We face a stark choice this year: a Labour-led government, which will create fairer tax and invest in jobs and innovation, or National-led government, which will govern for the kleptocracy, giving them tax cuts, then selling our assets and slashing our public services to pay for them. So why is the Goffice doing such a bad job making the case?
Food and oil prices have sparked unrest across North Africa. The Tunisian Government has fallen. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has declared martial law. In Cairo, thousands of protesters shook hands with the soldiers, and chanted: “The army and the people are united” and “The revolution has come.”* Yup. Mubarak’s screwed.
We could look at bailed-out TranzRail and Air NZ, with privatisation leading to risk-free pay-outs for the temporary owners of infrastructure that couldn’t be allowed to fail. Or Telecom that doesn’t look out for NZers interests, and needs us to pay for it to build us a fibre network. But let’s look at the “success” story of Contact, the closest privatisation to National’s new plans.
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“…When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, “Have a ball, peas [sic]?” And I’m sure you were very proud of him for using his manners. To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, “No! Looter!” right in his looter face…”
The Republican Party may be entering its death throes. In an unprecedented move, there were two competing Republican response speeches to President Obama’s State of the Union address. One from Paul Ryan, the powerful Chair of the House Budget Committee. The other from a Teabagger who looked into the wrong camera the whole time.
John Key was interviewed on Morning Report less than a handful of times each of the 2 years between winning power in 2008 and Sean Plunket leaving. He’s appeared on Radio NZ before 9.30 for lengthy interviews 3 times this week.
Election year accountability, you gotta love it.
John Key, very optimistically, reckons he can raise $10 billion by selling our assets. Key’s Government gave massive tax cuts, averaging $16,000 each, to the richest 1% of taxpayers that they’ll get year after year. The present value of those tax cuts for the richest 1% is over $10 billion. He’s selling our assets to pay for tax cuts for the richest 1%.
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John Key 2008: Follow me and we’ll be like Ireland.
John Key 2011: Follow me or we’ll be like Ireland.
The Maori Party has budgeted $22,000 for legal advice regarding the complaint made against Hone Harawira for stating the obvious, and hired Mai […]
In 2008, John Key’s line was ‘New Zealand doesn’t have a debt problem, it has a growth problem’. In Budget 2010, he said the Crown would be back into surplus in record time. In December, he said debt wouldn’t force a downgrade. Now, he says debt is such a problem we need to slash and sell. When did he mean what he said? Never. It has never been about debt.
Ironically, the best response to Key’s ‘slash and sell’ agenda came from Obama, whose spotlight Key is always trying to share: “Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact.”
John Key is busy raising the canard of our economy being as indebted as the PIIGS countries that are in trouble in Europe. He’s talking about net foreign debt, and he’s suggesting lowering government debt is the solution. But New Zealand’s debt problem is not a government debt problem, and with asset sales he has the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Just what is this political “courage” the Herald speaks of?
Senior Maori Party staffers have been deserting the party in droves in recent months, including chief of staff Harry Walker, repulsed by the leadership selling out to National. It’s gotten so bad that they’ve had to out-source their spin doctoring to the Tories. You think I’m joking? I wish. This illuminates Hone Harawira’s fight with the leadership.
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Halfway through last year I suggested we’d see a July election as National raced to lock in a second term before their numbers fell.
I reckon that’s exactly the strategy we’re seeing today. The tories know that their numbers are only going to go down this year as their policies bite so they’ve decided to put the pedal down.
While we’re all eagerly awaiting Tracy Waktins et al’s reviews of John Key’s controversial decision to wear a mauve tie in his state of the nation speech, I thought I would look at some of the reasons why asset sales are such a stupid idea.
Whilst John Key’s raising of privatisation is the first focus of his State of the Nation speech, perhaps equally as important is his intention for swingeing cuts to public services. Health and Education will have to pay higher wages from the same budget, but the likes of Police, Justice, Conservation and Social Services can expect cuts of more than 10%.
So John Key’s great bit of policy for the election is to sell off the family jewels. Generations of New Zealanders have built up these assets, and now, like in the 90s, National intend to flick them off to foreign investors, and drain the country’s wealth.
Good news for families of the Pike River miners. The Police have shown them video proving their mens bodies are still intact. It raises questions about the government’s actions. Why was this footage previously withheld? Why were the Nats spinning that there was nothing left to recover? And why was the recovery really abandoned so hastily?
It’s not radical, it’s not revolutionary but Phil Goff has laid out a positive, progressive, and affordable vision that contrasts with John Key’s directionless, lazy leadership. It seems to be popular. The PM’s state of the nation is expected to contain an interesting savings policy but always the question is: cue bono?
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John Key says that he can’t increase the minimum wage by a decent amount. The excuse this time round is that a decent increase will destroy jobs. Well, let’s check that out a little bit. Is it really true that lifting the minimum wages destroys jobs? If it is, do the benefits outweigh the gains? And what about the cost of letting wages fall?
Phil Goff has just delivered an excellent speech to start a year of laying out Labour Policy. $100/week tax free, stopping tax-dodging bludgers, support for R&D and exporters, correcting housing market anomalies and encouraging investment in the productive sector. There was a lot to like.
The Legatum Prosperity Index looks beyond GDP, a failed measure that counts rebuilding after an earthquake as a gain. The Index is a broad measure of nations’ prosperity comprising 88 components. It shows that New Zealand is a relatively prosperous nation. It also shows that relative prosperity is falling under National.
At this stage in the electoral cycle, government support parties are usually looking to try to differentiate themselves from the main governing party. They need to do this to show they still hold true to their own values and have a separate identity that is worth voting for. The Maori Party is doing to opposite.
John Key on Radiolive yesterday: “There are a lot of factors at play sometimes socio-economic, so there are a lot of negative statistics for the want of a better description that that Maori dominate and we need to make changes there whether it’s prison, incarceration or whatever”. Key thinks all Maori are crims. Welcome to your brighter future: it’s behind bars.
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A good day at Ratana today with the Labour party delegation led by Phil Goff and Annette King. For me personally, it was […]
Higher commodity and food prices, we are told are a Good Thing. Our exporters (ie. Fonterra and foreign oil companies) get more money. But we consumers have to pay more to by the same products, so are we better off? And what about the poor saps overseas who are paying more for less, or the really poor saps who are priced out of the market?
Today’s Herald editorial explores Auckland Grammar’s decision to ditch NCEA in favour of the Cambridge exams and the support this elitism, which undermines the NCEA system, has received from Anne Tolley. Never shy to give helpful advice to its favoured PM, the Herald tells Key it’s time to rid himself of the incompetent Tolley.
You’ll remember the disgraceful Schmuck scandal when Minister John Carter had clauses inserted into legislation specifically to legalise Doug Schmuck’s annexation of a public reserve. John Key took no action. Now, Kate Wilkinson and David Carter got in on the act – forcing DoC to sign over more public land for private use.
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