24 October 2001 Media Statement

Alliance won’t support flatter tax scales

The Alliance will not agree to increasing taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders and cutting taxes for the affluent as advocated in the Tax Review, Alliance leader Jim Anderton said.

The final report of the Review was released today.

“There is no truth in the suggestion that poor people have too much money and rich people don’t have enough. We won’t be signing up to any flattening of the tax scales.

“But while the Alliance won’t accept that recommendation, I welcome the Review’s point that decisions about tax and spending are related. Anyone who wants to cut taxes is obliged to say what spending they will cut,” Jim Anderton said.

The Review’s recommendations on other taxes, including wealth taxes, financial transactions taxes and carbon taxes would be carefully studied in the preparation of new policies for the next general election.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>