That's the finding of a Fairfax poll released today. Asked the obvious question - tax cuts or public services? - people overwhelmingly chose the latter:
As for which public services people would prefer, the answer is obvious: health and education. While National likes to talk about "low quality" spending in these areas and question whether spending more money will bring any benefit, when people are facing long waiting lists because the government will not fund enough operations, and have to wait at A&E because of capacity constraints caused by underfunding, that's a difficult case to make. It's also difficult to argue when schools are having to charge parents hundreds of dollars a year in "voluntary" donations for services they should be providing for free. And of course we have the example of the re-universalisation of primary healthcare to show how spending more money on health can make a real difference to people's lives.
Another interesting finding is that we don't want privatisation either, even the "partial selldown" National offers - 56% (including 49% of National voters) oppose any further asset sales.
This is the real choice we face in next years election: tax cuts for the rich and looting the state, or decent, well-funded public services which benefit everybody. And this poll is the reason why National really doesn't want to talk about it, but instead adopts tactics of lies, obfuscation, and spin.
