Measures weird —Sir Robert

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 1

Measures weird —Sir Robert

PA Wellington The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Robert Muldoon, said the Budget was a bad combination of Labour Party prejudice and Treasury theory. Sir Robert told reporters the social welfare Family Care package would apply to incomes above $20,000, one-third above the average wage.

“If you go above that you are getting a nation of Social welfare beneficiaries,” he said. The average income of sheep and beef fanners was $21,500. The Government had imposed on farmers a $2OO million a year reduction in subsidies and various impositions, not counting increased expenses of electricity and fuel. Those measures would pull the average income down into the area where very large numbers of farmers, depending on their family circumstances, would become social welfare beneficiaries.

“That is weird. It’s so ludicrous, it’s weird,” Sir Robert said.

“What they are doing is pulling the farmer down to the point where to get the maximum that he is entitled to he has to fill in a form, giving his income and his family circumstances, and become a social welfare beneficiary.”

Some of the “little dodges” the Government had brought in were quite unfair, Sir Robert said. They would tax company cars and fringe benefits of that kind “but company cars and various other benefits apply to Ministers of the Crown but they won’t be taxed. The employer is going to pay but the employer of Ministers is the Crown and the Crown cannot pay the Crown.” The deficit of $2.7 billion was higher than the figure Sir Robert had, which was $2.52 billion.

“The deficit is not down, and the deficit we had for next year was $l.B billion to $1.9 billion.” Sir Robert said he thought the Budget had damaged Labour considerably. It would hurt too many people who would see it was

simply not fair. “I have a feeling there will be a lot of people who foolishly voted for the Jones party and who now will realise they were foolish,” he said.

Hill-country farmers would be in “terrible trouble.” There would be huge increases in interest rates next year and farmers’ incomes would go down.

There would be a very considerable loss of confidence in farming, with farmers selling up and a resultant drop in land values.

The move on superannuation was a big broken promise “because no-one at election time believed they were going to touch National Superannuation at all.”

Sir Robert said the Government was putting a rate of income tax on superannuitants with high personal income of 91c in the $l.

He would have to pay that rate, which he described as discriminatory and a criminally high level.