Today Andrew Little admits the slave labour scheme was indeed being run by McCarten while he was the head of Labour's Auckland office and they no longer are on speaking terms. And a Labour councl member steps down for his role with the scheme. Little also says Labour likely has to pick up the bill.
I hope posters on here are no longer saying this program had nothing to do with the Labour Party. It is 100% responsible for this (possibly illegal) mess.
Evidently only 2 had the wrong visa and they were sent home, which is more than National are doing with many in the country on a dodgy visa. Although the offer may not have been what they expected, they were volunteers and not slave labour as you and the media so picturesquely describe. As EZ says it appears the Labour hierachy have done their best to sort out the problems.
McCarten on the surface appears to have been inherited by Little when he became leader and now his contract is finished he has been let go.
The Right should be more worried about the PM exhibiting more sidesteps, left and right, than an AB back over the goings on down south. Especially with the police investigating.
But hey, I guess there is always the promise of more tax cuts. The voters won't be concerned that Govt. services already cut to the bone will be even more restricted.
The sad part is to see those who call themselves politicians actually trying to win an election based on this pathetic crap. It must have been wonderful to live in times when the real news took several days or weeks to reach the public and most of todays rubbish would have been discarded as a waste of ink.
The sad part is to see those who call themselves politicians actually trying to win an election based on this pathetic crap. It must have been wonderful to live in times when the real news took several days or weeks to reach the public and most of todays rubbish would have been discarded as a waste of ink.
....... don't forget, we had The Truth in those days. Came out once a week, if memory serves correctly.
Yes, except the biggest upset result was housing affordability. It's OK as long as interest rates stay historically low, for everywhere except the major cities.
From time to time EZ tries to sell the fiction that Cullen was a responsible Minister if Finance. Au contraire, he inherited a big Budget surplus and proceeded to heavily run it down year by year in a desperate attempt to keep Labour in.
Here is a review from Stuff NZ on 23 May 2008...
Talk about going out on a low note.
Michael Cullen was upbeat about his 9th Budget in the lockup in the banquet hall at the bottom of the Beehive*yesterday afternoon. He had just delivered a kitchen sink of a Budget that he hoped might get Labour re-elected. He assured us it was safe now to return a growth dividend because the economy was slowing and this was as big as it could possibly be because there was nothing left for him (or anyone else) to throw into the tax cutting pot.
Budgets might not win elections, but they can lose elections, he said. His focus was clearly*on not losing as he built this Budget. Everything was done in this Budget not to lose this election. Taxes were cut for those on low to middle incomes. Thresholds were increased. Health spending was increased. Education spending was lifted. Broadband spending was lifted. Perhaps under pressure from many an anxious young minister and one not so young but just as anxious Prime Minister, the reluctant doctor pulled every lever he could.
He even told us Cabinet looked at an even more aggressive package, but it couldn't be justified on the grounds it would blow out debt too much and unbalance the economy. Thank goodness some sanity prevailed.
The*result of pulling all the levers in the wrong direction (tax cuts and spending increases) was the destruction of the budget surplus that Dr Cullen had spent the last eight years building up and protecting. Blown in one last desperate act. Dr Cullen and Ms Clark have now said they will fund the cash deficit after investments by running down the Reserve Bank's reserves and issuing more bonds.
Whatever happened to their mantra that they wouldn't pay for tax cuts by running up debts? Their (quite powerful) argument that it wasn't right for National to pay for tax cuts with debt is now dead as the proverbial. Their rebuttal that the debt is only paying for infrastructure is, strictly speaking, true, but debt wouldn't have to be raised without*the tax cuts. There's no getting away from this. They are raiding the Reserve Bank's cookie jar and borrowing from foreigners for an irresponsible spending and tax cutting budget.
Also, their argument that only National will fund big*tax cuts*with big cuts in government spending is also dead. Buried in the budget is a line about unspecified spending cuts totalling NZ$1 billion over the next four years that Labour will have to find*to help pay for the tax cuts. Dr Cullen flat out refused to answer my question in the lockup about what type of*spending cuts they would be. The only answer he could have given is that he hasn't dreamt them up yet. We can be sure he won't enlighten us before the election.
Where will the cuts come? Not by trimming Wellington bureaucrats, as the minister was at pains to point out when he said National could not afford big tax cuts by just restricting growth of the core bureacracy.*National*would have to take a knife to education, health and police to fund such tax cuts.* So which of these government services will go in the NZ$1 billion of spending cuts Labour is planning?*If it's not*chicken feed for Labour it's not chicken feed for National.
Any of the last vestiges of Dr Cullen's hard-won reputation for fiscal conservatism went down*into that kitchen sink*of pre-election goodies. This is a tragedy for a finance minister who could rightly say until today that he had been one of the most level-headed and careful of economic guardians in our history.
The collective red card came quickly.*
Financial markets are greedy, reactive and selfish at the best of times. But they often cut to the nub of an announcement in a flash. Within minutes yesterday, they judged this budget*as*inflationary enough to make the Reserve Bank's inflation-fighting task more difficult and therefore likely to delay interest rate cuts.
The New Zealand dollar surged over 78.5 US cents and wholesale interest rates rose sharply. If you doubt me on this, have a look at what a couple of economists say.*
It looks like someone who had swallowed all of the Crosby-Textor junk that was being pushed around from 2004 onwards. Labour nearly lost the previous election in 2005 after a major swing change occurring from the use of a lot more marketing money by the Nats, and pushing the CT messages constantly.
All through the good years, the Nats were arguing for tax cuts, on message, and then this editor/commenter thinks that the end of the world is near when Dr. Cullen starts to promise just that. Don't forget that Labour built up the tax base quite a bit, by growing the economy properly. They had a lot more good work to do, but were pushed out in 2008.
Of course, we all know what happened when National got in. Excluding the earthquakes and the GFC, National was determined to increase pressure on wages by sacking some of the crown's public sector employees, they borrowed big-time to pay for tax cuts at the top end that weren't necessary or useful to the rest of NZ, and they also assisted the housing market to boom with immigration, while pulling back on SME assistance for R&D.
Put together, this was a damaging set of policies that have ensured NZ treaded water, probably went backwards over the last 9 years. We have some new motorways and some fibre, but we are still exporting commodities. Many of our bigger manufacturers have relocated overseas, or been bought out. Many school leavers are not prepared for work, have low aspirations, and are not finding a useful role in our dull economy.
But MVT, I will completely agree with you on your first preposterous sentence, if you could just show me the budget surplus figures that you've imagined in your head. Labour grew some massive budget surpluses on their watch. How do you think they were able to pay off over $30-$40Bill of old crown debt in the nine years?
This from Vernon Small (and no doubt Crosby Textor) today:
"But how could anyone working for a party founded on workers' rights, led by a former union heavyweight, that has opposed low- and no-pay work and is campaigning to curb immigration and low-skilled work visas allow an 85 intern programme – and attendant "fantasy world stuff" (to use leader Andrew Little's own words) -–to go ahead."
Originally Posted by iceman
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