To help refresh memories, here is exactly what John Key said on GST before the last election. Personally I don’t think there is any room for nuance here. He said he would not increase it, and he did.
Red Alert
Posts Tagged ‘broken promises’
Broken Promise No.15
Posted by Grant Robertson on February 8th, 2011So the big idea to kick-start the New Zealand economy in John Key’s Opening Statement to Parliament today was to have a bash at public servants and propose the re-organisation of the public sector. Tired old stuff, and we won’t dwell on how this will actually create jobs, but more than that the second part of the “plan” is a huge break of the promise John Key made before the 2008 election. This is what he said to the PSA Congress in 2008
I also want to reassure people – and this is my second point – that a new National Government is not going to radically reorganise the structure of the public sector.Our focus is squarely on delivering services, not on changing the wiring diagram of the state sector to get a tidier conceptual model.
Few problems are solved by significant reorganisations – in fact, many more tend to be created. It is easy to underestimate the amount of energy and inspiration soaked up by institutional change, as well as the loss of personal and institutional knowledge.
Just as Labour has done, we will take opportunities to make changes to some agencies as part of the usual business of government. However, there will be no wholesale reorganisation or restructuring across the public sector.
Read his lips- no wholesale reorganisation or restructuring. I guess that sits along side the promise to cap but not cut the public service in the same speech, or not to increase GST or……
As you do the Saturday shopping
Posted by Grant Robertson on October 2nd, 2010You saw it here first (well not quite first, but for the first time after the election), so a reminder as you look at the bill from shopping this morning that National campaigned explicitly not to increase GST.
Peter Dunne plays grinch
Posted by Chris Hipkins on December 20th, 2009Last week I missed this little announcement from Peter Dunne that the threshold at which student loan borrowers have to start paying back their loan would not be increased. To my knowledge this has never happened before, the threshold is usually adjusted each year so that it stays the same in real terms. National promised at the last election to keep the student loan scheme as it is (keep interest free etc). This amounts to a broken promise, even if it is a very small one.
The amounts we are talking about are not huge, it will probably cost every student loan borrower about $20-$40 a year. But it does set a worrying precedent. Given National’s promise not to touch the loan scheme a statement from Dunne that talks about the “very significant cost of this $9.6 billion asset to the Crown” and noting this change is intended to “lower the overall costs of the scheme to the Crown” is particularly worrying.
Rhetoric vs reality
Posted by Clare Curran on May 11th, 2009It’s a bit like extracting teeth. Or to be more accurate, a protracted and painful labour. And it’s becoming a bit of a recurring theme. What is you ask? Getting the National Government to slowly and painfully acknowledge that their rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Or putting it even more simply, reveal their broken promises. On rushing through their plans for an Auckland supercity, taking away the rights of Aucklanders to decide what sort of governance they should have; tax cuts that put extra dollars in the pockets of only those who don’t need them; saying they’ll cap the public service, when what they’re really doing is cutting real people’s jobs. And now claims that they will deliver broadband into people’s homes. Well oops, sorry, it won’t be into their homes, it’ll be to their streets leaving families with the bill to connect broadband actually into their homes at anywhere between hundreds and several thousand dollars, depending on how far the home is off the street and how difficult the access is.
Now I can can hear the howls of protest from the apologists for the government. But hang on a minute guys. Let’s be clear here. Did the National Party, or did it not, promise before (and after) the election to deliver ultrafast broadband fibre to 75% of New Zealanders where they live, work and study within 10 years? They promised to spend $1.5 billion and the expectation was that this would be matched on a dollar for dollar basis by private investment, making the overall investment $3 billion. John Key used this promise as a central campaign pledge. Maurice Williamson trumpeted it from the rooftops. And New Zealanders rightly expected that this is what the newly-elected government would do.
Now my understanding is that after the election, the new Minister for Communications &IT Steven Joyce found he had inherited a pup. A promise that would be damn hard to deliver on. Costing at least $4 to $7 billion and possibly up to $10 billion to fully deliver. And he had to go back to the drawing board. Now I’m not criticising the proposal the government has come up with to date, not in this post. What I am pointing out is that the objective; ultrafast broadband to 75% of NZ homes, is undeliverable at that price. Either that, or the people will pay. Which wasn’t part of the deal. And don’t tell me it was!
Two weeks ago in Parliament, Steven Joyce didn’t want to admit that ordinary people would face a cost. However, last week Steven Joyce was forced to admit it when he said (for the first time to my knowledge) “there will of course be an element of cost…” in the consumer contribution. Well Huh? No mention of that pre-election to my knowledge. And I’m not the only one to comment on this publicly. A report to Treasury has said as much. Though Steven Joyce has tried to undermine it. The Dom Post has been commenting on this issue as has Computer World. It’s no secret that the major telcos think the same way. And I understand that the group of electricity lines companies led by Vector who are vying for the Govt’s $1.5b are asking for expensive extras before they get involved. So, um, there’s a few issues there for the government. Not to mention the pesky question of how to deliver ultrafast broadband to the remaining 25% of New Zealanders. A quarter of our population, mostly in rural provincial New Zealand. Now there’s a challenge.
