THE CORNER WITH GARRY CHITTICK

Having been cancelled, and accused of having a phantom writer, I approach today’s subject with trepidation. You see, the Corner is really just my tongue-in-cheek view of the racing world and its participants. So, politics should be off the agenda, you know the old maxim, if you don’t want to spoil the dinner party, then avoid politics, religion, and the guest’s children.

However, we are apparently in election mode, I say apparently because it is very difficult to take the many participants seriously. Is this the result of MMP, I am obviously old enough to have voted many times under the first past the post elections. Sure, there were many clowns then, and despite the dominance of the two major parties, there were many believers who offered their alternative view of the world, seeking support. None that I can recall had candidates in all electorates, perhaps Social Credit may have come close with many of the others only scraping up one or two candidates. Jim Anderton threw his toys out of the cot and left Labour but managed to get elected, Winston went from Finance Minister to the wilderness only to share his greatness with Jesus, being resurrected more than once.

However, MMP offers half a chance for many to make their case, the objective of the electoral process is to do just that resulting in we voters not really knowing what we are about to put up with.

When I was younger, my parents were market gardeners, and my cousins and I were required to present ourselves after school from the age of eleven at whichever of their mixed plots of land around Lower Hutt, Monday and Thursday were market days requiring us to be ready at 5am and go with our fathers before school. We didn’t mind, we were treated as young adults, but of course, we were influenced by their conservative values, their smoko’s with their employees and us revolved around racehorses and the state of the nation, you can see I really haven’t progressed.

But the choices we were indoctrinated with were a lot more simple, there was them and us.

But the them and us were never that far apart, so often we would hear our frustrated elders complaining, in the end their choice was about the leader and how they would restore the values they believed to be important. As a small nation, we generally looked after constituents with a high tax social welfare system. Just to refresh your knowledge, not memory, as I am going back a long way, initial tax rates were introduced by the then Liberal party in 1891 at the princely rate of 5% on incomes over 300 pounds which very few earned, during the 1914/18 war this was increased to 6.67% with 12,000 people out of 70,0000 above the threshold again of 300 pounds.

By 1921 tax rate jumped to 43.75% only to be lowered again a decade later to 29.25%, by 1939 42.9%, then spiking to no doubt help fund the war a whopping 90%. The end of the war back to 76.5%, I should point out tax was paid by a very small percentage of the population, so you can see there have been wealth taxes forever, Muldoon had a fair approach, now these are times I remember, he thought 66% was fair, I can’t remember the threshold, but it was low.

Roger Douglas can you believe it dropped the top rate to 48%, but there was a catch, GST was introduced at 10% obviously they collected more than expected, enabling the Fourth Labour to reduce the tax rate to 33%. John Key was happy with 33%, but when he needed to put his hand deeper into our pocket, he increased GST to 15%. 

So you know where we are at present, but you get the picture. My indoctrination over smoko was that we understood Governments need to fund roading, hospitals, police, social welfare, armed forces etc, etc. So we were voting for the administration we believed would responsibly handle OUR MONEY, the results of our endeavours, regretfully we seem now to believe those who may rise above the pulpit apart from the apparent share of their contribution are now regarded as pariahs, this is along way from the spirit of NZ as I remember it.

Labour’s slogan,”We are in it for you”, like who? 

National “Get the Country back on Track”, good luck, I think the change in our country’s values as a result of the last six years will take a Herculean effort, let alone the financial position they will inherit.

Act, well, Seymour says all the commonsense things. However, he will have just lost the support of the thousands of  Civil Servants with his quite reasonable suggestion they should be called into line.

NZ First, well, I went to a lunch where the very eloquent and humorous Shane Jones spoke, his values could have been Seymour’s, however can we trust them after the debacle of six years ago? He was asked how did that happen, it would appear English and Peters were never going to mix. However, he can speak freely on the change in the Country’s race relations, and He Pua Pua, would get my vote on that issue alone.

The Māori Party, well after espousing all the wrongdoings of colonialism, they now believe the Māori King should be afforded the same status as King Charles. Personally, I don’t give rats ——— about any title so long as I am the king of my patch.

There are others who believe they know best, oh, the Greens, well they haven’t as yet determined the methane emissions of our beloved horse, they need to be very careful, they may be our only method of transport if we continue to kowtow to their nonsense. Their proposed wealth tax will be a waste of time, we will all be poorer, all equal but poorer.

So, while we have an increase in stakes, with mouth-watering stakes across the Tasman, I suggest the eleven of you go hard on increasing your racing team. With the likelihood they will be needed to pull the transport of the future, they are sound long-term investment.

Cheers

G

P.s. just so I am not cancelled, I confirm these are my views not necessarily the views of my following generations no matter how hard I have tried.