What ideas has National had to grow the economy?
There was the promise that tax cuts would magically do the trick, but that was never anything more than a blatant election bribe. There was the cycleway, but that’s a joke. There was tearing up our best conservation land, but the public quite rightly stepped up and smacked that down. Anything else?
If they have had other ideas, they haven’t worked yet. That’s because National’s approach is cuts and austerity, completely the wrong methods for difficult times. Because constructive ideas and growth are far too hard, they’ve focussed instead on the one and only goal of deficit reduction, which they think they can achieve with slash and burn (like a dieter fixated on a target weight who decides to reach it by hacking off their own limbs). And how’s that working out?
2500 jobs gone but state service saves only $20m
A squeeze on state service backroom functions has saved just $20 million in two years, Treasury boss Gabriel Makhlouf has revealed.
The Government has shed more than 2500 jobs in the past three years and ordered chief executives to shave their IT and human resources bills as part of a drastic overhaul of the public service.
But despite ambitious plans to save $1billion over three years, a `benchmarking’ report to be published next week will show 31 agencies and departments have managed to reduce spending by just $20m. …
In last year’s Administrative and Support Services Benchmarking Report, Treasury estimated government agencies could save more than $230 million a year from back-office functions
$20 Million? For 2,500 jobs lost (and who knows how many other lives affected). Was it worth it? (I wonder if that calculation even takes in to account the increased spending on unemployment and other benefits.) Is that the way that we’re going to save our economy? Bollocks it is.
Meanwhile other opportunities are slipping by. Investment in techniques for a sustainable, green economy, “cleantech”, could be the very answer that we’re looking for. But no, still fixated on short-term, destructive mining, the bungling of the Nats means that “NZ risks falling off green wave“.
No sign of a Brighter Future wherever we look. No wonder Kiwis are fleeing NZ in near record numbers…
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