The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’:
$750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork
$700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork
$665 million to buy the national rail operations – Pork
$446 million for community organisations – Pork
$171.6 million in operational funding to schools – Pork
$164.2 million for cervical cancer immunisation -Pork
$150 million a year to keep young people in school or training until 18 – Pork
$72.1 million over 10 years to clean up Rotorua lakes – Pork
$46.5 million for home-based support for injured people – Pork
$35 million for a shared-equity pilot scheme for homebuyers – Pork
$22.4 million over four years for state house insulation – Pork
Of course, none of this is pork: it is money going where is is needed, not for electoral gain. No doubt there are legitimate targets out there (Winston Peters’ $9m subsidy for the racing industry springs to mind), but what National and the Herald are doing here is running a radical right-wing argument whereby every piece of spending, from R&D research to insulating homes for the poor, is a waste of money. National’s education spokesperson Anne Tolley even came out yesterday and attacked more money for kids’ education as ‘pork’.
So what does this all mean? If National says it’s pork, they obviously wouldn’t spend it themselves. So, we begin to see what a National government would do:
No more money for health. No money for R&D. No flood protection. No money for transport. No insulation for the poor. No more money for education. No money for search and rescue. No cancer immunisation. No lakes cleanup. No hand-up for young home buyers.
But, of course, plenty of real pork – huge tax cuts for the rich.
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