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Rodney Hide - Source: ONE News -
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Cheese block tax cuts is how National is describing the centrepiece of the Budget.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen delivered a three-year programme of tax cuts which will cost $10.6 billion over four years starting from October 1.
It will see workers pay on average between $12 and $28 less tax each week, to $22 to $55 less a week by 2011.
But National Leader John Key says Labour's cuts are like giving the average worker a family sized block of cheese and has dismissed the cuts as too little, too late.
He says New Zealanders have had to wait too long for tax cuts and that the government has presided over a fall in people's living standard whereby wages have not kept up with the increase in the cost of living.
Key went on to say that it had taken nine years for Cullen to deliver tax cuts and it must have hurt him to deliver a package he does not believe in.
The snipes riled Prime Minister Helen Clark who came out blazing against Key.
While Key promised his party will deliver better and more believable tax cuts, Clark has accused him of shifting his ground on his $50 a week tax cut comments made earlier this week.
She says Key's promises cannot even last 48 hours and the only thing he has confirmed is that National will cut public spending to pay for its tax package.
She says a vote for Key is a vote for fewer nurses and fewer teachers.
Foreign Minister and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters also fired a barb at National, criticising them of alluding to a tax plan but revealing no details.
He says he wants to when and how much their tax cuts will be, and that National has a duty to the public to tell them what it intends to do.
Meanwhile, Revenue Minister and United Future leader Peter Dunne has labelled the tax cuts as "long overdue".
"Today's moves are a step in the right direction, but they are not the full answer," says Dunne
He says that while his party supports the move, it wants a more fundamental overhaul of the tax system than "just tinkering".
Dunne says there is still unfinished business with the differing
top personal tax rate, the business tax rate and the trust rate.
These rates were addressed in the 2007 Budget but Thursday's
announcement does not advance on them.
"We regard today's tax cuts as just the platform for the future
changes we would like to make, rather than an end in themselves,"
he says.
