Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is National's tax strategy really working?

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2026, 7:28pm

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Question for you: is National's tax strategy working?

What I'm talking about is the blatant strategy they have of swamping social media and traditional media with warnings about Labour, the Greens, and the Opportunity Party's taxes in a bid to freak you out so badly it drives you back to National.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm not entirely convinced this is working. It just seems desperate and embarrassing from National.

For example, National has been accused of dishonesty because it's running social media videos featuring a number of National MPs warning about Labour's nine taxes.

Now, Labour doesn't have nine taxes. At best, it has two: the capital gains tax and the bed tax. The others are taxes it's ruled out.

You and I might have legitimate doubts about Labour's ability to rule out those taxes because we all know coalition negotiations can change everything. But that's what National should say. They should make that argument.

Pretending Labour has nine taxes that it doesn't have is embarrassing and, honestly, it's no better than what Tamatha Paul of the Greens has been doing when she's accused National MPs of buying houses for rent, when that is blatantly not true.

National's social media feed at the moment is a line-up of really lame, try-hard memes about tax. I don't know who finds these funny. I don't know who the target audience is because I look at them and think they're cringeworthy.

There's one that looks like a trailer for a Pixar movie about a little boy named Chris who gets told off by a teacher for stealing other kids' money. Then there's one with a Star Wars reference to tax, with Chris Hipkins' face imposed over the top. Again, it lands really poorly and just looks cringe.

I think the problem is that I'm not convinced tax is what people are worried about right now. People are more concerned about what's actually going on in their lives: the rates bill, the power bill, the grocery bill and the possibility that each of those might go up again.

They're more worried about that than paying capital gains tax on a house that hasn't had any capital gains in years.

Now, maybe the strategy will eventually pay off. It's entirely possible that, at some point, voters will engage their brains about how they're going to vote, the tax issue will click and it will be worth a few points to National. Maybe talking about it ad nauseam, as they are at the moment, will help make that happen.

But it's coming at a cost right now.

It looks desperate. It looks a bit dishonest. And it's led to comparisons with Tamatha Paul, who is as loose as you like with the facts. Frankly, when you start getting compared to the Greens and Tamatha Paul, it's probably time to ask whether the strategy has gone a bit too far.

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