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Mike Hosking: Phil Twyford naive in fuel tax debacle

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Thu, 21 Jun 2018, 9:56AM
None of this is complex and yet it seems to have escaped the Phil Twyford's of the world.
None of this is complex and yet it seems to have escaped the Phil Twyford's of the world.

Mike Hosking: Phil Twyford naive in fuel tax debacle

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Thu, 21 Jun 2018, 9:56AM

From our "as sure as night follows day " file comes this week's revelation that we have at least 14 councils looking at a fuel tax.  

We said as much, the moment the concept was floated.

That fateful day do you remember it? When Phil Twyford in arguing Auckland desperately needed one, that although it was designed for Auckland, it wasn't exclusive to Auckland and councils could ask if they wanted it.

And that was the really odd thing about the announcement, he somehow thought that by making councils ask, that distanced the government from the scandal of a new tax.

Which of course to any right minded individual it didn't.  

So, Auckland asked, and guess what? The government said yes.  

Now to think "that was that" would be to be exceedingly naive, which as it turns out I think this government just might be.  

Because did you honestly think that when every other council in the country saw one of their counterparts raking in millions from motorists that they wouldn't want a slice of the action?

That they couldn't drum up a whole list of reasons as to why they to needed a similar mechanism?

And so it has come to pass. 14 and counting.

Now where the government has got themselves in trouble, is they will argue, of course, that they have the right to say no.

But in saying no, all they do is get up the nose of local authorities.

Do they really want to do that?

I would not have thought so.

And here's the really bad news around a petrol tax, it leads to the cost of everything going up.

Hence the stupidity of the idea in the first place . 

Everything we buy has a petrol component, when the cost of producing and delivering goods rises, that rise gets passed onto the punter.

That leads to inflation, inflation leads to interest rate rises which leads to mortgages going up.

And when you pay more for bills like mortgages, you have less to spend on other things, which you cant afford because they've gone up anyway.

Thus the economy slows.

None of this is complex and yet it seems to have escaped the Phil Twyford's of the world.  

So he's misunderstood basic human nature. What one gets, another wants.

And he's misunderstood basic economics, making things more expensive leads nowhere good.

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