The super debate hasn’t been super. It has missed the most important issues. The government has tried to focus on misleading measures of financial affordability in 2040, in an attempt to position themselves as responsible. But the real issues are about fairness and equity, across and within generations.
Watch Barry Coates rip the Intelligence and Security Bill apart
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.
The new data on inequality from Oxfam shows an even more obscene disparity than previous reports – 8 billionaires owning more than half the world’s population and two billionaires in New Zealand owning more than the poorest 30% of New Zealanders. This is not inevitable. It results from rules that favour the rich and penalise the poor.
