Keith Melville

A few weeks ago, I wrote an opinion piece for the Beacon (February 4) to serve as a warning about the consequences of Labour’s misguided plan for its so-called capital gains tax.

In that letter I quoted an Auckland accountant Mathew Gilligan, who said part of Labour’s CGT was a tax on inflation and that amounted to a wealth tax on equity, which was grossly unfair and underhanded.

I finished my piece quoting him word-for-word: “It is not easy for the average person to understand, so it slips through the left-leaning media like teflon”.

One of my critics, rather than arguing for or against the validity of the message, took extreme and absolute umbrage at my use of the words “left-leaning media”.

I wrote that sentence in quotation marks to give some of my message Mr Gilligan’s professional credibility as an accountant, which I am not.

I would still have used his phrase if he had omitted the words, left-leaning, and limited the phrase to: It slips through the media like Teflon.

I just wanted to make the point that there were some serious consequences to Labour’s CGT, which the media had neither examined nor understood.

Beacon correspondent Dave Stewart has written two replies examining the words, left-leaning media, in defensive and creative detail.

He even presented the Beacon with a list of names of New Zealand journalists and media personalities he claims are right wingers.

I doubt whether he would have interviewed any of them to arrive at his conclusion.

In support of his argument in his follow-up letter, he gave us a lecture on Joe McCarthy and right-wing fascism in the United States during the 1950s when there was a paranoid reaction in the West at the spread of communism.

Again, what was important to me was Mr Gilligan’s message, not the political biases of media people and not that right-wing reactionary period in the US.

I did not expect such a rambling shoot-the-messenger tangent, and off-the-planet response, totally digressing from the point of my letter and ignoring its message.

Most people who read Mr Stewart’s Beacon letters or follow him on social media will be aware of his left-leaning political views.

He is entitled to his views, but his response just proves Mr Gilligan had a valid point about lefties and teflon.

■ Editor note: The Beacon is closing correspondence on this thread.