budget 2011

Categories under budget 2011

  • No categories

What will Labour do?

Written By: - Date published: 2:26 pm, May 17th, 2011 - 40 comments

Good speech here from David Cunliffe to the Manufacturers and Exporters Association last night. He and David Parker both spoke and I understand their message was very well received by the audience. He outlines the principles for a good budget, and then answers the question about what would Labour do. There is another one to Business New Zealand today.

Disaster politics

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, May 17th, 2011 - 10 comments

Gee, a disaster can be a useful thing. You can blame it for your pathetic record on economic management and borrowing for tax cuts. Then, you can take the credit for the jobs, growth, and higher wages created by the rebuilding. Course, you have to be a certain type of person to exploit a city’s suffering so.

Budget castles in the air

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, May 17th, 2011 - 24 comments

Apparently the budget will forecast strong growth in GDP and wages, and a return to surplus within a few years.  Sounds good?  Well yes, but it is all based on purely hypothetical “projected growth”.  Wishful thinking from Treasury analysts with a three year record of being wrong wrong wrong.

The Sword of Damocles Budget

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 pm, May 16th, 2011 - 40 comments

John Key is fond of saying “there is a constituency for every dollar you spend”. So, having borrowed to the hilt for tax cuts for the rich, which he refuses to reverse, how can Key cut enough to satisfy the credit ratings agencies without pissing off too many voters? He can’t, but he’s gonna say he can and leave the hard choices to his successor.

Will ACT vote against the Budget?

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, May 16th, 2011 - 42 comments

Reading Don Brash’s letter to John Key and watching Roger Douglas on Q+A, I wonder if the Nats behind the takeover of ACT realised what they were unleashing. I’ve heard some talk that ACT won’t vote for Key’s Budget. Where would that leave Rodney Hide? Where would that leave the Maori Party? Could we see a snap election?

There Is An Alternative

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, May 16th, 2011 - 66 comments

The run up to the budget has all been about cuts.  How many?  How deep?  Like lemmings we’re accepting National’s framing, and marching even faster to our economic doom.  But, there is an alternative. Instead of slashing spending, we can raise government income. Here’s how.

If only smiles were dollars

Written By: - Date published: 10:26 am, May 15th, 2011 - 38 comments

The minor party debate on Q+A was very interesting. Rahui Katene was self-contradictory and vague, like the Maori Party always is. Peter Dunne was pathetic. Roger Douglas slammed the government’s borrowing as did Russel Norman, who pointed out the other three had all voted for National’s debt-increasing tax cuts for the rich.

TV3 on the cost of living

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, May 14th, 2011 - 43 comments

Over the coming week Campbell Live will be highlighting the rising cost of living, falling wages, life on the pension, and so on.  In short, exactly the sort of stuff which should be front and centre of any budget, and any election campaign.

They cut, we pay

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, May 11th, 2011 - 49 comments

The Nats have run this country into the ground and say there’s no option but to slash Kiwisaver. The actual cuts they announce will be less than foreshadowed, and we will then be expected to be grateful. It’s the Nats’ old trick. But the reality is there’s no need for Kiwisaver cuts at all. Not while the rich keep the tax cuts National gave them.

A forest is made of trees

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, May 10th, 2011 - 36 comments

It took National some weeks to get together a line on their multitudinous spending scandals. When they did, it was rather predictable: ‘Labour’s focused on the small things’. Pretty rich coming from corgi-boy Key. No defence of the actual excesses either. But, naturally, the Herald editorial has swallowed and regurgitated the line.

Taking from Kiwisavers & giving to the rich

Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, May 10th, 2011 - 81 comments

John Key has confirmed he intends to slash Kiwisaver to the bone by cutting the up to $1040 a year government contribution you get as a member. Of course, this is the savings budget according to National’s spin. They’re going to ‘encourage’ savings by taking that money from Kiwisaver and giving it to rich individual savers. It’s just more class war.

Don’t cut our future – Budget cut protest

Written By: - Date published: 12:51 pm, April 30th, 2011 - 41 comments

The signs are clear that the Goverment is ploughing ahead with spending cuts and that Budget 2011 will contain yet more cuts to public services and still maintain tax cuts for the wealthy. On Budget Day, community groups, unions, and Kiwis who have just had enough will gather outside Parliament to protest.

Spending cuts I’d like to see – No 2

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, April 20th, 2011 - 4 comments

The government’s books are tight. We shouldn’t borrow more, so there need to be reversals of the tax cuts and spending cuts. What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same. I’d like to see the $110 billion dollars of subsidies for greenhouse polluters under National’s Emissions Trading Scheme cut.

Spending cuts I’d like to see – No 1

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 pm, April 17th, 2011 - 33 comments

This Herald story about spin doctor Brad Tattersfield was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Ministerial offices of the Prime Minister, Judith Collins, Paula Bennett, and the Chief Executive of the Department of Labour to “minimise scandal” is one example of the sort of back-room spending of public money I’d like to see cut.

Choices, Choices

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, April 7th, 2011 - 25 comments

Nice to have

Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, March 31st, 2011 - 116 comments

Bill English wants to cut things that are “nice to have”, like the adult education classes (that he used to praise in opposition), and keep “necessities”, like tax cuts for the already wealthy.  This is the kind of economic “wisdom” that has Bill leading us into an all time record budget deficit.

Cuts don’t make costs disappear

Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, March 30th, 2011 - 62 comments

Key and English are trying to soften us up for big public service cuts this budget. They tell us it’ll just be ‘nice to haves’ and that the private sector will step in to fill the gap when they cut too close to the bone. The important thing to realise is that every time the public service doesn’t provide us with something either we have to buy it out of our own pockets (usually at greater cost) or we don’t get it at all.

Zero is a cut

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 25th, 2011 - 26 comments

As we brace for this year’s budget it’s important to remember that no change is a cut. A dollar today buys nearly 5% less than it did a year ago and there are 1% more New Zealanders. This is the most subtle and insidious way that the Right can undermine public services, by letting inflation and population growth do the work for them.

Back to corned beef & frozen peas for Brash

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, March 23rd, 2011 - 10 comments

Turia’s learning the price of loyalty. Her Whanau Ora is getting cuts. Key knows she’ll roll over and vote for any budget to keep her seat in the limo. Hide’s 2025 Taskforce is for the chop too. Key says it’s not worth the money. Never was. 300K down the drain. Brash off the gravy train; back to corned beef and peas. Bet Key’s silly cycleway won’t be cut.

‘Crisis’ but tax cuts for the rich keep coming

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 23rd, 2011 - 43 comments

The Nats want us to believe there is no other option than massive cuts to government spending. Roughly, a third of the cuts covers the earthquake rebuilding, another third covers the Nats’ tax cuts for the rich, and the last third covers the revenue loss from this neverending recession. So, how come the Nats can afford another round of tax cuts for the rich?

A hell of a speech 2

Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, March 23rd, 2011 - 32 comments

“The Prime Minister’s out of touch. Here’s a man who got well over$1000 a week from his own tax cuts… He may know where his bread is buttered on but it’s a different side of the loaf to most Kiwis… who every time they go to the supermarket are asking “how come this trolley of groceries is costing $20 or $50 more than it seemed it did last week’?”

Slash and burn, Key’s choice

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 pm, March 21st, 2011 - 96 comments

John Key says there’ll be no new money in the Budget. The health, education, and other locked-in increases  plus the Christchurch rebuild will come from cuts elsewhere. Cuts of up to 32%. It doesn’t have to be that way. The rebuild and the shortfall can be easily covered if Key wanted to. If he chooses to slash and burn, it’s because he wants to.