Cheesed off

Rorted Covid bailout money and unnecessary new levies are unwanted distractions for a government looking for a Budget fillip.

- JANE CLIFTON

It’s beginning to look as though the government doesn’t really want to be re-elected next year – either that, or secret polling has revealed a new symptom of long Covid aff ecting the populace: masochism.

“Make pain your friend” is not a concept customarily applied in politics, but the Beehive seems to be in full dominatrix mode.

At a time of rampaging inflation, it has stoked feverish talk of new taxes, the latest an inner-Auckland congestion charge – just in case the ravages of lockdown and construction chaos haven’t sufficiently punished businesses there, and offices aren’t yet empty enough.

That’s on top of a possible “wealth tax” at a time when most of the population is feeling poorer by the day.

And plans are rumbling on for a social insurance impost on both workers and employers to boost income for the unemployed, at a time of near-as-dammit full employment, so hardly anyone will be in danger of benefiting from it.

Not to leave out the rural sector, where farmers who’ve done the decent thing and invested in sustainable practices may yet be subsidising their polluting neighbours under an equalised farm emissions regime.

In case any of the country’s masochists still feel left out, there’s the opportunity of being passive-aggressively aggrieved by the waste of unknowable quantities of Covid bailout money. The Auditor-General’s latest whip-crack has been over the emergency tourism support, which he says was dished out according to unclear criteria, with insufficient investigation into need, to some people who didn’t need it, and with sloppy documentation.