National is celebrating the creation of 1300 jobs (only 300 permanent) with a prison.
How many more prisons would they have to build to reverse the increase in unemployment under their watch and create 65,000 permanent jobs?
Only 217.
And you know what the anthem to that version of Planet Key would be, eh?
It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. The Nats are constantly trying to weasel out of their promise to create 170,000 jobs by saying that the private sector, not the Government creates jobs …. and the only job creation they can trumpet – a prison paid for by the government.
For that matter, the next biggest sources of new employment in the country are also the Government – public sector rebuild in Christchurch, and those bloody roads to nowhere.
The common theme to this, apart from the age old truth that it is government, not the private sector that creates big employment opportunities, is that the Government’s big employment schemes are not creating anything new and valuable – a for-profit prison when we already have too many beds and prisoner numbers are falling, replacing what we lost in Christchurch with a half-arsed rebuild (OK, most of the work has to be done in that case, but a huge opportunity is being lost), and spending $12 billion increasing our addiction to imported oil.
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