When it comes to doing dirty deals with a casino, selling our law so that it gets a convention centre and more profits from gambling addicts, National’s willing to die in a ditch. But when there was an opportunity to save and expand our high-tech, high-skill manufacturing at Hillside simply by requiring government bodies to consider the costs and benefits of their actions on the whole country, not their narrow corporate interests, National did nothing.
Now, Hillside is going to be privatised, and likely shrunk further or even closed, because National let the major rolling stock contracts go overseas. They did nothing while a state-owned company made New Zealand poorer and increased our current account deficit because it was good for Kiwirail’s individual bottom line.
Two things I’m looking really forward to from the Labour-Green government in 2014/15 – the reversal of whatever legislative favours National is about to give SkyCity (fuck the shareholders, give the leeches notice now) and a modern procurement policy that requires government bodies to account for the whole of economy/society and whole of environment impacts of their purchasing decisions. (not to mention an awards system, capital gains tax, extended paid parental leave, proper apprenticeship support, modern monetary policy, a full ETS/carbon tax, more modern state houses, pollution charging, Kiwis crewing Kiwi fishing vessels, no more asset sales, money to needed, sustainable transport rather than the RoNS ….)
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