Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
On Monday night, clad in a traditional Palestinian dress, which was presented to her by a Palestinian woman, Green MP Marama Davidson addressed a packed audience at Workers’ Educational Association in Christchurch.
Even National’s $25 per week benefit increase last year pales into insignificance with the news that reductions in the real value of Working for Families payments since National took office have taken a cumulative $2 billion from the homes of families on low incomes.
Big business just wants to cut any government expenditure that isn’t going to directly subsidise their profit making activities. This has led to a slashing of the number of people receiving a benefit as a percentage of the working age population from 13% to 8 % when unemployment only fell on average from 8 to 6%.
In one of the more curious admissions by the Ministry of Health’s Mental Health mogul John Crawshaw, when discussing the ‘consultation’, he stated “Ninety-nine per cent of the time they get it right, but occasionally there will be outcomes” in reference to the 167,000 annual mental health ‘treatments’ by Govt-funded services.
By my calculator’s reckoning, that means they are admitting to about 1,700 mistakes annually.
How many of the 570 deaths from suicide annually in New Zealand are amongst those ‘mistakes’?
Bill English was recently caught on-the-spot when challenged why National was permitting high immigration at a time when unemployment was still high, and rising.
Make no mistake, National has opened the floodgates of immigration because it is an easy way to artificially stimulate the economy. This was pointed out in May 2011, by then-Immigration Minister, Jonathan Coleman, who trumpeted the contribution made by immigration to economic growth;
PLEASE NOTE: This is satire. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events, is entirely accidental.
By reducing the real value of Working for families payments since 2010 the National government has taken a cumulative $2 billion out of the homes of working class families.
The government has started the election year with a tough on crime message. More police on the beat and more prisons. The government plans to spend $1 billion on a massive prison-building programme in a country that already imprisons a greater proportion of its people than all but a few OECD countries.
In all of my dealings with Ron over the last few years, and from my ongoing observation of the ‘second phase’ of his Parliamentary career, if I could pick but two phrases to sum him up they would unquestionably be “man of principle”, and “fighting for a just cause, to defend our country”.
The last conspicuous veteran of the plague years of the 1980s has bowed to the irresistible logic of Jacinda Ardern’s by-election victory and announced her retirement. Part of that logic, undoubtedly, was the reaction of Annette King’s caucus colleagues to her spittle-flecked outburst to the NZ Herald’s deputy-political editor, Claire Trevett.