If National wins ...

[iceman]

Iceman
Tracey Watkins summary is a reasonable reflection of how the electorate, i.e. those who are interested, probably view Nationals tenure in power and will obviously enhance their electoral prospects. Notwithstanding this MMP elections are always by their nature tight and if I was the National Party President I would be very concerned about complacency setting in. Remember Labour went to the 2005 election with a strong economy, reasonable polling, the party President Mike Williams was almost without doubt the most effective party administrator and tactician NZ Politics has seen. Despite this Don Brash came very close to being PM.

Challenges for National are

Complacency within the Party

The economy

Lately some disturbing economic indicators, e.g 10% plunge in dairy prices, slowing China economic growth, increasing domestic interest rates, potential for negative equity in the newly mortgaged. Wage and salary earners sense of disconnect between economic headlines and the reality of minimal wage rises, the very high cost of living comparable to the rest of the developed world

Health Service

The halcyon days of no industrial action within health sector are coming rapidly to an end, there is a palpable sense of frustration about to boil over, Tony Ryall is wise to get out

Winston Peters

say no more

John Keys future

The PM will be considering his legacy, pondering his post political career , all this has implications, and if not tightly managed could bring out internal friction as internal party rivalries are brought to the surface. The old adage that in politics your opponents sit opposite you your real enemies sit beside is very very true.

Labour Party

As David Farar outlined in an interesting article six months ago the Labour Party has some talented people emerging in the regional organisations from a diversity of backgrounds. Its been around for 98 years, and is not about to go away.

Good post Sgt Pepper and I agree with all of it, except maybe the David Farrar quote.

[elZorro]

Bottlerboy, none of what you wrote there, proved that what I said was incorrect, this wasn't Labour dogma, it was the bald facts put in a less positive spin than we are used to seeing in the press. Point (5), if you look carefully you'll see that manufacturing is on the up, compared with where it has been in the last few years (on an opinion basis). But in the meantime (post Labour) quite a few diverse manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and many of the new ones are in the construction materials sector for the rebuild.

[Cuzzie]

EZ, looks like your on a selling job for Labour, save your breath you wont convert anybody here with Labour's past and present performances.
You should be happy with this though, Paula Bennett has just saved the NZ tax payer $10.5 million since July last year. Well done Paula, full story here/
Travelling beneficiaries' payments cut.That's what I'm talking about. Just a stab in the dark, however I would say "90% plus" of those layabouts travelling overseas while on a benefit would be Labour voters. That's the good news for you there EZ, I don't think this will make them vote anything but Labour now & in the future.

[Cuzzie]

Oh yeah breaking news - NZ the happiest country in the world. I dam near p!ssed myself from laughing so hard when I read the last paragraph. Apparently this is all due to Labour. The link is http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/...ectid=11231593

[westerly]

You have let me down EZ, I actually defended you a while back by saying that you generally produce evidence to back your views.
In this post you have done exactly what FP accuses you of - posting the above drivel which clearly demonstrates your absolute blind acceptance of Labour party dogma.
1)They sacked workers from the public sector and state services. Of course they did, it was bloated, inefficient and under Labour simply a taxpayer funded means of getting the unemployment rate down
2)Reduced taxes for top earners - I think you will find that they gave everyone a tax cut, not just top earners. Yes it gave that group more $ in the hand but
3)increased GST tax for the masses - for the masses???? for everyone actually. This is a consumption tax and those top earners naturally consume more - so actually they pay more in GST than lower income people
4)sold down precious income-earning paid-off state asset - so what? They still get 50% of the divvy and 30 odd % tax on the other shareholders divvy. Not as good as 100% but then far less risk of another Solid Energy debacle
5)and watched as their policies finished off many manufacturing firm - where have you been? The news media has been full of articles about how manufacturing sector has never been in better health.
6)And of course, National borrowed to pay for their lack of enterprise - good god man, what about the GFC and the Christchurch earthquake? Do you not think they had a bit to do with nationals borrowing program?

(1) So we had Pike River, the SC Finance sell off, bio diversity scares and the list goes on. A run down Public Service is not good for NZ
(2) Reduced taxes at the top end by far more than the bottom.
(3) Sure it is a consumption tax So the top earners consume more? No wonder we have an obesity crisis! NZ is one of the few counties with GST on basic food items
(4)THe Company pays the tax, the shareholders get imputation credits
(5) The definition of manufacturing has become very wide - processing milk into powder is manufacturing?
{6} Maybe for the earthquake, not sure about the GFC

Westerly

[elZorro]

Their biggest success is how they've managed the economy in a very difficult World and taken over from a Government going flat out in the wrong direction with Government finances.
Or as Tracy Watkins at Stuff puts it :

" The reality, of course, is not quite as straightforward - despite the "zero" Budgets, government spending has continued to rise each year under National. But there is no dispute that when it came to power, the country was staring down the barrel at a decade of deficits and skyrocketing debt.

The May Budget will show that National has done a remarkable job of turning that around by bringing forward the return to surplus by some years and lowering the debt trajectory.

That it has done so by reining in spending, rather than slashing and burning and introducing austerity measures as seen in Europe and elsewhere, makes that feat even more remarkable. Even those programmes to which National is ideologically opposed, such as KiwiSaver, interest-free student loans and Working for Families, have been tweaked, rather than savaged. "

Iceman, it is surely conjecture that Labour was going flat out in the 'wrong direction'. They were completing the work on policy that any Labour govt would be proud of, it wasn't meant to be National party globalisation policy, that you'd perhaps have wanted.

FP should perhaps have piped up here that you then went on to supply a quote from a newspaper, or web feed. But it is clearly with a National-siding tone, so that is OK with FP. The article did serve to reinforce your views, so I'm all for that technique. But let's have a look at that, sentence by sentence.

But there is no dispute that when it came to power, the country was staring down the barrel at a decade of deficits and skyrocketing debt. The May Budget will show that National has done a remarkable job of turning that around by bringing forward the return to surplus by some years and lowering the debt trajectory.

National voters have been talking like this for years, to justify the massive borrowing rate. Yet in the years before the GFC, and until National got in, Labour had repaid a heap of old debt, and had steered the country well. Who said that there was always going to be a decade of deficits after the GFC? National had promised an earlier return to budget surplus, but had to stretch it out. And technically it won't be a surplus, it'll be breakeven, compared to Labour's massive surpluses. So is that a remarkable job? I don't think so. They blew a hole in the tax take, that's what happened. It's recovering now, getting back to where Labour had it in 2008. Truly unremarkable.

That it has done so by reining in spending, rather than slashing and burning and introducing austerity measures as seen in Europe and elsewhere, makes that feat even more remarkable. Even those programmes to which National is ideologically opposed, such as KiwiSaver, interest-free student loans and Working for Families, have been tweaked, rather than savaged. "

National dare not meddle with the integrity of Kiwisaver, interest-free student loans or WFF, because those were well-received steps by Labour to rebalance some of the inequalities created during our globalisation experiment. National would certainly lose the election if they tampered with any of those. But National does still want to continue with the general trend of globalisation in a purist fashion, even if it damages the local economy. According to their model, it is robust and will rebalance.

Well, it looks to me like it's slow at rebalancing, especially when it is given no particular direction. And in the meantime, jobs are lost, people have to relocate, maybe even emigrate. More families are renting than ever before, and they're not doing this because they think it's a good idea to live from day to day.

They're stuck, and if their children can't find decent jobs, the next generation will be shafted too.

[Xerof]

Actually, Cullen introduced the Deposit Guarantee Scheme, and the circumstance under which an extension was granted is currently before the courts as a fraud case. But lets all blame the gummint for that

[elZorro]

Actually, Cullen introduced the Deposit Guarantee Scheme, and the circumstance under which an extension was granted is currently before the courts as a fraud case. But lets all blame the gummint for that

Xerof, equally you could argue that the Labour govt had no choice but to offer a deposit guarantee scheme under the circumstances of the GFC. I think that the ham-fisted way SCF later covered their tracks with related party dealings could have been detected, had there been appropriate supervision and reporting. But National has shown that they are not too good at that, with not enough staff left doing that sort of work. After all, central government is wasteful isn't it? SCF were the biggest risk to the guarantee scheme, they should have been getting heaps of attention.

Those ex-SCF guys that are left behind in court, they all knew there was a lot of crooked stuff going on, but they let SCF sail on into bigger trouble without raising a flag. Not a shred of decency or respect for the taxpayer, in any of them.

[fungus pudding]

Oh yeah breaking news - NZ the happiest country in the world. I dam near p!ssed myself from laughing so hard when I read the last paragraph. Apparently this is all due to Labour. The link is http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/...ectid=11231593

That's Sue Moroney. If you didn't hear her on Larry William's show yesterday (Thursday) it's worth a listen. She's got to be a contender for the dizziest politician of all time.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland...ries-traveling

Fairly indicative of Labour's problem. They are obviously short of talent to have her as spokesperson on anything at all.

[elZorro]

EZ, looks like your on a selling job for Labour, save your breath you wont convert anybody here with Labour's past and present performances.
You should be happy with this though, Paula Bennett has just saved the NZ tax payer $10.5 million since July last year. Well done Paula, full story here/
Travelling beneficiaries' payments cut.That's what I'm talking about. Just a stab in the dark, however I would say "90% plus" of those layabouts travelling overseas while on a benefit would be Labour voters. That's the good news for you there EZ, I don't think this will make them vote anything but Labour now & in the future.

We're not allowed to say "probably", "possibly" or "stab in the dark" on this thread Cuzzie, you'll need to prove these comments, but without using any stats or other factual articles, or comments in the press and web from those with left or right persuasions.

Here is Work and Income's revamped website, not one I've ever had to look at for long. The page on taking overseas trips is lacking detail.

http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/ind...-overseas.html

Reading between the lines, National has left it open to allow no excuses for a Jobseeker person to go overseas while on the benefit, unless it's for a funeral. Anyone on a support payment has to advise the department before they go. And any partner going has to advise too.

Next step - if not a suitable reason - the benefit is cut on the day you leave. And then...the page stops. What happens when you get back? How and when does the benefit start again? Is this open to penalty? Does someone in the department get to make a decision about when to reinstate it?

I'm not surprised some choose not to let the department know (or they don't know about it), when they can't even manage to state on their website, what the full procedure is.

So the government has 'saved' $21mill from the customs linked clampdown in 9 months. This would be a pitiful percentage of the full costs of providing jobseeker support during that time. It would have cost some extra wages to enforce the rules. The unemployment queue has lengthened a lot since National got into office, it's beyond dispute that on average, it always does this, when National are in. I'll drag up the stats if needed.

So National creates more costs for itself, by presiding over job losses (sure, some from the GFC , but some that were self-inflicted) and cuts its own income in the higher-paid area by reducing the highest tax rates the most, and then proceeds to clamp down on beneficiaries, like they always do. For good measure they increased GST again, to fill the tax hole. Everyone knows that GST affects the lower paid and unemployed proportionally more.

Paula Bennett is right now on TV getting some free press coverage before the election, but she's not telling us that National have now proven that all these beneficiaries have suitable jobs to go to, because of the incredibly clever way National have handled the economy.

Many of these beneficiaries used to work in manufacturing, jobs that are disappearing while National watched and helped, or they are younger people who have yet to earn their first proper paycheque.

$21mill. How does that compare to the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Aussie banks shortchanged the IRD for several years, or the tax evasion that goes on with trusts, international IP fees, tax havens etc?

Yes, the NZ taxpayer is being fleeced all right, but on average, it's not by beneficiaries.