Watching National & Labour sock puppets on social media arguing over who is going to build the most roads only highlights the low horizon imagination NZ politics has descended into.
Let’s get the stock standard comments out of the way first.
Yes, these are good first steps, National underfunded for a decade and it’s shit that Labour has to fix all that obscene underfunding but all that said, this unimaginative attempt to look like something is getting done is barely a response to that decade of underfunding.
There is no vision here.
The terminally cautious Grant Robertson has finally undone some of the buttons on his budget corset that he and James Shaw straightjacketed themselves into by promising our Corporate Overlords that a Labour led Government would be just as austere as a National led one and has delivered a stock standard investment package that lacks vision, punch or hope.
New Zealand could borrow $100billion and still be below the 40-60 percent levels of our AA rated peers, that could regenerate and rebuild a genuinely sustainable green economy prepared for adaptation to the climate crisis. Instead we get the bare minimum from politicians more keen to please our Corporate Overlords than rebuild New Zealand.
So, will the infrastructure investment help Labour? Probably not. All this investment does is drag NZ into the late 1990s, it does nothing to cope with the ongoing growth pains of NZ.
As Auckland has become painfully aware, the appalling cost of new infrastructure is the disruption and gridlock it creates so while Labour tout more roads, all people will see is the road works and gridlock.
They won’t thank Labour for that, they’ll simply be reminded how underfunded everything is.
So will it help National? Not at all. We are only in this ridiculous position because National did fuck all in their decade of power and it robs National of one of their most effective attack lines on roads.
Beneficiaries and Gangs however should be most terrified because all National have as an election platform is ‘Roads’, ‘Bash the Bennies’ and ‘Crush the Gangs’. With Roads removed from their campaign, bashing the dirty filthy bennies and the counterproductive war on gangs is all National have, so expect them to double down hard on those fronts.
Ultimately Labour’s infrastructure plans are too little to be transformative for climate change and simply avoids the mass tourism, mass immigration and mass student language industry pressures that make New Zealand infrastructure groan at the seams.
Not an ideal direction for this Govt. but if they get a second term, then all of us have to put the heat on for the stuff the underclass, working poor/precariously employed, and retirement age strugglers really require. Need I list some of them again? Oh all right then…
–Sit on WINZ/MSD sack the top echelon and put the rest on notice, make benefits unique to holder–so moralistic snooping stops, and bring in a UBI trial to be extended to all
–Continue a massive state and public housing build until developers and neo rentiers are squeezed out and houses are affordable and obtainable
–Fare Free public transport across the country
–Restore to full public ownership–power generation and supply, Marsden Pt (NZ Refining Consortium), halt penetration public and local Govt infrastructure by private capital
etc. etc.
The announced plans will certainly benefit Northland with Rail going back to Moerewa with a new container depot there which will revitalise things and take trucks of the crumbling highway. Kaipara harbour is going to be a marine “road” again with scores of new jettys and ramps and rail links, for starters.
Yes good idea let’s do exactly the opposite of helping people be responsible for their own situations, let’s bag capitalism which has brought more people out of poverty than any other system in the history of the planet, let’s all look at Scandinavia in owe as if they aren’t capitalist economy at their core, instead let’s all that socialism works when in realist socialism is responsible for more deaths than all the world wars put together, go socialism!
Genuine solo mums and dads sickness benefituries and those with social problems should have increased wrap around social service that really help not just with more money but with support and a pathway out of dependantcy. However I fail to understand why there are 115000 getting the unemployment benefit at a time when situations are vacant at every level from labourers to highly skilled workers. As a migrant I like many others travelled 1/2 way around the world to find work where is the get up and go for some of these unemployed people.
The problem with unemployment in this country is easily identified: unemployment is primarily due to the rise of Human Resources specialists. Specialists who have bugger all understanding of what is need in the workplace, and even less idea of the capabilities people bring to the job. Thus competent highly skilled, willing, motivated candidates are passed up in preference for a cheaper, younger, less motivated, newly “qualified” pretty applicants. Never mind the fact that is contrary to common sense, and the law. The crazier aspect of this is that HR consultants often get paid a nice fat fee amounting to up to a third of the wage/salary of the new hire of a permanent employee. They then take another fee for the same position in a years time when another candidate must be hired to replace the now redundant too expensive permanent employee hired the year before.
Eliminate HR and even a half wit manager could employ a better employee at a third of the cost.
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