Over-promise, under-deliver

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 6th, 2009 - 5 comments
Categories: john key, national/act government - Tags:

If there’s been a motto of this government, it’s the one above. We’ve been promised the world – tax cuts, better public services, higher wages, more growth, less regulation, lower crime, better education, lower carbon emissions – and none of it has been delivered or looks likely to be delivered at any time by this Key Government.

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The tax cuts were cancelled once the rich had theirs. Public services are being slashed. Wages are dropping. Growth is anaemic. Nanny State has been replaced by Step-father State with new regulation and breaches of human rights. Crime is up. National standards were shoved through against the experts’ advice. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was asked whether National’s ETS would reduce carbon emissions said simply “No”.

Key was asked on Morning Report how he intended to follow through on his promise to catch up to Australia by 2025, what movement we should expect in the next year. Of course, there was no detail and no immediate target. The fact is to close the gap within 15 years, we need to close the 30% gap by 2% per year. It’s not going to happen, and it’s certainly not going to happen at some unspecified point in the future. It would need a dramatic change in our growth trajectory and there’s simply no way that’s going to happen. The best Key could claim was his government would spend more on infrastructure to boost growth and what’s the bulk of that? The ‘ultra-fast’ (whoops, it’s ‘fast’ now) broadband network, which a new study shows won’t do anything to increase growth.

People are starting to ask Key a very sensible question – where’s the plan? As hard as he tries to avoid it, he has the responsibility. He hasn’t delivered change because he is too weak to direct his government’s agenda and more concerned with being the Clown-in-Chief than actually working on the hard issues.

He hasn’t, by his minister’s own assessment “done anything” except start a cycleway, which has become to exemplify Key’s over-promise, under-deliver style. We were promised a national cycleway and 4,000 jobs to help us through the recession. What we’ve got is two jobs and a plan to help build some small, unconnected cycleways that were already planned.

5 comments on “Over-promise, under-deliver ”

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  1. tc 1
    6 November 2009 at 10:50 am

    JK and NACT inc. aren’t interested in anything other than having ‘their turn’….”aw geez thanks NZild” and executing their backers strategy….old news I know.
    Yet again these types of questions and lines of inquiry should have arced up in Sept 08 after their post election honeymoon….elementary journalism really.
    By now there’d be plenty of evidence over a 14 month period that they have no plan….just a checklist for rewarding their backers…..Fed farmers/Insurance council/Business roundtable etc etc which is national party defacto behaviour…..again nothing new here but again no exposure in our mainstream media.
    The fourth estate have shown to NZ they aren’t up to the job, across the ditch this lot would be in tatters if they had to face the Oz media pack because when they smell blood they attack and don’t relent….ours smell blood, get squeamish seek direction from management…….we’ve all seen what happens then.

  2. prism 2
    6 November 2009 at 11:04 am

    Boo hoo I want Nanny!! At least she knows something about her job, and is trained to care about her charges. It is interesting don’t you think that human resources go to such lengths to find suitably experienced and trained people for senior positions yet we have politicians who have specialised in one particular branch of knowledge and know all about that, but often little about humanity. Yet we give these amateurs full sovereignty over us. All politicians should have to do a course in political studies and social anthropology. Wouldn’t guarantee they would be perfect but would ensure that gaps in the tight little brains they have would have been levered open before middle age cemented them, making them impervious.

    • So Bored 2.1
      6 November 2009 at 11:38 am

      Now look here, Im middle aged and the gaps in my tight little brain never needed levering open, the gaps were always too wide to be cemented….you are also right off the money with the human resources analogy if the corporates iI have worked in are any indication. It would appear from the behavoir of the NACTs that they have all been inculcated with bad values on the corporate job, and if we wanted them better educated as MPs we might be waiting for their IQs to reach a level suitable for graduation from kindy..

    • Draco T Bastard 2.2
      6 November 2009 at 2:51 pm

      Those two courses should be mandatory in high school.

  3. prism 3
    6 November 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Oh well it seemed a rational idea somehow. Could be that our political system needs smartening up as much as it needs MMP, which it does! Things have changed in the world, perhaps in future times the system will be regarded as primitive.