Expats need more than spin to come home

National Party Leader Don Brash says expat Kiwis will need more than Helen Clark’s assurances and spin before they contemplate a homecoming.

“The best way to reverse the brain drain and to entice more New Zealanders into coming home is to get incomes moving up. Tax cuts are a good place to start.

“That won’t happen with this tax and spend Labour Government, which is far more focussed on the redistribution of our taxes into pet projects and expensive advertising campaigns.

“What should worry the Prime Minister is how her Government’s policies have become so twisted that someone earning $50,000 a year could get a 5% pay rise and only end up taking home an extra $5 a week.

“Labour is stifling ambition and aspiration with a tax regime that punishes hard work and that’s precisely why the number of New Zealanders leaving for good is again on the rise.

“Over the past five years real after tax wages in New Zealand have barely moved and over the same period the income gap between the average Australian and the average New Zealander has been widening at an alarming rate.

“Yet Helen Clark is mistakenly convinced ‘the economy has picked up and a lot of the reasons people left are no longer valid’.

“The fact is the economy is past its peak and the outflow of Kiwis is increasing. That will continue unless Labour takes action to correct the disincentives, like those outlined by Singapore-based computer consultant Jamie Clark.”

‘New Zealand company tax and employment law are strong disincentives to locating there. I would love to be back home employing Kiwis but the NZ Government is making that look like a daft idea’ - Jamie Clark.

“In the past five years Labour has introduced anti-business employment law pandering to union supporters, while at the same time it has introduced a raft of new taxes and levies generating large surpluses.

“So now in election year, with a looming skills crisis, Labour plans to spend more taxpayer money on an 11th hour charm offensive to lure expats home.

“It’s too little too late. As Helen Clark is now discovering, her chickens have already come home to roost,” says Dr Brash.

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