The crazy right-wing antics of today’s Herald would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact it’s the main paper in New Zealand’s largest city.
First we’ve got Fran O’Sullivan talking about the need for the government cutting costs (I suspect she wrote the absurd editorial I commented on earlier this week). Essentially it’s more of the “dig our way out” thinking the new right have always been so fond of and again it talks about scrapping policies of the previous government, in this case student loans. I ask again, how come the right wingers who want “expensive policies of the last government” rolled back never call for company tax to go back up to 33%?
The edition continues in this vein with John Roughan calling for the super fund to be cut. They always use the economy as household (or small business) analogy for these arguments. That analogy doesn’t hold up because, as Steve has explained, a nation state operating on intergenerational timescales works a little differently to a corner dairy.
But the worst of the worst is John Armstrong and his glowing commentary on the government’s sly cutting of government spending. Exactly what you don’t do when you are trying to stimulate an economy (not that anyone should really believe this government is trying too). Here’s the last par from his piece:
But if there was ever a time to apply the blowtorch to the bureaucracy it is now. With widespread job losses anticipated in the private sector, not much notice is going to be taken of squealing by the public sector.
That’s people’s livelihoods and their lives he’s talking about. What a disgrace.
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