Red Alert

Posts Tagged ‘double dipper’

Remember when Key wanted to close the wage gap with Aussie – now English is proud of it

Posted by Trevor Mallard on April 9th, 2011

John Key’s promise to close the wage gap with Australia was an important policy plank.

Yesterday Bill English formally abandoned that policy and used the fact that our wages are 30% lower to try and sell New Zealand as a long term investment option.

The fundamental competition is for capital, including Australian capital, he said, and over the next few years New Zealand’s advantages would become more apparent.

“One is the wage differential. We have a workforce that is better educated, just as productive and 30 per cent cheaper,” he said.

I suppose it should be refreshing to see honesty from the government but I do feel sad the the first appearance of a plan openly involves keeping wages low.

Tags: Bill English, double dipper
Filed under: economic, inequality, low pay, national, poverty, value of work, workforce

23 Comments

Really early election?

Posted by Trevor Mallard on October 15th, 2010

I’ve worked on nine budgets – some pretty big surpluses and actuals were just about always bigger.

Been looking at fiscals over the last three months and they are just awful.

There are massive out year cuts built into this years budget that we are yet to see the detail on. They will bite hard. There will be no public appetite for more.

English is probably the most conservative Finance Minister NZ has had since the 1960s. Except for his own approach to where he lives where he has an impossibly liberal interpretation of living in Dipton. He has never been one for radical change of any sort. And Key won’t want radical cuts in an election year. Or a u turn on tax or economic policy.

I’ve always thought the government couldn’t try and campaign during a Rugby World Cup – I’m sure we would have had an August 2011 election if it had been our call. Key being booed at the football in South Africa will be a warning to him. Sports crowds hate campaigning politicians.

Last time a Finance Minister couldn’t put a budget together was 1984 and Muldoon called a snap election instead.

I’m picking March/April 2011.

Tags: Bill English, double dipper, John Key, snap election
Filed under: economy, finance, rugby world cup, sport

33 Comments

Understatement

Posted by Trevor Mallard on August 24th, 2010

The Speaker to Bill English – that answer doesn’t show a Minister on top of his game.

Update I’ve just been given a bit off time out for calling Brownlee a size 84 chicken for refusing to answer a question on wage rates v Aussie – after he cocked them up for three weeks in a row.

Tags: double dipper
Filed under: parliament

20 Comments

Double Dipper told to front up

Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 2nd, 2010

John Armstrong notes that English has been told to clean up his act in Parliament. The Speaker is differentiating between straight questions asking for a factual response and more “politcal” questions which are allowed a more political response.

Chalk another one up for Lockwood Smith. Parliament’s Speaker yesterday secured a small, yet potentially significant, victory in his continuing campaign to get Cabinet ministers to answer opponents’ questions in the House in an informative and meaningful manner.

It followed a confrontation between Smith and Finance Minister Bill English. This was no Mexican stand-off. Smith was always going to win. His authority would have been seriously undermined had he not done so. Which begged the question why English chose to defy the Speaker’s requests that he make a better fist of answering what was a pretty straightforward question of little consequence in the grander scheme of things.

and later

English’s reply roamed a bit around the paddock, but did say the calculator did not include factors “not directly attributable to the Budget”, such as falling unemployment rates or indexation of entitlements.

When Cunliffe complained that English had failed to answer his question, the Speaker concurred, saying the question was straightforward and the minister should answer it.