Fran ‘sell it all’ O’Sullivan says the government’s case for selling Crafar farms “appears robust”. Well, she would say that. But, if you read it, you’ll see they’ve just done a half-arsed, perfunctory attempt to appear to abide by the law as defined by the Court while coming to the same decision on the same offer. It’ll be shot to pieces in Court.
In his speech yesterday, David Shearer talked about how wages have lagged productivity gains since the neoliberal revolution. Here’s what he was talking about:
When it comes to doing dirty deals with a casino, selling our law so that it gets a convention centre and more profits from gambling addicts, National’s willing to die in a ditch. But when there was an opportunity to save and expand our high-tech, high-skill manufacturing at Hillside simply by requiring government bodies to consider the costs and benefits of their actions on the whole country, not their narrow corporate interests, National did nothing.
You don’t get fat off the crumbs from someone else’s table and you don’t get rich by being someone else’s butler. So, why the Nats are so happy that Australia is sending a few call centre and cigarette jobs here, where wages are lower, I don’t know. We’ll be wealthier if we produce more wealth, more stuff of real value. Not if our competitive advantage is low wages and insecure jobs.
The Greens have revealed that criminals are laundering millions of dollars through SkyCity, taking their gambling losses as the price of coming out with clean, untraceable money. The Government’s sleazy ‘law for sale’ deal with SkyCity would only make it worse by allowing more anonymous, higher stake gambling on the pokies. Instead, we should be clamping down.
The Right says selling all our stuff and letting the profits flow offshore is great. At least $2b of the asset sales programme will be bought by foreigners. But does overseas investment actually provide the benefits it claims? We don’t know because the government doesn’t monitor the outcomes. The Nats’ obsession with selling our stuff is ideological, without any evidence it’s good for the country.
Ports of Auckland management admit they gave Slater/Lusk the confidential employment details of a worker who criticised the bosses’ disastrous bargaining strategy. At least 2 other workers were victims of the same misdeed. CEO Tony Gibson needs to sack the senior staff responsible. If he can’t or won’t, he’s incompetent or complicit and ought to go himself.
As the Nats try to spin us into accepting another zero budget, focus is turning to 2 big holes that their policy decisions have created. First, the $1b+ a year spend on the low to negative value Roads of National (Party) Significance. Second, the $1b+ annual cost of the 2010 tax changes. That’s $2b+ that could be spent elsewhere, avoiding spending cuts without more borrowing.
We know that giving SkyCity more pokie machines will mean more problem gamblers, more crime. The Right says it’s worth it for the convention centre. But the official numbers show that’s a dog and we would pay for it in the long-run. It’s not one side of this equation that is bad for New Zealand, it’s both.
On Monday, Key said his tax cuts have been “literally fiscally neutral”. In Parliament yesterday, Russel Norman showed Treasury documents showing the 2010 tax changes were to forecast to cost $1.1b in 4 years, actually cost $1.1b in 9 months, and the cost has grown since. Key didn’t want to hear the Treasury numbers, instead waving some ‘billshit’ put together by the Finance Minister.
Rookie Green MP Julie Anne Genter, a transport planning expert before entering Parliament, gave Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee, whose qualification for the job is that he used to teach kids to make wooden toy cars, a sharp lesson in transport policy in the House yesterday. It’s rare for a newbie to show up an old tusker like that. With petrol prices at record levels, I hope someone in the government’s listening.
The recorded crime rate has been dropping for two decades now mostly due to changing demographics. More good news this year with a 4.8% drop, mostly attributable to a 21% fall in Canterbury. But something’s a little off in these numbers. The number of offences recorded has fallen, yet the percentage solved has fallen even more. Shouldn’t less crime mean more resources to solve the ones that do happen?
While Collins is busy backing herself into a corner over the ACC affair and has found herself footing the bill for vexatious lawsuits, Joyce, her main rival for the post-Key leadership, is cutting a sleazy deal with SkyCity: more pokies and relaxed licencing in return for an international convention centre we don’t need. Now we learn SkyCity is fostering problem gambling.
John Key gave one of his least sure and most defensive interviews in five years on Q+A on the weekend. His goal was clearly to protect his personal brand and close the issue down. He failed. He failed because he refused to criticise Pullar and Boag, and refused to back Collins’ law suits. That puts him at odds with the Collins faction and onside with Boag’s.
The PoAL management looks as incompetent and divided as the Nats after their ‘bullet-proof’ contracting out plans were shot down by the Employment Court and a director resigned publicly admonishment management’s strategy. Time to use that bully pulpit, Len. Say you have no confidence in Pearson and Gibson, demand they drop their plans, and get the port back to work.
Within minutes of Simon Lusk’s name being linked to the leaking of the Boag email, a message came through on the tip line – Slater is going feral over Lusk’s name being mentioned. And well he might, Lusk is Cameron Slater’s meal ticket. After a stunned silence on Whaleoil for a few hours – Slater/Lusk were back with all the dirt they could sling.
Mfat is spending $9.2m a year on 30 strong razor gang cut diplomat jobs. It’s a ludicrous waste of money. As Goff notes – McCully’s splurging on ‘back office’ contractors in the razor gang to cut the ‘frontline’. 49 of 53 heads of mission have written to McCully say this process is destructive and dangerous. All McCully can do is blame the ‘star’ private sector head of Mfat he appointed.
Ipredict reckons there’s 60% odds Key won’t be National leader in 3 years. Whether you think that’s too low or high, it brings an important fact into resolution – the next National leader is in Parliament, probably a minister right now. People talk about Parata but she’s a lightweight. Collins and Joyce are the options. Mike’s just had a look at Collins’ style, let’s examine Joyce’s.
Ports of Auckland must pay the permanent workers among the union members it had illegally locked out. It’s only a partial victory for workers who want to work and have long-term job security, not just get paid for two weeks. But it’s yet another costly defeat for management. How long will they keep burning ratepayers’ money like this before the council acts?
Mediation broke down in the Port dispute again yesterday with the PoAL management still refusing to make any concessions. So it’s back to court for a ruling on PoAL’s lockout without notice. Hopefully, the Court will side with reason, force the Port to allow the workers back and impose compensation for lost wages along with hefty fines.
The lead story on Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper is about the “violent comments” of Gerry Brownlee. How would we react if a foreign politician told those kind of lies about NZ? We’d go off our self-righteous rockers. In some countries, like Finland, a minister would resign without hesitation if they brought their country into disrepute.
Growth in the December quarter was 0.3%, a third of the government’s PREFU forecast.
| Quarterly GDP per capita, $95/96 | |
| Peak, Q4 2007 | 8,104 |
| When Nats took power, Q3 2008 | 7,935 |
| Now, Q4 2011 | 7,777 |
| Brighter Future | any day now |
Anyone else find it odd that GDP per capita has fallen as much during the ‘aggressive recovery’ as it did during the recession?
1,200 prison beds, 1 in 8, are empty plus the 1,300 bed reserve. Prisoner numbers are projected to keep falling. So, why are the Nats spending a billion dollars on the Wiri private prison? And where will they get the prisoners? By closing existing public prisons. Rather than upgrading what we have more cheaply they’ll let a foreign company make a profit off locking people up.
The Port of Auckland’s refusal to let the stevedores return to work now that they have lifted their strike notice is a lock-out. There are specific legal requirements around strikes and lock-outs at ports and other essential services – notice must be given in writing and with 14 days’ notice. The Port’s lock-out is illegal. And it’s costing Auckland millions.
Treasury has repeatedly proven itself incapable of forecasting its way out of a paper bag but, for some reason, that doesn’t stop it trying to tell everyone else how to do their jobs. Currently, they’re pushing for larger class sizes in the reduced education budget. Someone should ask why the education budget is under pressure but Treasury’s isn’t. Wait, someone did.
Barack Obama will be breathing a sigh of relief after David Farrar endorsed his call to end oil subsidies. It seems the 3rd oil price spike in 5 years is getting the attention of even the Right. Something, they’ve got an inkling, is wrong and rising petrol prices are here to stay. Pity that, on the cusp of revelation, Farrar opts for the security blanket of neoclassical economics.
David Farrar has had a go at David Clark for supposedly blaming (or crediting, Farrar can’t make up his mind) National for the revenue loss resulting from Labour’s 2008 tax cuts after Clark said that National’s tax cuts have sucked 2.5% of GDP out of the Crown’s revenue, widening the deficit by $5b a year. Either Farrar can’t read or he’s desperately spinning.
Labour’s Revenue spokesman, David Clark, has picked up on a statement in IRD’s Briefing to the Incoming Minister that “2.5 percentage points of this decline [in tax take as a percentage of GDP] is attributable to policy changes”. 2.5% of GDP is $5 billion a year. So, a huge chunk of the record deficits that National is running is attributable to their tax cuts for the rich.
China’s political counsel (note, not a trade official) has threatened New Zealand over the Crafar Farms deal saying that New Zealand trade to China and investment from China is at risk. It seems an extraordinary action over a supposedly private business arrangement. As was Chinese Officials’ meeting with the OIO while the first Crafar farm decision was being made.
National has backed down from privatising ACC’s work account. To make it work, they were going to have to pump up ACC levies and make it pay a dividend to the Crown to make prices high enough for the private sector to compete. A sign of how weak the government is that they couldn’t push this through. Problem is, the same logic applies to asset sales.
There’s some odd omissions from Key’s new ’10 targets’. There’s nothing hard. Nothing about closing the gap with Australia, formerly goal number 1. Nothing about creating jobs, despite 170,000 being promised. Nothing about the cycleway that was going to end the recession. It invites a closer look at the 10 targets. And then you discover, they’ll all happen anyway.
After months on the side-line, David Shearer and Len Brown have been forced to choose a side in the Ports of Auckland dispute by the irrational and unreasonable behaviour of the Ports management. Shearer has come out against casualisation and marched with the workers in Saturday. Brown has offered mediation between the parties.
So, National wants to re-assure us that, when they sell our assets against our will, they’ll keep 51% and control. But, um, minority shareholders have rights and private boards have to maximise profits ahead of the national interest. If they decide to sell off the dams later they can, and the Nats won’t stop them.
Louise Upston had a patsy for Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee about a bridge replacement in her electorate (the Nats have big achievements to crow about, eh?). Upston asked about the project’s benefits. Brownlee responded “First, I would expect re-election of the local member”. Now we know what National sees at those end of those highways to nowhere – swing votes.
Maybe it’s the influence of Bill ‘Guess’ English but National has this strange habit of only doing half the sum. Paula Bennett counts people going off the benefit, but not people going on. John Key looks at normal job creation but ignores normal job destruction. Now, he’s claiming that a mother with a 1-year old is better off working, but he’s not counting the costs of working.
