Written By:
Steve Pierson - Date published:
1:53 pm, September 23rd, 2008 - 33 comments
Categories: election 2008, tax -
Tags: psa, public services
The PSA’s campaign looks to get past National’s simplistic ‘tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts’ mantra and ask voters to consider what they would have to give up to get larger tax cuts.
Great stuff. Hopefully, they won’t be limiting this campaign to internet and magazine ads. Every kiwi family should get this as a leaflet in their mailbox.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Are the Nats not using the “Less Bureaucrats” billboards in Wellington for fear of alienating the public servant vote?
I didn’t see a single one of them when I was there last week.
I think I saw one on Dixon St. They’re easy to miss, light blue isn’t the most attention-grabbing colour.
Nice ad. Gets the message across well. My only “criticism” would be that there are too many words.
The Greens’ “Vote for me” billboards are much more to-the-point.
Scribe: the PSA isn’t soliciting votes. They’re not asking you to tick a box for them. They’re just pointing out some facts.
It also misses the distributional point. Sacking those people will give someone else a tax cut. Under National, ordinary New Zealanders (that’s actual ordinary New Zealanders, not John Key’s “ordinary New Zealanders earning $100,000 a year”) will simply miss out.
My question would be ‘when did National say they were going to sack public service workers’?
Brilliant, it’s a whole lot harder to support the cap/sack the bureaucrats line when you give them a name and show what essential work they do.
I especially like how they state the fact that these people the right is so keen on getting rid of are Kiwis working for the good of other Kiwis.
Very well done. The message is in the black, and if you have time you can read the rest.
It even has a little line on the bottom, saying “Authorised for the PSA by…” See, the EFA isn’t that hard.
well I wouldnt *start* with those specific public servants.. I would start with the IRD and work down from there.
Vanilla,
Scribe: the PSA isn’t soliciting votes. They’re not asking you to tick a box for them. They’re just pointing out some facts.
True. The PSA is trying to get someone to tick a box for Labour, which is its right, obviously.
Most good ads and cartoons — regardless of whether or not they’re trying to solicit votes — have few words. As I said, though, a good ad overall.
“See, the EFA isn’t that hard.”
It seems that its only the National aligned lobby groups that can’t help but put a jab in their advertising (like the EMA northern flyers). It’s not hard at all really, seems they are just being martyr’s for the publicity huh, not exactly trustworthy that they can’t follow the law.
Even more reason why there should be custodial sentence’s for EFA breaches.
djp. if you started by hollowing out the Crown’s abiltiy to raise revenue, you would be moving on to everyone else pretty quickly.
Killinginthenameof,
actually most of the breaches have been by the idiots who voted for the law (trall through http://www.elections.org.nz/news/ if you like), Progressives have been refered to the police at least once
Brillian plan Steve! 🙂
yea, fukk public healthcare, public education, superannuation, the transport network, the Police, Defence, the sick and the infirm. (those areas accont for about about 80-90% of government spending)
Mmmm taxpayer funded labour advertising.
Nice to know I’m forced to pay for this, while having restrictions on what I can do with my own money while campaigning.
You’re not forced to pay for this MikeE. It was paid for by the PSA, a voluntary, democratically-elected and self-funded membership organisation.
Mmmm taxpayer funded labour advertising.
You retard – the PSA is a union. Why are (right-wing) libertarians so thick???
MikeE: Restrictions? Such as?
And to say that this is ‘taxpayer funded’ is drawing a pretty long bow.
Finally it doesn’t say anywhere on there that you should vote for Labour. In fact, aren’t Labour cutting taxes too? I think the Greens haven’t promised to – maybe the ad is trying to get people to vote for them?
“You retard – the PSA is a union. Why are (right-wing) libertarians so thick???”
Are you trying to argue that the PSA isn’t taxpayer funded?
Private sector unions are not taxpayer funded, fair enough. I’m not forced to subsidise the unites, epmus of this world etc via taxation and good on em.
But its kind of ridiculous to suggest that a union that is 100% public sector, whose union fees come from their taxpayer funded pay packets, isn’t funded by the taxpayer.
Mike, I hate to channel the Sod, but that’s a retarded argument.
You’re a libertarian, right? So surely you understand property rights. Here’s how it works. Public servants sell their labour to the government in exchange for money. That money then becomes the property of the public servant, who is free to dispose of it as he or she wishes. The money the PSA receives in membership fees belongs to the person paying it, not to the government. Hence, the PSA is not taxpayer-funded.
You’re smarter than this Mike.
MikeE – I suspect that twenty you’ve got in your wallet could possibly have passed through my hands as earnings in the last five years. Does that mean that when you spend it on spank-mags that I am funding your onanism? Or is it just the folk whose blogs you post on that have to bear that cost?
Only in the same sense as groceries bought by public servants are taxpayer funded. There’s got to be a point at which one’s salary, regardless of its source, becomes the property of the person who earned it, to do with it as they see fit.
Last time I checked, public servants choose whether or not to join the PSA, in the same way as they choose whether or not to join Kiwisaver or Southern Cross or any other organisation that lets you pay for its services directly out of one’s salary.
I suspect that twenty you’ve got in your wallet could possibly have passed through my hands
So, if Mike licks the $20, he might get some residue from your cocaine snorting?
Then again, I’d be careful not to touch anything that’s been near ‘sod. We can’t be certain where he’s been.
Hey MikeE,
I’m a tax payer and I paid for my lunch, I guess that was tax payer funded too huh?
I joined the PSA voluntarily, and I approve of this message (in the billboard above – nice one!).
I was pleased to see the Nats raised questions about the EFA in parliament this afternoon. It gave Annette King the opportunity to explain how easy it is for anyone to express their views or campaign for the election (as with the PSA billboards). King did this by waving about some leaflets from the vote-with-your-eyes-wide-open campaign – the don’t forget these 3 Nat MPs.
The opposition kept asking supplementary questions, which gave King the opportunity to wave the leaflets in front of the cameras each time to show how good they were.
“djp
September 23, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Killinginthenameof,
actually most of the breaches have been by the idiots who voted for the law (trall through http://www.elections.org.nz/news/ if you like), Progressives have been refered to the police at least once”
The difference being the righties have been intentionally breaking the rules.
well done the PSA – smart campaign. keep it up.
MikeE has stumbled upon a point. groups like the PSA receive greater funding if there are more public service employees, its a no brainer. labour has increased the number of public service employees meaning the union made up of public service employees has more resources. if act slashed the number of pse’s the psa would have less resources. basic arithmetic.
So basically the ad uses misinformation to scare voters away from the parties with tax cut policies. What a triumph.
Dont you guys ever wonder why you have to lie to score political points?
This is why you are going to lose the election; because you keep lying to people. You assume people are ignorant of the facts, and sure, some are.
But if those people are becoming fewer and fewer, then all you are doing is insulting more and more peoples intelligence. They know that National has said it isnt selling anything or reducing staff numbers in their first term. And unlike you, they dont automatically think that anything National says is a lie.
On this point, this is another reason why you will lose this election; you refuse to grow up and engage the real world like adults. You prefer to live in your own simple minded fantasy world, where National is evil and Labour is pure and good. Which would be fine if the rest of the country lived there with you. But they dont. And increasingly people are realising that you lot are unbalanced, and are questioning why they ever voted you in in the first place.
Step out from behind the screen smeared with bullshit through which you view the world, stop congratulating yourselves for creating a pretty piece of propaganda, stop desperately using that piece of propaganda as proof that the EFA is not-a-bad-law-at-all-actually and look at what you are reduced to doing to retain power.
Kimble: From memory the Nay’s came in in 1990 promising exactly the same thing. That they would ‘cap’ the public service. In fact they cut it.
They also said that they weren’t going to do anything significant to the economy. They then found an excuse and screwed the economy into a long recession.
That is why people who lived through it are so ready to disbelieve their ‘policies’ this time.
IMO: For the Nay’s any excuse will do. If they can’t find one then they will inflate a smaller issue into a ‘crisis’. John Key’s charming smile and A4 figleafs masquerading as policy can’t conceal that.
“That is why people who lived through it are so ready to disbelieve their ‘policies’ this time.”
The national accounts that National picked up when they took power were very different to what everyone was lead to believe. This is something you are obviously deliberately forgetting. It was the deception of the Labour party that forced the turn-around from National, not any inherent evilness.
Back then Labour was looking like they might be on the way out and so they lied about the state of the governments books, basicaly putting their own well being ahead of New Zealands. Today, Labour is looking like they might be out, so Cullen promises enough extra spending to put the country into a deficit.
Once again they have screwed over NZ to improve their electoral chances.
They did it with a poison pill budget (which Cullen actually gloated about if you recall), they did it with the EFA, they did it with their support of a corrupt policitican, they are doing it by entrenching their cronies in the public sector, they are doing it by politicising the public service, they are doing it by criticising the privelages committee and the SFO, and they are doing it by rushing through legislation without proper consideration and discussion.
You guys wet yourselves over imaginary Americans funding National, but in reality the biggest threat to political freedom and democracy in New Zealand right now is another Labour led government.
But you guys simply cannot see that. You are psychologically incapable. Just look at your opinion.
“For the Nay’s any excuse will do.”
What does that even mean? That National will get in and reneg immediately on what they promised? Basically dooming themself to being a one term government. Think about how insane it is to assume that.
“If they can’t find one then they will inflate a smaller issue into a ‘crisis’.”
You mean like the EB? You remember them? An insignificant little group of people that put out a single pamphlet and scared Labour into unilaterally changing New Zealands electoral law in their own favour.
Politicians beat up issues. They all do it, so dont try and say that it is anything unique to your political opponents. Thats just childish.
“John Key’s charming smile and A4 figleafs masquerading as policy can’t conceal that.”
So all you are saying is that John Key has a charming smile, and no policies. Well the first part is subjective, but the second is plain wrong. National has released plenty of policy. In contrast Labour seems to have released more National policies than their own.
Like I said, this is why you will lose the election; you expect everyone to believe your bullshit, and anyone part way educated on the issue in question will just be offended by the insult.
Just look at your language here. Is that the language of a person who is willing to engage in a rational political debate? No. It is just the ranting of someone so full of hate that he has blinded himself to reality.
And again, this is why you are going to lose the election. Because you are so divorced from reality that you are completely incapable of engaging in rational debate.
Anyone you talk to can straight away see that you arent interested in what National has to say. Because even if they say something you agree with, you will assume they are lying.
Seriously. Grow the fuck up.