Matthew Hooton is one of the most important spin masters of the right, if the Death Star had an architect, he’d be it. How he spins is how the msm follows and his latest spin lines spun throughout his interview on Firstline on TV3 this morning give a glimpse of how the msm and the corporate political punditry will start to create the narrative structure around the Government leading into the 2014 election.
Whenever Matthew opens his mouth, out pop gems of how well the NZ economy is prospering. It’s a gold plated ‘we don’t know how lucky we are’ anthem that counters the need for radical changes to the economy as prescribed by the Greens and Labour.
What Hooton’s good time karaoke collection of feel good tunes totally glosses over of course is the inequality. Yes NZ has outperformed the rest of the worlds Wall street corporate gangster created meltdown but that’s because of its geographic micro-climate generated position sheltered by China & Australia. It’s luck, not amazing economic stewardship that has given us this level of economic performance and all that treasure is pouring into the pockets of those who are doing well and not into those on the bottom of the heap.
As Dr Wayne Hope’s impressive blog today points out, this is seeing the inequality in NZ soar. Hooton will have to try and speak out of both sides of his face on this one, praising the economic strength of NZ while denying any of it go into helping the mouths of the 270 000 children living in poverty.
The glaring inequality that now permeates NZ society will be more and more difficult to hide while Hooton continues to sing the praises of a strong economy. He can’t have it both ways, if NZ is doing so well, when will that start being redistributed to those in more need than those who have benefitted so generously from National’s tax cuts?
What Mr Hooton really means of course is that things are doing swimmingly well for Mr Key and his wealthy mates. At some point this stops becoming cheerleading for the economy and starts looking like gloating.
Luckily for Mr Hooton, no one in the msm will ever ask him that question.
Also worthwhile remembering is that the National government was well placed to whether the storm after Labour paid down sovereign debt, as this Treasury graph illustrates (but which Righties don’t like to concede);
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/2010/bps/04.htm/bps10-03.gif
Unfortunately, National squandered this healthy economic positrion with two unaffordable tax cuts in April 2009 and October 2010.
This left a $2 billion-plus shortfall in government revenue and requiring massive borrowing to sustain, http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5106876/Government-debt-now-71-6-billion (Again which Nat/ACT supporters don’t like to concede)
Ummm… I don’t know many National party supporters who deny there were tax cuts.
The first I believe were already scheduled under the Labour government pre 2008.
The second were designed to be fiscally neutral by the independent advisers in Treasury as it was accompanied by a rIse in GST.It may not have been at the time due to less consumption but this US being made up at the moment. One of the biggest reasons behind the better Government position in the budget is increased revenue from GST.
A brief reminder of the tax “switcharoo” – June 2012 total government tax revenue = 55b individual tax 24b. 2012 total crown tax revenue remains same as 2006, though we now pay 3.5b more GST p/a (10.5 to 14b), 1.5b less corporate tax p/a (10 to 8.5), while individual yield remains 24b. In 2000 total tax revenue was 36b individual tax was 15.5b corporate 4b GST 8.5b. The simplest way to measure this argument = how much did you earn & spend in 2000 – 2006 – 2012. losers, all of us but the filthy few. Our economy grew, but funded McMansions & multinational conglomerates, tax switch my butt. Trickle down my arse!
Everybody seems to be forgetting the Canterbury rebuild when discussing how well the economy is doing. Billions of dollars are getting spent down here, a lot of that money coming from re-insurers from overseas. The whole NZ economy must be getting a huge fillip courtesy of the earthquakes. John Key and co are patting themselves on the back, but the fact is they’re benefiting from the Canterbury disaster.
The flip side of that argument is that they weathered the damage the earthquake did to the economy well. Given they had to deal with a massive unexpected increase in demand for funds and loss of tax revenue.
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