AUCKLAND (Sachin Sharma): The restored daily press conferences of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about COVID - 19 situation, and an ad by opposition National Party alleging ruling coalition plan to tax people's houses, has heated up the politics ahead of September general elections.
National Party's campaign chair Gerry Brownlee warned PM to be careful not to use her reinstated daily press conferences for election campaigning.
The National Party has also come under fire from Labour for one of its election ads related to tax if ruling coalition is voted to power again, with allegations that opposition party was spreading lies.
The COVID - 19 and lockdown related daily press conference by PM and other ministers were restored by the government this week.
The conferences had stopped as New Zealand moved down the alert scale to level 1, and the need for daily briefings on the Government's response receded.
Brownlee said that the party shouldn't use the ability to hold daily press conferences for electioneering. He questioned what the information the prime minister is now in possession of that has made her feel she needs to do this (press conference).
Ardern defended the move saying that she would usually be giving media interviews at roughly the same time anyway.
Unlike Ardern's usual pre-Question Time interviews to media, her press conferences are livestreamed and usually open with a couple of minutes of Ardern outlining some of the Government's successes.
She said the briefings were not politically motivated.
"There is still really critical information we need to be sharing. Covid is not over, it's not going to be over for some time," she said.
She said conferences are likely to be stopped after Parliament is dissolved ahead of elections.
Meanwhile, National Party's Facebook ad claiming a future Labour-Green government would tax people's homes has also come under fire.
The ad, with a video, reads: "Labour-Greens plan to tax your house, your retirement fund, your business assets, and even your art. Who knows what they’ll tax next?"
National Party levelled these allegations on basis of a Green Party proposal to tax people's net wealth, including wealth vested in their home.
On allegations, Ardern said that the Labour tax policy would "look very different" to the Greens. She termed the National's allegations as "ridiculous".
"We have our own policies, we are our own party," she said.
Brownlee, however said, the ads were about asking Labour to rule the tax out of any post-election coalition talks.
Ardern said same could be applied to National Party's obvious coalition partner, ACT as latter's current tax policy is to flatten the tax system to just three tax rates, which would mean tax increase for anyone earning less than $57,000, or roughly 70 per cent of all income earners.
National leaders have distanced from the ACT policy.