A dirty three-letter word ending in X

There are reasons I want to pay tax. They're old-fashioned - so go ahead and laugh at me if you like.

I want school kids to be fed. I want whānau to be housed. I want workers to be safe, public servants to be valued. I want our environment to be cared for. I want Te Tiriti to be honoured in the words and deeds of the Crown.

I'm just a walking cliché, aren't I? A big old bleeding heart, clinging to my silly ideals while the big boys, the ones who know what's good for me, take on the hard realities - their whole fiscal strategy not much more than a sneered 'Go woke, go broke'.

This is all happening in my name: middle New Zealand. And yet the twenty bucks or whatever I'm about to get - assuming these tax cuts even happen - will buy me none of these things I truly value.

All it'll buy is the bottle of wine I'll need to get through the next two-and-a-half years.

I'm not being flippant here, I promise. Twenty bucks or so is a massive deal for some families - the difference between school lunches or not, turning on a heater or not. And that's exactly why they should have that twenty bucks, not me.

This is a time of venality, of ugliness, of disgrace. Our actual decency as a society is at stake.

So let's not sell it for twenty bucks.

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