Bill English is a strange denizen of National’s Wellington groundhog set. He keeps repeating the wet dreams that have been tried three times now and come up as failures each time. On Q&A yesterday he played with some silly numbers about dairy, ignoring the damage that it and National’s obsessive focus on the past has done on the resilience of our export economy.
The Herald this morning reports that New Zealand is near the bottom in global R&D spending. Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce is in full denial mode, saying that this doesn’t reflect what he’s seen. But he did make his money from being a crony capitalist, so perhaps he just can’t recognize innovation?
National are bleating about Labour’s Research & Development tax credit – largely because as they have no economic plan of their own, so they can only talk about other parties’. But Labour’s R&D tax credit is in fact part of what’s desperately needed to get our economy moving in the right direction.
The Herald editorial is rightly damning of the government’s lacklustre approach to science funding. The ‘new’ money is a trickle, barely replacing last year’s cuts. A crucial difference between Labour and National has always been that Labour invests in the long-term success of the country while National makes short-term wealth grabs for the ruling elite.
To build a brighter future for New Zealand we need to invest in it. We need to build up our national savings, invest in R&D, and build a sustainable, more self-sufficient economy. National has cut savings and R&D investment, and talked down New Zealand’s potential for hi-tech manufacture. Seems they’re only interested in short term pay offs for the rich.
Jeanette Fitzsimmons has written a very good post from the Emissions Trading Scheme special select committee* about her views on the impact of […]
One of the most cavalier and foolish actions of the National led government during its first 100 day blitz of legislation (in itself […]
