Monday, November 30, 2009



How not to catch Australia

The 2025 taskforce has released its first report, and as expected, its the usual NeoLiberal "solution": tax-cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, sell off anything that isn't nailed down and use the money to buy a claw-hammer, plus labour-market "flexibility" for lower wages. Apparently these policies - none of which were implemented in Australia - will help us "catch Australia". Hardly. These are the very policies which opened the gap in the first place, and implementing them will make the vast majority of kiwis actively worse off (just as it did in the 90's). But the uber-rich will do very well out of them, and screw everyone else.

To John Key's credit, he has ruled out implementing this insanity. But then he knows that these ideas are pretty much toxic waste as far as the public (particularly those who survived them last time) are concerned. Which means that if he wants to cling to this idea of "catching Australia" within a decade, he's going to have to find some other way to do it.