Four years of failed promises

Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 22 comments
Categories: bill english, budget2012, john key, labour - Tags:

Labour has published its budget website and a video ripping John Key’s record of broken promises.

Right now, John Key is simultaneously blaming Labour for the recession and making excuses for the dismal economic performance of his government by blaming the world economy.

And Bill English is saying that borrowing and growth hasn’t been far out of line with previous Budgets’ projections.

It’s like they’re operating in a parallel universe.

22 comments on “Four years of failed promises ”

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  1. RedLogix 1
    22 May 2012 at 3:26 pm

    I wanna believe anything that nice Mr ‘Ambitious for New Zealand’ Key tells me…

  2. Eddie 2
    22 May 2012 at 4:44 pm

    My only question is why they didn’t make the video’s soundtrack dubstep.

  3. marsman 3
    23 May 2012 at 8:07 am

    Performance Pay for the Treasury Mandarins…..peanuts is all they deserve. As for Bill English and slime on legs John Key……lots of rotten tomatoes wherever they show their smirking mugs.

  4. captain hook 4
    23 May 2012 at 8:23 am

    the promises we’ll never know about are the share parcels and concessions they have promised to their mates.

  5. Bored 5
    23 May 2012 at 10:56 am

    Nice video, shame about the song. What I mean here is that its too easy to say you would “manage” the great recession better BUT hey anybody can “manage”. Labour actually need to get with the real economic issues of today and have a plan to do the hard things. Cunliffe seems to have been muzzled, everybody else is still stuck being neo-lib managerialists listening to flawed economists and Treasury.

    So what is Labour going to do? Be better at following useless remedies?

    • Dr Terry 5.1
      23 May 2012 at 12:03 pm

      What Labour had best do is make room for the Greens. At least, they could be working now toward coalition, but only if Labour stops moving in neo-liberal directions. I would like to know if Labour’s best member, Cunliffe, is really being gagged?

    • adam 5.2
      23 May 2012 at 3:25 pm

      Have to agree with the imposition of the neo-liberal agenda in that there are too many apologists in the Labour Party that won’t change much. Until such time as we stop making stupid FTA’s and start making stuff here and protecting those jobs here, nothing much will change. R&D jobs and new technology jobs that Josie Pagani goes on endlessly about on National Radio will always be just lip service until our manufacturing sector is protected again so that significant amounts of jobs can be created here with import restrictions and quotos the protecting facility on imported rubbish from China.

  6. Sam Hall 6
    23 May 2012 at 11:13 am

    The IMF (urrgh) have advised the UK that the country is in trouble.

    • Colonial Viper 6.1
      23 May 2012 at 11:25 am

      Giving more public money to the bankers while removing regulations safeguarding their behaviour and bonuses should help.

      • SpaceMonkey 6.1.1
        23 May 2012 at 1:01 pm

        Definitely! They are the “Masters of the Universe”… “doing God’s work” after all! The problem is the City of London. It has always been a pirate haven… the Lehman collapse, MF Global scam and JP Morgan’s $3billion-and-still-counting trade loss all happened through London. As Ben Kenobi once said: “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany”.

    • rosy 6.2
      23 May 2012 at 9:43 pm

      Well it looks as if Key and English have just become yesterday’s men. Growth is all the rage now

      Nick Clegg has signalled that the coalition has plans for a “massive” increase in state-backed infrastructure investment but denied that the fresh emphasis on growth represented a “plan B”.

      The deputy prime minister said instructions had been issued to the Treasury setting out the government’s plan to use its balance sheet to inject credit into the economy, with a “massive” increase in housing and infrastructure and schemes to reduce youth unemployment in a new emphasis on growth.

      The Lib Dem’s comments seemed to chime with a call from the International Monetary Fund to the UK to look at fuelling infrastructure funding or cutting VAT or national insurance if the economic situation worsened…
      …Clegg admitted the use of state balance sheets to assume additional risks on major schemes was not popular with all Treasury officials.

  7. travellerev 7
    23 May 2012 at 11:33 am

    With John key’s background in banking and his knowledge of what is really happening in the global finance world the “promises” were more like Lies, lies and more lies just like he lied about Transrail, Lord Ashcroft and our downgrade to name a few.

  8. Dr Terry 8
    23 May 2012 at 12:05 pm

    I fear that the man is actually a compulsive liar.

    • aerobubble 8.1
      23 May 2012 at 12:29 pm

      Please. What was his day job? He brought low, to sell high. He ‘talked’ people into backing him to invest their money, and to become so successful he had to have seen when a opportunity was undervalued, or overvalued. His whole career was a fiscal politician.

      That’s what’s so stunning about his big policies. Raise GST, lower top tax rates for individuals and businesses, shift the burden on the middle classes from the rich. Let’s call it stage one. Help out the overwhelming private debt problem in NZ by shifting the books into the negative and bailing out debtor NZ, then the second stage as banks deleverage put more collateral into the NZ economy. Sell assets. So the people worst off under Key are pensions (aka why Winston is back) and everyone or anyone will positive finances (savings). So Key is designed to help the property developers deleveraging landing very soft indeed., even if it means not addressing the capital farming problem beseting the NZ economy.

      So he is the right man for the job, used second hand investment salesman, who takes existing profit centers and gives them a nice gloss over to raise the price. Well the right man for the job if you have sold your soul to debt, and impoverishing future NZ unnecessarily.

  9. SpaceMonkey 9
    23 May 2012 at 12:48 pm

    Surely everyone knows by now that, with John Key, numbers are just aspirational.

    • Jackal 9.1
      23 May 2012 at 4:10 pm

      Sackur: Yeah but it’s a number, it’s based on research, it’s not an opinion plucked from the air.

      Key: It’s one number, and like all of our projections, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview.

  10. freedom 10
    23 May 2012 at 1:10 pm

    Mr English told reporters the theme of tomorrow’s budget is “confidence is uncertain times,”

    i’ve read the line a hundred times and he is channeling Nietzsche or ate some bad sausage rolls

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10807836

  11. Georgecom 11
    23 May 2012 at 8:51 pm

    English writes the 2009 budget speech, he dusts it off in 2010 and changes the dates, he dusts it off in 2011 and changes the dates, he dusts it off in 2012 and changes the dates.

    4 years of budget speeches, same over promise, same under deliver, just different dates.

    On the news today Key was telling us it was Labours fault, then the global economy. Anybodys fault but his government.

    1. When will he actually admit that it is all too difficult for his government rather than blaming others?

    2. Why is it that despite the full resources of the state, Bill English is unable to get a budget forecast correct?

  12. Ad 12
    23 May 2012 at 10:19 pm

    I like the presentation.

    Just seriously wishes Shearer hadn’t given up two weeks of media to other parties, and on the night before budget, when you should be launching everything you have at them, he just stuck his head up hit bum on the Shane Jones matter and let the story poo all over himself.

    The net outcome is that Shearer has gone from “can’t manage one weekend of The Nation”, to another weekend of “can’t manage Shane Jones”, and Key only ever had to respond to the Greens’ Russell Norman, and Ganesh Nana.

    I definitely don’t want English or Joyce or Key leading this country. But we seriously need more effective Labour leadership than this.

  13. KJT 13
    23 May 2012 at 10:48 pm

    I can only repeat what we have said before about voodoo economics.

    http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2011/03/voodoo-economics.html

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