Government targets need not privilege

“The government is committed to fairness and to opportunity for all, Finance Minister Michael Cullen said today. “That is why our policies are focused on need rather than privilege.”

He said that focus would be clearly expressed in the coming budget, particularly in the package to assist low to middle income families and in the government’s continuing strong commitment to public health and education.

“We are determined that the dividend from New Zealand’s strong economic performance of recent years and from the government’s disciplined fiscal management will be invested where the need is greatest and where it can deliver the greatest good.

“It will not be frittered away in tax cuts to the rich – cuts that would deliver another $168 a week to someone on Dr Brash’s salary of $195,000 a year and another $295 a week to someone on the Prime Minister’s salary of $305,000.

“This government is about reducing inequality, not promoting it. “Dr Brash’s policy agenda of aggressive privatisation, benefit cuts, reductions to New Zealand Superannuation, abolition of the minimum wage and removal of worker protections would have the opposite effect reducing the opportunities available to the many to line the pockets of the few.

“Dr Brash believes that the rich have to earn more to work harder and the poor have to earn less to work harder because he believes there are two kinds of people in this world – the rich and the rest.

“National is for the rich. We’re for the rest,” Dr Cullen said.

© Scoop Media

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>>