John Key: liar, liar, pants on nuclear fire!!!
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In early 2010…
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“Yeah, National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes…What I’m saying is if we do a half decent job as a government at growing our economy I’m confident that won’t be happening and that’s not on our agenda.”
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December 2012,
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Interesting…
After two tax cuts in 2009 and 2010, National is now having to raise taxes in other areas to make up for the billions it has lost in revenue.
English admitted as such in this Fairfax Media story,
This morning Gerry Brownlee announced plans to increase excise tax on petrol by 3 cents a litre, in each of the next three years. This would raise Government income by up to $300m a year.
While English said the increase would have an impact on the Government’s accounts, he denied it was done to ensure the forecasts showed a surplus.
“Without the changes, we would have fallen short of the surplus track.”
Today’s announcement also saw forecasts that by 2015-16 the New Zealand Debt Management Office would borrow $6.5b more than it forecast six months ago.
“That is a concern,’’ English told reporters.
See: Growth forecast cut, debt seen higher
Yeah, I’ll bet “that’s a concern“.
This is in stark contrast to warnings we were given in mid-2008,
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Well, we got our tax cuts. (Mostly for the top 1%, as usual.) And National borrowed hand-over-fist to make up the revenue shortfall.
It was not enough.
Which is why National is partially selling off our state power companies, Solid Energy, and Air New Zealand.
But it’s still not enough.
So the Nats will be slyly raising taxes and government charges (eg, road user charges, medicines, etc). Even children delivering newspapers were targetted.
All to re-coup the lolly-scramble they initiated in 2009 and 2010.
This, however, does not surprise me. Since the Muldoon Era, I have realised that National’s so-called reputation for being “prudent fiscal managers” is a myth. Most likely perpetrated and perpetuated by National’s taxpayer funded spin doctors.
National is no more “fiscally prudent” than a shopaholic who justifies his/her spend-up by explaining that ” I saved heaps – it was all on “Sale” – And I put it on the Card !!”
When Key and his cronies promised us tax cuts in 2008, it was well into the Global Financial Crisis (see: Blog Timeline – specifically Year 2008). The Nats knew full well that tax cuts were unaffordable.
Michael Cullen tried to warn the country.
But 1,053,398 voters in 2008 took the bribe and thought nothing about who or how we would pay for National’s promises.
Well the answer is blindingly obvious; we are paying for it.
And now we’ll be paying for it every time we fill up at the petrol stations.
How happy are National voters now, I wonder?
Silly buggers – shafted by the Party they voted for!
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Acknowledgement
Gordon Campbell: On last night’s debate between John Key and Phil Goff
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= fs =
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Frankly Speaking... 
I have said many times:
Raising student loan repayment rate from10% to 12%
Raising minimum Kiwisaver rate from 2% to 3%
Removal of tax credit for income under $9880
Removal of tax credits for schoolchildren
Rejection of recommended decrease in ACC Earner levy
Increase in petrol excise tax
Backdated pay rise for Parliament.
Redundancy of civil servants through departmental mergers
There is something wrong here.
And well said, GG!
And just keep saying it.
I can vouch that some National voters are not ‘happy campers’ as they were in 2008. The message IS getting through…
Reblogged this on Louis' Outlook and commented:
A great post here and very true.
Go for it, Louis!
get rid of them.
Great article!
If our government coined it’s own currency it could inject liquidity when needed, without any debt obligation (image that!). This is opposed to borrowing credit from a private Reserve Bank of New Zealand at interest which causes all this financial harm in the first place. Taxes must be increased and spending cut in order to honour the debt to the reserve bank.
Coining our own money instead of being in debt to private interests would free our economy and our people. This would never happen as long as we have a banker as a “Prime” Minister…
James
Yet all MP’s are receiving a nice, hefty pay rise this Christmas, how much more sickening could this all get?
Not leading by example are they!?
I voted for Key in 2008 and 2011. I’m still kicking myself for it.
It would be too logical to hire someone, maybe fourth year varsity students familiar with taxation law to go through our taxation laws and find all of the tax loop holes that can be closed and then present a list to the Minister of Finance for closing.
““Yeah, National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes…What I’m saying is if we do a half decent job as a government at growing our economy I’m confident that won’t be happening and that’s not on our agenda.”
Lying piece of—
Nailed 🙂
First article read in 2013 and I’m glad that it was (been catching up on your blogs here after a few days trawling other things 🙂
And yeah, Robert Glennie, that would be a great idea. What I can say is that I’ve asked a friend (he’s a corporate Auditor for KPMG, but now based overseas) about things like that in passing and … well, the answers were a tad depressing. His bookcase at work as I’ve told others before is full of exceptions to the rules, not ones to follow. How to get out of things is the profession he’s really in he’s told me once, with that look that he knows, really, a lot of what is going on has been quite blatantly unfair and unbalanced.
And Auckland Ratepayer, well … you know, not to worry because better late than never. Let’s all work together to turn this one around, as that’s the only way it’s going to work, pulling together on this.
I get the feeling sometimes that arguments over the direction of the countryabout these issues get so heated is because ultimately, your average Kiwi is still a good hearted bugger at the end of the day. Still willing to go for that original fair suck of the sav line – and actually mean it.
But some out there got taken in by a cabal of supremely arrogant individuals… and they will be rightfully pretty angry about it, having discovered – admittedly in the most painful way possible – that Key and his cohort don’t really have the voters true interests at heart. it all sounded great. But anything predicated on monumental lies of that proportion always does… the tax cuts of that extent were a bribe one could see a mile off, the business community themselves expressed no confidence at several points, the sham of accountability, well… it’s already filled 4 years of my life and quite a few keystrokes(!) to discuss my feelings on those and a myriad of other issues but hey, if we can limit it to two terms, we surely can still turn this one around in time!
I get the feeling things such as Bill English giving his opinion that he was intent on ramming through the asset sales in one year, seemingly no matter what, is quite simply the last desperate act of a party that must, at some level, know its finally cooked. That its game is up. Hell, you know that the game is up when even someone like Tracy Watkins admits that producing a wafer thin tax windfall by way of a swindle essentially is indeed like throwing a “free” party for people and then presenting them with the bill for it at the end.
Previous efforts at turning things that were getting out of hand have not been able to stem the flow of blood – some of it frighteningly real – as a result of a hands off, “let them set their own rules” attitude toward managing the affairs of the country and the engine room of progress. And with our country so unregulated and unchecked … those who would take advantage saw a chance to snatch as much as they can, as fast as they can. Not only once. Twice.
We just have to keep discussing, talking about and encouraging debate about it at a level that makes sense and resonates well with the public out there.
Funnily enough, I think those of us who repeatedly joust and poke and prod would do so no matter who was in power – as we should, all ought to be held to account. But that’s ultimately what’s so appaling to me and many others about *this* particular party and what’s been going on, and why it needs to be pointed out so forcibly at times. It’s a different class of corrupted and twisted lies altogether. But, they will ultimately be hoist with their own petard. It’s also partly what is so frustrating when talking about it – this is really a case of holding the government to account, no matter who they are, regardless of party. Because the bottom line is all government has to work in the interests of those who put them there. We’re the paymasters after all, through our taxes. Time we exercised a lot more of our actual rights – or at least managed to convince others to. This ability to do so will be severely compromised through other means if we’re not careful and vigilant about working on it. The TPPA is just one in a long line of many things that will erode our ability to do so, and the constant battle against this and other things has caused us to to have breakdowns in so many areas when we should by now be well in front of many in the rest of the world. A chance to lead with vision has been thrown away many times, too many times.
At the end of the day, I can only feel sorry for anyone who thought Key would be as different as he has been painted to be. Complacency, and just lack of knowledge combined to a heady mix where magical tax cuts were possible, and a whole bunch of other insane things. I cast my mind back to the beneficiary on the front page of the Dominion Post decrying some new policy of Ms. Bennet, decrying the work of Key within months of the first term. I don’t know, I just shook my head at that. I mean that’s how successful they were at spinning a litany of untruths.
It pained (and continues to pain) me to hear time and again about Key being the best for the job because he was “good with the numbers”. Well, I faced an accountant once across the table in talks about an investment when I had a product that I was trying to launch with a former business partner, and this accountant actually only spoke twice in 2 hours. It was about numbers and the two things were “Anyone can make the numbers look good on paper” when talking projections, foillowed by “I’m only really here to find out what you are making in the real world, right now?”
Apply that to this government and we have the lie, and the reality. The lies of affordable free money for all, of roads we could magically afford, and the real world where we are paying for payrises for MPs, encouraging subsidies we can ill afford for the most unproductive areas of the economic life, layer upon layer of waste and bureacracy to monitor, measure and quantify all these magical “improvements”, none of which are working on any serious level at all. All of this paid for in real terms when we seriously can lower costs to society in so many more ways overall. We can actually run things in a way that’s actually good for business in real terms, good for society in real terms and progresses everyone in real terms.
We can get that extra money through fair means, and this is always the thing that gets mistaken for tax grabs and the like. And as we all have known, it requires just readjusting where and how the burdens fall if we are to be an actual fair and equitable society as we project ourselves to be.
There is a year and a bit or even earlier perhaps to go until we can change tack as a country before aspects of where we are currently headed cannot be stopped at the present damage level at best, or become irreversable at worst.
Let’s get there together…
Brilliantly stated, Alan. There’s not much I can add to your piece – especially your advocation of ‘doing more of what we’re doing now,