The line that the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind seem to believe without ever even questioning it is that National are far better economic managers than Labour.
Despite all the evidence that shows Labour lifts everyone up rather than just the already wealthy, NZers believe that rich people know better and always swallow the line that National are better economic managers.
Well, how are these economic mangers?
National have clocked up billions in debt while mutilating the State’s ability to raise revenue by selling off state assets because they believe in Government with a tiny g, and there ain’t no better way to escape social welfare obligations than raise debt and hack off any ability to pay for it.
That stops the Left from implementing social policy that people end up demanding.
Look at it another way…
…National have conned NZers and racked up so much debt future Governments are limited in what they can do to fix our country’s homeless crisis, housing crisis, mental health crisis, suicide crisis, rape culture crisis, poverty crisis and inequality crisis.
National have borrowed billions for tax cuts to the richest, underfunded our social services so privatisation looks preferable, implemented draconian welfare reforms and sold state assets to invest $400million into irrigation and dairy intensification.
All the while choking off public broadcasting so they act like lap dogs and not watch dogs.
This madness must end in September or we will be forever maimed by the National Party.
Great article. Also who benefits from the debt? Banks. What was John Key? A banker
Yes Merrill Lynch and maybe Goldman Sachs, any surprise
Yep, it’s shocking.
How about a few stickers…
‘Friends don’t let friends vote for the National party…”.
To get the bastards out, everyone needs to start to talk a bit more about politics, what the Natz have done to our country, and get all friends on board to vote!
Get it out there on social media… cool graphics, interesting satire etc to reach those who are not into politics.
All said perfectly SAVENZ
“And all the while choking off public broadcasting so they act like lap dogs and not watch dogs”
This is not all that is being choked off.Three years ago as the situation in the Ukraine unfolded I noticed that in the N.Z.herald, and in our public broadcasting, that a very one sided narrative was being portrayed.Events like the C.I.A. coup against a democratically elected state,the role of Victoria Nuland and her five billion dollar regime change fund, the existence of Neo-nazi armed groups on the”progressive “side,the agreement for the Ukraine to be able to veto and shape the results of the investigation on the downing of the MH17, were being completely ignored.I contacted the Herald and sent in what I felt was an analysis of the situation that would provide balance.In essence,they refused to publish it.But what was fascinating was their response to my correspondence ,which was an apparent lack of understanding of my suggestion that their narrative was unbalanced. .However they did not deny the events.In exasperation I suggested in an email “Either the N.Z. Herald are aware of the events and chosen not to include them in their coverage, which suggests a lack of accuracy,fairness, and balance, or they are blithely unaware of them, which brings into question the competence of the Herald as a newspaper. Which is it?” I proceeded to lay a complaint with The N.Z. Press council. The council replied “It is up to the editor to decide what is newsworthy.”In other words it is not up to the press council to interfere when a newspaper gives an unbalanced narrative!What meaningful function they observe escapes me!
Since then there appears to be a disappearance from the N.Z. landscape of avenues for citizens to comment and criticize.The opinion columns in the online N.Z.HERALD have disappeared. The T.V. current events programs have become breathless cheerleaders for the Govt.
A well informed citizenry is indispensable for any Democracy. Unfortunately our news media are no longer performing this function!
New Zealand society now functions on the basis of everything having a commercial imperative. If it’s not generating cash, through advertising revenue or other means, it’s of negligible worth. Profit is everything, the public good comes a distant second. News is now selectively reported, and those ‘sensitive’ stories that might annoy political or business ‘stakeholders’ are generally massaged to within an inch of their lives, or subject to so much spin I’m surprised the people involved don’t suffer from perpetual motion sickness.
The sad thing is, you don’t have to be particularly clever to notice it. You just have to be curious. Or cynical. More often than not, the most cursory investigation and a little cross-referencing will lead you to a more accurate and less disingenuous reporting of events. Granny Herald is the fly-blown carcass of what journalism used to be. It’s awash with professional bullshit artists, and people who couldn’t travel in a straight line if you dropped them down a well.
I’ve shown these graphs to National voters, you honestly wouldn’t believe how strong their denial is. One person asked me “do you really think treasury figures are a good source for figures?”.
You cannot make this stuff up.
REALIST
Nactional voters = lemmings
Martyn,
This racking us up with foreign debt is just what the Goldman Sachs need to Greece for them to still make money off renting that debt and they did to Greece last.
Then the NATZI’s Claude Jean Junker & Donald Tusk and the Angela Merkel the German leader all followed behind the EU Commission who all blamed Greece for foolishly borrowing so much “foolishly” remember this?
We are deliberately now being set up for this big fall as Greece has been destroyed with already.
History repeats itself sooner than we will know. As a next Economic crash comes; = boom!!!!!!
http://thesovereigninvestor.com/exclusives/80-stock-market-crash-to-strike-in-2016/
https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/02/24/eu-commission-welcomes-greek-list-as-valid-starting-point
“Tuesday’s deal comes just days before Greece’s 240 billion-euro ($270 billion) bailout program expires and is aimed at buying time for both sides to agree on a longer-term deal to ease the burden of the bailout loans. Greece will, in all likelihood have to negotiate a new financial agreement with its creditors to see it past June, when big bond repayments are due. Though Greece has made great strides getting its public finances into shape — it is actually posting a surplus once debt and interest payments are stripped out — its debt burden remains exceptionally high at around 175 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product.”
+100 CLEANGREEN
This not normal governance .
There is something very unhealthy that has been driving this National party for quite some time. Since at least ,… 1984 onward’s.
And it has to do with banks , … and yet another group. And effectively , what we are seeing – ( and is no different to the originals Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson ) – is a form of proto / pseudo Nazism.
Here is a link to explaining just what and who guides them , specific to recent New Zealand political history and how and why they affect us :
New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
Bloody Good article by Hugh Price. Wow.
We have been played as fools everyone, so vote these monsters out of NZ
Is there anyway to verify that figure?
I had a look around the treasury reports and found the financial year report for end of june 2016 stating debt was $62 billion?
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/financialstatements/yearend/jun16/10.htm
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand
35% of debt to gdp…. most developed countries would kill for that. Would of your rathered austerity? You really need to get a grip of basic economics before you call New Zealanders idiots, the irony is cringe worthy.
As usual we will be “reminded” of the two large earthquakes in Christchurch, the recent one near Kaikoura and the northern part of the South Island, of course also that “deficit budget” that Labour left them in 2008, the Global Financial Crisis, necessitating bail outs, and the need to kick start the economy afterwards.
Now we have had the economy drugged by high level immigration gains, to make the figures look better, i.e. high GDP growth, but they never like to talk about the miniscule “growth” of GDP per person, which is a more relevant figure.
Tax cuts were more important to keep their voters happy, the higher earners and wealthy, and then the partial sell off of the power companies was also important, to shift large share packages to their supporters, who were the only ones who could really afford buying such shares.
That left SOEs with less to earn and return to the state, given the reduced shareholding.
Only this time have the Nats more or less accepted that tax cuts are not an option with this budget, as the pressure has mounted, on services and infrastructure, so they will spend to get some things done which they neglected for years, just to see them through the election.
Come next year, they will be back to their own tricks, and it will always have been Labour’s fault, no matter they had low deficits and payed off debt during their last nine years in government.
But the national debt alone is nothing to make arguments with, the Nats will simply wave around the low government debt, which is only part of total debt for NZ Inc, most debt is private, and mortgage lending has reached massive proportions, add the student loan debt, we are living in territory not much better than Greece, but nobody out there, apart from a few, really seems to get it.
I too am worried about NZ’s deteriorating debt position and it’s great to see the left are focused on reducing it. Are you advocating lower government spending or higher taxes to reduce the Government debt levels back to the levels of the those of the Helen Clarke’s Labour administration?
Can someone more literate in these matters than I please explain how the graph above showing this government’s increasing debt allows Finance Minister Joyce to say in Parliament today that “we have returned to surplus”? Are there some alternative facts/figures we’re not being told about?
You may have heard or read some of this kind of reporting:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/90133985/Budget-surplus-is-outpacing-forecasts-by-700m-as-business-taxes-beat-expectations
What they are talking about is the OPERATING BALANCE, after OBEGAL, so that means, it is the balance for a year, and long term debt is repayable at certain rates and interest, which is broken down, so the operating surplus is for a short period, which includes the debt instalments and interest payable for that period.
Of course the total government debt is long term, and total national debt also includes private debt. So the operating balance does not say much about total debt.
Also see this info for some clearer explanations:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/forecasts/befu2016/013.htm
Compare it with your annual household budget, which is different to the long term outlook and situation, as you will only pay a mortgage off over many years, so the annual payments are just part of the total debt to be paid off.
Thank you MIA. Very helpful explanation.
The Key/English/Joyce government – the most incompetent and irresponsible government in New Zealand’s history. This will be the verdict of the historians and they will look aghast at the so-called ‘popularity’ that kept them in power. But the clever historians will uncover the dirty politics, the biased media, the media shockjocks and the ascendancy of reality television, the destruction of journalism, the character assassinations of opposition MPs, the cynical manipulation of the non-vote, the domination of business and the general colonisation of the mind that is the hegemony of neoliberalism. More than any other time in our history, they will say, we were a people conned.
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