The original of this post is here.
Here’s the Prime Minister in Question Time yesterday:
Hon David Cunliffe: Is he taking economic advice from Colin Craig and are Māori not looking really hard for jobs as the Māori unemployment rate has increased by 3 percent to almost 13 percent since December 2008?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Again, I go through the issues that have taken place over the course of the last 5 or 6 years. What I do know is that when this Government came in, there were predictions that unemployment would rise to over 10 percent. In fact, that never occurred. Unemployment topped out at, I think, 7.2 or 7.3 percent.
Well I for one would sure like to see where those predictions of 10% unemployment came from, because if we look at Treasury’s official predictions from when John Key took office, the highest unemployment they forecast was only 6.4% – well below the level that National has allowed it to reach.
In fact, here’s a quick chart of Treasury’s December 2008 projections (see p5) of the March quarter unemployment rate, versus the actual March quarter unemployment rate (StatsNZ figures) up to 2013.
Far from outperforming the forecasts as he claims, unemployment under National has always been above the Treasury forecast when he took office, and his performance against the forecasts has recently got worse and worse.
Imagine the outcry if a error this big – on a core policy indicator that matters to many New Zealanders – had been made by a leading opposition politician. Now go looking for any outrage over Key’s error.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress