Key: we’re a less than half-decent govt

Written By: - Date published: 4:19 pm, February 9th, 2010 - 28 comments
Categories: john key, national/act government, tax - Tags:

Good spotting by Jake Quinn:

during the 2008 election, John Key ruled out raising GST, as the Herald reported back in October of that year:

‘National leader John Key said told (sic) a press conference this morning that if National is elected and does a ‘half decent job’ at growing the economy, then increasing GST and the top tax rate will not be necessary.’

I’m no big city logician but by his own account, does that mean that Key has done less than a ‘half decent job’?

[update: Jim Anderton made reference to this quote in his speech and Phil Goff used Julie Fairy’s nice piece of research, that we re-published, disproving the claim that Jackie Blue had fired Joan Nathan because she merged offices with Sam Lotu-Liga. Nice to see the politicians making use of bloggers’ work]

28 comments on “Key: we’re a less than half-decent govt ”

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  1. tc 1
    9 February 2010 at 4:40 pm

    Half decent would be 50% more than most would say.

    • kiwiteen123 1.1
      9 February 2010 at 4:46 pm

      http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/poll-makes-grim-reading-goff-and-harawira-3200388
      Key is supported by over 50% of NZers.
      They must not think he is doing a quarter-decent job.

      • mickysavage 1.1.1
        9 February 2010 at 4:50 pm

        Gee …

        This poll is over two months old. Try polling them again.

        • kiwiteen123 1.1.1.1
          9 February 2010 at 4:57 pm

          68.5% of NZers (polled) in early January said the country was heading in the right direction. An increase of 6% since the last poll.
          http://curiablog.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/roy-morgan-poll-early-january-2010/

          • Lanthanide 1.1.1.1.1
            9 February 2010 at 5:00 pm

            Which is not the same as 68.5% of NZers saying they think the government is taking the country in the right direction.

          • lprent 1.1.1.1.2
            9 February 2010 at 5:10 pm

            Did you look at the poll at Morgans? The devil is in the detail…

            a New Zealand-wide cross-section of 1,758 electors from January 4-17, 2010

            When most of use were either on holiday or sobering up. Which means that the assumption on the margin of error…

            The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. The following table gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. The figures are approximate and for general guidance only, and assume a simple random sample.

            My bold…. Maybe you should learn some more statistics?

            I have no idea why anyone would run a political survey at that point in the NZ summer. The cities empty out and people aren’t near their phones. Guaranteed to get non-random samples.

            • kiwiteen123 1.1.1.1.2.1
              9 February 2010 at 5:22 pm

              They would run a poll so Micky can’t get to upset that their isn’t one for a whole month.
              Perhaps its all the Labour supporters of having holidays and getting drunk? 🙂
              Applying stereotypes I would expect that National supporters were more likely to be away from their homes during that period.

              • lprent …
                9 February 2010 at 5:25 pm

                You noticed our posting levels over summer?

                But there seemed to be a lot of posts in wingnut blogs….. Well maybe Camerons attempt to see if he could get contempt of court charges added probably pushed those up a bit.

              • kiwiteen123 …
                9 February 2010 at 5:28 pm

                No I didn’t notice the comment level. I myself had about 3 weeks of blogs.
                Half your commenters are National Party supporters.
                Slater’s campaign would’ve helped WOBH, KB etc.
                I will be shocked if Labour leads National in the next (main) poll.

                • lprent …
                  9 February 2010 at 5:41 pm

                  Posts – not comments. Why would authors care about comment numbers? There are only a few comments that really manage to tear into the meat of a post and help improve the writer. We were lucky to put out 2 or 3 posts per day during that polling period. It is when people who work tend to leave home and their data lines. Well apart from me – I’m fully mobile.

                  I’d be ecstatic is Labour led in the next poll. However I also wouldn’t believe it until I’d seen at least 3 polls from the same company that there was in fact a trend. I also would regard the actual values as being of little importance – ie not the actual result we’d see if an election was held during the polling period.

                  In this particular case, you’re looking at a number that went up by 6 points after having a decline in each successive poll from Morgan for the last 5 polls. It happened to coincide with a period when a lot if not a majority of the possible population would have been unable to be contacted by pollsters.

                  I’d personally expect that we’ll go back to a decline in the next couple of polls.

                  • kiwiteen123 …
                    9 February 2010 at 9:23 pm

                    @Lynn
                    My bad.
                    I hope those comments are mine! 🙂
                    I am expecting a small decline but then an even out or increase by September.

                    • lprent …
                      10 February 2010 at 7:39 am

                      It is unlikely, governments usually go down in the polls over time unless they do something pretty innovative and popular.

                      This government is slowly managing to piss off too many people from all sides of the spectrum through its inaction on anything substantially positive. Things like mineral exploitation of our reserves will take decades and are going to get a lot of opposition. They’ve pissed of a *lot* of people with vindictive basic cuts like cutting the ACE program, the training allowance on the DPB, the primary remedial reading, etc. Those cost peanuts, but a lot of people hauled themselves out of the poverty trap with them.

                      I’m expecting that the unemployment on the benefit rate will continue to rise, and that really constrains their freedom of movement. I’m pretty sure that the political analysis will be starting to look back to the early 90’s at present.

                      This is all starting to feel like deja-vu to me.

                    • kiwiteen123 []
                      10 February 2010 at 7:49 am

                      We’ll key lost my vote yesterday.
                      I suppose I’m going to ACT so it doesn’t make much difference… 😉

                    • Pascal's bookie []
                      10 February 2010 at 8:07 am

                      The more support ACT has in the polls, the more centrists will be nervous about giving National a second term.

              • kiwiteen123 …
                9 February 2010 at 5:42 pm

                “off” I mean.

      • Marty G 1.1.2
        9 February 2010 at 5:10 pm

        I love the ‘well the polls are high’ line. It’s the ultimate fall-back, hilarious to see it come out straight away from Kteen

        • kiwiteen123 1.1.2.1
          9 February 2010 at 5:24 pm

          Polls are here for a reason with the margin of error of about 4%. National has been leading Labour in the polls since about October 2006.
          National has been popular for that period.

  2. kiwiteen123 2
    9 February 2010 at 4:42 pm

    They are not increasing the top tax rate and GST.

  3. Policy Parrot 3
    9 February 2010 at 5:07 pm

    Even with that inference, Key is stretching the truth – they’re not half decent, they’ve got no decency at all.

    Now we just have to wait for the public to apply the three strikes rule to the Government for gross negligence. Strike one.

    My pick is for a strike out – next batter up.