A word before I start.
This isn’t intended to be a political piece. It’s a leadership piece written in a political season.
I’m interested in what politics can teach us about leadership – how people make decisions, how they manage resources, and what they do when those resources aren’t enough.
And few things reveal that more clearly than tax.
Election campaigns bring promises.
New programmes.
New entitlements.
New spending.
And inevitably…
New taxes to pay for them.
But there’s a leadership question I think deserves far more attention:
Before asking people for more money, have you demonstrated that you can manage what you already have?
In almost every other area of life, that’s the standard we apply.
If a business is struggling, the first question isn’t:
How do we charge our customers more?
It’s:
What’s not working?
Where is the waste?
What needs to change?
What are we spending money on that isn’t producing results?
That’s leadership.
Yet in politics, asking for more can become the default setting – a form of entitlement – before answering the fundamental question: how well has the money already collected been managed?
YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING
I’m not saying tax is inherently bad.
We need government.
Police. Hospitals. Schools. Infrastructure. A safety net for genuine hardship.
These things have to be paid for.
But there is a simple reality that governments, businesses and households all face:
You can’t have everything.
Thomas Sowell put it another way:
“There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”
Every choice means giving something else up.
Spend here and you can’t spend the same money there.
Fund one priority and another may have to wait.
Promise everything and eventually someone has to pay for it.
That’s where leadership matters.
Leadership isn’t simply identifying things that would be good to have.
Leadership is deciding what matters most.
THEN COMES THE TAX QUESTION
This election gives us some very different answers.
According to the Opes Partners 2026 Election Property Cheat Sheet, Labour proposes a 28% capital gains tax on qualifying gains from 1 July 2027.
The Green Party proposes a 2.5% annual wealth tax on net assets above $10 million per person, alongside reversing the current government’s changes to landlord interest deductibility and the bright-line test.
The Opportunity Party proposes an annual land-value tax of up to 1.75% on urban land, including the land beneath the family home.
National, ACT and NZ First take materially different positions on property taxation.
These aren’t minor differences.
They reflect very different ideas about tax, property ownership and the role of government.
I’m interested in the policies.
But I’m equally interested in what sits behind them.
When the answer is another tax, I want to know:
Why do you need more of our money?
There may be a good answer.
If there is, make the case.
Show us what the money will achieve.
As importantly – show us what you’ve already done to get better with what you have.
And show us the trade-off.
I’m not suggesting every new tax automatically represents poor leadership.
I’m suggesting that asking for more should come with an obligation to demonstrate beyond reproach how well you’ve managed what you already had.
Winston Churchill once captured the problem with tax obsession perfectly:
“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Different time. Different country.
But the question behind it remains remarkably relevant: can taking more ever substitute for managing better?
THE NUMBERS MAKE THE QUESTION RELEVANT
According to Treasury, core Crown expenses have risen from $87 billion in 2018/19 to a forecast $147.2 billion in 2025/26.
Not all of that increase is waste.
And no doubt, there are legitimate reasons for some of this spending.
But the scale is confronting.
At 31 May 2026, net core Crown debt stood at $186 billion.
That’s a lot of money.
And it makes the leadership question even more important:
Before asking New Zealanders for more, what have you done to demonstrate that the money already being spent is being spent well?
THE LEADERSHIP TEST
Imagine a CEO walking into a board meeting.
Costs have increased.
Debt has increased.
Results haven’t.
His proposal?
Give me more money.
A competent board would ask, “What’s going on?”
What have you changed?
What have you stopped doing?
Where have you become more efficient?
What results are we getting from the money already invested?
And why should we believe more money will produce a better result?
Government should face the same test.
Perhaps an even higher one.
It’s spending other people’s money.
Money earned by people who went to work.
Built businesses.
Took risks.
Bought property.
Employed people.
Saved.
Invested.
That should demand extraordinary care in how it is spent.
HAVE YOU EARNED THE RIGHT TO ASK FOR MORE?
This is the ‘leadership’ question I’ll be asking as election day approaches.
Not simply:
What are you promising me?
And not simply:
Who are you proposing to tax?
I want to know what you’ve done with what you already had.
Did you spend it well?
Did you deliver?
Did you remove things that weren’t working?
Did you take accountability for failure as well as success?
Did you create an environment where people could build businesses, invest, own property, employ others and get ahead?
And when you promise the next solution:
What’s the trade-off?
In other words:
Have you demonstrated the leadership required to ask for more?
That’s the tax question for me.
Tax policy tells us more than how a government intends to raise money.
It can also tell us something about how its leaders think.
When faced with a problem, is the instinct to become better with what they have?
Or simply to take more?
Great leadership starts with stewardship.
Before asking for more, show me what you’ve done with what you already have.
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Discover more from Richie Lewis | REINZ Manager of the Year
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