on the subject of Labour’s Finance Spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. Key started his article thus, “Tax. A short little word. Seems innocuous.” In the context in which he’s saying that he’s correct. Here’s my spin on it. I know of no other word in the English language that has more negative connotations than what those three letters convey. They inflict pain and anger...and then the creative thinking required to avoid the obnoxious payment.

To those parties on the left, tax is a form of financial heaven. They bask in the glory of robbing the rich to fund the poor while the reality is most of the poor also get caught in the net most of the time. The left’s fixation with tax could be thought of as a global financial pandemic because they all do it. They don’t understand anything else when it comes to economics. They have tunnel vision and at the end of the tunnel sits your bank account. It’s like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Tax, to a degree, is a necessary evil. We do need to fund public services, such as education and health. Health is, and has always been, a bottomless pit. No matter how much money is thrown at it, more is needed. But, as Bruce Cotterill points out, it’s not so much about increasing the tax take, rather the focus should be on how we spend the money we already pay. He’s right because there is still enormous waste in the public sector. Why not fire all those who turned out for the obligatory pre-election strike last week. These illustrations of human waste were wailing they weren’t being paid enough. This motley mob wouldn’t get a job in the private sector. Sacking them would be a start.

This government has not done enough to reduce the excessive number of people supposedly ‘working’ in government departments. David Seymour’s pledge to reduce the number of these departments should be supported. Wellington train cancellations due to a lack of patronage because of public service cuts would be a good thing.

Then there is welfare. The way the media report the situation one could be forgiven for thinking half the country is on welfare and still not making ends meet. More needs to be done researching these people. Why are there so many? Do they need help with budgeting? How many are genuine? No doubt some are but is enough being done to produce accurate numbers?

Tax is not a way to increase the prosperity of a country. For that you need productivity, innovation and manufacturing, not to mention creating an environment whereby our agriculture sector is encouraged to grow and produce more. Along with the economy, the left have no clue about farming. Like everyone else whom they regard as rich pricks, farmers are just another source of tax revenue. In just two years Labour in the UK has practically wrecked the agriculture industry.

Taxing the rich is a pointless exercise because they either leave or find creative ways to avoid paying it. We continually hear the rich don’t pay their fair share when the statistics show the opposite is true. The communist mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, is finding this out the hard way, as all the major global corporations are leaving, mainly for Texas or Florida. Why those two states? Simple. THERE IS NO INCOME TAX. New York has lost BILLIONS in tax revenues as a result. No government, if it wants to remain in power, can keep taxing, taxing, taxing.

For a country to increase its wealth, it must earn more through increased productivity. It must spend less than it earns. It’s called balancing the books, something the left profess to have heard of but have no idea how to go about it. The problem is balancing the books is at odds with their tax and spend ideology. You can’t spend your way to oblivion and, at the same time, balance the books. In fact you can’t spend your way to prosperity full stop.

This brings me to Fran’s article on Barbara Edmonds, who Fran thinks has potential for the finance role. Edmonds is the child of a Samoan immigrant family. She has eight children to her name and a law degree to her credit. She was a specialist tax lawyer with Inland Revenue and a former tax adviser to National Revenue Ministers Michael Woodhouse and Judith Collins. Fran said she would make the best Labour finance minister since Michael Cullen. I agree. No doubt her background sent her into the arms of the Labour Party, but I suggest she would be more effective working with those on the political right. She would then be devoid of the hurdles around her on the left.

Fran featured a picture of Edmonds in her article and in the picture, sitting right next to her, was maybe her biggest hurdle – Willie Jackson. If Edmonds wants to achieve her aims she will need to implement some form of fiscal discipline. I have a suspicion discipline is a word not that familiar to Mr Jackson. He told Jack Tame on *Q+A* that “we need to spend more”. Then there are Edmonds’ coalition bedfellows and their fiscal desires. Barbara’s words may not become her actions.

Labour is suggesting they have only one tax: capital gains. Even if that were true, which I doubt, that is ignoring the plethora of other ones the Greens and the Māori Party will bring to the table. If Hipkins wants to form a government, he finds himself once more between a rock and a hard place.

I think this is why Hipkins has been so unconvincing in the campaign. Deep down he knows his options for forming a government are unpalatable. Just as viewers see the false left narrative on the news, they will see through the falsehoods of his rhetoric when it comes to tax. There simply won’t be only a capital gains tax but, in fact, many more.

We have to keep the tax gatherers well away from the seat of power. The coalition may not have given us all we voted for, but they are certainly preferable to those occupying the opposition benches. This is why tactical voting has come to the fore and why it is so important.

Leading up to this election I would remind all parties of the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “Never a borrower or a lender be”. In other words live within your means. I would remind the left in particular that the Bible tells us tax collectors were resented because they abused their power to extort money from their own people. That brings to mind another old saying in the Bible - “a leopard never changes its spots”. That describes the left to a T.