Government Railroads Export Education Industry

Media Release
Government Railroads Export Education Industry

“The Government’s export education tax is not supported by the industry and is being railroaded through by the Government”, said Barbara Takase, chairperson of APPEL , after Trevor Mallard’s release of a consultation paper today.

“The export education industry will be the only industry with a Government-imposed industry tax. Every other industry requires balloted industry approval of a business plan before a levy can be set by the relevant Minister. Without industry support, it is not a levy but a tax.”

“The export education industry delivered six times the export income of the wine industry last year, and achieved above 50% growth without an industry tax. Mr Mallard has many solutions but no problem.”

“The Government knows it is selling a lemon so it is not even planning any consultation meetings. They have released no information since the start of May and have undertaken no formal consultation. Yet now they want to railroad us with four weeks of consultation before a January 1 start date. We all know that the decisions have been made.”

“One amazing aspect of the consultation paper is that expenditure on generic promotion will triple from about $600,000 to $1.7m. No breakdown is provided on the expenditure and there are no performance measurements. In no other industry would the marketing budget be tripled without any cost/benefit analysis”

“APPEL will provide a detailed response to the consultation paper, but with scant budget details it will be hard to truly assess the value of the proposed projects. Even though we do not support many purposes of the tax, it is surprising that industry input has not been sought on such major items as promotion. What reason is there to leave that up to officials?”

New Zealand is the only one of its competitors to have such an industry tax. Neither Australia, Canada, the UK nor the USA have a similar tax. Their industry activities are generally sector-funded or funded through the Government.

Contact – Barbara Takase, 09 379 3777 (work tel), 021 779 279 (mobile)

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