National are continuing their privatisation by stealth. Hospitals services and a new prison are the current targets. Tony Ryall, Judith Collins and Bill English are the ministers currently pushing their ideology in their respective areas.
National are a land of broken promises – from GST rises and tax cuts to falling wages and attacks on education. Here’s my list – help me with any I’ve forgotten.
This government doesn’t seem to have the human touch. It fails to see the personal, just the numbers. So it’s sending 3 New Zealand children to live as ‘untouchables’ in an Indian slum, without the limited access to schools or hospitals that even the locals have – as they won’t (and can’t) be Indian citizens.
The just released Income Survey is more evidence of the Key Government’s failure to deliver for working Kiwis. After inflation, this is the third successive year in which the median income of New Zealanders has fallen. It’s now nearly 5% lower than when National came to power. This year alone, the median income fell 3.5%.
Treasury in their first year under National tripled their expenditure on contractors whilst forcing all other departments into cuts. Bill English decided against having any public accountability, and left Tony Ryall talking rubbish trying to explain it.
Remember how John Key used to talk about GST? Here is a video reminding everyone of the past before he did his usual flip-flop to favour the rich while increasing costs on most people. The GST increase and the consequent inflation will make almost everyone worse off unless they are wealthy enough to bribe the NACT’s.
Danyl over at DimPost has produced an excellent graph of the gains from National’s Tax Swindle. It uses the Government’s figures, it is generous in showing average rather than median incomes…
And it doesn’t look good for average kiwis.
While the cat’s away the mice will play. And while the clown’s sunning himself in Hawaii the ideologues in his Cabinet will launch vitriolic attacks on public service workers. As teachers are forced to endure another day of the country’s most powerful figures attack them, lets consider the consequences of undermining vital public services.
The government was told that lowering the drink-drive limit would save 33 lives and $238 million a year. They ignored it. Why? I reckon the only money they were worried about was donations from the booze barons. These idiots don’t bother with basic cost vs benefit analyses. It’s all about pay-offs for their mates. And donation kickbacks.
The state sector is in turmoil. Secondary teachers and medical technicians are striking for fair pay and against claw-backs in their work conditions. Junior doctors look set to join them. What’s the Nats’ reaction? They’ve appointed the Scottish ‘smiling assassin’, Dr Kevin Woods, who fired 1,500 nurses from the Scottish NHS and will apply the same formula here.
National don’t understand macroeconomics. As such they are inflicting massive and unnecessary harm, with high unemployment and a long time until recovery.
National is governing like National governs. Anyone could have foreseen this, there were plenty of clues, but its only now are people who switched to Key waking up to the fact that he’s just the grinning face on the same old beast. I wonder: if someone is smart enough to see that Key’s government is a failure now, how were they dumb enough to ever believe things would be different?
When John Steinbeck said “No one wants advice – only corroboration†he could well have been describing the numerous working groups the Government has established in many areas of significant economic and social policy. Too lazy to spend its nine years in opposition developing a detailed policy prescription, National now picks groups to tell it what it wants to hear.
After half a government term of insisting that NACT had an economic plan, it has been ‘misplaced’. The full plan, said by informed sources to have been found in a brief case (along with a pie and a men’s magazine) and written on the back of an old rental expenses claim form, reveals that the government expects significant economic development will be lead by the construction of a single national transport infrastructure, namely a National Cycleway.
This guest post quotes the statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller in Germany after World War II about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power. The comparison to NACT policies towards the education sector is striking.
During the election the National Party packaged up its policies so as not to scare voters. The 90 day probationary period was for two specific reasons. It was targeted toward people on the margins of the employment market and only applicable to small businesses. Either the original justifications still hold true, hence undermining any argument to extend the scheme, or the original justifications were rubbish from the very start.
National have been undemocratically shutting down the avenues to amend their ideologically stupid legislation. They ignore submissions to select committees and abuse the parliamentary process of urgency. The only effective means of diverting them from pushing through unworkable legislation is proving to be protests and direct action. Consequently you can expect to see a lot more of it.
Roger Douglas has a private members bill to introduce bulk funding. It (hopefully) shouldn’t get through – National are unlikely to support it as they’ve already introduced by the back door.
Before the last election John Key promised the public service would be capped, because that’s what Kiwis wanted. That promise is now lying in tatters as jobs in education and health are to be slashed. With mining, privatisation, and now this, Mr Key shouldn’t act surprised if he suffers from the Rudd effect. This government is getting more and more out of touch.
A new report says that building the half a billion worth of new rail rolling stock for Auckland in New Zealand would boost GDP by $250 million, improve our current account deficit by over $100 million, add $70 million to government revenue, and create 1200 skilled jobs. But the Government just want the cheapest price for the rail cars, and that means going overseas.
National’s hysteria around ACC last year was focused on creating an air of crisis. Now they’re going to ‘do something’. That something is privatisation of ACC. It won’t work, it won’t save money. The costs of injuries will still exist. Privatisation will put more of that cost on the injured. Added ligation and profits will mean worse cover for more cost.
Lifted from comments for wider reading by commentator acclaim.. Beneficiary bashing in this country is definitely becoming uglier by the day. It seems […]
Education Minister Anne Tolley has made an extraordinary promise: “New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school. That is what the country voted for.” We would all love to see National deliver, but they can’t, and they know that they can’t. It’s an empty promise.
Cuts to prisoner rehabilitation, night classes, and the Super Gold Card aren’t about saving money. The government is only too happy to sign blank cheques for stupid projects like Transmission Gully and the Holiday Highway on the vaguest cost estimates. No, these successful policies are having the financial life bled out of them because they contradict National’s ideology.
Telecom is threatening to throw up to 1,500 workers out of their jobs so it can increase profits by offshoring. A good government in this situation is […]
Remember how John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“. You might remember the big corporate media refused to run it, […]
Oh, sure, the Nats will lock a person up longer after they commit a crime, if they get caught. But what they won’t do is prevent them […]
TVNZ reports: “Associate Education Minister Pita Sharples has labelled the National Standards policy as damaging to Maori but later refused to comment after […]
Australia’s Federal Industry Minister Kim Carr has criticized Bridgestone’s closure of its Australian and New Zealand operations and the 1000 redundancies it’ll bring. […]
John Key says that if school support staff want pay-rises then teachers should sacrifice the ones they bargained for. Tell him to get […]
Watching the Maori Party get done over by National is getting painful. The MP thought they had a good faith dialogue on the […]
And by any other name it smells as bad. John Key has annouced a reform of the rules for ministerial accommodation allowance. A […]
I’m surprised that the Maori Party have rolled over so easily on the issue of Maori seats on the Auckland council. I will […]
3News covers the story of National Ministers double-dipping at the taxpayers’ expense. UPDATE: ‘BLiP’ has bestowed a new title on Bill English: “Sir […]
Remember the mantra about John Key being a centrist? Doesn’t get much play nowadays does it? And it shouldn’t. Not with the government […]
The government has just confirmed Don Brash will head the “productivity” group. Expect a lot of talk about “labour market flexibility” and the […]
