Speaker 1: Kiyota owned Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Should
Speaker 1: the ultra wealthy pay more tax? It's a debate that's
Speaker 1: continued for decades, even centuries, from ancient Athens to present day.
Speaker 1: The idea has been a constant when it comes to
Speaker 1: addressing inequality, yet no government in the last few decades
Speaker 1: has been brave enough to impose one. It's a staple
Speaker 1: of the Green Party's proposed budget, which promises bold moves
Speaker 1: to make sure everyone has a warm home, decent ki
Speaker 1: and the care and support for a good life. But
Speaker 1: who pays and is leaning even more left than center
Speaker 1: doing wonders for the party's polling. Today on the Front
Speaker 1: Green Party co leader Chloe's Swarbrick is with us to
Speaker 1: discuss whether it's time for the wealthy to fund the.
Speaker 2: Rest of us.
Speaker 1: First off, Chloe, your Green's on Tour road show is
Speaker 1: taking the party's Green budget directly to communities. What are
Speaker 1: the most common concerns or questions or stuff raised with you?
Speaker 3: People know that the wheels are falling off. You know,
Speaker 3: if you diagnose the problem of the world that we're
Speaker 3: living in today or the country that we're living in today.
Speaker 3: You know, half a million New Zealanders are using food
Speaker 3: banks every single month, one hundred and ninety one New
Speaker 3: Zealanders or leaving the country every single day, and a
Speaker 3: pharicle correctly two thirds of them are between the ages
Speaker 3: of eighteen to forty five. If Nicola Oillis has concerns
Speaker 3: about the aging population and the challenges that may face
Speaker 3: in terms of fiscal propositions for us, then we need
Speaker 3: to actually be having sensible, rational conversations. And that was
Speaker 3: just only underscored by the iid's Long Term Insights briefing
Speaker 3: from a few weeks ago, which told us that the
Speaker 3: rational conversation and politics if we change the tax system,
Speaker 3: it's how we change the tax system to make things fairer.
Speaker 3: But look, you don't need to be an economist to
Speaker 3: know that things are pretty dire and pretty diabolical out
Speaker 3: there at the moment, and New Zealanders are feeling it
Speaker 3: every single day. So I'm also really part of the
Speaker 3: fact that we've been going out there and saying we'll
Speaker 3: not here to complain an solidarity with those complaints, but
Speaker 3: also to put some solutions on the table. So for us,
Speaker 3: let's looked like obviously free early childhood education, free dentistry,
Speaker 3: free GPS in the primary healthcare space, and also helping
Speaker 3: the transition into a climate resilient economy, because you can't
Speaker 3: just be talking about climate adaptation without also talking about
Speaker 3: how we curb our climate changing emissions. And this government's
Speaker 3: making some deeply irresponsible and frankly stupid decisions with, for example,
Speaker 3: the two hundred million dollars that it's decided to invest
Speaker 3: in new fossil fuel subsidies. It's taxpayer money. Yeah, so the.
Speaker 1: Party's promising you mentioned, free early childhood education, free dental care,
Speaker 1: free GP visits. I mean, what do you say to
Speaker 1: critics who find all of this to be fiscally unrealistic?
Speaker 3: Say that if we were advocating for or fighting for
Speaker 3: free compulsory education or free hospitals, these days would be
Speaker 3: called the exact same thing. It'd be called wasteful spending,
Speaker 3: would be called Marxists, and all the rest come at us.
Speaker 3: The reality is that we've done really big things in
Speaker 3: the past, and the nineteen thirties and forties, after World
Speaker 3: Wars and the Great Depression, we came together as a
Speaker 3: country and decided to build a nation which looked like
Speaker 3: the foundations of public health care, public education, and public housing.
Speaker 3: And we paid for that responsibly by higher taxes on
Speaker 3: those who had profited handsomely during a time of hardship
Speaker 3: for many. Right now, we're in a situation where the
Speaker 3: top one percent in this country hold twenty three percent
Speaker 3: of all of the country's wealth, and IRD research from
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three told us that the top three hundred
Speaker 3: eleven households pay an effective tax rate less than half
Speaker 3: of that of the average New Zealander. It's not fair.
Speaker 3: And when are we going to be able to have
Speaker 3: a rational political debate about how we fix and change
Speaker 3: these things? I mean, there's a reason that the Conservatives
Speaker 3: on the other sid out of the political debate and
Speaker 3: not even willing to engage in the terms of this debate.
Speaker 3: They simply want to shut it down. And that should
Speaker 3: tell New Zealanders everything that they need to know. I'd
Speaker 3: also add that in the government's first hundred days, one
Speaker 3: of the first things that it did, as quietly as
Speaker 3: it possibly could was revoke or appeal the enabling legislation
Speaker 3: to require id to report on the fairness or on
Speaker 3: fairness of our tax system. One the way there is
Speaker 3: I think Nobel Peace Prize winning economists have recently called
Speaker 3: for a global tax on the ultra wretch, arguing that
Speaker 3: even a modest two percent wealth tax on billionaires, say
Speaker 3: not even just millionaires, billionaires could raise substantial revenue internationally. Now,
Speaker 3: how does the Green parties proposed wealth tax compare? And
Speaker 3: do you see new zeeraltters having a kind of a
Speaker 3: leadership role in this global argument at the moment. I mean,
Speaker 3: we absolutely could be taking leadership position if we want
Speaker 3: to do. Unfortunately, I think with this current government we're
Speaker 3: saying far more of a shredder than we are any
Speaker 3: kind of vision for the nation and that we'd want
Speaker 3: to build. And this is the point that I made
Speaker 3: in the budget debate. You know, this kind of cut, cut,
Speaker 3: cut after callous cut, whether it's in conservation or frontline
Speaker 3: of what's necessary for communities or climate resilience or adaptation
Speaker 3: or whatever. It's not only cruel and unusual, but it's
Speaker 3: not how you build a country, it's how you break one.
Speaker 3: And that's where I kind of come back to those
Speaker 3: basic economic principles. You know, it's really deeply ironic and
Speaker 3: profoundly nonsensical for the government to be talking out one
Speaker 3: side of its mouth about productivity and growth while actively
Speaker 3: kneecapping precisely those things with its fiscal strategy, where it
Speaker 3: is pulling back on government investment and the things that
Speaker 3: drive that productivity and that growth, let alone fair distribution
Speaker 3: of those things. But to your question on how our
Speaker 3: tax proposals would work, so we put on the table
Speaker 3: a proposal for a wealth tax which would only apply
Speaker 3: to the top approximate three percent in this country. So
Speaker 3: for anyone with an individual net wealth over two million dollars,
Speaker 3: so for a couple, it's over four million, and that's
Speaker 3: net wealth, so it's minus obviously your mortgages. Ratherwise, you'd
Speaker 3: pay a two point five percent tax above that term
Speaker 3: million dollars net wealth individually, and doing that along the
Speaker 3: suite of other reforms, and using debt sensibly to actually
Speaker 3: pay for productive investment in our infrastructure, as opposed to
Speaker 3: the tax cuts of Nicola Willis, which have generated zero
Speaker 3: jobs and in fact have only continued to minimize the
Speaker 3: opportunity for young New Zealanders. We can build an economy
Speaker 3: that works for people and planet.
Speaker 4: They are further entrenching a system, mister speaker, which sees
Speaker 4: our nurses, our firefighters, our teachers pay an effective tax
Speaker 4: rate almost double that of the wealthiest in this country.
Speaker 4: And not only is that so deeply unfair and so
Speaker 4: deeply inequitable that it robs us of the very productivity
Speaker 4: that they tell us that they care about, it robs
Speaker 4: us of the investment that we could be making in
Speaker 4: that infrastructure that all.
Speaker 2: Of us need.
Speaker 4: The fundamental problem with the economy and the tax system
Speaker 4: in altero in New Zealand is that we over tax
Speaker 4: work and we undertaxt indeed oftentimes do not tax at
Speaker 4: all wealth.
Speaker 1: We're hearing these terms rich ultra riches as a term
Speaker 1: that I've heard pop up recently as well. How does
Speaker 1: the Green Party define rich in this context of tax policy?
Speaker 1: Where do we draw the line for who should pay more?
Speaker 3: I mean, we've drawn the line and our proposals as
Speaker 3: that termillion dollar figure, termillion dollars individual net wealth puts
Speaker 3: in the top three percent in this country. So I
Speaker 3: think you're doing pretty all right. And this is where
Speaker 3: I think we just kind of need to come back
Speaker 3: to these really fundamental points. Right there are very few
Speaker 3: people in this country who could individually afford to pay
Speaker 3: for the cost of building a school or a hospital,
Speaker 3: or even closer to home for a loved one's cancer treatment.
Speaker 3: When tragedy befalls us. That is why we pull our
Speaker 3: resources together and we create this thing called a country.
Speaker 3: Because we're not five million random individual people or running
Speaker 3: around this country doing our own thing. Actually need each
Speaker 3: other and we can build this infrastructure by working together.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, maybe it's a bit of a
Speaker 3: red hearing to try and define what we perceive rich
Speaker 3: to be, but we've decided to draw the line in
Speaker 3: terms of our wealth tax is currently at that two
Speaker 3: million dollar net individual wealth.
Speaker 1: What about Nan and Pop who bought say a villa
Speaker 1: in Mount Eden for a ten of tomatoes in the
Speaker 1: seventiges or something, and they're obviously going to be above that.
Speaker 3: What happens there. Yeah, So in terms of people who
Speaker 3: are you know, asset wealthyed but don't necessarily have the
Speaker 3: cash flow, they would be able to have this eventually
Speaker 3: paid off in the same way that rates can accumulate
Speaker 3: against the kind of property to the point that it's
Speaker 3: sold or the point at which somebody passes on. So
Speaker 3: we'd have those same features in our wealth.
Speaker 1: Tax critics often claim that higher taxes on wealth will
Speaker 1: drive high net worth individuals to leave.
Speaker 3: The country, and this is probably a few gimes, and
Speaker 3: that's why we simply can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: No, No, what evidence do we have that something similar
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen here? Like would there be some kind of
Speaker 1: brain drain? I mean we're seeing one at the moment anyway,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the point. But would we be seeing
Speaker 1: different individuals leave and we don't mind them leaving, but
Speaker 1: we want the young ends day.
Speaker 3: It's frankly ludicrous. Look, I'm not going to pretend that
Speaker 3: it is easy to change the tax system. Of course
Speaker 3: it's not. But ease should not be the reason that
Speaker 3: we do something. Fairness and equity and the fundamental principles
Speaker 3: and values that we have as New Zealanders, that is
Speaker 3: that we care about each other and the planet that
Speaker 3: we live on should be the driving force behind why
Speaker 3: we do things. And we've done people should one hundred
Speaker 3: and we've done hard things in the past, So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: just a lot of the arguments that are often floated around,
Speaker 3: for example, Norway, at the top of my head, I
Speaker 3: think it's there's approximately two hundred and thirty six thousand
Speaker 3: millionaires and billionaires in Norway and there are approximately thirty
Speaker 3: high profile individuals who made a big song and dance
Speaker 3: about leaving the country as a result of their wealth
Speaker 3: tax changes, and that resulted in a huge amount of hysteria.
Speaker 3: Again a drop in the bucket in terms of the
Speaker 3: reality of it. So I think we just need to
Speaker 3: come back down to earth as far as this debate goes,
Speaker 3: and ask ourselves why do people want to live here?
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be a race to the bottom to shred
Speaker 3: the social safety in there and the infrastructure that all
Speaker 3: of us ultimately rely on. All the country falls apart
Speaker 3: and people end up with less social cohesion and we
Speaker 3: have more people sleeping rough down the bottom of Queen
Speaker 3: Street outside of luxury stores. The reason that people should
Speaker 3: want to live here is because of our great quality
Speaker 3: of life, and we are losing that because we are
Speaker 3: not investing in it. What about people?
Speaker 1: And you've probably heard this one before as well, because
Speaker 1: I've heard it a few times. I've worked hard to
Speaker 1: get here.
Speaker 3: I ask anyone, well, firstly, I would say the hard
Speaker 3: working news are some of the hardest working New Zealanders
Speaker 3: that I have met are single mothers working multiple jobs,
Speaker 3: paying double the effective tax rate if the multi multi
Speaker 3: millionaires and billionaires in this country. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: any politician who wants to claim to be fighting for
Speaker 3: the hard working New Zealanders should be fighting for those
Speaker 3: who make their income from work, not from near wealth accumulation.
Speaker 1: By the way, I read some critique about the so
Speaker 1: you've got this thing five thousand dollars per passenger private
Speaker 1: jet tax proposing, and I've read something that's somewhere that said, look,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll force people to fly commercial or something. And
Speaker 1: I actually laughed out loud at that because these people
Speaker 1: are not like five thousand dollars to me, for instance,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but that's I don't have
Speaker 1: that total will really do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: But these people who have private jets, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say they will drop that on a lunch aind of
Speaker 1: some things, so.
Speaker 3: Little in the multiples of that that it costs they
Speaker 3: actually use the private jet to get here in the position.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, do you have any data or any
Speaker 1: idea how many of those private jet passengers are actually
Speaker 1: coming here? Every month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every year. I believe it's between two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty to three hundred, so it's not that many. But again,
Speaker 3: this is about kind of drawing a line in the
Speaker 3: sand or making a point of principle, because we've seen
Speaker 3: similar policies applied in other jurisdictions. I just think that
Speaker 3: it is insane that we are at a point in
Speaker 3: time where regular people, low income, middle income, regular people
Speaker 3: are trying their best to use reusable straws and reusable cups,
Speaker 3: and billionaires are allowed to set the planet on fire.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the end of it for me.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, Jeff Bezos is wedding the other Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I was giving a close eye on that guest lest
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh right, that's good to see Oprah there.
Speaker 1: I mean, in New York City recently, attacks the rich
Speaker 1: message helped Zoran Mumdani to win the Democratic mayoral primary.
Speaker 1: Do you say this as a sign that public sentiment
Speaker 1: is shifting globally in favor of wealth taxes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there's a few things that we can
Speaker 3: take from Zoran's win. The first, you know, I really
Speaker 3: applaud the approach that he took post Trump's Win. He
Speaker 3: went into communities within New York and the equivalents of
Speaker 3: kind of electorates or burrows or whatever they call them
Speaker 3: over there, and he asked people why they had flipped
Speaker 3: from the Democrats to voting for Trump, because that seems
Speaker 3: to be a question that many of us in commentary
Speaker 3: land are asking. And what he found, strangely enough, was
Speaker 3: people citing the cost of living and basic economic issues
Speaker 3: and they felt as though they had voted for decades
Speaker 3: and decades their entire lives for the Democrats to do
Speaker 3: something about it, and they hadn't. So it was kind
Speaker 3: of a hail Mary, something needs to change. So we're
Speaker 3: just going to grasp for the closest thing that looks
Speaker 3: like a meaningful transformation or a meaningful change there. And
Speaker 3: that is why he ended up coming out with such
Speaker 3: strong fundamental economic policies of how you basically rebuild society,
Speaker 3: of how you rebuild communities, of how you provide people
Speaker 3: with actual economic freedom which then results in those social freedoms.
Speaker 3: So you know, will be completely transparent about the fact
Speaker 3: that Baquard I was at university, I was enamored by
Speaker 3: the idea of libertarianism, which is actually the ideology encapsulated
Speaker 3: best by the activity right now, because I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: course it makes sense. We'll just get to run around,
Speaker 3: live our own lives, don't interrupt other people doing their
Speaker 3: own thing. But the more that I thought about it,
Speaker 3: and I read a second book, you then start to
Speaker 3: realize that that social freedom is allsory. It's not real
Speaker 3: if you don't have access to the material basics to
Speaker 3: be able to participate in society to survive, let alone
Speaker 3: to thrive. So that's where he came out, obviously with
Speaker 3: the kind of tax the rich stuff, but also those
Speaker 3: basic propositions for free public transport services, for free early childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that what that tells us is in a
Speaker 3: nutshell tempered centrism which has failed people for decades, for
Speaker 3: forty decades, as they're being subjected to trackle down economics
Speaker 3: is a breeding ground for effectively right wing radicalism. And
Speaker 3: the antidote to that is to ensure that everybody has
Speaker 3: their basic needs met. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 2: On our numbers, the opposition parties Labor, the Greens, Antipart
Speaker 2: and Maldi would be in a position to govern if
Speaker 2: an election was held today. Let's break the numbers down.
Speaker 2: National is on thirty point seven points. That's down two
Speaker 2: point two on our last poll in March. Labor is
Speaker 2: a head of National sitting on thirty three point two.
Speaker 2: That's a slight increase of zero point nine. The Greens
Speaker 2: into Party Mardi are both up. The Greens one point
Speaker 2: six points to eleven point six while to Party Mardi
Speaker 2: has nudged up zero point five to five point five
Speaker 2: percentage points.
Speaker 1: Well, the Green Party is currently polling really well.
Speaker 3: We can go high.
Speaker 1: The double digits now, which is I mean, this far
Speaker 1: out from election isn't too bad, all right, and that's
Speaker 1: ahead of ACT in New Zealand. First in the recent
Speaker 1: post fresh Water and ourn z Read research polls, Rather,
Speaker 1: what do you attribute this surge and support to.
Speaker 3: First thing, I say, I'm always so reticent to provide
Speaker 3: commentary on poles. I know, me, it feels like reading
Speaker 3: the tea leave and it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: everyone's always like when it's good, oh yeah, it means
Speaker 3: that we're doing great, and when it's bad, we don't
Speaker 3: actually pay that much attention. That's in pole but our
Speaker 3: and another thing is just my basic experience, you know,
Speaker 3: in Auckland Central in twenty twenty, I was put behind
Speaker 3: on all the poles, and then of course we ended
Speaker 3: up making history because the real poll is people realizing
Speaker 3: not to watch the poles. But we are the poles,
Speaker 3: we have agency, and we can actually change things here.
Speaker 3: But I guess to try and read the tea leaves
Speaker 3: and the vibes that are out there. The sense that
Speaker 3: I'm getting from folks across the country is people are
Speaker 3: much like as we're discussing around zorns, when people are
Speaker 3: looking for what the next iteration of our economic framework
Speaker 3: looks like. People know that the wheels are falling off
Speaker 3: of the way that things are currently operating. So there's
Speaker 3: obviously a heck of a lot of frustration. And I'm
Speaker 3: really proud to be co leading a party that is
Speaker 3: putting genuine solutions on the table. And this is about
Speaker 3: also understanding the kind of fundamental principles of the Green
Speaker 3: Party too, because it's a moral panic that I get
Speaker 3: asked about every few months or so where people are like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're talking about social policies. That's not Green Party stuff.
Speaker 3: Your name is green, your color is green. So just
Speaker 3: to give you some insight, the Green Party or Green
Speaker 3: parties all around the world have the same four core
Speaker 3: charter principles. What differentiates the Green Party in Altered or
Speaker 3: in New Zealand is a recognition of ten tooth your
Speaker 3: waiting is our foundational constitutional text. From that flows firstly
Speaker 3: the notion of ecological responsibility. Resources are finite, even those
Speaker 3: resources that do regenerate need time and space and God
Speaker 3: forbids and planning Shane Jones in order to regenerate. If
Speaker 3: you accept that as the first principle, that makes you
Speaker 3: know in terms of the flow on effects for society,
Speaker 3: it makes sense to go, well, we need to share
Speaker 3: those resources in a somewhat fair, just and reasonable and
Speaker 3: rational way. That's known as social responsibility or social justice
Speaker 3: on the internet. The third is appropriate decision making. We
Speaker 3: like devolving decision making powers down to the level where
Speaker 3: it actually affects people. It's why I'm such a massive
Speaker 3: nerd for local government. And the fourth is non violence.
Speaker 3: Of course we're happies and we don't like going to war,
Speaker 3: but if you dig into that little bit deeper, it's
Speaker 3: basically about how do you create these systems and settings
Speaker 3: and blueprints and ways of operating as a country and
Speaker 3: governance and making decisions that don't neglect people or their perspectives,
Speaker 3: so that further down the track they go, this thing
Speaker 3: doesn't work for me, and I want to uproot the
Speaker 3: entire thing.
Speaker 2: Do you reckon?
Speaker 1: The Greens have bounced back.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, we're back, baby, But I think I
Speaker 3: think that you know, my aspirations, our aspirations as a party,
Speaker 3: will not be met until we live in a country
Speaker 3: where every child is able to live a good life,
Speaker 3: until our rivers are clean, and you know, our native
Speaker 3: wildlife is flourishing. It was utterly mind lying to me
Speaker 3: to be in a discussion or a debate or whatever
Speaker 3: you want to call it the other day with an
Speaker 3: act Party MP where you know, the proposition of bringing
Speaker 3: back the more was on the table through genetic engineering,
Speaker 3: and it's like, yeah, cool, like novel whatever, get it? Yeap,
Speaker 3: science is awesome, but like, we're putting our eggs in
Speaker 3: the basket of something that literally sounds like Jurassic Park. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of our current native wildlife is at
Speaker 3: risk of extinction. The government is approving and fast tracking
Speaker 3: coal mines and kiwi habitats and cutting predator free twenty
Speaker 3: fifty and Department of Conservation funding make it make sense.
Speaker 1: But mama's got a lot of meat on. Look. Finally,
Speaker 1: if Chris Luckson called you tomorrow, he said, look, I've
Speaker 1: had a good look at your green badga. Not bad,
Speaker 1: but I'll let you pick one thing to implement tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And he's got a genie out the back, so don't
Speaker 1: worry about logistics.
Speaker 3: What would you choose? I think it has to be
Speaker 3: the wealth tax as a starting point. You know, if
Speaker 3: we're talking about economic transformation and fairness, which is deeply
Speaker 3: into related to climate justice, then we need tax reform.
Speaker 3: And regardless of whatever side of the political spectrum that
Speaker 3: you're on at the moment, as the IID themselves said,
Speaker 3: and you know they're not politically beholden, the visible, rational,
Speaker 3: mature political debate at the moment is not if we
Speaker 3: have text reform, it's how we do tax reform.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Chloe. Thank you. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of the Front Page. You can read more
Speaker 1: about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzid Herald
Speaker 1: dot co dot enz The Front Page is produced by
Speaker 1: Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow
Speaker 1: for another look behind the headlines.