Politics

NZ First pledges to remove some GST

22:17 pm on 20 July 2014

New Zealand First is promising to remove the goods and services tax from food.

Party leader Winston Peters made the announcement in his speech to 250 supporters at the party's annual conference in Auckland.

Mr Peters said the 15 percent tax would be removed from all of the basics of the household food budget.

Winston Peters at the New Zealand First annual conference in Auckland last month Photo: RNZ / Demelza Leslie

He said it would cost $3 billion per year and would be paid for by a crackdown on tax evasion and the black economy, and from running a sound economy.

Mr Peters said the bold policy aims at the heart of the inequality undermining the country.

New Zealand First says it would also remove the GST on rates bills for residential properties.

Wealth inequality on NZ First agenda

A guest speaker at the conference, Dunedin student Jacobi Kohu-Morris, 17, told party supporters politicians were too busy talking about Kim Dotcom and the Government's electronic spy agency, than the thousands of children living in poverty.

Mr Peters earlier said the party was seriously concerned at the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the social catastrophe taking place as a result.

"We can not go on just letting people fall by the way side," he said.

And Mr Peters described prospective coalition partners in the forthcoming election as shooting stars that will tumble to the ground.

Mr Peters is hinting he may stand in the East Coast Bays electorate if National stands aside for the Conservative Party leader Colin Craig.

He told the Sunday Morning programme that Mr Craig, and the Internet-Mana players Hone Harawira and Kim Dotcom, will not last, and that New Zealand First is a long-term project.

"Do you know what a shooting start looks like? It briefly flashes in the sky usually tumbling to the ground to disappear, or invariably doing that.

"We've been around for 21 years we've got a record and we're here for the long haul."