WAATEA NEWS COLUMN: Why should the poor pay for a war we had no hand in making?
We are into week 4 of America and Israel’s illegal war in Iran and I don’t need to tell you we are all already feeling it at the pump!
Everytime we fill up, it feels like we are getting mugged!
Many, many, many whanau who were just holding on by their fingernails with the Cost of Living Crisis have been given another kick in the teeth!
To date, the Government has been missing in action.
They have built a false political narrative that Labour was so feckless in spending during Covid that the Government is paralysed with inaction to do anything now!
I say it’s a false narrative because if Labour were so feckless in spending, why is the National, ACT and the NZF Government borrowing more than Jacinda and Grant did?
This Government is leaving this crisis to the free market and hoping you won’t blame them for their inaction.
To date, the Greens have shown real leadership with their proposed package
Making public transport free for users;
- A Relief Payment for low income people or people who live rurally to help meet additional transport costs;
- A Windfall Profits Tax to prevent corporate price gouging;
- Reversing changes to school bus eligibility and routes, and temporary expansion of eligibility for school buses;
- Reversing the Government’s intended reduction in Total Mobility Support for disabled people; and
- Increase mileage rates to the 23,000 care and support workers to meet their actual travel costs.
THAT is what real leadership looks like!
The Government are too frightened to act with this crisis because they will sink their own narrative about how Labour acted with the last crisis.
This crisis is too important to leave to politics.
