This is a great billboard. Who did it?, really cool.

About time someone did something good that works.

What labour doing?

I don’t Vote by the way before people give me the bash bro.

The Boss

No-ones yet mentiond that d4j has a ghetto-esque vibe…

In other words, a good old social democratic spend-up. A very expensive one. While promising to rein in government spending.

I doubt it’ll have either a significant impact or cost much; I suspect the take-up will be low frankly and/or it’ll displace existing pathways. This is policy clutter, not clarity.

That said, the economic benefit from getting school-leavers to do additional years of training is significant; an Australian study, in 2005, estimated that by progressively increasing retention rates you can achieve net increases in GNP.

There’s always all sorts of assumptions in this kind of analysis, econometric general equilibrium modeling, but you can play around with these and get different result. The underlying logic is sound. Why Key’s anouncement is clutter however, is because many of these pathways are already in place.

In 2007, 4.9% of all school leavers left school with little or no formal attainment. This represents a 71% decrease from 2001, when the percentage of all school leavers who left school with little or no formal attainment was 17.0%.

That quote’s from here: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/indicators/indicator_page/schooling/753

There’s lots of reasons for this, both to do government initiatives (NCEA, Modern Apprenticeships, Gateway et al) but also increased demand for labour.

it is a dog-whistle to the softer underbelly who feel threatened and disenfranchised.

Yeah, I agree and if they had some policy the same issues, or any issues really, I’d be less concerned by it but the fact is National are hoping to win government without telling us what they’d do. Tragically, as redlogix said at KBB a while back, much of the media are either unwilling on unable to challenge him.

I don’t disagree that this campaign strategy might work to win the election, but is it a strategy that gives you insight into what they’ll then do?

I’m 100% with you here.

Not so sure about the remainder – looks like a lapse into feeling threatened and disenfranchised on false grounds.

L

Here are John Key’s words, launching the billboard today:

“The policy will provide a universal educational entitlement for all 16- and 17-year-olds. It will allow them to access, free of charge, a programme of educational study towards school-level qualifications at approved institutions.

“This entitlement will be on top of, not instead of, the education entitlements they have now.

(my italics)

In other words, a good old social democratic spend-up. A very expensive one. While promising to rein in government spending.

Either National are going to outspend Labour or they are lying. Take your pick.

National wants to get young people into boot camp style training.

Or like when your party leader says “dude” in an assembly hall.

My first impulse is that this is fantastic, one of the lamest branding efforts I’ve seen in a long time (ok, maybe since Labours maildrop following the budget) but on the other side of the coin I get a sharp pang of uncertainty every time I hear someone say “The NZ public is too smart to fall for this”.

Is this the same NZ public that bought into the housing boom hook, line, and sinker? Because that was pretty dumb, and it’s hardly an example in isolation.

Sorry about the quality.