The Alliance is insulting the intelligence of the country's students with its crazy tertiary bribe announced yesterday, according to ACT Education Spokesman Donna Awatere Huata.

Speaking to students at Canterbury University today Mrs Huata said the Alliance was becoming more and more extreme in its policy announcements to try and lift its poll ratings.

"By releasing such ill-thought out policies the Alliance is alienating itself from those it's trying to woo and the Party is becoming a major embarrassment to its coalition partner, the Labour Party.

"Students know that while the Alliance is promising to tax today's hard working New Zealanders to shoulder the burden of their tertiary education, in a few years time those students will be the ones struggling to run their own businesses and pay for the Alliance's promises.

"The cost of the Alliance's policy would be astronomical. While the Alliance was robbing hard working New Zealanders to pay for its tertiary bribe it would completely ignore the education needs of the many thousands of children struggling just to make it past primary school.

"It is at the pre school and primary school level that we need to be focusing our efforts to make sure we have students who can go on to University. At present one in four children can't even read or write properly.

"The politics of envy promoted by the Alliance have no place in New Zealand today. We all have to pitch in to get ahead. We all have to look to the future and carefully study the impact of decisions and promises being made by politicians today.

"The Alliance's tertiary policy is nothing more than a cynical attempt to win votes. It is wrong for the Alliance to play with the futures of our tertiary students in this way. They are being totally dishonest.

"The Alliance's latest extremist policy is a warning to us all that the Party is not fit to be anywhere near Government," said Donna Awatere Huata. ENDS

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>>