19 REASONS NOT TO VOTE NATIONAL -- Please read and share!! #NZELECTION2014 1. The Key government is planning to reduce the extent and quality of public services. You think you’ve done your share of belt tightening? Think again. While offering the lure of tiny tax cuts in 2017, the government plans to cut the range and quality of public services. In this year’s Budget, government spending is set to fall proportionate to the size of the economy – from 33% of GDP in 2013 to 29.9 % by mid 2018. Reportedly, Finance Minister Bill English has an even lower target in mind: “We want that to be dropping to 26 per cent and 25 per cent in the next six and seven years.” 2. Despite the existing levels of child poverty. Working For Families has been cut by stealth. 3. National’s decision to stop payments into the Cullen Superannuation Fund has been idiotic. Since its inception, the NZ Superannuation “Cullen” Fund has earned nearly $25 billion, and in 2013 it earned $5.5 billion – more than the entire asset sales programme. 4. National has failed to acknowledge, let alone resolve the housing crisis. 5. The government has violated privacy and increased the powers of the surveillance state. 6. Beyond the Christchurch rebuild (of which only 10% has actually happened), there’s not much going on in the way of net job creation. 7. After six years of this government, New Zealanders are barely keeping their heads above water. Between 2010-2013 the median weekly income for people in paid employment rose by 9.6% but inflation rose by 8.7%, transport spending rose 20.8 % and food spending rose by 8.5%. 8. Our sovereignty in foreign policy and trade has been diminished. The Trans Pacific Partnership (a) involves treaty commitments that over-ride national sovereignty (b) is being conducted in secret without any significant public input or mandate and (c) is widely acknowledged even by conservative trade experts to be driven by US corporate agendas that have very little to do with free trade. If completed, the deal will also expose New Zealand to so-called ‘investor state’ dispute procedures whereby foreign corporates will be empowered to sue future New Zealand governments if they happen to lose money when we pass laws to protect our environment or the health of our citizens. 9. No discernible plan exists for growing the economy in partnership with the private sector. Despite the rhetoric about the virtues of an export led economy, exports were a declining proportion of the New Zealand economy, even before dairy prices started tumbling in February. What’s missing is any sense as to where to the rest of the developed world is going. The world is utilizing radically different business models in – for example – the energy sector, in new materials, and around concepts of sustainability. We’re missing out on the speed and complexity of technology change. 10. The Key government sold down stakes in our highly performing assets – power companies and Air New Zealand – for no good social or economic reasons. 11. Our export economy is still dangerously dependent on dairy products and raw logs. Despite the promise by Finance Minister Bill English to “ re-balance” the New Zealand economy from its dependence on relatively low value agriculture commodities, it still hasn’t happened. 12. The Key government has presided over persistently high levels of unmet, unmeasured need in our health system. 13. A slim Budget surplus has been achieved by real cuts in health and education. This will get worse. From 2014-2017, Nationals projected health spending is cut 9.8%, education spending is cut 1.7%, and environment spending is cut 13.9%. 14. Child poverty is being virtually ignored. However poverty is measured, the figures are shameful. The 1982 level of child poverty was 14 per cent. Since then, it’s doubled, according to the 2013 Child Poverty Monitor, with one in four children now living in poverty. Today, child poverty is embedded in our vernacular with almost 280,000 children impoverished – that’s something like the population of Hamilton and Dunedin combined. 15. The Ultra Fast Broadband rollout is too little, too slow, and is self-defeating. 16. The Key government has lowered the standards of ethical governance, and accountability. When it gets hit with scandals of its own making, the Key government routinely saddles the subsequent inquiries with narrow terms of reference that exempt itself from scrutiny. 17. The state’s coercive treatment of beneficiaries will pick up pace. A mean society beset already by crimes of resentment and desperation, is about to become a whole lot meaner if National is re-elected. 18. The government is failing to fund the gathering of essential information. As even conservative NZ Herald columnist Fran O’Sullivan has indicated, the government has not invested in some of the basic information gathering that’s essential to good decision making – not even in a contentious area like foreign ownership of land, and foreign speculation in our housing stock. 19. National and its crackpot allies in the Act Party still believe cutting taxes is a path to growth.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 05:45:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015