MEDIA RELEASE

Winston's Wish List Impossible to Cost

25 AUGUST 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Taxpayers’ Union is today calling on Winston Peters to provide sufficient details of his Party's campaign promises to enable them to be credibly costed for inclusion in theTaxpayer’s Union 'Bribe-O-Meter'. Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Jordan Williams says:

“The lack of policy detail in New Zealand First's manifesto makes it all but impossible for our economic expert to credibly determine how much Winston Peters' election priorities would cost New Zealand households.”

"While National, Labour, the Greens, Conservatives, ACT, and United Future have provided the Union with sufficient policy and financial material to estimate the cost of their election manifestos, New Zealand First apparently just doesn’t have the information for our expert.”

“It appears that while Mr Peters is traveling around Grey Power meetings promising all and sundry, his staff aren't even bothering to add up the costs. It smacks of dishonest policy formation."

“Even the Green Party, hardly the symbol of sound fiscal planning, has produced numbers that our expert can credibly assess."

“To Winston’s credit, two of his flagship policies appear to be tax-cuts, albeit complicated ones - cutting GST on food and removing GST from rates. New Zealand First seems unable to communicate much in the way of detail as to which items would be affected.”

“It appears as though New Zealand First make policies without any assessment of the impact on the government's books. We are calling for Mr Peters to front up and reveal what his policies would cost.”

The Taxpayers’ Union will be releasing updated figures for the Bribe-O-Meter, including the estimated cost of the minor party policy pledges, in the coming days.

The figures used for the Bribe-O-Meter are sourced from an independent expert in costing public policies, Dr Michael Dunn. Dr Dunn led the team at IRD that costed revenue policy and produced budget revenue forecasts for 12 years. He has advised both National and Labour led administrations.

The Bribe-O-Meter is available now at www.taxpayers.org.nz.

ENDS

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