by frog
I thought it was strange to read Fran O’Sullivan suggesting that ‘Coalition mates need to be ready for National’s vision‘. Most of the parties in Parliament have a record over recent years of working together in governing or support arrangements of some sort or another. Among the few notable exceptions is National (by dint obviously of a long run in opposition). So if any party needs to prove its adaptability and teamwork it is not so much the smaller parties in parliament who, on the whole, well understand the score, but National, and to a lesser extent, Labour.
But the bit of O’Sullivan’s commentary that is really interesting is her repeated veiled references when talking about National’s vision to that word National dare not mention – privatisation:
- …a greater discipline on government spending…
- …rolling tax cuts, possibly even indexed to inflation…
- …big public/private sector partnerships…
- …major incentives for greenfields foreign direct investment…
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Sat, June 21st, 2008
Tags: , Fran O'Sullivan, Frog, frogblog, green party, greens, national party, new zealand, privatisation
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The line that caught my eye was:
“a greater discipline on government spending so the private sector can play a bigger role in the country’s fortunes”
It’s the same old stuff: Running down the state sector so the business buds of the National party can pillage the treasury and we have to pay user fees for more and more stuff so they can profit by it.
I’ve seen how this works in Ontario, Canada. They privatised driver license testing. So the private company that now runs it is never able to give you an appointment less than 5 weeks away. Their priority is on keeping the pipeline full and maximising revenue….not testing you so you can get your license and start a job that requires a license. If you fail, come back in ANOTHER 5 weeks….and with every financial incentive to fail you (you pay again!!) there are a lot of people failing. Oh…you don’t have to fail the first test if you take their $500 “driver training” course. If you didn’t take that, just asume you’ll be failed until they get their $500 out of you.
I’m serious. This is just one example of how it will go.
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National won’t have to privatise. They will do 100 years “leases”. We’ll still nominally own stuff…..but all the money from it will go to the lessee.
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Despite NOT being a Nat supporter, I do watch/listen to/read their interviews/handouts.
As the media so often say, “Labour Lite”.
So there must be a clear policy difference at some point.
So the guessing game continues as to which visionary policy and which point of difference.
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OutinFront,
“National won’t have to privatise. They will do 100 years “leases?. We’ll still nominally own stuff…..but all the money from it will go to the lessee.”
Its not as if National will be the first. Transpower did that as part of a tax avoidance scheme, under Labour’s watch.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4489794a13.html
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It goes to show how moronic National Party supporters to claim that Australia is some kind of low tax paradise.
They pay GST on property-which we don’t
They pay State Tax-which we don’t
They pay land tax-which we don’t
They pay Capital Gains Tax-which we don’t
They pay tax on rental income-which we don’t or at least if you bother trying to make a profit on it rather than writing it off your income tax.
They pay stamp duties on real estate-we don’t
And National could become our next government? God help us!
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Not “could” Sleepy….they WILL become the next government.
I would not get to worked up though, sadly Key is as much a socialist as you are, we can only hope that Key is ousted at some stage by Collins and they we might see a real National party PM.
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big bro,
Wake up and smell the coffee, your neoliberal mates have put the world economy through the ringer and its teetering on the edge of the abyss.
John Key, is not my kind of socialist.
He’s too evasive for me to be sure what he is. Its not for want of brains that he’s so vague about policies, not with the job that he had in the States.
You don’t get to become the head of Merrill Lynch’s global foreign exchange department or a member of the Foreign Exchange Comitte of the United States Federal Reserve if you’re not incredibly smart.
The only problem is that he’d be a diehard neoliberal ideologue or else he wouldn’t have reached those dizzying heights.
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So his sin was making money was it?
Given that according to you and Philu (not sure you want to be in that company) seem to be banging on about this impending doom can you tell me what YOU would do to stop it?
Now of course you cannot suggest communism as that has proven to be a failure but I would love to see what you suggest.
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SleepyTreehugger, there is a NZ-AUS tax comparison calculator linked through this page, if you’re interested:
http://tvhe.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/new-zealand-budget-2008-tax-cut-c alculator-2/
Obviously it doesn’t incorporate all the stuff you mention, but if you just want to measure day-to-day living…
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big bro,
“So his sin was making money was it?”
Where did I even imply that? I was saying that his vagueness on policy isn’t because he’s stupid, because he has to have been to have occupied the positions that he did. Hes just been indoctrinated in the neoliberal dogma.
“Given that according to you and Philu (not sure you want to be in that company) seem to be banging on about this impending doom can you tell me what YOU would do to stop it?”
Thats precisely the problem, it can’t be stopped. All that can be done is try and pick up the pieces after it blows up.
“Now of course you cannot suggest communism as that has proven to be a failure but I would love to see what you suggest.”
It has done no such thing. In the 1920s, Russia had a communist economy that you could argue was more liberal than those of the mixed economies of the European Union.
Stalin originally supported the NEP over that of the form advocated by Trotsky, but for some reason abandoned that position after he exiled Trotsky. I’m hardly one to advocate communism though. I’m more of a Social Creditor than a communist.
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this could help clear some minds..
“..why i’m voting republican/national..”
http://whoar.co.nz/2008/why-im-voting-republican/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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National will be government in a few months. The much needed swing to the right will begin then, and not before time.
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That’s optimistic of you…though I don’t suppose they could go tooo much further left.
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First rule of politics: don’t scare the horses.
Softly, softly catchee monkey.
Nats will be the government. If the Greens stick to their present course, they will remain outside government, once again.
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You mean if the Greens stick to their principles – which they will. I would much rather they formed a principled and honest opposition than pervert themselves just to share the benches with National, or Labour for that matter.
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Collins is a party hack in the Ryall, Power mold. It would be a sad day indeed for NZ if she became PM.
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frog: Agreed. Greens need to be able to speak the verifiable truth in the House on any issue and not be silenced or spin-dizzied by a coalition agreement with anyone.
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speaking of ‘party hacks in the power mold’..
simon ‘all the way with bush’ power was on agenda today..
it’s worth watching..
if only to confirm that he should have the moniker..’slippery’
he lifts ‘duck ‘n weave”/’say nothing’ to an art form..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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>>stick to their principles
New Zealand doesn’t want hard core Green principles.
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Mmm…surely there is a wish list of stuff they would like action on? Wonder if they would go with National (all EXTREMELY hypothetical here) if they were offered major concessions on say, climate change, public transport funding and food, but nothing else?
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I can already see this happening here. The iniquitous and incestuous relationship the Automobile Association has with government departments involved in driver training has already led to this type of behaviour at the Westgate AA in Auckland.
Young white guys can pretty much expect to fail the test first time round. Of course the theory is that they can afford to pay for a resit.
The same happens with the eye test at relicensing time. If you are white and middle class (therefore perceived as being able to pay more…) you will get a very strict ‘failed’ on the eyetest. While people of other races get ‘coached’ what to see in the display of the test machine.
Ive witnessed it at several branches of the AA.
We need to make every effort to retain a neutral public service and not out-source to private companies.
However, at the same time we need every New Zealander to recognize that we have been spending more than we can afford on government funded benefits and services.
The answer is to charge appropriately for government services, but not outsource to private companies. Obviously this needs to be accompanied by strict guidelines to prevent poor productivity (the usual bane of government run operations).
Shouldn’t be that hard for a National government to hire private CEOs to drive efficient government departments. That is my guess about what they will aim for.
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Privatisiation is a funny thing.
In principle, the state shouldn’t own anything that it doesn’t have to, so in principle, privatisation is a good thing.
The reality is that privatised entities (even those properly privatised overseas, unlike the NZ SOA pseudo-privatisation) are generally entities that shouldn’t have been privatised, because in their new shareholder owned status, in a monopolistic (or near monopolistic) position they then occupy, they are less good for the ordinary citizens of the country than the previous governmental owners.
As an example, all householders can purchase electricity from a choice of retailers, but there isn’t very many of them, and they don’t genuinely compete. They are a cozy pseudo-monopoly. If there was a cut-throat market with each customer wanted by several dozen retailers, then maybe margins would go down…
Unfortunately, political parties world-wide don’t think holistically or long term, they only read the first page of the memo, that says that government ownership is bad, and that the solution of that is to privatise. The law of unintended consequences follows…
Thats not to say there aren’t winners in many privatisations. In the medium term many UK citizens did very well out of gas privatisation, as wide public share ownership was encouraged, but over the long term, the shares have gravitated to places shares normally gravitate to, and thus the ordinary UK citizen is now less well served by their gas companies than they were prior to privatisation.
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StephenR
Right. Is it better to get through some important pieces of legislation, or none at all?
More a case of priorities than principles, as one doesn’t have to abandon principles in order to prioritize.
Greens,
And where were the Greens principles on the EFA? We know you know it was rubbish, but you still supported it.
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typo….”we know you knew it was rubbish”
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…or better than nothing, which makes me think the ETS will be supported too, unless they’ve realised their ‘mistake’.
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Can’t have it both ways, really.
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“First rule of politics: don’t scare the horses.
Softly, softly catchee monkey. ”
In other words, “don’t tell them what you arer going to do until after they’ve voted”. Worked well for Labour in 1984, will probably work for National in 2008.
Funny how neo-liberals are always going on about ‘freedom’, but don’t like the idea of putting their ideas up for debate and seeing how well they go down with the public. Oh yeah, ACT does that (though I read Heather Roy’s rant in the local paper a while back and the only clear policy was to give taxpayer-funded rebates to medical staff who stayed in NZ after their training) and look how many votes they get.
I was talking to a character from the World Bank the other day, a dyed-in-the-wool neo-liberal who blamed every failure on ‘not going far enough’. Just like the old Marxist idealogues who blame every failure of Marxism on ‘not going far enough’. And just like them, he’s moved to a government-funded bureaucracy where he can inflict his ideology on the developing world where democracy won’t get in the way. Plus ca change.
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Well to be fair, ACT’s policies are on their pledge card: http://www.act.org.nz/, it’s just that the media didn’t really cover the launch of it!
I hear that second paragraph though, as does say, South America, although I’m not sure if their current direction is going to do much better.
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Sam,
It’s all double-speak, omission, and deception. We tolerate it, so that’s what we get.
What’s that I hear? The left are always 100% up front, open and transparent, eh. They’re different. They care.
Tui, etc….
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Cynical old jaded types…essential
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(really)
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“The left are always 100% up front, open and transparent, eh. They’re different. ”
I reckon the left, or what passes for it these days (The Greens, Alliance, obscure Marxist churches), are more up front than the right (Labour, National, NZ First, whatever Peter Dunne’s party is called) – they usually have a lot of policy heads who love to talk about their plans and schemes. I’m not suggesting this leads to good ideas, but at least we know what they stand for.
This might be just a matter of size – small parties tend to be more willing to put up policies and ideas than the large ones who rely on momentum, compliant media and government money to get votes.
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Dunno. I’m not seeing much detail surrounding the Green Charter, for example.
When we ask “exactly what does this mean/how will you achieve it”, very few answers are forthcoming.
One wonders why that is?
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Patience, BP. We haven’t seen much National Party policy either. I’m sure all will be revealed over the next few months.
Unlike the Nats, who sometimes seem to make theirs up on the spot, the Greens do have a good excuse – their policy development process involves democratic membership participation. Usually several rounds of consultation to get a membership consensus agreement to each policy.
As a Green member I’ve got a couple of documents requesting membership input into the Greens Sustainable Business and Industrial Relations policies sitting in front of me right now. The policies obviously can’t be released until the process is complete.
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The National Party does in my opinion, have a good reason for not releasing policy – all their popular ideas tend to get stolen by the Labour Party. If they release policy too early, then Labour would pinch it and National would be relegated to another three years in Opposition.
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Why doesn’t NZ have set election dates?
No party would release policy into the current vacuum.
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May be right john-ston, but I don’t really think they’ll be that innovative, and if they’re actually palatable to Labour, that just means we’re going to basically have a Labour government with bigger tax cuts…but hey, at least they’ll get elected right?
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National – the policies you have when you’re not having any policies – or any that is, that they want you to know about before they’re elected.
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samiam said: Why doesn’t NZ have set election dates?
Very good question. I suspect it is because whoever has been the majority party in Government (be it Labour or National) over the years wants to retain an unfair advantage by being able to call the date of the election to suit themselves.
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I thought it was our election not their election. Hmmmm
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Any slim hope that the left might have harbored to retain power has been swept aside by the arrogance of Clark over the anti smacking referendum.
Why are the left so scared of public opinion?, what is so wrong with the public having their say on matters like this?.
The breathtaking way that Clark and co have totally ignored the wish of the people will see them hammered at the next election.
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I’m sure you’ll get the chance to substitute ‘right’ for ‘left’ there sometime in the next few years BB…
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Stephen
In nine years or so you may well be right, hopefully by then we will have seen the emergence of a real right wing party instead of Labour lite masquerading as National.
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Well yes I thought some would see National now as left-ish, but am reluctant to say so myself without a lot more policy.
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“hopefully by then we will have seen the emergence of a real right wing party instead of Labour lite masquerading as National.”
How about ACT and the Libertarianz? There seems to be a pretty goood right-wing spectrum available, just that nobody much wants to vote for it.
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Yeah! I always make a point of asking people who profess to detest everything Labour stands for – and therefore are going to vote National – why they don’t just go and vote ACT, and it’s inevitably a variant on ‘they’re too corporate’/'I’m actually happy to some tax, just not as much as I do now’/'they’re crazy’! All seems a little at odds with ‘detesting Labour values’, but there you go.
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Is anyone else as sick as I am of our political spectrum being seen as two dimensional; left and right?
It just doesn’t stack up anymore to see our leaders as either on the left, or on the right.
Every issue is multi-dimensional, and we simply MUST start to expect our political representatives to represent us more maturely.
How can anyone argue with the idea of an incoming government aiming for fiscal responsibility?? It is not “right wing” to want to balance the books. It is simply foolish to do anything else.
It is not “left wing” to provide benefits for old people and sick people, it is simply foolish, shortsighted and uncaring to do anything else.
Surely there must be a political system somewhere that stops unnecessary polarisation into “left and right wings”, and reaches multi-party understandings on critical issues.
That is what I was hoping for when I voted for MMP. There is no way I want to go back to First-Past-The-Post, but MMP has not delivered.
We must find a way to force our political parties to put aside their artificial polarisation. We are all sharing the same boat, regardless of whether the hole in the hull is on the right hand side or the left!!
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That’s easy Geek in the case of the Greens. It’s name is it’s policy. That puts the Green party in the ideal position to declare itself neutral and to have green, and green only, party policy. On all other issues its MP’s could conscience vote.
It need not have a pro Labour or National bent, just pro sustainability.
I know that I, for one, am not a supporter of the Green party per-se. I am a supporter of green policy and if Rodney or Winston or whoever comes up with a workable sustainable imitative then I’ll be right behind it.
I’d like to think that a huge number of kiwis are that way inclined as well.
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Greengeek
What you suggest is a nice idea but totally unworkable in the real world.
As long as you have those who passionately believe in the states right to run our life’s and those of us who feel just as strongly that the state has a very limited role in how we live then nothing will change.
MMP has not delivered because you have the tail wagging the dog and to suggest that we need to find a way to force the parties to put aside their beliefs defies reality.
Who is going to decide what the “hole in the hull” is and who is going to decide what the remedy is, you are NEVER going to get total agreement.
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I would say they simply all believe they have a solution to a problem – no party doesn’t care, it just seems that way to people who disagree with the method!
How has the tail wagged the dog if everyone is pissed off with Labour ? NZ1, UF and the Greens have all gotten small policies of their own enacted (and one big-ish if you count the Section 51 bill), but the last 9 years have been owned by Labour.
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“the Green party in the ideal position to declare itself neutral ”
I agree with Samiam. However, I sense the unspoken agenda will never allow it.
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