Here is John “not a political commentator” Key today:
Mr Key claimed Labour was using a smear campaign to bring National down instead of bringing out new policies.
Where to start? Well, it is hardly a “smear campaign” when it is about exposing the truth of misuse of official information and unethical political behaviour by Cabinet Minister.
Also, Labour has nothing to do with Mr Hager’s book. I know the Prime Minister knows this, since his spies and the entire Press Gallery would have seen Cunliffe staffers at the launch last week. They frantically bought ten copies of Dirty Politics and ran off down Willis Street towards Parliament, where an army of researchers waited to co-read it record time so Labour MPs could be told what the hell the book was about.
But Key’s bigger misdirection is about policy. First, claiming “they have no big policy” is pretty rich coming from a crew whose centrepiece idea for their conference was $200 million of pork-barrel roads for Cabinet Ministers’ backyards.
Second, Labour has already announced a large number of big policy innovations this term. And we have costed them out, and published all the figures months in advance.
On housing, there is KiwiBuild, a foreign speculator ban, and the Healthy Home Guarantee.
For families, there is the Best Start package, a digital schooling upgrade, smaller class sizes, and an end to “voluntary” school donations.
For jobs, there is an increased minimum wage, increased attention on the needs of our regions and on sectors like forestry.
On the cost of living, we’ll cut hundreds off everyone’s power bill.
We’ll make sure education and health funds can keep up with rising process and populations.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Perhaps the Prime Minister was too busy on other matters to read Labour’s fiscal plan. It is here. Or, if her prefers a non-technical highlights package, maybe he can go here. Or maybe just a summary webpage is more “him” It is here.
Seriously, how stupid does New Zealand’s Prime Minister think New Zealand journalists are, trotting out obviously nonsensical lines like this? Don’t answer that.
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