I always thought that common sense was supposed to come to the fore in a crisis.

I was wrong.

Why on earth would a government decide that raising a tax in the middle of the largest financial challenge in generations would be seen as a good idea?

Dear Government: you are urging people to go out and spend their rapidly dwindling money to help our businesses, but at the same time, you want to actively take more money out of our pocket. It’s nuts.

I am referring to the scheduled four cent rise in the nationwide petrol tax scheduled for July.  Of course, it was scheduled at a time when Covid 19 did not exist. Now everything’s changed.  But the government seems determined to go through with the increase.

National has leapt on this saying they would defer the tax rise because Auckland’s Light Rail is now on hold.  

Two things here. Note they only said defer and not cancel. That’s because all Government’s love petrol taxes.  National raised the fuel excise six times when they were in power.  The no tax party? Yeah right.

Secondly, they linked the national fuel tax with Auckland’s light rail when that’s not strictly the case. The fuel excise helps pay for all roads and public transport and infrastructure projects throughout the whole country.  So even if the light rail had never existed, the tax would still be levied.

That’s all bye the bye. It’s all good politics for Simon Bridges and he pounced on it yesterday.

But Phil Twyford stayed strong. He said cutting this year's petrol tax increase would mean massive cuts to roading and public transport projects throughout the country and New Zealanders wouldn’t want that.

It would not mean massive cuts to the projects. It would mean they would have the same money coming in as they have now.

Going forward, it would mean somewhere between $300 and $500 million less for the government which is a drop in the ocean when you measure it against Thursday’s $50 billion borrowing budget.

No New Zealander wants tax.  They may agree they’re necessary, but they’d rather not pay them and certainly not if they think they’re too high.

I have no idea why Phil Twyford is so adamant to keep the fuel tax rises.  Politically, they’re a gift to the opposition and they’re a slap in the face to the business sector struggling in the worst times than seeing their transport costs go up.

Surely a bit of common sense would have seen the government putting the tax hike on hold. But I suppose Mr Twyford and common sense are not well acquainted.