A government proposal to claw back money from homeowners and businesses who benefit from major infrastructure projects amounts to an 'envy tax', National says.
Simon Bridges Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
In a speech last week, finance minister Grant Roberston said the government would have to come up with different ways to finance major infrastructure projects.
He listed options such as public private partnerships and 'value capture' - a way of either local or central government getting some money back from homeowners and businesses that benefit from major infrastructure projects.
"If we're going to make big investments in [Auckland's city rail link], in a series of different rail links, people will benefit from that - how can we capture the value of that and use that to help fund development?
"We need to have a range of innovative financing mechanisms and we want to work with the investment community on how to develop those up," he said.
National's Amy Adams took to Twitter to says it was a case of "another day, another tax", while her front-bench colleague Judith Collins denounced it as an "envy tax".
However, Mr Bridges initially said that while Labour was performing a "flip-flop" over value capture, he welcomed the proposal.
"It's good to hear from Grant Robertson that finally he's come around to the need for innovation in this area.
"This is like so many areas where we did quite a bit, we were moving in that direction, I was certainly excited about doing more," Mr Bridges said.
"It's good news that he's coming to the realisation he doesn't have enough money for the infrastructure that needs to be built in New Zealand and some of things such as value capture ... PPPs and other private sector initiatives can play a real role."
But when asked again today, Mr Bridges - purloining Ms Collin's phrase - described value capture as an "envy tax".
"What we don't agree with is taxing individual homeowners in the way he seems to be talking about - that was never something we were going into."
While in government, he worked on something "altogether different [that] you wouldn't call a tax", but would be used for projects the size of Waterview Tunnel.
"And negotiating for co-funding with potential large commercial property developers in advance, so it's much more in the realm of contractual negotiation where they were going to see large value from the project going ahead," he said.
The government's plan involved going in "after the event" and taxing individual households and businesses, Mr Bridges said.
"Effectively a land tax - we were never looking at that."