Author Archive
Wave goodbye to National’s last promise
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, June 19th, 2012 - 15 comments
The last time Treasury did an economic and fiscal update outside of its use two-per-year schedule, was December 2008, the depth of the recession. So, it’s telling that, just 4 weeks after the Budget, Treasury is looking at doing a revision of its numbers. One thing is certain, National’s last economic (actually, fiscal) promise- surplus in 2014/15 – is out the window. So, what’s National’s goal now?
Quarter of the way there
Written By: - Date published: 6:49 am, June 17th, 2012 - 66 comments
The Keep Our Assets Coalition has collected a phenomenal 80,000 signatures already, quarter of the way there. The signatures are pouring in. Collecting will get harder closer to the end but we’re going to get our referendum – if we all play our part. If you haven’t signed, or your friends and family haven’t, download the form and send it in.
No surplus for you!
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, June 15th, 2012 - 14 comments
National has reduced the multifaceted, extremely complex job of economy management to a simple bookkeeping goal: a surplus, whatever its size, by 2014/15. Treasury came to the party, projecting a $200m, 0.08% of GDP, surplus for 2014/15 in the Budget. Now, the Reserve Bank’s projected a 1.1%, $2.5b deficit. Oops.
No asset sales without a referendum!
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, June 15th, 2012 - 137 comments
Peter Dunne would be really, really smart to back the Green amendment. He could still vote for the asset sales law but claim some moral high ground in saying ‘no sales until after the referendum’. Then, when the result is overwhelming opposition, he can do the commonsense shuffle and switch to opposing asset sales. It would be too late to stop the law passing but it might just save Dunne’s skin in 2014.
Cunliffe attacks Nats’ crony capitalism
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 79 comments
David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”
Nats quietly pushing back unaffordable motorways
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, June 12th, 2012 - 34 comments
People are driving less because of high fuel prices. That means less road tax for the government – a $120m shortfall in the last two years -, which pays for the transport budget. The biggest slice of the transport budget – the uneconomic roads of national significance. So, National is quietly delaying the RoNS until after they know they’ll be out of government.
The game is rigged
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, June 12th, 2012 - 5 comments
Times are tight, right? You’ve probably been told that when your boss says you can’t have a pay rise that keeps up with inflation. Yeah, well. It seems that doesn’t apply to managers. The largest jump in median weekly income has been for managers – twice the change across all workers. In hourly terms, no-one is keeping up with inflation. Welcome to the brighter future.
National: looking after those in need
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 11th, 2012 - 22 comments
When Righties say we can’t afford to support solo mums, what do they think we can afford instead?
Nats to slam through asset sales
Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, June 8th, 2012 - 59 comments
After hearing 150 oral submissions and receiving thousands more written ones, National’s members of the Finance and Select Committee shut down the Committee’s consideration of the evidence they had heard on the asset sales bill after just 1 hour. And why not? They had had Treasury write the Committee’s report before the submitters were even heard. Now, the legislation goes back to the House 6 weeks early to be slammed through its final stages.
Serco incompetence should put a halt to Wiri
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, June 7th, 2012 - 10 comments
A year in to its 10-year, $300 million contract, and Serco is making a real hash of running Mt Eden Prison. A second escape this week, along with two late releases, failure to meet drug testing targets and failure to report as agreed. And this is dealing with mostly only remand prisoners. Why are we spending $900m on an unneeded prison at Wiri for these clowns to run?
John Key, the jobs fairy
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, June 5th, 2012 - 46 comments
Remember when John Key promised 4,000 new jobs from the cycleway and, in fact, a few hundred, short-term, part-time positions were created? Remember when John Key promised 170,000 new jobs and unemployment went up instead? Looks like Key’s being making it up on the pokies-for-convention centre deal too, which would create only a fraction of the jobs promised.
There is no alternative?
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, June 4th, 2012 - 77 comments
We all know National is on a record borrowing binge. But when they say they need to slash education investment to balance the books, what dumb spending are they leaving untouched? Which leaves the obvious question: why were these Tory sacred cows protected while public education was cut?
The beam in your eye
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, June 1st, 2012 - 53 comments
A tattered few on the Right are attempting to stir up an issue over the Greens using a bit of their leaders’ office budget on the citizens’-initiated referendum petition. The use of the $78,000 is completely within the rules and approved by the Speaker. The Greens, and the coalition, are helping us to keep our assets. Meanwhile, the Nats have budgeted $120 million to sell them. Who’s in the wrong?
Electric cars will save us all
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, June 1st, 2012 - 53 comments
You know how, whenever someone points out that spending $12 billion on highways that make no economic sense makes even less sense when you consider that people are driving less because of the price of petrol and will only reduce their driving more in the face of even higher petrol prices, some idiot says ‘we’ll just invent alternatives, drive electric!’. Yeah, it ain’t happening.
A modest proposal
Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, May 30th, 2012 - 149 comments
Winston Peters is on the attack over Tariana Turia’s slush fund again. This time, Turia and John Key find themselves defending a $60,000 grant to a rugby club to investigate “undertake whanau development research”, on the spurious grounds that ‘the old way doesn’t work, this is something new, so let’s try it’. In that spirit, I have a proposition for Mr Key.
Your choices for PM: a thinker or a ‘glib performance artist’
Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, May 29th, 2012 - 96 comments
Colin James contrasts Shearer with Key: At a post-budget standup on Thursday he lacked leader-like fluency, deferring readily – and necessarily – to finance shadow minister David Parker who had his lines off pat.This factor should diminish over time as Shearer settles – though don’t expect him to become the sort of glib performance artist John Key has become. Shearer is too earnest and too aware of complexity.
Failure to deliver
Written By: - Date published: 7:11 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 15 comments
National has undershot every one of its growth promises. I bet that doesn’t stop them promising big tomorrow.
Falling prison numbers
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 13 comments
It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.
One more promise I couldn’t keep
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, May 21st, 2012 - 14 comments
Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
The wheel turns
Written By: - Date published: 6:33 am, May 18th, 2012 - 11 comments
Across the country, the number of party votes National received fell in 2011, except for in Christchurch. Given turn-out fell 10%, the fact more people voted National was a sobering moment for critics of how the rebuild is being handled. Or perhaps not. Now, 87% of Press readers think the government isn’t doing enough. National just got lucky with the timing of the election.
Nats to cut 500 teachers
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 17th, 2012 - 156 comments
If there was any doubt that National has an anti-teacher, anti-education agenda, it’s gone. Increasing class sizes will ‘save’ $43m a year by reducing the number of teachers that would otherwise be required by 500. National standards will be used for performance pay. It’s a cut to the frontline, a cut to our kids’ learning. And Parata’s comments suggest more to come.
Wage cuts for doing your job?
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, May 15th, 2012 - 10 comments
Sometimes during union bargaining that has hit a wall, workers will vote to ‘work to rule’ – ie not do extras beyond the terms of you contract. It’s perfectly legal. In fact, it should be what we all do every day. Working beyond rule is gifting time and effort to the boss for no compensation. But National wants employers to be able to cut your pay for doing your job.
Rock and a hard place
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, May 11th, 2012 - 20 comments
We’re in a second mini-recession/stall since the Great Recession began in 2008. As in 2010, oil prices ramped up and growth petered out. Now, oil prices have dropped back a little. But the moment the economy shows mild signs of life, they’ll be back up again. Short periods of weak growth, oil price shocks, recessions – sounds like the cycle peak oil economists have predicted for years.
Nats eye up Chch assets for sale
Written By: - Date published: 12:51 pm, May 10th, 2012 - 5 comments
Remember when John Key said that rebuilding Christchurch wasn’t just that city’s challenge, it was New Zealand’s challenge? Yeah, well, now Gerry Brownlee and Bill English are pressuring the council to sell off its assets to pay for the rebuild. Green figures show the madness of that. This is a 20-year rebuild. The dividends over that period are more valuable than one-off sale revenue.
Roads to nowhere paved with your gold
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, May 10th, 2012 - 21 comments
You know how the government’s short of cash, eh? Well, the guy spending $14 billion on highways that don’t make sense on the government’s rosy numbers, isn’t even going to consider whether they’re still a good idea now the IMF says petrol is heading to $5 a litre. Nor is he concerned about the $6 billion shortfall because that’s in ‘the future’ – because he’ll be out of office by then (seriously)
Parcelled up and ready to sell
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, May 8th, 2012 - 20 comments
The Nats say they won’t sell more than 49% of our energy companies and AirNZ. As if that’s a good thing. As if it doesn’t carve a $100m per year hole in the budget. But, it turns out its worse than that. The Greens have discovered that every power station in the country is a wholly-owned subsidiary. After privatisation there will be nothing to stop them being flogged off one by one.
Does NZ have $400 million+ to burn?
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, May 7th, 2012 - 36 comments
The Environmental Protection Agency, bastard child of Nick Smith chaired by National crony Kerry Prendergast, has given draft approval to Transmission Gully. This billion dollar project returns 60 cents of benefits for every dollar spent. Worse than a night on the pokies. And that’s NZTA’s estimate assuming traffic growth that isn’t happening, and not accounting for $5 a litre petrol.
Nice work
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, May 4th, 2012 - 15 comments
Number of additional jobs per year needed to match population growth: 25,000 * Jobs promised by National last Budget to be added in March 2012 year: 36,000 * Actual number of jobs added: 20,000 * Additional unemployed: 5,000 * Change in number of fulltime jobs: -6,000 * Change in number of parttime jobs: 25,000 * Growth in underemployment: 4,000 * Broken promises: 1 really big one
$5 a litre petrol, here we come
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 3rd, 2012 - 94 comments
Last week, the IMF warned that oil prices will double over and above inflation in the next decade. The Greens crunched the numbers and say that means we’ll be paying $5 a litre for petrol in 2022. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. A handful of white elephant highways is a poor use of $14 billion, especially when petrol is only getting more expensive.
The polls must be crazy
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, May 2nd, 2012 - 14 comments
OK. I’m officially confused. Is National plummeting or holding? Is Labour gaining or falling? Are the Greens becoming the second party or slipping back? 5 polls: 5 different answers.
Classy
Written By: - Date published: 10:49 am, April 30th, 2012 - 37 comments
What your ruling party got up to at its South Island Regional Conference. Michael Woddhouse, list MP and failed candidate for Dunedin South, speaking at a podium behind a toilet seat with Dunedin South MP Clare Curran’s face attached. It’s witty, too. That’s what I like about it.
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