Chris Luxon was having a good week until he caught Covid. 

His tax ideas will be welcomed by most hard-working New Zealanders. The idea that you can earn the average wage yet be in one of the top tax rates is absurd and keeping more of your own hard-earned money is actually something all governments should aspire to. 

It's the classic problem for left-wing governments when such debates arise, because what it exposes is their belief that they spend the money better than you. But, 99 times out of 100 that isn't true. 

But what was particularly clever of Luxon was the trap he set on the cost of living that the Prime Minister walked right into. Saying we have a cost-of-living crisis puts pressure on the Government of the day who don't dare admit it, because it makes them look bad. 

But by not admitting it, they look of touch, which is where our current Prime Minister now finds herself. Having said on television that since their time in office wages have outstripped inflation, we have since shown you, it's simply not true. 

It's especially not true at the moment and hasn’t been overall for four years, but particularly bad in the past six months, and it's only getting worse. The first three months of this year, for which we don't have numbers yet, will show without a shadow of a doubt that we are going backwards at a rate of knots. 

Claiming the opposite, the way she has is damaging. Because you can't argue with facts. 

You can argue wastage of expenditure is renovating marae with Covid money and giving every kid at a school lunch, whether they want it or not. Is that wasteful? Most of us say yes. The Government will say no and run you round the mulberry bush until you are bored witless. But the stats don’t lie. 

Wages are not keeping up with inflation, life is getting more and more expensive, and the numbers back up what we see and feel every day. 

National have a partial solution to that, and the Government doesn’t. 

The Government's defence is to pretend it isn't a crisis by using false facts and when they do that, they look out of touch. 

When Prime Ministers on half a million a year say there is no crisis, they get a "let them eat cake” stigma. That is particularly dangerous for a left leaning government who previously couldn’t spend enough of the money they never had in the first place on the poor and dispossessed, the very people who are feeling the cost-of-living crisis most acutely. 

Telling your support base who can't make ends meet that their lot is not a crisis is about as damning an insult as you can fire - and yet Jacinda Ardern has fired it. 

She created the crisis, denied the crisis, and all that’s left is their hope that the people who live it every day, are so punch drunk they don’t wise up to the con.