1[Caucus] Money or the bag: Major parties crashing into the centre National’s tax plan is a clever political document but raises questions about “heroic” numbers. We look at how much government spending doesn’t change and what’s up for grabs in coalition deals. Plus… Analysis - National's tax plan released this week was one of the big set pieces left in the Election 2023 campaign, even though the campaign hasn't officially started yet. In the past tax plans have spurred and stalled political momentum, sparked debates about fiscal holes, lost voters and maybe even elections. So though we still have six weeks to go to the election, there was a lot riding on Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis when they talked tax this week. It's the focus of this week's Caucus podcast. National produced a clever and careful political document. As Julian Wilcox says, they made sure they didn't know the ball on five metres from the try line. That was their first job and they got it done. The narrative crafted was about support for "the squeezed middle", seeking to underline both the caring face of National and its steady hand at the fiscal tiller. It was a tax plan very much in the modern style of economic managers. This was the National Party of Keith Holyoake and Harry Lake, not the party of Ruth Richardson and Don Brash. National is underlining its softer, centrist credentials, with hardly a hint of reforming zeal. In a week where National leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report he believes in "better government" rather than smaller government, it was a largely ideological-free document. No trickle-down, no market solutions. Instead, it was a tax plan for swing voters. As Lisa Owen puts it, National and Labour are crashing into the centre. National won't touch Labour's winter energy payments or fees-free tertiary policy, for example. It will boost the Working For Families in-work tax credit by exactly the same amount as Labour. It carefully designed tax relief so that those on $80,000 a year would get the same dollar amount in their "back pocket: as someone earning 10 times that or more". You could see the delight on Luxon's face when he was able to point that out, nixing Prime Minister Chris Hipkins' favourite line of the past few weeks, that National was a party giving tax cuts to millionaires. That attack line has been silenced. And where National's tax plans often spark squeals of outrage at who is expected to pay for this "back pocket boost", there were crickets on the front this time. National isn't blatantly cutting benefits or rolling back public services, instead it's introducing new levies and "revenue measures". Heresy for some National parties of the past. So who does pay? Foreigners wanting to buy houses or move here, casinos, commercial property owners, backroom bureaucrats... no-one who will win any popularity contests or upset a voting bloc. Instead - and this is a bit different - the debate over this tax plan is whether the numbers stack up. It's the sort of scrutiny the Greens have often had in the past, with opponents giving a nudge and a wink and saying they're making up numbers. National's revenue estimates on the number of houses that will be sold to foreigners, the number of casinos they can regulate and their suggestion re-introducing depreciation on rental properties will create "downward pressure" on rents have all been mocked. The revenue estimates were as "heroic" so often, we wondered if Super Luxon and Wonder Willis would suddenly whip off their blue suits to reveal capes underneath. It means the action this campaign will be on the fringes. Perhaps the most important question after this tax announcement - as we discuss in the podcast - is whether National can ring-fence the policy and deliver it in coalition with ACT or whether it will need to concede ground, undermining Luxon's promise that this is the tax policy National will "implement on the other side". It leaves major party voters with a narrow choice: The money or the bag. Do you want Labour's complicated bag of childcare subsidies, free bus rides, money off fruit and veg et al or National's $10-$50 per week in your pocket to spend as you wish? The underlying choice is laid out. And the campaign hasn't even officially begun yet. [Season 2023, Episode 5, Thursday 31 August 2023, 17:00]

2[Voices] 'This is not the image we want to put out' - claims of exploitation by migrant workers on Accredited Employers Work Visa scheme A group of South American migrants spoke out recently about allegedly misleading job contracts they signed with the Auckland construction company Buildhub as part of New Zealand's Accredited Employers Work Visa (AEWV) scheme. On Voices, Kadambari Gladding sits down for an exclusive interview with Buildhub's commercial administrator Ricardo Corona-Perez, and also speaks to some of the complainants. People from Chile, Peru and Colombia who signed contracts with Buildhub in their home countries tell Voices that they were not given the jobs or number of work hours the company promised. Several people from the group of families say they are desperate and struggling to make ends meet in Auckland. Many are living off favours and borrowed money to support themselves and their families, and their hopes of a new life in New Zealand have been completely shattered. Some of the migrants have now been given the Migrant Exploitation Protection Visa (MEPV) based on their reports of being exploited by Buildhub. The MEPV gives them a period of six months to remain in New Zealand while their claims are being investigated. Buildhub defends its position, saying it has complied with Immigration New Zealand's contractual terms and rules. According to Ricardo Corona-Perez, 92% of its recruits have work and only 8% are not working – because they either resigned or were dismissed. The Accredited Employers Work Visa is now being reviewed by Immigration New Zealand. According to licensed immigration advisor Paul Janssen, while the visa is a smart idea, there hasn't been the due diligence required to ensure it is a robust scheme. He says it will be tricky to discern between complainants who may be taking advantage of the system and those who may have been genuinely ripped off by accredited employers. With several claims of immigrant worker exploitation coming to light in the past month, "this is not the image we want to put out", he says. [Monday 28 August 2023, 05:00]