Classic Nat press releases

Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 18th, 2013 - 23 comments
Categories: labour, making shit up, national, spin - Tags: , ,

The best that the Nats can come up with in response to the Labour / Green electricity reforms is juvenile posturing (via twitter) about Stalinist extremism and “comrades Norman and Shearer”. This from the National Party that brought you cancelled democratic elections, harsh punishments for protestors, and increased powers to spy on the people. Oh, the irony.

So here in all its glory is National’s response to NZ Power:

Opposition loses the plot on economy

Thursday, 18 April 2013, 3:57 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Government
Hon Steven Joyce …

Labour and the Greens have jumped the shark with a half-baked Soviet Union-style nationalisation “plan” for electricity in New Zealand, Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce says.

“This is truly wacky and desperate stuff obviously made up in the last minute in the Koru Lounge between comrades Norman and Shearer,” Mr Joyce says.

“Their crazy idea to have both a single national purchaser of electricity and to exempt Government-owned companies from both company tax and dividends would effectively demolish private investment in the electricity industry overnight. It would also raise real questions as to why any individual or company would want to invest in businesses in New Zealand.

“Even the idea of it is economic vandalism of the highest order, with the timing designed to try and disrupt the mixed-ownership company floats. What we are seeing here is a desperate Opposition that is prepared to sacrifice economic development in New Zealand on the altar of political opportunism.

“The sad truth is that Labour has no idea how to operate a competitive market that keeps downward pressure on prices. Labour made a number of reforms to the electricity market in the early 2000s and the result was power prices rising 72 per cent over nine years.

“This Government’s reforms have halved price increases while maintaining investment in generation and transmission. Labour’s suggestion today is no more than a belated apology for their mismanagement, with a back-to-the-70s solution that would only make things worse.

“You seriously have to question the quality of economic advice the Labour Party is getting. They really need to get a lot more serious if they are ever to be considered fit to manage the New Zealand economy.”

The intellectual depth and honesty reminds me of another classic Nat press release:

Maori Gain Control Of The Beaches

Thursday, 18 December 2003, 2:48 pm
Press Release: New Zealand National Party
Dr Wayne Mapp MP National Party Constitutional and Treaty of Waitangi Issues Spokesman …

Maori Gain Control Of The Beaches

“The Government’s decision to create customary title for Maori to sit alongside ‘public domain’, sets a time bomb ticking,” says National Party Constitutional and Treaty of Waitangi Issues spokesman Wayne Mapp.

“Far from guaranteed public access, the public right will be slowly eroded. The Government has clearly broken its promise to guarantee access.

“Title means control. The customary title will allow commercial development that will inevitably mean reduced public access.

“The proposals go far beyond the Court of Appeal, which concluded customary title would be very difficult to prove,” says Dr Mapp.

“All that is now required is “mana and ancestral connection”. It is likely most of the coastline will now end up subject to customary title claims.

“In addition, the 16 new committees will allow Maori co-management of the entire seabed and foreshore,” Dr Mapp says.

“In order to bring peace with its Maori MP’s, the Government has sold the birthright of all New Zealanders.

“For more than 160 years we all believed Crown title ‘vested the foreshore and seabed in the people’.

“National fears this will only serve to create a greater injustice and set New Zealander against New Zealander,” says Dr Mapp.

The Maoris / Russians are coming! The horror, the horror…

23 comments on “Classic Nat press releases ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. quartz 1
    18 April 2013 at 4:32 pm

    Joyce really isn’t very good at politics.

  2. Pascal's bookie 2
    18 April 2013 at 4:50 pm

    The reaction has been hilarious.

    Judith Collins has been barking mad on her twitter machine.

    DPF has been feverishly banging his retweet button.

    Bill Ralston came up with the “half-baked Soviet Union-style nationalisation” and they ran with it, or fed it to him, it matters not which.

    But if they want to fight an election about ‘Sovietisation’ with the examples being lower electricity bills on the one hand vs K-GCSB, restricting the right to protest, cancelling elections, and doing away with environmental safeguards to further centrally planned irrigation projects on the other, then we’ll see how that works out for them.

  3. ak 3
    18 April 2013 at 5:31 pm

    Beautiful, LabGreen.

    Centre bullseye confirmed by dazzling display of risible 1950s fearmongering.

    The whites of tory eyes incandescent with fear: and all it took was unity and principle.

    Keep it up. Get Winnie on board for the next one and we’re home.

  4. ghostwhowalksnz 4
    18 April 2013 at 5:56 pm

    From the party that promised …and promised tax cuts, that were snatched from out under taxpayers noses AFTER the election.
    And then made the taxpayers pay increased GST to get risible tax cuts for the next election.

  5. BLiP 5
    18 April 2013 at 6:18 pm

    ‘

    FFS!! Not a new idea in 40 years – welcome to National Ltd™ . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbevFguT6NE

    • georgecom 5.1
      18 April 2013 at 7:16 pm

      Just my very thought. Joycey having to stretch back 38 years to find a press release. He’s even starting to look a bit like Muldoon.

      The policy must have real merit given the way the Nat spin machine is tilting like mad.

  6. wyndham 6
    18 April 2013 at 6:25 pm

    From the rabid right-wing reaction all round, this really has hit home. Well done Greens since I suspect this is largely where this idea originated.

    ak
    Winnie is on board.

    • Bill 6.1
      18 April 2013 at 10:55 pm

      Grey Power issued a press release that gave the policy full backing.
      So okay, Winno is ‘on board’.
      To be fair to him and his party, I think they would have been anyway.

      But this type of policy thinking has to be across the board…health care, dental care and so on. If the thinking stops at what is useful to industry (with obvious domestic spin offs) but fails to embrace what is just socially advantageous regardless of industrial wonts, then we’re merely talking incidental crumbs from the table….and we, just the ordinary people living in NZ deserve to be much, much higher on any list of priorities drawn up by parliamentary parties…pre-eminent

  7. North 7
    18 April 2013 at 6:29 pm

    Hear Simon Bridges, constipatedly, with sham gravitas, slowly, slowly, issuing the warning –

    ” T h e U n i o n o f S o v i e t S o c i a l i s t R e p u b l i c s ”

    – in response to Labour power announcements ?

    God he’s ridiculous. Probably still smarming around his Form 2 teacher when the Cold War ended.

  8. Anne 8
    18 April 2013 at 6:52 pm

    Hear Simon Bridges, constipatedly, with sham gravitas, slowly, slowly, issuing the warning –

    ” T h e U n i o n o f S o v i e t S o c i a l i s t R e p u b l i c s ”

    His speaking capability is about the level of a seven year old.

    Oi wornt ta wornnn you thiz iz (thinks: now what did C/T tell me to say oh yes…) Thi Uuneen iv
    SSiviet sosilist replooblic.

    What is the matter with voters in Tauranga? Voting for a philistine like that.

  9. Red Rosa 9
    18 April 2013 at 6:55 pm

    Will be interesting to hear Federated Farmers’ reaction.

    South Island irrigated dairying is a massive power user. Farm power bills of $20k per month are quite common, and can pass $50k per month on the spot market for bigger properties.

    This policy might get a surprisingly positive reaction from the True Blues down south…;)

  10. North 10
    18 April 2013 at 8:39 pm

    Mapp was always a pompous wanker. Thought he was saved by Denise Henare being his wife but no. Just a troughing wanker with pretensions to the highest intelligence. They still together ?

  11. BrucetheMoose 11
    18 April 2013 at 10:54 pm

    So will we be seeing Nationals classic 1970’s Dancing Cossacks cartoon on TV again?

  12. kiwicommie 12
    19 April 2013 at 1:56 am

    Electricity Nationalization is ‘stalinist’ and only Venezuala did it, ORLY? xD
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority
    “TVA’s service area covers most of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small slices of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. It was the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest. Under the leadership of David Lilienthal (“Mr. TVA”), TVA became a model for America’s governmental efforts to seek to assist in the modernization of agrarian societies in the developing world.[1]”

    “Type Government-owned independent corporation
    Industry Electric Utility
    Founded May 18, 1933
    Headquarters Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.
    Key people Bill Johnson, CEO
    Revenue $11.26 billion USD (FY 2009 ending September 30, 2009)
    Operating income $1.97 billion USD (FY 2009)
    Net income $726 million USD (FY 2009)”

  13. Tigger 13
    19 April 2013 at 6:27 am

    Speaking of things desperately scribbled while waiting at the Koru lounge: Jumped the shark? What staffer wet themselves coming up with that. It doesn’t even make sense in the context (to jump the shark someone/thing previously was great but the current action brought them down – does Joyce therefore think Labour/Greens were doing well until now?)

  14. Gosman 14
    19 April 2013 at 7:00 am

    This is a brilliant policy from a right perspective. It becomes easy to paint the Greens and Labour as rapacious economically illiterates hell bent on destroying private enterprise. I for one will have a lot of fun with that.

    • felix 14.1
      19 April 2013 at 7:35 am

      And no-one will care what you think because everyone knows that your ideas and theories have been miserable failures. And they know not because they care about arguments on blogs, but because they pay power bills.

      Time for the free-market failures to step aside and let the grown-up run this shit.

  15. ghostrider888 15
    19 April 2013 at 3:04 pm

    from the NAct camp; “the sky is falling…the sky is falling…”

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