Author Archive

Helping people into work good but jobs needed first

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:50 am, June 9th, 2010 - 30 comments

The best form of welfare is a decent job. During it’s nine years in power, the fifth Labour government cut the number of beneficiaries by 150,000 by getting people into work. So assisting more sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries into work is a good idea. But you can’t help people into jobs that don’t exist. The danger is that the government will simply make it harder for people to get the help they need.

Tell us what you really think

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:42 am, June 9th, 2010 - 12 comments

National was forced into a back down by the extremely negative public reaction to Bill English’s kite-flying over selling Kiwibank. Now, after initially supporting the idea of a sale, John Key has emphatically ruled it out… unless he changes his mind later. When it comes to other public assets, Key is giving us the semantic run around. National’s true intentions are clear.

Aussie national standards hurting education

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:26 pm, June 8th, 2010 - 28 comments

We all know what a disaster America’s ‘No Child Left Behind’, the inspiration for the Nats’ National Standards has been. It seems Australia has gone down a very similar track and the results have been the same – teaching to the test, grade inflation, and institutional cheating as teachers and schools find themselves being judged solely on their students’ grades.

Clamping down on trusts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:55 pm, June 7th, 2010 - 33 comments

One of the most popular uses of trusts is to hide income for tax avoidance or evasion. So, I was happy to read about the IRD’s success in a recent court case against two surgeons. The court found these two very rich men had used trusts to avoid tax to the tune of $168,000. The case will have big ramifications, potentially shutting down one of the biggest tax rorts in the country.

The company they keep

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:00 pm, June 7th, 2010 - 36 comments

Wayne Eagleson isn’t doing anything wrong by going on holiday with rightwing lobbyists but there are parallels with John Key’s Highwater-gate. Eagleson doesn’t have the apparent conflicts of interest that Key has (more on that later) but both incidents give us an insight into the company that National keeps and the interests they really represent.

Coddington on our overgrown weeds

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:01 pm, June 6th, 2010 - 21 comments

Tall poppy syndrome. It’s one of those useful, mindless terms that comes up again and again in our political discourse. Like its cousin ‘PC’ it is used to delegitimise any criticism the behaviour of those with privilege and power towards others. It survives because it is useful to an elite, not because it makes any sense.

Dancing on a head of a pin on asset sales

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:36 am, June 5th, 2010 - 59 comments

National really, really wants to sell assets – it’ll be worth a fortune to their rich mates who can’t seem to generate any success on their own without a government hand out. But the public is firmly against asset sales. It would be an election losing campaign issue. So, National will play a game of ambiguous promises and confusing financial moves to sell without appearing to sell.

Funnily enough, it really was about trust

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:47 pm, June 2nd, 2010 - 39 comments

I am ruling out selling Kiwibank at any point in the future/Asset sales are on the table for a second term
We won’t be raising GST/We’re raising GST
My trust is so blind I have no idea what’s in it/Owning a vineyard is great fun
Anyone else seeing a pattern?

Rush to judge turns embarrassing

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 2nd, 2010 - 18 comments

The Budget is turning into something of an embarrassment for the media. Even before it had been released, the journos in their lock-up had written pieces proclaiming it a hugely popular success. The evidence says they got it wrong. The people think they’ll be worse off. Journos need to stop deciding public opinion before it has had a chance to form, let alone be sampled.

For $200 mil, it better be really super

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:02 am, June 2nd, 2010 - 13 comments

Congratulations Aucklanders, you are about to become the owners of a supercity. It was forced on you with no referendum and the your concerns have been ignored. This is being done to suit business, not the needs of Aucklanders. Democracy just gets in the way. Rodney Hide said the set up cost would be “minuscule”. And it’s cost you just $200 million… so far.

The weak neolib defence of asset sales

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:16 am, June 1st, 2010 - 23 comments

The neoliberal dinosaurs at Anti-dismal have presented their defence of National’s privatisation agenda by responding to my post “Privatisation: the facts”. Their responses offer an insight into the neoliberal mind – asset stripping is good, it’s fine to get ripped off when selling assets, and who cares that the ‘mums and dads’ line is bollocks, the rich deserve the assets more.

Espiner: Key trust not blind

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:45 pm, May 31st, 2010 - 39 comments

Colin Espiner sums up Highwater-gate very well: “Basically it comes down to this: [John Key] said he didn’t know he had shares in Highwater when he really did.” No-one’s alleging Key had conspiracy meetings in smokey rooms with alcohol magnates. That’s a ridiculous misdirection being run by Kevin Taylor. This is about the blind trust and how Key handled the conflicts of interest arising from his knowledge of his shareholdings.

On yer bike, John

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:02 pm, May 31st, 2010 - 11 comments

After 15 months, just 10km of the 2000km John key Memorial Cycleway has been built at 3 times the budgeted cost. I’d like to see Goff take Key up on his offer of a ride on his recession-busting national cycleway. They’d be done in half an hour. Key’s flagship policy was always a joke and, now, everyone’s laughing. Come next year, voters are going to look at this record and say ‘on yer bike, John’.

How the Left won Budget 2010

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:42 am, May 31st, 2010 - 60 comments

Immediately after the Budget, some of the political commentators said National had triumphed and caught the Left wrong-footed. Wrong. In reality, Kiwis are not buying National’s spin. The Left’s argument against tax cuts for the rich is gaining resonance. Workers see a tax swindle. The Nats have played their only trump and they’re finding it hasn’t worked.

Rightwing policies hit Nats in latest poll

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:57 pm, May 30th, 2010 - 78 comments

Another bad poll for National. Support for the Tories in the latest Colmar Brunton poll has dropped from 54% to 49%. The gap between Right (National and ACT) and Left (Labour and Greens) has fallen from 20% last September to 11%. And keep an eye on New Zealand First. It looks like, for all the gushing reporting, the public hasn’t been taken in by the tax swindle.

$2.3 billion sting in the Budget’s tail

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:47 pm, May 30th, 2010 - 19 comments

National’s second budget has induced a lot of inflation – 5.9% over the next year. Interest rates on term deposits are just 4.4%. Collectively, New Zealand’s savers will be $2.3 billion worse off in a year’s time than they are now, thanks to the Budget. The flipside is the real value of mortgages will fall. Borrowers win and savers lose. I thought English said he was encouraging savings.

Bennett in yet another privacy breach

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:48 pm, May 29th, 2010 - 77 comments

Audrey Young reports that Paula Bennett has once again abused the trust and power that is given to her as a minister in her campaign to paint all beneficiaries as bludgers. I don’t know anything about this family. But if this family is not entitled to their benefit then Bennett should do her damn job and get them off it. If they are entitled then she shouldn’t be accusing them of being bludgers.

Key needs to answer questions in Highwater-gate

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:37 pm, May 29th, 2010 - 75 comments

The only question that matters in Highwater-gate is this: “is John Key’s trust really blind”? The answer seems to be “no”. I’m sorry, but the lawyer’s letter that John Key released yesterday just raises more questions about his not so blind trust. We’re still waiting for an explanation of how the trust is blind given that everyone can see into it.

World’s largest ship line refuses unsustainable fish

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:59 am, May 28th, 2010 - 20 comments

Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, has announced it will no longer transport unsustainably harvested fish. New Zealand orange roughy is on the ban list. Good on Maersk. It’s not often you see a major corporate using its market power for good, putting the long-term future ahead of short-term profits. A wake up call for the government and the fishing industry.

Privatisation: The facts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:20 am, May 27th, 2010 - 89 comments

There is no economic logic to selling SOEs. This ‘mum and dad’ stuff is just fluff to disguise the real agenda – taking quality companies that have been built up by taxpayers over the generations and selling them off cheap to the capitalist class so they can make a quick buck.

Who pays for climate change, polluters or taxpayers?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:53 am, May 26th, 2010 - 65 comments

We pay for the need to reduce greenhouse emissions one way or the other. There’s no point complaining about the cost of the ETS on power and fuel. What we should be more pissed off about is that we are being expected to bear half the cost as taxpayers. We have to pay, the question is whether we put the cost on pollution to discourage pollution or we just lump it on taxpayers.

The tax swindle, visualised

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:13 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 75 comments

Here’s a graph of tax week’s tax swindle. I can’t do the property tax/rent increase part but here’s the net weekly effect of the income tax changes and the GST hike. These numbers match up with those provided by Treasury. The first 1.2 million taxpayers get less than a dollar a week. The first 3 million (of 3.4 million) get an average of $4.24 a week. The top 100,000 average $105 a week.

Nat resignation coming?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:27 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 27 comments

Trevor Mallard reports being asked by a press gallery member if he knows which nat is about to resign. Trev doesn’t know, but there’s a few choice candidates

Daily Show on lucky duckies

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:53 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 7 comments

Seeing as the theme of the day has been inequality and class war, this video from the Daily Show is very appropriate. Interesting to see that in the US the Right is running the same ‘lucky ducky‘ line about the poor who are supposedly getting it easy because their incomes are so low they don’t […]

Softening the public up for privatisation

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:05 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 39 comments

One thing National does very well is spend a lot of time softening the public up for unpopular moves so that the public attention has moved on by the time anything actually happens. Look at GST. The ‘rabbit from a hat’ trick of borrowing for larger income tax cuts served to divert attention from the well-signaled GST hike. They’re running the same strategy on privatisation.

Caught out

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:02 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 11 comments

Last month Colin King revealed that his National Party colleague Chris Finlayson had said he would block an investigation into the behaviour of his old mate Supreme Court Judge Bill Wilson. Finlayson should have recognised his conflict of interest and stood aside months ago but only did so once the media got the story. It says something about National’s standards.

Working Kiwis aren’t lazy

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:39 pm, May 24th, 2010 - 74 comments

The Right claims that people who aren’t on high incomes are just lazy and need to work harder, and, so, are undeserving of a fair deal. It’s insulting, it’s false, it’s just another excuse for maintaining the wealthy’s privileged position. Most people who work long hours are on low and middle incomes. And there are hundreds of thousands of low income Kiwis wanting more work.

No progress on Key memorial cycleway

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:30 am, May 24th, 2010 - 41 comments

I love that John Key is so desperate to show some progress on his memorial cycleway that he’s even going along to the opening of cycleways that aren’t funded with its money. On Sunday he showed up at the opening of a cycleway in Oamaru. The cycleway was funded by the council and NZTA. The recession has been over for a year – not a single job has been created, no cycleway built.

Nasty attacks on workers hidden in Budget

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:25 pm, May 23rd, 2010 - 30 comments

There’s some mean little barbs hidden in the Budget. National has abolished a tax rebate for redundant workers that helps you out if you are made redundant and your payout pushes you into a higher tax bracket. It’s a petty mean-hearted attack from an increasingly rightwing government. In fact, this insult to hard working Kiwis is an exact repetition of what they did in 1992.

Guyon vs English

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 4:02 pm, May 23rd, 2010 - 52 comments

The frustration was palpable today as Guyon Espiner struggled in vain to get a single straight answer from Bill English, who was only prepared to twist, evade, and repeat lines: “GUYON Do you accept that for very high income earners, people on the sort of salary like your own of $276,000 a year,you gave those people money they simply did not need?

I can’t believe it’s not satire!

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:44 pm, May 23rd, 2010 - 94 comments

The other day, we had a satire guest post about ‘thank the rich day’. Michael Laws appears determined to out do us: “On Thursday, this Key/English administration decided to abandon the pretence that we are an egalitarian society, or that we should ever attempt to be so. The wealthy are the wealthy because they merit that status, was the prime minister’s underlying message.”