The Herald understands Luxon was talked out of ordering the car by horrified staff and at least one senior MP, who believed the purchase would be a massive political risk.
I think that pretty much sums up his independent decision making ability
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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If you are rich enough, there are very few material consequences for doing stupid things.
E.g. make a mistake that costs you personally $100,000? OK, just try again with another $100,000.
This means that he's probably never had to actually suffer any meaningful consequences in his life. Few lessons learnt the hard way.
This makes for a stupid person. "Stupid is as stupid does" after all.
He's criticising subsidies on electric vehicles, namely Teslas, while he owns one himself?
I actually respect that, for once he's actually acting against his own interests.
He criticized the subsidies whlst trying to get the tax payer to buy him a second tesla
I'm a little confused about the motive being described by the article. Is the political risk that concerned them...
- that Parliamentary Services definitely would have claimed the available rebate from the scheme even though it wouldn't be automatic, which would then have been inconsistent with his criticism of the scheme?
- that he shouldn't have access to any taxpayer funded vehicle, even one owned by Parliamentary Services, because he's (more generally) advocating against taxpayer money subsidising any vehicles, and even though there are countless MPs who claim funding to do things like rent houses from themselves and it's apparently not an issue?
Do you not see the conflict between political point scoring against the clean car scheme and tesla owners whilst owning a tesla and asking the state to buy you one for your crown car?
Yes and no. I can see a blunt perception thing that could be exploited but it doesn't clearly add up to me when I think about it.
I thought the big problem with the scheme was mostly about making ute buyers and poor people pay for rich people's EVs. EV buyers aren't forced to claim the rebate when they purchase a car. If someone really wants a Tesla then they can still refuse to claim the rebate after purchase if they wanted to make a political point. Maybe Luxon doesn't get this choice, though, if it's the policy of Parliamentary Services always to claim the rebate, and perhaps that's the issue. It'd be sort of interesting to learn if Luxon or other National Party MPs have claimed the rebate for any of their own cars.
Also, Parliamentary Services is buying a car to be owned by itself, not by him. It lets him use it for as long as he's entitled to it, then takes it back and either sells it to recover as much as possible (most likely) or give it to someone else. It probably also pays the operating costs, which would be significant for many crown cars (especially petrol), so it'd be odd if the fact it was a Tesla or any EV was the problem given they're likely to have lower or negligible operating costs.
The biggest issue here, at least to me, seems to be about he and other MPs being so used to routinely claiming expensive things which they don't need, merely because the rules of the system they and their peers created for themselves allow for it. Often it's through seemingly bizarre arrangements like by having Parliamentary Services pay them to rent their own homes from themselves. That's something that goes well beyond self-drive vehicles, and yet it's apparently only a political problem when the thing being bought is a Tesla.