National does a big sook

• mickysavage
• 8 months ago
• Categories: chris bishop, chris hipkins, Christopher Luxon, Dirty Politics, national, same old national, spin, taxpayers union, Unions, workers' rights

Recently National, which perfected the art of dirty politics, which has spent the past couple of years being relentlessly negative and which has had its sock puppets attack individual Labour MPs mercilessly is deeply, deeply, deeply upset that the fire has been returned recently.

Yesterday the CTU released a full blitz attack on Christopher Luxon.

One may ask why are they so upset about the prospect of a National Government.  How about these reasons?  From the CTU website:

• Fair Pay Agreements would be abolished – these provide minimum protections for workers and prevent the race to the bottom, by cutting the wages of the most vulnerable workers.
• 90-day trials for workers would be reinstated – there is no evidence these help businesses hire workers. In fact, it is the opposite, it will be easier to lay off workers for no reason.
• Minimum wage rises would be restrained – National promises to raise the minimum wage every year, but we know National’s track record is poor. Under the current government minimum wages rises have increased the fortnightly income of those workers by $556 since 2017.
• Tax breaks for landlords and speculators would make a comeback – these fuel the property market and simply enrich property investors, making it harder to buy a first home and pushing up rents.
• Public transport costs for many low-paid workers would rise, along with prescription charges.
• Welfare payments would be pegged to CPI inflation, meaning that many of the lowest-income New Zealanders will fall further behind.
• The public service would be gutted – National would cut $8.5 billion of spending and savage frontline services up and down the country. Services working people depend on, and jobs that employ union members.
• Climate Emergency Response Fund would be axed – $2.4 billion dollars committed to reducing our climate emissions to fund National’s landlord tax breaks. This will undermine New Zealand’s ability to tackle our climate crisis.

I guess it is a bit unfair quoting Luxon himself about what he thinks about poor people.  Saying that he is focussed on helping the wealthy, which he is, that he wants to scrap fair pay agreements and free prescriptions, which he does, and giving billions in tax cuts to landlords, a policy he is campaigning on, may be considered to be unfair if you think that you have a god given right to lead and want to win without people realising how unfair your policies actually are, but in a healthy democracy pointing these things out is considered to be standard campaigning.

The response by National is as heightened a display of pearl clutching as you can imagine.

Especially this from Chris Bishop.

And the Taxpayers Union, yes the Taxpayers Union chose to complain about the advertisements AND seek donations at the same time.

Chris Hipkins had a perfectly weighted response.

It is really rich for National to complain about negative campaigning and for Bishop to suggest that this could the most negative campaign ever.  Over the years National has made an art of negative campaigning.

Like in 1975.

And in 2005.

And in 2014 when dirty politics was weaponised and run out of John Key’s office.

This level of hysteria is an attempt to divert from the CTU’s message which is perfectly appropriate to raise in an election campaign.  Luxon would be a disaster, workers wages and conditions would be severely undermined, and the wealthy would benefit to the expense of the rest of us.

Well done CTU.  Good to see you representing the interests of your members.