The Government can close some of the loopholes multinational companies are using to avoid paying their fair share of tax by adopting similar measures to Australia, the Green Party said today. Australia passed new legislation in December 2015 to target multinational companies that are avoiding paying regular company tax rates. Multinationals now face 100 percent tax penalties if caught shifting profits, along with new transparency and reporting requirements to give the Australian Tax Office (ATO) a better picture of how...

The Green Party can reveal the Government is continuing to pour public money into subsidies for the oil and gas industry and ignore clean energy investment, on the eve of a major government-sponsored oil and gas conference starting in Auckland tomorrow. The Government has just confirmed it spent $47,583 on the 2016 Minerals Exploration Data Pack – a collection of valuable data for overseas fossil fuel companies as a sweetener to make drilling for oil in New Zealand more attractive....

The Green Party is supporting the announcement made by the Chief Ombudsman on TV3s The Nation that he will produce a league table revealing Government agencies’ lack of compliance with the Official Information Act (OIA).

Data obtained by the Green Party shows that the National Government’s funding announcement at the Paris climate change conference is a cut to assistance to help other countries deal with climate change.

The IRD warned the Government in 2013 of massive, systematic tax avoidance by multinational companies but National is still to act on it, the Green Party said today. The New Zealand Herald today released analysis that showed multinational companies operating in New Zealand could have avoided paying up to $500 million in tax last year. The IRD warned both the Ministers of Finance and Revenue in 2013 that multinationals were avoiding tax by profit shifting and that work to protect...

The Prime Minister deliberately misled the New Zealand public into believing women had left New Zealand to join terrorist groups and become what he described as “jihadi Brides”, the Green Party says.

The gap between the tradable and non-tradable parts of the economy has grown to its biggest since 2000 meaning the economy is growing more unbalanced under National’s economic leadership, the Green Party said today. GDP statistics released today by Statistics New Zealand show that the tradable parts of the New Zealand economy (exporters and trade-exposed businesses) shrunk by 0.8 percent in the December 2015 quarter while the rest of the economy (the non-tradable sector) grew by 0.9 percent over the...

The Health Minister should follow the bold move of the UK chancellor who overnight announced he’d introduce a sugar levy on soft drinks, a move that is being tipped to “take over the world”, the Green Party says. UK Chancellor George Osborne is being hailed as a hero for children after overnight introducing a sugar levy on soft drinks from 2018. New Zealand Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has repeatedly refused to introduce a similar levy here, despite advice to do...

Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK) officials were barely consulted over the Governent’s formal analysis of the impact of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement on New Zealand, leaving doubts that the impact on Māori was properly assessed, the Green Party says.   Emails released to the Green Party under the Official Information Act show TPK weren’t given enough time to read the agreement, and its written submissions on the National Interest Analysis amounted to three short emails over two days.   “Consultation...

The Prime Minister’s admission that he “doesn’t have a clue” how many farmers will fail as a result of the dairy downturn shows that the Government is in denial about the scale of the threat facing our wider economy, the Green Party said today. Green Party Co-leader James Shaw asked the Prime Minister several straight questions on the numbers of farmers, small businesses, and rural retailers likely to be impacted by the downturn of the dairy industry and the risks faced...