The National Party’s standing by its tax policy as holes threaten to be poked in the major election year plan.

Announced almost a week ago, the plan has dominated headlines and risked overshadowing the party’s own campaign launch yesterday. As The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire wrote, the swish launch in South Auckland did not deliver any new policies, simply a pledge to implement previously announced ones. And Stuff’s Tova O’Brien commented that without a new policy for punters to get excited by, “Luxon’s media conference after the launch was instead totally overshadowed by questions the leader was unable to answer about how National plans to pay for its tax cuts”.

The questions hang largely on one aspect of the plan: the foreign buyer tax that would see speculators pinged 15% on the purchase of any luxury home over $2 million. However, it’s since been pointed out by tax and financial experts that the numbers may not quite stack up. Shamubeel Eaqub told Newshub Nation over the weekend that National’s revenue estimates were “bullshit”, while Robin Oliver, the tax expert named by National, said he wasn’t consulted until after the plan had been released.

Speaking to RNZ this morning, National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop described the backlash to the tax plan as “confected outrage from the Labour Party” and said that the advice provided by Oliver was “not so much advice for us but he is on the record saying it is possible to do”.

Without naming any further names, Bishop said his party had been consulting with a range of economic, legal, financial and tax in the development of our policy. “We are extremely confident what we are proposing can be done and it will be done under National,” he said.

“Lots of other countries to similar things… we’re not inventing a new thing that other countries don’t do. The reality is there will be people who want to buy property and invest here and if they do we’re saying that’s fine… then they have to pay a 15% foreign buyer tax.”

However, Bishop admitted that the policy could not apply to people who became New Zealand residents.

Meanwhile, the other big story of the weekend: protesters at both the Labour and National campaign launches. Bishop said his party was taking the necessary precautions to avoid aggressive scenes, but said in an election campaign when the leaders were in public, “these things are going to occur”.

He added: “I’d just encourage the people on the other side of the fence so to speak to show a bit of respect to the democratic process. We’ve got free speech in this country, they’re entitled to their views but leaders are also entitled to go out and campaign and that applies to Chris Luxon but also frankly it applies to Chris Hipkins as well.”