National just can’t stop lying. We’ve covered National’s lies on wages and migration in the past and our last two posts have debunked National’s lies on crime, the economy, compliance costs, corruption, press freedom and, well, just about everything.
Now they’ve resorted to repeating David Farrar’s discredited lies by deliberately misquoting Helen Clark on tax. Here’s what David’s mate Bill English claims Helen Clark said about tax:
In 2000 Helen Clark was saying: ‘tax cuts are the promises of a visionless and bankrupt people’.
“It’s hard to believe this is the same Helen Clark who has welcomed tax cuts today.”
The actual quote, as we pointed out almost a year ago, was:
‘Tax cuts are a path to inequality and underdevelopment in today’s circumstances. They are the promises of vision-less and intellectually bankrupt people’
The circumstances Helen Clark was talking about were the year 2000, a time when the country was reeling from nine years of right-wing policies that had battered the poor, slashed wages and brought our public service to its knees.
Tax cuts in those circumstances would certainly have been a path to inequality and underdevelopment, and while I’d personally rather see the money spent on social services, the circumstances in 2008 are very different.
As my man a_y_b said at the time, to misquote Clark so deliberately – by removing the three crucial qualifying words – is an absolute disgrace. And it’s a perfect example of the kind of dishonesty National is now engaging in on a daily basis as we head towards the campaign.
Seriously, if you can’t win without lying what does that say about your policies?
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