Tonight the government has used extraordinary urgency, not to ditch the ETS, but to raise taxes yet again. Again on tobacco under the pretext that they are trying to stop people from smoking and as a sop to the Maori Party. The highest tax increases were also on loose tobacco, socking the poorest even more.
Tobacco tax goes up 10 per cent from midnight, raising the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes by about a dollar to around $11, and two more hikes are in the pipeline.
The Government brought the legislation to Parliament under extraordinary urgency today and it will go through all its stages, putting in place three excise duty increases of 10 per cent – one at midnight, the next on January 1 next year and the third on January 1 2012.
Loose tobacco used by pipe smokers and to make roll your own cigarettes is being socked with a 14 per cent increase immediately to bring it into line with cigarettes.
Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia, a strong anti-smoking campaigner, introduced the bill and said the debate on it was going to be about life and death.
This is of course not at all about life and death, it is simply about taxing people who are addicted to a legal product and freely chose to suck into their lungs. If it was truly about life and death then the Government would have made cigarettes illegal and unable to be sold in New Zealand and classified tobacco as a Class A drug. As they didn’t do that it is only about revenue.
The National party used to be about personal responsibility and freedom of choice, now it is nothing more than a nanny-statist over-lord deciding what is and isn’t good for you.
Only the congenitally stupid amongst us would willingly take up smoking given all the available information about the deleterious health effects. The fact that in the past 5 years the numbers of smokers has remained constant at about 700,000 people shows that previous tax increases are meaningless, especially to the truly stupid of this country.
Since the government are going to raise taxes I thought I might share with just where those taxes will probably be going. The increased taxes will go to more Maori troughers, like Shane Bradbrook, intent on spending as much of the poor addicted tobacco users cash as humanly possible on themselves, carting their useless arses around the sights of world so they can un-furl protest flags and promote the palestinian cause by wearing a keffiyah at the same time.These pictures are from his state-funded tours around the world saving Maori smokers, in India at the Taj Mahal, in the Washington DC and in Tokyo.
It is kind of ironic that Shane Bradbrook identifies closely with Palestinians because there are huge similarities between palestinians and Maori especially when it comes to troughing and grievances. Maori are still wailing over injustices perpetrated more than 100 years ago, palestinians are still creating greivances and living in refugee camps. Maori suck massively off the public tit and palestinians suck massively off the UN. The longest running welfare system in the world is the UNDP mission to Gaza, sucking literally billions of dollars off the world and giving it to palestinians as “aid”. The fact that the money has not made one single zak of difference to them escapes almost everyone, and Maori have had millions spent on them trying to stop them being fatties aand smokers and that too hasn’t made a zak of difference. Palestinians and Maori are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries and aggrieved peoples in the world and yet they will not make personal choices that will stop them from getting the same deal. Palestinians won;t stop chucking bombs, rocks, missiles and bullets at Israel and Maori won’t stop chugging on booze, quaffing vast quantities of poor quality food and puffing up large on as many ciggies as they can get their hands on.
The pity is that this measure won’t do a thing except increase the power of the gangs in New Zealand’s poorest neighbourhoods and make tobacco a much more profitable drug to sell illegally than even methamphetamine. This measure is only making larger profits for gangs and smaller profits for legal tobacco companies. Chinese tobacco merchants will be making a killing.
Politicians lie when they say this is to pay for the cost of smoking. The Smokefree Coalition and the Cancer Society provide figures that show that revenue from excise taxes on tobacco raise more than $900 million per annum and the government spends about $250 million on smoking related health costs. Smokers, unlike the rest of New Zealand society actually pay their own way. We should be giving these folk medals for killing themselves before they take a pension. New Zealand benefits economically from having smokers in every-way.
National disgusts me. They have betrayed their founders, their constitution and their own beliefs. It seems that this country no longer believes in personal freedoms or personal choice and no longer believes in personal responsibility for ones own actions. It is all about the state and what it believes is best for you.
