Bernard Hickey has it right…
A smoking gun without smoke or a barrel
Weeks ago, Nicola Willis accused Grant Robertson of ‘fiscal vandalism” in handing over a set of books she said were littered with ‘snakes, snails and fiscal cliffs.’
Yesterday, she repeated the accusation and unveiled a set of books without any real surprises, budget blowouts, or even many details of her own Government’s plans for income tax cuts funded by new taxes elsewhere, benefit cuts and spending cuts.
It was supposed to be a smoking gun. Instead, all we saw was the barest wisps of smoke without a barrel of budgetary detail about the new Government’s own plans.
The bottom line – The experts tasked with judging the riskiness of Government debt viewed the books yesterday as showing a better economic and budgetary outlook, not a worse one. The 10-year Government bond yield actually fell two basis points to 4.58% after the release of the mini-Budget and it has fallen 42 basis points from 5.0% since Willis warned on December 4 the mini-Budget would prove an act of fiscal vandalism. That move would have been the other way around if there had actually been fiscal vandalism.
…this Government isn’t a cohesive philosophical structure, it is bound together only by a shared glee of bashing groups their voters despise.
Bashing Māori, beneficiaries, prisoners, workers, renters, the environment and the poor are the only thing this hard right racist Government know how to do so their pathetic mini-me budget was the greatest flop since whatever the latest woke thing NZ on Air has sponsored.
Remember this was a budget that Nicola would highlight all the terrible things Labour had done in power, yet when it was revealed, all the things Willis had claimed about Labour’s economic mismanagement and numerous budget holes was all bullshit!
She is the Finance Minister who cried wolf when there was only a sleeping puppy.
It highlights the deep need for this Government to always mislead, the way they misled with their Foreign Buyers Tax, the way their lied about how many people would get their tax cuts and the way they ‘misspoke’ when ever they get caught out misleading the public!
When they aren’t misleading, they are pure hypocrites. Here’s Luxon defending his taxpayer funded Māori lessons, but removing payments from public servants , and then you have the right attacking Labour for bringing Luxon’s wife into the debate over National taking Tesla subsidies (while dumping them for everyone else) when it wasn’t even Labour who brought up Luxon’s EV subsidy hypocrisy – IT WAS NATIONAL!
Speaker apologises to Chris Hipkins over exchange with Chris Luxon about his wife’s Tesla
Speaker Gerry Brownlee has apologised to Labour’s leader for any implication yesterday that Chris Hipkins was responsible for bringing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s wife Amanda into the political debate.
The apology follows yesterday’s Question Time in which the Leader of the Opposition asked Luxon about taking the clean car discount for a Tesla.
It had been discovered in June that the $8625 discount was claimed for the Luxons’ Tesla despite Luxon’s criticism of the scheme.
At the time, Luxon said the Tesla was owned by his wife, Amanda Luxon, and not him.
The exchange in Question Time yesterday led to claims by both Luxon and National’s leader of the House that Hipkins was trying to bring Luxon’s family into the debate – something Hipkins rejected by saying that it was Luxon himself who first raised his wife in an answer on the issue.
The Speaker closed the question line down, claiming it was not the responsibility of the Prime Minister, and saying it was a long-standing convention not to bring family members into the debate.
However, at the start of Question Time today, Brownlee apologised to Hipkins for that, saying he had now looked back over the footage and it was clear Luxon’s answer to the first question had brought his family into the matter.
“Any suggestion the Leader of the Opposition brought family into the debate are wrong. I unreservedly apologise to the Leader of the Opposition for any implication to the contrary from my intervention … I will be more vigilant in future.”
…the political Right hide, mislead and then outright lie when they are caught out.
The Budget takes money from the poor and actually hands it to the rich! It’s the very opposite of what a Government should do!
Robbing young people of public transport subsides to give rich pricks more is deplorable!
This hard right racist Government doesn’t have anything replacing all these policies, just culture war revenge fantasies!
They are ramming all this through misusing urgency and without proper oversight as to the true cost of this and as we saw this week, all the race baiting hate by the Right against Māori was just for political gain…
Crown admits Māori health vandalism was purely political to win 2023 election
The Crown’s admission that scrapping the Māori Health Authority, minus any consultation with Māori, was nothing more than a political campaign to win the General Election in October is astounding and shocking.
…spite and malice as social policy alongside Qanon conspiracy theories was on no ones 2023 Bingo card but most importantly none of this bullshit will solve any of the problems we collectively face!
This wasn’t a fucking mini budget, it was a virtue signal!
When Orr had a obligation to unemployment he was predicting 30 000 unemployed, now they don’t have to care about unemployment that number could explode which is outrageous when you consider so much of the inflation we are seeing is actually being driven by greedy corporate margins…
Comrades.
As a trading nation, our economy is built for feeding 50million others, it’s not about domestically ensuring food for Kiwis.
Indeed, as Bryan Bruce’s documentary pointed out, free market capitalism has robbed NZ of food security for kai grown in our own nation!
We have built our economy on 4 pillars:
- Steal Māori land and NEVER pay for the full cost of that theft
- Addiction to a Low wage economy that exploits migrant workers and drives wages down
- Allow property speculators to have enormous political influence
- Milk powder über alles
The geopolitical shockwaves started by shutting down global supply chains during Covid plus the disruption of base ingredients from the Ukraine/Russia war plus the Red Sea shipping restrictions from the Israel/Palestinian conflict plus the growing militarisation of conflict in the South China Sea between the Phillipines and China and we have global inflationary pressures that are being reshaped by global conflict.
That is going to cause inflationary drag for a Trading nation like us.
On top of this we are importuning vast immigration but the workers we are bringing in are exploitable migrant workers.
Orr seems to believe importing 50 000 people to run fast food franchises is the way to economic stability.
A relative of mine last month had a van full of Filipino electricians turn up at her house.
The local mutation of a power company she is with were updating their power monitors from 2G to 4G and were sending out ‘staff’ to do this upgrade.
The ‘staff’ turned out to be Filipino Electricians who were conned into coming to NZ under the belief they would work as electricians only to find they had been recruited because they had the lowest and cheapest transferable skill sets.
These Filipino Electricians were told they were all contractors now and had to buy cars (from a vender who price gouged them), but gear (from a vender who price gouged them), and they were told they had to get housing (from a vender who price gouged them) that kept them working around the clock.
The Filipino Electricians who were so surprised to find thesmelves in such an unequal deal actually asked my relative to check their contract top see if it was really true.
My female relative had to tell them, “Why yes, you are fucked”.
THIS is Adrian Orr’s economic saviour folks, more exploitable migrant workers.
We are basing all our future wealth on trade with China which doesn’t hold up.
Oil prices have plummeted because China’s economic situation is far more dire than is understood.
Our future dairy and meat – which China is furiously attempting to match domestically in production so they no longer need us – is built on great economic conditions in China when that is far from certain!
This is all going to come to a head next year with the threat of Trump winning the American election so expect vastly more explosive geopolitical events leading up to that.
If only all those ‘leftists’ on Twitter who were so incremental when we were actually in power and who were mostly involved in handing the right cancel culture war ammunition were as focused on economics then as they all seem to be now
We’d probably still be in power.
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Urgent retrospective tax cuts for landlords and the continued promise of tax cuts for middle and low income earners makes Willis’ claims about ‘fiscal vandalism’ hollow political rhetoric – the MSM need to call it for what it is.
How can you be against it look they love it https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1DBKn2g7MP/?igshid=YzZhZTZiNWI3Nw==
“Robbing young people of public transport subsides to give rich pricks more is deplorable” wasn’t that what the EV subsidy was ,
Migrants- who flooded the country with cheap labour, where getting tourist visa was harder to get in comparison to work visa?
Inflation- if the previous govt didn’t pour money out the door, the books would be in better shape and NZ would have somethings to show for the money spent.
Did you miss the Covid years? I suppose since you didn’t notice that inflation was a worldwide problem or that the NZ public debt is still substantially less than most major Western governments that might explain why. Yes, Labour made mistakes & while the degenerate part of the population claimed that they had an evil agenda they did not show the malice that this new coalition has shown since gaining power.
Bonnie “ Don’t talk to the neighbours,” was soul-destroying and unnecessary, more so for elderly persons living alone. “Spy on the neighbours”, was a sick joke.
Whose car would the Tesla be if Luxon’s wife were to die? The Nats are good at pretending they are so evolved that their wives are independent of themselves. The opposite applies to their policies for those on benefits. Should they ever fall on hard times and need a benefit at the ‘married rate’, or a subsidy for long-term care they would find out how intertwined their fortunes are.
Where’s my tax cut?
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