One of the local candidates standing in this year’s general election wants to see all existing taxes scrapped in favour of a 0.1 per cent transaction tax.
John Alcock is representing the new Rock The Vote NZ party in the Pakuranga electorate.
It’s one of several component parties of Freedoms New Zealand, which is led by Brian Tamaki and lawyer Sue Grey.
Alcock is up against incumbent Pakuranga MP Simeon Brown, the Labour Party’s Nerissa Henry and Parmjeet Parmar of the ACT Party in the election scheduled to be held on October 14.
Alcock has degrees in science and law and is the business development manager for the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists to New Zealand.
The business owner is no stranger to elections and campaigning, finishing eighth in the race for Auckland’s mayoralty in the 2022 local-body elections, earning 5262 votes.
He says he wants to see politicians more frequently take a principled stand “rather than a specific policy stand”.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen in Parliament, but what you can trust with me standing in Pakuranga is I will tell people exactly what my principles are and those are the principles I’ll be going into any policy discussion with.”
His five “personal rules” are: “Everybody is their own property; the fruits of your labour are your property; you may do anything you like with your property as long as it does not damage the property of another; if you damage the property of another you must compensate them to the full value of that damage, and; act honourably and in good faith.”
Alcock describes his political beliefs as libertarian, which is a philosophy in favour of removing government from people’s lives and increasing human freedom.
An example is in healthcare, where he wants to see “as much decentralisation as possible”,
“Down to the localist level you get, and giving the most freedom of choice to the most number of people with respect to their healthcare. That is incredibly important.
“Nobody should be forced to receive any kind of healthcare they don’t want, and they should be able to choose the kind of healthcare they want to receive from the medical professional they want to receive it from. That should be the focus.”
He says cutting taxes would give people freedom and control over their lives.
Alcock supports eliminating “excess taxation” in favour of a 0.1 per cent transaction tax, which he calculates would generate $10b a month in income to the Government.
“We are taxed far too much. On average I pay 66 per cent of my income every year to the Government in tax.
“Income tax, GST, fuel tax, alcohol tax, cigarette tax. All the little taxes built into our everyday lives.
“That is a crazy amount of tax to be paying and it’s no wonder people don’t have control and choice over their own lives.
“We need to eliminate as much taxation as we possibly can.”
