ACT Finance Spokesman Rodney Hide today said the Alliance budget would spell disaster for small businesses already under pressure.

"Jim Anderton's budget is bad news for jobs and bad news for families.

"Jim Anderton is hiking income tax up to a top rate of 47 cents in the dollar and bringing in a whole range of new taxes - land taxes, stamp duty, pollution taxes, Financial Transaction taxes and across the board tariffs. These extra costs will kill off business and jobs.

"The job losses will hit families hard. They will also struggle because the price of all goods will jump 10% because of the Alliance tariff policy. The cost of everything will go up.

"It's dangerous nonsense from Jim Anderton to claim he will create 90,000 new jobs with his extremist tax, spend and bust policies.

"Jim Anderton budgets on halving the cost of unemployment in three years. The only way this would happen is if hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who wanted a job went to Australia because Jim Anderton with Labour would wreck job prospects here.

"This Alliance budget is very damaging for Labour who cannot distance themselves from the extremist policies of the Alliance.

"With the Alliance now positioned 'at the heart' of a Labour Government today's budget will be very damaging to the centre-left vote," said Rodney Hide.

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>>