Wage gap is the John Key credibility gap

Marty G
14 years ago
Categories: Economy, john key, phil goff, slippery, wages
Tags: broken promises, john ansell, wage gap

You won’t see many nice words written about John Ansell on this site. He’s the guy who came up with the Iwi/Kiwi billboards which were a key feature National’s racist campaign in 2005. Still, he is a voice of the Right and he takes John Key to the cleaners in this post:

I left National in 2008 because I could see that John Key had no ambition for New Zealand, only for himself and his party.

Two years later, Key and National are riding high on their wave of false promises, while the Sunday Star-Times reports the all-too-predictable reality: Kiwi wages slip further behind.

For once I can’t help but agree with Phil Goff, who describes Key’s promise of catching Australia as ‘reckless and dishonest’:

‘He was undertaking to the New Zealand electorate that he had a secret plan whereby he could catch up with Australia, and the truth is he had no such plan. And, far from catching up, New Zealand has fallen further behind.’

Key’s motto, as far as I can see, is ‘You can fool most of the people most of the time.’ And it seems to be working a treat

Say you’re ambitious for the country. (When you’re not.)

Say you’ve got a plan for growth. (When you haven’t.)

Keep an eye on that Tasman Wage Gap. Because it’s also the John Key Credibility Gap.

If it closes, he’ll have silenced many a doubter. If it keeps widening – as we all said it would the PM’s political epitaph could well be (to paraphrase Julius Caesar):

I came, I smiled, I tinkered.

There’s a nickname for John Key that’s picking up currency from both Left and Right around the blogosphere: ‘smile and wave’. The one thing Key can be depended on is to turn up grinning in some cheesy photo op. All his promises fall by the wayside. Meanwhile, 276,000 Kiwis are jobless, the wage gap with Australia keeps widening, and so does Key’s credibility gap.