Let’s put some context about this. New Zealand runs a deficit. The deficit is increasing in part because the government is trying not to increase tax burdens or make major changes during a recession.
However, the accounts are further out of balance. We have had two earthquakes, six months apart, which flattened Christchurch, a city of around 0.4 million in a country of 4.3 million. The estimated cost of recovery is about 20 billion. The entire GDP peaked at 140 billion before the current depression.
Now, the National led government promised in the last election not to attack the entitlements and transfer of monies that they inherited from the previous Labour Government. They will (probably) campaign on reducing or removing many of these things in the next election. In the meantime, they are attempting to cut the costs of governing. The public workforce increase under Labour… and this is being questioned.
Christchurch must not be used by the Government as a “scapegoat” to push asset sales and public sector cuts, Labour MP Lianne Dalziel told a public meeting in Dunedin yesterday.The Christchurch East MP said she could “read opinion polls” and understood why the Government would be confident about this year’s election.It was after the November election she feared seeing cuts and asset sales, by a National-led Government with a “mandate”.
Dalziel has basically stated that she thinks Labour will lose the next election. What she forgets is that (in a constitutional monarchy) the votes of the people lead the crown to appoint a government. The sovereign holds any mandate on behalf of the people: as the Whigs used to toast “the people are sovereign!”. I’m don’t think saying that this will happen is a wise thing to motivate the faithful, when the left needs to take courage in their hands and campaign on behalf of the less privileged.
It had been difficult for Labour post-quake. Opposition MPs had been “side-stepped and even lied to” by the Government in the post-quake period. Opposition MPs had been criticised and told to stop playing politics with the earthquake when there was an advocacy role on behalf of constituents. People incorrectly assumed the Government was above playing politics with the situation, she said.
Standard Leftist smears. Total lack of imagination. Straight out of the Wisconsin Democrat playbook. Dalziel forgets that (a) the Democrats in Wisconsin are losing the fight — indeed their activists have been charged with threatening to kill and (b) the governor of Wisconsin is breaking the unions anyway. They have failed to stop the legislation.
For Labour, the financial burden of the rebuilding was a chance to look “outside the box” – restructure the economy to favour manufacturing, introduce currency controls, and train more tradespeople.
Dalziel has clearly never heard of the Smoot-Hawley Act.
There is only one thing I agree with Dalziel about — we need to think out of the box. The old mixed socialist economy — which puts a burden of 20 –70% of production into transfer payments and the administration of such — is no longer sustainable. This is the big crisis: we can not run deficits forever. The money will run out. The promises for security — from cradle to grave — are false.
We either dig our heads into the sand, refuse to basic sums around our national accounts, and go bankrupt, or change. Dalziel is not wanting change. However, the old system is not sustainable. The unions need to consider how they can manage to run a network to support their members — and small businessmen need to consider how they will insure against failure.
For the state is near bankrupt, and will not be able to afford it. Any political party that cannot see reality in front of them is dangerous. The average person is too sensible to vote for those who had policies that would destroy the nation and are now giving up the fight for the people they were set up to represent. Trotter is right — they must reform, or they will follow NSW Labour into oblivion
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