CTU: Labour’s financial plan will make life fairer for working Kiwis

Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, June 25th, 2014 - 8 comments
Categories: Economy, election 2014, labour - Tags:

Labour’s Fiscal Plan shows a clear and positive difference from National.

“Those who earn over over 150,000 will pay more tax and applying tax to trusts to combat tax avoidance, are welcome steps to reducing inequality and the unfairness of the tax system.  It’s a relief to see more effort in stopping the billions of dollars of tax evasion.” CTU President Helen Kelly said.

“Labour’s commitment to funding the real costs of Health and Education, taking account of rising costs and the changing population, forces National to front up and say what it is going to do to prevent our public services from deteriorating further. It cannot continue to pretend that it can squeeze more “efficiencies” out of a system that has faced five years of real cuts in funding and additional costs lumped on it by the Government. The Government’s claim that it has only hit “back office” staff has lost credibility with recent major problems in CYFS and Health.” Kelly said.

“If the present Government reduces spending as a proportion of GDP as its 2014 Budget says, its own Budget documents showed there will have to be major cuts in services in the next Parliamentary term. In Health, officials warned last year that major changes would be required saying that sustainability of the health system would require changes that are far larger than those achieved to date including more targeted services and funding. That would mean major cuts to services.” CTU Economist, Bill Rosenberg said.

“Budget spreadsheets show the government plans a real cut in Health spending of 12.3 percent in real terms between 2013 and 2018, Education sectors between 3 percent and 9 percent, Social Welfare excluding New Zealand Superannuation 6.0 percent if forecast cuts in beneficiary numbers are achieved, and other expenses by 10.3 percent. All these are falls after costs and population changes are taken into account. Only New Zealand Superannuation and Finance Costs rise in real terms.” Rosenberg said.

“Journalist and commentator Rod Oram has reported that Bill English said in a recent conference that “If National wins the election, English says his next budget will be the most radical restructuring of government spending in 50 years…”.” Kelly said.

“National cannot keep on cutting without consequences. It is sweeping under the carpet social, economic and environmental deficits for future governments to fix. They include high levels of child poverty and inequality, climate change, the needs of an ageing population, an unbalanced economy and increasing numbers of preventable diseases caused by poverty, poor nutrition and commercial pressures. Neither can it continue to underpay state service employees without loss of skills and morale. The Labour-led governments of the 2000s were left with a similar legacy in the 2000s.” Kelly said.

“Labour begins to address these problems without breaking the bank while introducing some useful programmes for economic development, better paid parental leave and help for families.” Kelly said.

 

 

8 comments on “CTU: Labour’s financial plan will make life fairer for working Kiwis ”

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  1. ianmac 1
    25 June 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Just heard Bill English rubbishing the Labour Budget. He reckons it is just the same as the ones in the 90s and can be summed up a with “Tax and Spend.” I imagine he wants no one to read it. Scared? He also reckons that it will not suit the Greens and there is nothing about free tertiary education so Internet Party will not be happy.

    • Kiwiri 1.1
      25 June 2014 at 3:43 pm

      Nothing original in what Double Dipton says in the House.
      He regurgitates essentially the same ol’ same ol’ thing, going back to about 2.5 decades ago, that he has repeated in the past against the other side of the House, regardless of whether he is in government or in opposition.

    • Tracey 1.2
      25 June 2014 at 3:44 pm

      So bill hasnt read it and is spewing out mantra…

  2. ianmac 2
    25 June 2014 at 3:33 pm

    ““Journalist and commentator Rod Oram has reported that Bill English said in a recent conference that “If National wins the election, English says his next budget will be the most radical restructuring of government spending in 50 years…”.” Kelly said.”
    Yes. Someone else on The Standard referred to that the other day but I don’t think it got any traction. It should be used to scare the daylights of Education, Health, Welfare etc.

  3. Graham 3
    25 June 2014 at 5:31 pm

    Labour and the CTU both agree on something and that’s news

    • Colonial Viper 3.1
      25 June 2014 at 5:33 pm

      Yep – and I’m betting that there will be more in the coming weeks.

  4. aerobubble 4
    26 June 2014 at 12:19 pm

    When borrowing money the principle has to be repaid, and then the interest, but in NZ there’s an extra cost. Since so much is borrowed from overseas, and we borrow much more than we should, there is a huge demand to buy NZ dollars so the world’s wealth can be lent to us, this pushes up the dollar and makes it harder to compete. Even, yes, farmers who don’t get quite as much in exchange for their exports. But its worse! We borrow for homes and farm land, pushing up the price and forcing new homeowners and farmers to borrow even more. Strangely though had we invested in more regulation around homes, raised the standard, we wouldn’t have had to borrow so much more money. Yes, for sure, as leak homes, but also bespoke is non-standard and so more costly, and more costly means more borrowing. So NZ started digging itself into the cesspit of debt because of neo-liberals claims for less deregulation when more can be better for the economy.

    But hey, the industrial revolution started with manufactures having a million different standards, had we continued that way, the neo-liberal way, we’d never gotten far. Go figure why tories have shit for brains.

    • aerobubble 4.1
      26 June 2014 at 12:51 pm

      What gets me is the propaganda, that the wealthy are owed a living, even that their wealth is secured without any compensation to the rest of society, that they don’t owe society for ‘wealth’ possibilities.

      Its like the public road, because we all obey the rules and keep left, etc, the whole road network runs efficiently. When wealth is used to secure itself, its own right to exist, then obviously there will be many who see no need to keep left, and start their own self appreciating society.

      Fascism eats itself, Communism starves itself. Why are so many in our media so wedded to class war on the rest of us. This is what they do when they make wealth a right. Capitalism does not work well if there is no churn, the wealthy have to start each year again, exposed to losing.

      What Key;s government has done by lowering top taxes and raising GST, is to make it easier for those with wealth to be lazy and up themselves.