The Labour party, the ETS and the dairy farm.

It seems John Key has set about trying to destroy Labour's plan to bring farmers into the ETS in 2013.

Key says " the only impact of that will be to make our biggest exporter uncompetitive on a world scale and ultimately make New Zealanders pay more for milk, butter, cheese, meat and all the staples of a New Zealand diet".

Andrew Ferrier, CEO of Fonterra, says that this is not true as the milk and dairy prices are set by the international market.

I have two points to make on this, the first is that last year the average amount of tax paid by a dairy farmer was $1508, the second point is that this year Dairy farmers are set for a record payout of $8-$8.10. So, dairy farmers do not pay their fair share of tax (it is also important to keep in mind the levels of debt they may have and business expenditures because farms are very expensive).

Now here is where we must make some clarifications, so far I have only talked about dairy farms, whereas sheep and beef farms (or any other farm which produces meat) are very different and if Labour gets the chance to introduce this plan they must keep this distinction in mind.

The money raised from this will go to fund a 12.5% tax break for research and development. In order for this to work and gain public support Labour needs to do two things, firstly as the money is coming from an ETS tax it should go to develop technology that will directly benefit New Zealand environmentally, secondly Labour must make sure to explicitly state that dairy farmers cause a lot of harm to our environment (particularly our waterways) and that the R&D tax cuts will go to help alleviate this.

One particular question pops into my mind when I think about National's objection to this. Why are they really opposing this? Farmers are a big part of National's constituency and if they did support this they would very likely lose a lot of votes. It may very well be true that National does support this but because of their financial backing from the rural sector and the possible loss of votes, they just can't say so.

Is this just another case of the corporate interests driving our politicians?

Tax cuts for the rich will cost us all.

In Bernard Hickey's Herald column he illustrated how the National Government's tax cuts for the rich have not worked and the same problems of over investment in property still prevail.

Some of those tax cuts probably have gone into paying down private debt as was hoped but they have not lead to more investment in industry and infrastructure, just more property speculation even with the depreciation tax loopholes closed.

When will the Nats finally come to see that a capital gains tax is really the only way to fix this problem properly.

One of the things I really like about Bernard Hickey is that he is unafraid to admit that he was wrong, such as in the great column he wrote last year stating the final nails have been driven into the coffin of free-market capitalism.

On the subject of the rich and their greed Radio New Zealand published a story this morning on the issue of the "super rich" not having contributed anything towards the Christchurch recovery.

It 's the same thing that has been happening for the last 30 or so years, you give the rich tax breaks and they just want more without giving anything back when the should be helping out.

Favouring the rich in such a way just furthers the growing plutocracy of New Zealand, when you cut taxes for those who don't need their taxes cut you have to cut spending, and the people who need the Government services the most are certainly not earning enough to qualify for a five percent tax cut given out last year.

Then of course out finance minister comes out this week and says our low wages are good for us, but I think that deserves a post all of its own, so more on that later.

If we are looking for services to cut my first suggestion would be to pull our troops out of Afghanistan and get them into Christchurch.