Phil’s speech in Nelson yesterday can be found here.
Obviously I think it is a good speech. It is exactly the kind of speech an Opposition Leader should be making in the lead up to the Budget in the middle year of the electoral cycle. It lays out the fundamentals of Labour’s approach to the economy and gives an indication of our priorities, and the areas where we are doing further work.
Actually it does have a number of quite specific commitments as well. In particular re-focusing tax cuts to middle and low income earners, changes to monetary policy, restoring government contributions to Kiwisaver and the Super Fund, restoring incentives for R&D.
Looking ahead we are finalising a fairer tax package. This includes investigating raising the thresholds for a top tax rate to around $100,000. Phil does not rule out reversing the increase to GST, but we are also investigating the possibility of removing it from fresh fruit and vegetables.
One area that has not received much attention in the media are Phil’s comments on overseas investment.
Foreign investment will continue to be important and encouraged. In particular we need to attract good greenfield investment that has a net benefit for New Zealand. It can bring factories, jobs, technology and other gains – that’s good investment. However our overseas investment legislation should not allow loss of control over strategic assets and areas which are natural monopolies within our country.
We need to ensure we maintain New Zealand control over key export areas.We should not allow cumulative purchases of farms that would allow control over Fonterra, for example, to slip out of New Zealand. We need solutions that harness our own capital, our own talents and brains and skills, and invest in them so that we do better at earning our way in the world.
This is an area which will be getting more attention over time, and is one that I know a lot of New Zealanders are very concerned about.
Overall this is a very substantive speech, and gives a strong indication of the territory Labour is staking out when it comes to the economy.
@Sideroiler
Then maybe you should read HIS post and see that he wasn’t saying that state ownership was the ’secret to singapores wealth’ he was saying it was how they had low taxes.
“Phil does not rule out reversing the increase to GST, but we are also investigating the possibility of removing it from fresh fruit and vegetables.”
First we Lab oppose GST increase, then reduce it from food now veges & fruit next onlythose red in colour. Ther eis little ground to move from there. Actions indicate where strong motives really are.
Re ACC I think that adding a bit to booze is a great idea and hard to argue against. Re supporting the wrkers and the lack of fearness to swith car rego to included with fuel tax. The arguements re how this could afect families where was this concern when the propsed $0.10 regional tax was delivered + the GST effect on top of that and the other fuel tax increases that preceeded this. Sorry for me this sentiment regarding working families is a wee bit hallow as action by Lab that adversly hurt familiy budgets wasn’t an issue when Lab was in power ONLY when in opposition. I await atiently for next year and the great set of announcements that WILL solve real issues, and not the auction to purchase my vote that has occurred in the past by both major parties,
“Re ACC I think that adding a bit to booze is a great idea and hard to argue against.”
Aw, why not just educate people 
I don’t think it’s a great idea because booze is already too expensive and raising the price will only hurt the pockets and social lives of people wishing for a civilised drink in a bar. It won’t stop the binge drinkers!
Awww Spud it’s not all about you & lets look at the stats: which demographic cause the most road & alcohol related ACC claims?
How many lowlifes have gone out on the turps then climbed into their beat-up unwarranted & unregistered vehicle & crashed?
Rebecca said:
No two ways about it, I have to agree here. Those in lower socio-economic demographics are at far higher risk of bad health outcomes and shorter life expectancy.
Providing opportunities to help move people up the socioeconomic ladder improves everyone’s health outcomes and life expectancy.
Fortunately, Labour gets this.
Of course those with the wherewithall to negotiate diversion or other methods of avoiding conviction dont apear in the stats at all…
Yes Phil NZ farms should not be sold to overseas owners.
“Aw, why not just educate people ” I just wish we did like in Utopia then we could solve most problems by education. By adding a few cents onto booze then there is a cause -effect- funding the solution(In part) all in one loop Also it displays be in Nat or Lab some proactive part to a solution. No it will not be the total solution but there would be some action to help reduce the problem as well as in a small part also the drinking binge by slightly touching on the price elasticity on the demand side. Re the price if it is on % of alcohol then those who drink single malts are not too penalised and the bulk alco pops contribute more in $ terms to the pool. Only those with obvious vested interest would oppose and their self intereest would be seen by all and the shallowness of their arguement. It is almost perfect win:win :win so to the initiator of this deserves a seat in parliament
Just because they’re not on the street doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
To become an economic powerhouse requires ownership of as much productive capital as possible. Preferably all of it. It’s called capitalism.
When NACT got into power the tax cuts that Labour had put in place were repealed with NACT putting in their own that went directly to the top tax group and nobody else.
Except it doesn’t work like that. The reason why 50 people in the top 100 don’t pay the top tax rate is because they get to write their expenses off through trusts and businesses. They certainly aren’t paying more GST as they’ll be claiming it back. It’s one of the areas I do agree needs to be looked at. The present system was designed by the rich to benefit the rich.
and that was because of…Oh, that’s right, trade restrictions especially from the USA (trading with the USSR would bring political weight to bear from the USA).
I’d dispute that as well – it would be more accurate to say that too much of their wealth was put into the military. Oh, and the fact that it was a repressive dictatorship.
I think you’ll find that most don’t know what it’s spent on and the outrage against taxes comes partly from that and a lot from the political right (by playing on that ignorance) telling people that it’s being wasted.
herodotus
some argue education is part of the problem because it is a form of propaganda, that is, even in Western societies our education system is designed to ensure certain maxims continue.
For example we are NOT educated to think critically or independently. The “educated” are actually the BEST conduits for propaganda because they share it endlessesly.
Jaques Ellul wrote a great treatise on this in Formation of Mens Attitudes. I know this excerpt is long,…
“Let us not say: “If one gave them good things to read… If these people received a better education…” Such an argument has no validity because things just are not that way. Let us not say, either: “This is only the first stage; soon their education will be better; one must begin somewhere.” First of all, it takes a very long time to pass from the first to the second stage; in France, the first stage was reached half a century ago, and we still are very far from attaining the second. There is more, unfortunately. This first stage has placed man at the disposal of propaganda. Before he can pass to the second stage, he will find himself in a universe of propaganda. He will be already formed, adapted, integrated. This is why the development of culture in the U.S.S.R. can take place without danger. One can reach a higher level of culture without ceasing to be a propagandee as long as one was a propagandee before acquiring critical faculties, and as long as that culture itself is integrated into a universe of propaganda. Actually, the most obvious result of primary education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was to make the individual susceptible to superpropaganda.1 There is no chance of raising the intellectual level of Western populations sufficiently and rapidly enough to compensate for the progress of propaganda. Propaganda techniques have advanced so much faster than the reasoning capacity of the average man that to close this gap and shape this man intellectually outside the framework of propaganda is almost impossible. In fact, what happens and what we see all around us is the claim that propaganda itself is our culture and what the masses ought to learn. Only in and through propaganda have the masses access to political economy, politics, art, or literature. Primary education makes it possible to enter the realm of propaganda, in which people then receive their intellectual and cultural environment.”
“Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propaganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver…”
http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/propaganda.htm
Damn spud you have the best emoticons o-O
:rolleyes: