The big story of the week is National’s work rights policy that does nothing to further workers’ rights and actually undermines them in a number of subtle ways. There is no policy for increasing wages, none at all. In fact, the policies are likely to cut wages by taking bargaining power away from workers. Turns out John Key really meant it when he said “we would love to see wages drop“. A week and a half of pretty petty attacks on Winston Peters suddenly became much more serious when it emerged that Bob Jones had made a donation to a secret trust that was meant to go NZF but was either never passed on or never declared. These secret trusts are now illegal thanks to the Electoral Finance Act but it’s clear that parties who have used them need to open up their books so Kiwis can now who has been making large donations and be sure the trusts haven’t been used to circumvent spending limits.
Between the lines: Nats’ work rights policy
On its surface, National’s ‘workplace’ policy seems fairly mild but, when you look at what it actually means in practise it’s classic National: anti-worker, anti-rights, anti-wage rises…[more]
Take the money and run
The government will be providing New Zealand manufacturers with a tax incentive to outsource their production….[more]
Would Nats introduce work-for-the-dole?
Work-for-the-dole is a nice sounding slogan but it doesn’t work in practice. As with ACC and the 90 Day No Rights policy, National is following ideology, rather than doing what makes sense….[more]
The war on P
So here we have again, John Key and National saying one thing to voters and another thing to big business in this case the insurance industry….[more]
Culture of secrecy
It’s 4.45 on a Friday afternoon and National has just released its Outdoor Recreation policy…if you’re trying to kill media coverage of a policy and avoid any awkward questions then just before 5pm on a Friday is the perfect time to do it…[more]
Open up the trusts
The only way to clear all this up now is for all parties to open the books of their secret trusts so that Kiwis can finally be certain of who has been donating to parties and that the money has been used as donors intended…[more]
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