John Key MP
National Party Leader

6 November 2007

Clark misleads over tax cuts

Helen Clark has misled the public over personal tax cuts and the advice the Labour Government has received over many years about room for tax cuts, says National Party Leader John Key.

“Helen Clark has no answers on this issue, as Parliament’s question time showed today.

“She had no answer to her own comments to the Labour Party conference in 2000 that: ‘Tax cuts are a path to inequality… They are the promises of visionless and intellectually bankrupt people’.

“She had no answers to the fact that Treasury told Michael Cullen in 2003 that: ‘This healthy fiscal position presents the Government with scope to cut taxes, increase expenditure, and build up financial assets’.

“And she had no answers to Michael Cullen’s comment to a television reporter: ‘$8.5 billion surplus and still no tax cuts. So? What’s the connection between the two? None. Right?’

“Helen Clark and Michael Cullen have failed over eight years to cut taxes, and their claims that they now believe in them are simply not credible.

“They have argued time and again against them - despite all the official advice to the contrary.

“Only now, when they are desperate, are they trying to convince the public that they believe in tax cuts and it was the fault of the officials all along why they didn’t earlier.

“Helen Clark’s arguments are simply not credible.”

ENDS

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