Treasury-Inspired Budget Fails To Deliver For Tauranga - Peters

“Dr Cullen has presented a ‘fiscally-prudent’ Treasury-inspired budget that misses a golden opportunity to deliver the means of growing our economy, fostering education, or taking care of our health and welfare,” New Zealand First Leader and Tauranga MP Winston Peters said this morning.

“My concern for the people of Tauranga is that our sons and daughters will be under-funded and debt-bound in their studies, and that our hospital and health services will be run down as the result of this Scroogean budget.

“A reduction in roading funding bodes ill for our city as we struggle to keep up with the infrastructural demands made by our vibrant growth,” Mr Peters said.

“Leased laptops for school principals and underfunded health boards appear to be the social highlights of a budget that will only be applauded by that small but influential group of business moguls who continue to hold sway in New Zealand. How can we expect to have a knowledge economy when we are loading our students with more and more debt?

“One would have expected that a second Labour budget with input from the Alliance and the Greens would have put people first. Regrettably, they have simply given us more of the same – and left their supporters out in the cold,” Mr Peters concluded.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>