Don’t Quote Me
Once again the Herald shows us the ignorant nature of it’s headline makers:
Key: We can’t help your price pain
That is NOT what Key said at all. What he said was:
““Like everyone else, we’re frustrated by higher petrol prices,” Mr Key said. “It’s just a fact we have to live with at the moment.””
This, of course, is completely true. The government can do nothing about the price of crude oil. It is also true that the tax on petrol is earmarked for roads and is not easy to remove from petrol without pushing up taxes elsewhere. None of this indicates that Key is indifferent to price rises and their implications for the man in the street, as the headline implies.
GST could be removed from petrol. But only if accompanied by a rapid reduction in government spending to match the fall in revenue. This would be a worthy thing to champion, as it is a much cleaner exception than GST off fruit and vegetables. But Mr Goff prefers to make inane comments about inflation and the GST rise.
For the record, a rise in GST does not cause inflation (pressure on general prices caused by money oversupply), GST causes a one-off increase only. This will be evidenced by the fact that the rate of price rises will rapidly settle over the next few months as the one-off increase works its way through.
At least the Herald had the grace to note that Mr Goff has evidenced no intention to reverse the GST rise or remove GST from petrol, so his mutterings are contentless, as usual.
The article is reasonable journalism and relatively even-handed. It is a pity that it is spoiled by a headline that is blatantly slanted.
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Apr 20 11 8:58 am
You’re being too charitable to the PM Macdoc. You know that any time he wanted he could get on the phone to Gadaffi, tell him to quit, and bring down the price of oil in an instant …
Inventory2´s last [type] ..Of polls- poles- and a cartoonist called Emmerson
Apr 20 11 1:50 pm
Of course he could. All he would have to do is send in those squadrons of flying pigs…
Apr 20 11 7:03 pm
I think you mean “Millitary Enabled Airborne Swine”.
And it’s not really polite to talk about the Labour party that way anyway.
Apr 22 11 7:14 pm
Key is of course lying; reducing road user taxes and getting rid of emmission bollocks which are then taxed with GST would be a simple solution to the problem.
The problem is that National are continue to sign our grandkids up to serfdom by overspending on wasteful outgoings like cradle to grave welfare, bloated civil services at local and central govt level, overtaxation which results in decreased investment in the productive sector.