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ANZ Bank CEO’s Shameless Self Interest: This Is Why People Hate Bankers

The Taxpayers’ Union is calling out ANZ NZ CEO Antonia Watson for what appears to be calculated comments to promote a capital gains tax to benefit home lenders and fuel New Zealand’s residential property money wheel.

“New Zealand’s low wage economy is a direct result of under-capitalisation of the private sector and too much money going into unproductive assets and family homes,” said Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union.

“Antonia Watson knows that full well, but also knows that every capital gains tax that has ever been promoted in New Zealand excludes the very family family home that ANZ makes most of its profits from.”

“The reason Watson is promoting a capital gains tax is so families are even further incentivised to park their nest eggs under the roofs of their family home. That is terrible for New Zealand but great for ANZ’s bottom line and bankers’ bonuses.”

“Taxes on capital hurt investment, and they incentivise the very capital New Zealand needs to grow our standards of living to move offshore. A capital gains tax would hurt everything except the very residential property investments that ANZ makes so much coin from.”

“Watson’s self-interest is so brazen she even hid it under a veil of ‘fairness’. Predictably, RNZ swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.”

“This sort of gall nearly deserves admiration. It’s probably why the former Morgan Stanley banker pockets $1.9million as a salary.”

“If CGT proponents don’t really think these comments are calculated to help ANZ’s bottom line, and that we saw for the first time in history a bank CEO championing a policy for ‘fairness’, I have a bridge to sell them.”

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