2025 Taskforce Recommendations

Yet to read the full paper, but the Herald reports major recommendations are:

Dr Brash revealed 35 recommendations today but the centrepiece was to reduce government spending to 2005 levels of 29 per cent of gross domestic product by 2012-13.

This could be done by:

* Reducing benefit numbers through “ambitious” welfare reform;

* Ending Kiwisaver subsidies;

* Scrapping the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and using the money to pay off debt;

* Raising the age of superannuation eligibility; and

* Cutting universal subsidies for health and education.

Of these savings, $7 billion would be used to reduce all income and business taxes to a top rate of 20 per cent.

Dr Brash said unless tax and spending were slashed the Government’s “ambitious” goal could not be achieved.

“There may be some other cunning plan, but I am not aware of it,” Dr Brash said.

He said the proposed cuts were “not a massacre”, but a winding back of spending that had not been effective since 2005.

The taskforce’s other policy prescriptions included:

* Reducing the minimum wage and reintroducing a lower minimum youth wage;

* Changing employment laws to make it easier to sack workers;

* Extending probationary employment periods to a year for all workers;

As I type this I am literally on board NZ1 to Auckland sitting by the gate in Los Angeles. The wireless can still pick up the Koru Club signal – just. Will blog my thoughts on the different recommendations on Tuesday when back home.