Robson-on-Politics - 2 October 2007

National's plan

National has been outlining its agenda for New Zealanders:

Greater privatisation of health services as a precursor to less access to medical support for families.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2161963,00.html

The sale of 25% of State Owned Enterprises as a precursor to selling all the family silver.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=49&objectid=10465713

Pushing the Crown into greater indebtedness to foreign lenders in order to deliver unfunded income tax cuts for those already on higher incomes, a precursor to weakening the Crown's balance sheet.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4204994a6160.html

It is a programme that offers higher costs and burdens to working families, less government support to personal savings such as KiwiSaver and less support for national savings such as the New Zealand Superannuation Fund - and a big fire-sale of the assets that we all own to a select, few major transnational corporations.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10465138& pnum=0

And now the stunning new proposal to have private ownership of state schools !

There is no question that, as more and more people are made aware of what the National Party stands for, that less and less people will consider voting National in next year's election.

National wants to do a Telecom on KiwiBank

These dinosaurs would do a Telecom on Kiwibank.

This party that has no respect for the wishes of the majority of New Zealanders and would do an Air NZ on NZ Post.

This party, which is against the national interest, would do a NZ Rail on our electricity generation companies (Meridian Energy, Genesis Power and Mighty River Power) - and all the rest of the many successful 100 per cent taxpayer-owned companies listed in the schedule to the State Owned Enterprises Act.

National insults our intelligence by failing to be upfront

National's agenda has in practice always been to sell-off the entire 100% of State Owned Enterprises, but in 2007 it insults our intelligence by fudging the issue because the party is not proud of its own anti-New Zealand policy.

Instead of saying up front that they will sell the Crown's full shareholdings in these successful New Zealand-owned companies, National instead absurdly says that what it would do instead is initially sell 20 or 25 per cent of shareholdings.

From an economic and constitutional perspective, that is even worse than the bad old policy of selling the full 100% of Crown shareholdings because National's 2008 policy proposes to maintain taxpayers' financial risk in owning assets - while taking away all Ministerial responsibility or taxpayer control over the assets that we would partly own.

National's assets sale policy has gone from Dumb to Dumber over the past decade.
The National/ACT platform is clearly rejected by a majority of New Zealanders and a majority of the electorate will reject National's snake oil and weasle words.

National threatens to borrow, borrow, borrow overseas

National, whenever it has been in government, always got out the Visa Card and borrowed heavily overseas to fund unaffordable income tax cuts for the richest in our society.

Too many people aged over 40 are by now fully switched on to how utterly destructive that National Party strategy is for our society.

I am sure this issue will come back to bite National on the backside in the final weeks of the campaign as Labour and Progressive candidates get the opportunity to directly meet with and talk with voters about the real issues next election campaign. When responsible people hear that National wants to take us back to the "more government borrowing" nonsense of the past, they will not want to vote National.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4204994a6160.html

Poll points to 4th term progressive Labour-led government

You can bank on there being a swing against National in the final few weeks of the campaign as working families do their sums and figure out what National means.

According to a Saturday poll in the NZ Herald, if an election were held now then around 60 seats
would go to Labour/Progressive/Green versus 57 seats for National/ACT.

Given that over 90 percent of voters in the seven Maori Electorates voted last election for a Labour-led government with their party vote, as Maori voters have overwhelmingly done for 70 years, then no doubt the four Maori Party M.P.s would not stand in the way of their supporters' democratic aspiration for a Labour-led government.

But that is now - with no serious national discussion on the National Party's ugly agenda.

This time next year, National's level of support will ease back to the level of the actual level of support that exists in the community for its ugly agenda. There is no way that real support will translates into 57 seats, or nearly half of the seats in Parliament.

(They got 48 seats in 1999, 50 seats in 2005 and 27 seats in 2002 when current Deputy Leader Bill English was National leader. The real level of support for the Right Wing agenda is no doubt somewhere between 27 abd 50 seats).

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10466659

And from our special Oz correspondent.

With the election date still unannounced, promises worth at least $60 million a day since the Federal Budget in May have been made by both parties in this run-up period to the election. The Liberal Coalition government has made spending announcements worth around $8.8 billion, targeting indigenous intervention ($2.1 billion), disability assistance ($1.8 billion) and $1.1 billion worth of additional drought aid.

Labor have promises worth around $9.5 billion, not including $4.7 billion for a key policy of creating a high-speed internet network which will be funded from existing telecommunications money, partly coming from the Future Fund. They are emphasizing gains for health, education, superannuation and the environment.

Labor's policy to replace the Government's relatively new employment law, WorkChoices, has been warmly embraced. Despite millions of dollars of government ads to promote WorkChoices, a hard-hitting ACTU campaign, reflecting widespread workplace dissatisfaction, has largely destroyed WorkChoices credibility.

Labor in government would sign Kyoto, introduce carbon trading and cut emissions by 60% by 2050. Detail is not however known on their policy for short-term and immediate emissions-reduction targets, which have the biggest impact on households, or if Labor would give the same protection to the big polluters (like John Howard has proposed) by issuing free permits.

Labor has given notice to state governments that they will have to do a lot better with their hospital and health responsibilities or they will centralized at the Federal level, a popular initiative and outsmarting the Liberals who had done this in one marginal seat in Tasmania but stepped back from early talk of doing it in non-marginal seats. Both major parties are talking about hospital on site training for nurses (like the old days) and Labor says it will phase out full-fee courses, creating a revenue gap for universities, the opposition estimate, to be around $500 million.

With Kevin Rudd having a reputation for a top-down approach, with discipline and control a key feature of his leadership, and policies speaking to ordinary working families, Australians may well vote in a Labor government when the election is finally called.

ENDS

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