Well, that didn’t take long.
In the first 100 days of the new National government we’ve seen a clamp-down on workers’ rights, tax cuts for the rich, and now tying everything up nicely in a big bow, we have the first leaked National Party email of the term.
Another day, another leak in the National Party. We shouldn’t be surprised. Getting into government was never going to stop the problem. But in this instance we should be even less surprised considering the contents of John Key’s email to his Ministers.
In the leaked email John Key admits to his Ministers straight out there IS NO NEW PLAN, infrastructure or any other spending plan, to deal with the economic downturn and all spending must be funded within existing baselines and that Ministers must simply rather ‘reprioritise’.
“Given the challenging fiscal position that we have inherited and the weakness of the economy, we need to focus and target our efforts to achieve maximum impact.”
“The Minister of Finance has written to you to outline the implications of the fiscal outlook…. It will not come as a surprise to hear that there is little new money, and that we will all need to reprioritise within our baselines.”
Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd may have huge stimulus packages to get their respective economies going, but in New Zealand our former merchant banker Prime Minister knows better: tighten the belt and restrict spending.
Obviously at least one of his Ministers doesn’t agree and is worried the impact Key’s inaction will have on National’s 2011 election hopes. Because if the economy goes under, unemployment hits record highs, and small enterprises start going under, we’ll know whose inaction to blame.
(Read Nicky Hagar’s full account of the latest leak here. It’s worthwhile. You might as well read Steve’s analysis too if you haven’t already.)
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