Labour’s panicked u-turn

Labour’s attempt to get a blank cheque for their tax policies has failed, and the inevitable u-turn was done this morning as poll panic sets in.

Labour are now saying that any CGT or land tax will not be implemented until 2021, so after the next election.

This is of course the policy they had up until six weeks ago, under Andrew Little.

The decision to change it and campaign on introducing new taxes without an election mandate was Jacinda’s Captain’s Call. And it has been just as big a disaster as Tony Abbott’s calls.

So if this is Jacinda’s one and only Captain’s Call to date, you have to look forward to her next one. And imagine her judgement if she is Prime Minister.

The urban dictionary defines a Captain’s Call as:

A decision made unilaterally by a team leader without consulting colleagues, often a massive clusterfuck.

And who labelled it a Captain’s Call? The media? National? Jacinda herself used the term. Why would you?

It is worth noting that Labour are merely saying that a CGT and/or Land Tax won’t happen in their first term. The water tax, tourist tax, fart tax and regional petrol tax are still all on, along with hiking the tax thresholds so that someone on $50,000 has a marginal tax rate of 30% instead of 17.5% and someone on $20,000 has a marginal tax rate of 17.5% instead of 10.5%. So they’re still going ahead with five tax hikes.