Get ready for more over-promise, under-deliver

Written By: - Date published: 4:39 pm, August 1st, 2009 - 15 comments
Categories: economy, john key, national/act government, spin, unemployment - Tags:

Tomorrow John Key will be announcing policies on youth unemployment. Looks like rehashing of the already announced Youth Guarantee and probably something more.

Whatever Key comes up with it will be tinkering around the edges. The Nats aren’t willing to spend any money and they don’t have any big ideas. If the cycleway, the tax-cuts, and the basically every other government policy have proven anything, it’s that Key’s National does hype excellently but the follow-through always disappoints.

Expect Key to claim his schemes will keep large numbers of young people out of unemployment. Expect it to end up being a fraction of the number he promised, long after he promised.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about Key’s ‘great Kiwi invite’ policy (can you imagine Clark ever coming up with such a small solution to such a big problem?) and it’s inspired me. I have an idea for the ad campaign:

[in the Weekend Dom there’s a page 2 article mocking Key’s ‘great invite’ with a fake letter from him to Obama: ‘remember? I’m the guy you talked to on the phone for 15 minutes a few months ago. We chatted about golf and you said I could call you Barack’. Can’t see it online. Strange]

15 comments on “Get ready for more over-promise, under-deliver ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. IrishBill 1
    1 August 2009 at 4:44 pm

    Jesus, the blams. That takes me back.

    • Daveski 1.1
      1 August 2009 at 4:49 pm

      Some one is snooping in my personal record collection. Was a hoot when Dick Driver joined as he struggled with the lyrics to start with!

  2. Daveski 2
    1 August 2009 at 4:58 pm

    Some other suggestions from the same era:

    The Swingers – Counting the Rorts
    The Screaming M Pees – See Me Expenses
    The Blams – Dont Fight it Paula, It’s Bigger Than Both of Us

  3. Jared 3
    1 August 2009 at 7:58 pm

    What would satisfy you Marty? Large scale spending ala Obama? We can’t afford it. Im beginning to realise, no matter what National do, it will never appease you. It will always be wrong in your eyes.

    • Marty G 3.1
      1 August 2009 at 8:23 pm

      strawman. Just because I’m asking for bigger action than we’ve got doesn’t mean I think we have to go enormous and crazy with no regard for debt levels

      • Maynard J 3.1.1
        1 August 2009 at 8:41 pm

        Yeah there’s always sensible things like the home insulation scheme. It works, it is making jobs, and there are a lot of other initiatives that they could be supporting.

    • BLiP 3.2
      1 August 2009 at 9:23 pm

      Be good if they did something about employment – maybe they could stop sacking public servants, it turns out that it was another John Key lie – unless when “capping” the public service actually meant putting a cap in its ass.

      But something – even if it was a speech that rallied the nation and put forward a vision of where we could be heading, the sort of society we could create. But no – just Natonal Inc dribble and greedy grubby aspirations going foward.Nothing real. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to work towards. Just back to good ole Tory survival of the fittest and fuck the rest of ya’s.

  4. Zaphod Beeblebrox 4
    1 August 2009 at 8:18 pm

    Jared,
    Why do you put NZers down so much? Why don’t you think we can’t get together and develop great little communities with lots of local employment and viable shops and employment not living in an environmentally destructive manner. I doesn’t neccessarily take large amounts of government spending to encourage community development but it does take leadership. This is what is happening in Australia and the U.S.. because they have leaders willing to take chances and risks and back regional and local projects. You can see their GDPs now growing faster than expected whereas we are stuck in the mire.
    The money can be raised and will be paid back many times over the coming decades, it just takes a little vision not a its all too hard, we can’t do anything mentality which is condemning us to a bleak economic future.

    • Jared 4.1
      1 August 2009 at 9:49 pm

      Sounds like a Tui billboard. Your future utopia is gutless due to a lack of import tariffs and bargain products sourced predominately from China to be sold in big red sheds that have gutted main street small town New Zealand. Just like a 40% reduction in carbon emissions your theory is misleading and almost impossible. We simply don’t have the economy to support large scale borrowing to support spending plans like Obama’s(and I say spending loosely, seeing as Obama is essentially throwing mountains of cash in every direction to try and see if SOMETHING *might* stimulate the economy). In an economy like ours you don’t gamble with chance, it has the high possibility of bankrupting the nation, which is why National is urging a cautious approach.

      Our businesses in New Zealand cannot compete with overseas imports yet maintain low levels of unemployment and first world labour conditions. You want your $15 an hour minimum wage? Tell me how we fund it without accelerating unemployment.

      • Zaphod Beeblebrox 4.1.1
        2 August 2009 at 12:09 am

        Jared, thanks for your thoughts. Why is it that we don’t have the economy to develop creative communities and a knowledge economy?
        BTWYour utopia is happening accross the ditch at the moment. Not everybody wants to buy crap from The Warehouse and transfer it to the dump 6 months later. Intellectual capital is what drives economic growth, not low wage sweatshops- you don’t have to believe to BRT dogma that gets thrown at you all the time.
        If we can produce the best Sav. Blanc in the world , I can’t see why we can’t produce other quality products. Dumbing down the population, paying them nothing then stuffing up the education system for our children is the route to the third world.
        It was after the 1950s when Western countries started to pay decent wages and started to provide a welfare net system develop decent public education and health systems that the U.S, Europe, NZ and Australia some economic advancements- Henry Ford saw this, thats why he started marketing his cars to the middle classes. So why would you want to turn back the clock to the Nineteenth Century?
        If you want our government to take the Neo-liberal road get ready for a repeat of the Argentine situation a la 2001, that right wing pack of idiots had to go begging to the IMF. Thankfully for them they have seen the light since.

        • Draco T Bastard 4.1.1.1
          2 August 2009 at 12:27 pm

          So why would you want to turn back the clock to the Nineteenth Century?

          Because then the rich could get back to being feudal lords. They really haven’t gotten over the fact that we dumped absolutism and feudalism a few centuries ago because it causes massive poverty. Now we just need to realise that capitalism is just one small step from feudalism and that we need to take the next step of getting rid of that as well.

  5. just another student 5
    1 August 2009 at 10:44 pm

    Will be very interesting to see what they cut from youth schemes, since that seems about all they are capable of doing.

  6. Akldnut 6
    1 August 2009 at 11:28 pm

    Jared Im beginning to realise, no matter what National do, it will never appease you. It will always be wrong in your eyes.

    Wrong wrong wrong again. all they have to do is cut the spin & bullshit, get rid of the ministers who screw up, and finally disolving this present government would big step in the right direction.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.