Responding to speculation by Prime Minister John Key on the possible introduction of a land tax, Mr Twyford said the land tax issue was ‘‘classic John Key''.
It was just enough to get the issue off the front page and just enough to make it look as if he was doing something.
‘‘The overwhelming majority of Kiwis support Labour's policy. It is simple, it is clean, and in Australia the requirement for foreign investors to build new homes has channelled $30billion into new home construction in the past year.
‘‘The Prime Minister is a day late and a dollar short.''
Mr Key had been rubbishing Labour's policy for the past three years and denying foreign speculators were even a problem, Mr Twyford said. Mr Key refused to carve out a ban in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement and now he had some complicated land tax idea that would apply to Kiwis who happened to be working or living overseas.
The Prime Minister needed to reflect on the number of young Kiwi first-home buyers who had had their dream of home ownership destroyed while Mr Key had been protecting the interests of the mega-rich and speculators, he said.
Act New Zealand leader David Seymour said that the introduction of a land tax would be a broken promise.
National promised ‘‘no new taxes'' during the last election campaign but then introduced a travel level and a capital gains tax, Mr Seymour said.‘‘For the third time now, this promise could be broken as the Prime Minister ponders a land tax.
It's another example of National campaigning from the Right and governing from the Left.''The tax would likely include expat Kiwis and could easily be extended by a future government to Kiwis within New Zealand, he said.
Homeowners were already getting bled dry with rates bills as it was. Property rights were meant to be protected by centre-right governments but it looked like National was too busy trying to put Labour out of a job.
‘‘National's increasingly incoherent tax polices are a symptom of its failure to comprehensively reform the Resource Management Act. Tinkering with special housing areas isn't working and so now they're getting desperate,'' Mr Seymour said.
The Taxpayers Union described the proposed land tax as a cop-out by the Government to fix New Zealand's housing affordability crisis.
The Government needed to explain why it mattered whether a landlord lived down the road, in Picton, or resided in Sydney, chief executive executive director Jordan Williams said.
Instead of fixing housing supply, the Government appeared to chose the easy options of taxing the foreigners, trying to dampen investment while ignoring the evidence it was the Government's failure to fix the RMA which was more responsible than any foreign buyer for locking the younger generations out of the housing market.
