Heather du Plessis-Allan criticizes the proposed election costings unit, arguing it would be biased, redundant, and costly, while asserting that public scrutiny and existing analysis already reveal flawed party promises.
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Now, unfortunately, because it is election year, we are apparently going to have the debate that we have every single election year. Should we set up a special unit that costs each party's election promises independently? And the answer to that question should be the same as it always is, which is no, we should not do this. There is no point in doing this. This unit will not be independent. It will be stacked with the same people that stack the public service, predominantly left-leaning public servants, who will overestimate what a capital gains tax will bring in because they love a capital gains tax, and they will underestimate the benefits of cutting red tape because they are the red tape. To believe this unit's numbers, you would have to first believe Treasury's numbers. Because it is probably people from Treasury who will go and work in a unit like this. If you believe Treasury, here's a word of advice. Go outside at midday with a stick and a string and see what the spirits tell you is going to happen in the future. Because that is about how useful the numbers out of treasury are for you. If you want to know what a biased referee looks like in election year, this is the biased referee, an independent costings unit. In which case, if we were to set this thing up, all we were gonna do, all we'd end up doing is the same thing that we do with the Treasury numbers, is argue all the time about whether they're right or wrong. Actually, you and I are really good arbiters of where the costings add up. We all spotted immediately that Labour's $65 million for the public transport policy was not enough money. We didn't need an independent unit to tell us that. We looked at and went, that's not enough money, mate. You're gonna have to do those numbers again. We all knew last election, we talked about it for months, that National had completely overestimated how much money they would get from a foreign house sales tax. And were we right? Yes, we were, of course we were. We don't need another unit to tell us what we can already figure out ourselves.
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National overestimated revenue, we were right
Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Do we really need another special unit that costs more money?Spotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.
