If you watched TV news last night you could be forgiven for thinking that a circus was on when Internet MANA launched its election campaign today.
The reporting was abysmal but I won’t rehash it here because it’s been described elsewhere by others.
What the TV journalists failed to report was the boldest, most creative and dynamic policy on employment from any political party for two generations.
What was announced was the first stage in implementing a “Right to Work” policy based on full – yes full – employment.
If there’s one lesson we should have learned from the last 40 years is that “the market” can’t provide jobs for everyone and in fact is not interested in providing jobs for everyone. Big employers like to have a sizeable pool of unemployed to help keep wages down – one of the reasons we have such a low-wage economy in New Zealand.
So Internet MANA launched its election campaign on Sunday promising 100,000 new jobs a year for the next five years…
Internet Party leader Laila Harre made the announcement saying unemployment was New Zealand’s biggest problem, affecting communities from the Far North to the Deep South and that we need to move from managing unemployment to ending unemployment.
“The plan is to create 50,000 permanent jobs and up to another 50,000 shorter term jobs a year over the next five years through initiatives to tackle youth and long term unemployment and develop a world leading digital technology workforce”
So how will it be funded? Through the creative use of about 20% of ACC’s current reserves.
Remember how National hiked ACC levies in their first year in office? They said ACC needed the extra money to pay the full lifetime cost of any claim rather than use the “pay claims as you go” approach which has worked so well since ACC was brought in by Labour in the 1970’s.
The real reason National increased rates was to help privatise ACC but potential corporate buyers realised they could not run the system as efficiently as it currently runs and make a decent profit on top.
So National’s failure to privatise ACC means the corporation now has very large cash reserves which Internet MANA will put to excellent community use to implement a policy of full employment.
Once this initial jobs stimulus is up and running it will be sustained with a whole host of Internet MANA polices (tax and regional development for example) to make full employment a sustainable reality.
The dignity and self-respect that comes to workers, their families and whole communities from having a job will be a reality with Internet MANA. Nothing less is acceptable.
What jobs ? Doing what ?
Exactly.
IMP are just going to pay people out of the government’s money to create no production or meaningful output whatsoever. It’s just a large scale expansion of welfare.
Will they continue to pay people full wages year on year, resulting in completely draining ACC’s reserves?
Calling it a ‘job’ is a farce. It’s really just an unaffordable populist scheme designed to win votes.
If you think there are no things needed to be done in society then you’re completely out of touch.
Chch is still a disaster zone, we have a housing crisis, we need to switch from fossil fueled energy to renewables, we have hungry kids, we need to redesign our cities for a post-oil age, we have an aging population which requires major shifts in employment/training, we need to shift from primary industries to digital/value added, we have an environment that needs cleaning up, we have species that need protecting…
…all that is off the top of my head and none of those needs get fulfilled by free market capitalism. This might be a surprise to you Mark but our society, economy and environment are all at a breaking point and some shit needs to change. Investing in full employment is not a cost, its an investment. Get a brain!
There’s nothing in their policy to complete any of the above tasks you have outlined (Christchurch rebuild etc)
It’s nonsense for you to claim that is what the intention of the policy is to achieve those goals, when you yourself cannot provide appropriate citation.
Sorry noddy, I assumed you could use google. Name one you want a citation for
Confused22, I suggest that you would be less confused if you read some basic economics. Increasing the money supply in a location increases employment. That’s why Christchurch has the lowest unemployment in NZ.
Money is just an IOU and has no intrinsic value. Dont just take my work for it, the Bank of England says so and ought to know. It is given to people to enable them to get their fair share of the national wealth. It follows that if jobs need doing there should be money available to pay for what has been done. So the basic questions are:- 1) Are you so dull that you really cant see that there are plenty of jobs that need doing? 2) Why isn’t money readily available if the work is to be done?
The short answer is that if the Government provided money as debt free IOU’s there would be (indeed must be) enough money, but if the Private Banks create the money, not as IOU’s, but as interest bearing debt there can never be enough money because its use has been subverted.
Pretty vague on the money side John. Might pay to tell corkery to pull her head in to all though I’d do it from a distance.
Corkery should be sacked, it was a disgrace and such an opportunity to have the great policies that Laila put forward out there. Dotcom should not be on the stage, it isn’t his party.
No she shouldn’t be fired – that’s exactly how we should talk to a mainstream media that is failing to fulfill it’s basic obligation of informing people. They’re the ones who are disgrace.
If you find Corkery’s language offensive can I suggest you keep away from building sites, industrial yards, and all those other places where normal kiwis talk that way. Also you’ll want to be keeping away from Cam Slater too.
And Waghorn – did you even read the article? – it was very specific about the money side of things.
As a media liaison person you do not perform and it was a performance by Corker carry on like this, this is not Slater’s blog (of course I would never read his stuff) nor a building yard etc.
Who said a ‘media liaison’ person cannot ‘perform’?
Pam can!
It’s great to see some balls within a political party.
Just because ‘most all’ politicians use double-speak dribble when they speak, doesn’t mean they all have to.
She was simply enlightening the media numpties with a bit of home truth reality!
And everyone was shocked – oh no not the truth!
Awesome.
Laila will need more practice is all, to speak past the torrent of shock when IMP speak the truth out loud.
This is a good sign.
Revolution time is here!
Opinion.
Yes it is his party.
He pays the wages, he gets saved from life in a U.S. prision. Don’t you understand how this German scoundrel operates??
Nonsense, it is not HIS party Laila Harre is the leader of the Internet Party and Hone Harawira the leader of Mana. He is certainly not paying the wages of all the Internet Mana candidates.
Yay! Now THAT’s a cash cow that needs milking! What a great policy!
It would so be possible to return to full employment on the back of ACC. Just before I read this I was thinking about how the Clark government was basically shafted by Cullen’s financial ploys involving investing ACC funds (and losing money too). That’s not what hard working kiwis signed up for with their Labour ticket and there are far too many people permanently disabled by the treatment ACC hands out by abrogating their responsibility to those who pay in via the many channels to their coffers. It sure beats the cycleway and prison combo currently being deployed under National.
Jane – are you perhaps confusing two funds? From memory, Michael Cullen didn’t make any changes to the funding of ACC. However, the current Government ditched the ‘pay as you go’ concept and introduced ‘pre-funding’ which in effect created an investment slush-fund which has been a God-send for some private companies (e.g. Willis Bond etc.) but didn’t, as seems was the intention, result te primary aim of gifting ACC to the private sector. The former Finance Minister’s baby was the so-called Cullen Fund. The purpose of that fund was to mop up excess Government revenue to invest in order to subsidise future superannuation payments. This is the fund that the current Government is happy to show as an asset but stopped funding when it gave tax cuts to the wealthiest NZers and socked the rest with extra GST. Generally, the Cullen Fund makes healthy profits by chucking money at the usual private sector suspects which adds to internal inflation through the likes of Public Private Partnership rorts in NZ. This fund also finances the likes of the IDF military suppliers and no doubt plenty of other unethical enterprises, as part of its international investment portfolio.
John Campbell recently ran a piece about government ministers refusing to front on his show. One would have thought the MSM would be more concerned about this, but no, they harass someone who isn’t even standing for government office.
Brook Sabin the son of a National Party MP entirely missed the spirit of the Internet Mana launch.
I saw Sabin at the Kelston Roadtrip event so he has heard Kim’s speech before. It is not news. Ex copper Mike Sabin is an embarrassment of an MP even for National.
Mike Sabin ran a drug consulting firm–Methcon that would charge poor Northland communities grappling with P issues $1000 min for a seminar.
But back to John’s post–full employment is a political decision that business does not support so the people have to do it themselves.
Ha !!!! ….MSM…. they’ve got their shoes parked under FJK ‘ s bed . And their slippers as well.
Matter of fact , FJK’s bed is gettin pretty damn crowded these days…the guy could corner the international market on footwear….
It is funny how Krim Dot Con said once the party was set up he would take a backseat as he was just the financier. The only backseat he has taken is the one in his vehicle when he scurries away from the press like a scared rabbit. He has made himself front and centre pulling the puppet strings not behind the scenes. Thank heaven he can’t stand in any electorate or list. I wonder who Pam Corkery got her elocution lessons from.
If this were true then the policies of the Internet party wouldn’t be so far to the left surely.
I really like Pam Corkery 🙂 she says it like it is, from her perspective. Clear concise and honest.
Yes, bad reporting. Yes, ignoring policy.
But this could have been avoided if KDC wasn’t at the campaign launch right? Did we honestly expect the media to ignore KDC and report the policy? Please tell me InternetMANA didn’t think that.
If the whole fracas was a ploy to keep Key’s lame new policy off the headline, then that’s great – it worked. But it is now time to fire Pam Corkery and bring in a press secretary who the media will be happy to work with.
Don’t underestimate the spitefulness and unprofessional nature of NZ’s media. Brooke Sabin spent last week exposing Whale Oil’s lies, and then Sunday afternoon perpetuating Whale Oil’s lies.
Of course, to anyone with a brain it may seem unbelievable that in the wake of Hager’s book the media will follow Whale Oil’s lies, but that’s what we saw yesterday. Be careful with our media – they’re ignorant, stupid, money-hungry shit-stirrers. They are happy to repeat Whale Oil’s lies if it means more advertising money – they have no integrity
What Pam said was spot on, it’s just that the media control what is broadcast about what is said and so they’ll obviously going to try and shot the messenger, one way or another.
Let’s face it, she’s got it right, they are (the Lame Street) Glove puppet media.
They’re not independent and thankfully some one associated with the press was willing to tell them so.
What I say to the Lame Street Media is……If the hat fits………………… and the true often hurts……
“…But it is now time to fire Pam Corkery and bring in a press secretary who the media will be happy to work with…”
I disagree with you.
It would be more proper to say “It is now time to fire the media, and bring in some reporters that Pam will be happy to work with.”
opinion.
Is that all the article? wow! I expected more from the dailyblog.
And why are you complaining about mainstream media not providing much coverage? Can you not do that yourself on the dailyblog? after all this is a website that reports on such matters is it not? Do I sense a little frustration and not being considered by mainstream media? boo hoo grab a tissue, wipe those tears and get over it. Welcome to the real world.
And I have a question? Is this policy just empty words? Because I am going to be following it closely and monitoring the stats if Internet Mana get into government. And I will call them out on it if they fail to fulfil this promise.
And where exactly are they going to get all those 100k jobs from? thin air?
Wow big threat from you Anonoryan.
Really well if you are so hell bent on making sure ‘political parties..’ keep their promises..then are you going to hold National to account for all the promises they have NOT kept?
Oh man, who let the trolls out?
Anonoryan, why shouldn’t the jobs come from ‘thin air’, thats where the money comes from.
Good on you ANONORYAN.
Glad to know you’re watching our backs!
By the way, you spelled it wrong – you wrote ‘mainstream’ media, but it’s spelled ‘lamestream media’!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHpVA_fO2zk
You will likely enjoy watching the link above – Woody Harrelson tells it the way it really is.
Opinion.
Making ‘pledges’ and ‘promises’, candidates and parties have no intention of keeping or will be unable to keep has become the hallmark of politics in NZ (and in most other countries).
Global extraction of conventional oil peaked over 2005 to 2008, and desperation measures to maintain the energy supply via fracking etc. are already failing. The decline in economic activity that is occurring in most ‘advanced’; economies has been kept from the public view via manipulated and fabricated economic data, but reality cannot be manipulated.
The other important aspect is that the longer the present system keeps functioning at all, the worse off the next generation will be, inheriting a resource-depleted planet undergoing abrupt climate change because of ‘jobs’.
Apparently, telling the truth is political suicide because the masses do not want to know and want the Age of Entitlement to go ion forever.
There will be a rude awakening form many between 2016 and 2018, when the steep sector of the net energy decline graph is reached.
In the meantime, “Ponzi schemes forever,” say the majority of candidates.
This policy may sound good, but raises a few questions.
Perhaps some questions can be answered by listening to two audio tracks available from Radio Live, where Laila Harre spoke with Willy and Ali from shortly after 12:30 pm today (Mon. 25 August). Click the audio for that time, and also the one starting at 12:45 pm, and at least in the second one Laila explains a bit about the Internet Mana employment policy:
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Audio.aspx
By the way I think Pam Corkery did IMP no favours by losing her temper. She is right in criticising the MSM, but she chose the wrong words and time, I fear. Doing this in front of running cameras and microphones is just not smart. It may not turn off those that will potentially support the IMP, but it will reflect badly to the majority out there, and with that some that may consider voting other progressive parties, who may in the end need IMP support to govern.
But Laila says something re that also.
Even with her answers, I expected a bit more clarity on what kind of jobs and project would be implemented should the policy be given a chance by the future government. Most unemployed will hardly be potential IT workers, I fear, as you need sound maths and science skills to do programming and the likes.
But then again, that may just be part of the plan.
Mark, not all jobs need to be hi-tech. There are plenty of service industry jobs needed but apparently no money to pay them. I have said earlier that shortage of money is never an excuse. Some will argue that paying more for service jobs will simply make us uncompetitive with trading partners, but that argument simply shows that the neo-liberal trading system doesn’t work.
If we were not burdened with crushing, unrepayable debt we could probably all live happily on less work and more leisure.
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