The No-Principles Labour Party Leader, Chris Hipkins, was led by his focus groups & in-house pollsters to drop capital & asset taxes as a platform to fight Election 2023. They told him proposing such new taxes would be a losing strategy. Consequently he threw former Revenue Minister, David Parker's, plans back in his face. Now Hipkin's same focus groups & pollsters tell him these new taxes may be a winning strategy for Election 2026. So he is in the process of reversing himself & instead embracing them. Why? Hipkins aim is power - what's good or bad for NZ is irrelevant to him. His political strategy is becoming Machiavellian, something Black Adder would be proud of. What is it? Due to the shocking state our country's economy has been left in, with stagnant GDP - and GDP per capita plummeting - the National-led Coalition will struggle to find tax revenues the next three years to barely fix anything. That wouldn't matter should the Coalition be making bold reforms to the health system - by far the single biggest item of government spending - to convert it into the likes of the Singapore model which has incomparably better health-care outcomes achieved for half our cost. Yet the new Coalition has no such plans. Without an immediate prospect of such productivity gains, and with a stagnant economy, NZ's public services may well come under threat. Hipkins cunning plan is to argue that the only way public services can be restored and infrastructure fixed is by hitting the rich with asset taxes. For it to work, the country must languish these next three years. Hipkins is betting on NZ to fail in order for him to gain power.