From Brian Fallow in The Herald on migration and immigration:
…Statistics New Zealand has been comparing last year with previous peak gross outflows, allowing for changes in population size and age-structure.
In unadjusted terms, permanent and long-term departures for Australia last year were just 7 per cent lower than the 1979 peak, but 20 per cent lower if allowance is made for the growth in the population since then.
Compared with the 1988 peak the figures are 9 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.
Adjusting for the size of the population, departure rates of New Zealand citizens to Australia last year were very similar to rates in 2000, the previous peak in departures across the Tasman, Statistics NZ said.
“For both years the [departure] rates across most ages were lower than during the 1988 peak. However, rates in the late teens and 20s for these three years were well below the rates seen during the 1979 peak, when people aged 19 to 24 were more than twice as likely to leave for Australia on a permanent basis than they were in 2007.”
What’s that? So National’s strategy of continually running down New Zealand and the government because of an “exodus” to Australia isn’t really based on fact?
Now that Michael Cullen has ruled out a tax-free bracket but promised that everyone will benefit from Labour’s tax-cut package, what cuts will he give?
The simplest option would be to cut the bottom tax rate, which would deliver a tax cut for everyone. As a percentage of income the tax cut would be largest for those on the lowest incomes, while the actual monetary value of the cuts would rise until the end of the first tax bracket, and then remain constant. That would satisfy Cullen’s desire to deliver more money to those on middle incomes without giving massive cuts to those on high incomes.
In the graph below the current effective tax rate at different incomes is compared to what would happen if the 19.5% rate was cut to 16.5% or 14.5%.
(data)
The 16.5% option would cost roughly $2.3 billion and give a $23 a week tax cut for people earning $38,000+. The 14.5% option would cost $3.7 billion and deliver $38 a week. On an income of $35,000 your tax would drop by 16% in the first option and 26% in the second. My money is on a cut somewhere between these two, perhaps in several steps: say a cut to 16.5% on October 1 and another two percent off by 2010. Cullen will probably include an increase in the tax bracket thresholds as well: an initial substantial rise and inflation indexing to deliver on the promise of multi-year cuts.
Some hopefully not altogether baseless speculation to ponder.
[Vernon Small raised the idea of an additional top tax rate of 45% at $150,000 like Australia has, to fund more cuts at lower incomes. This is unlikely to happen: any increase at that level would deliver relatively little revenue ($100 to $200 million) and encourage more tax dodging, so it wouldn’t allow much more cuts at a lower level. Hardly worth the effort and the political cost of not making a clean cut.]
The thought of losing his seat must be making John Howard desperate. It’s been revealed that he’s recently met with senior Exclusive Brethren officials including one who is being investigated by Federal Police over the funding of pro-government advertising.
For a group of people who don’t vote because they believe it interferes with God’s right to ordain who rules on earth I would have thought that the Exclusive Brethren’s continued activism in worldly political affairs has them sailing pretty close to the wind.
Marion Maddox puts the change of heart down to a newfound belief under ‘Elect Vessel’ Bruce Hales in what she calls post-millennialism - the idea “that actually Jesus’ return is not before the tribulations at the end, but after, and it can only happen once Christians have taken over the reins of government, and got the world under Christian control”. The Exclusive Brethren believe then that conservative political control will bring about the rapture, and only then will they be saved.
So Howard winning really could be the beginning of the end… and not just for Australian political progressives.
It’s also a timely reminder as the debate on election funding here in New Zealand heats up that electoral reform is desperately needed. The Exclusive Brethren tried to buy the last election here with a covert and unprecedented $1.2m smear campaign. That was 10 times more than any other independent group - and more than half the total cap any one party was allowed to spend.
The Brethren and their supporters are casting the reform issue solely as one of free speech. People do have a right to free speech but they also have a right to a robust and transparent democracy. A laissez-faire approach to the law governing campaign finance won’t provide it.
