John Key’s government has just made one of its potentially most damaging decisions so far – that it wants to mine areas such as the Coromandel, Great Barrier Island and Stewart Island protected by a Schedule 4 designation because of their beauty and environmental and recreational importance.
Most of its other noteworthy decisions to date have been political calculations driven by private polling. With ACC cuts, GST increase, tax cuts, welfare cuts, cuts to government departments, it’s the lower income earners who will suffer the most. They’re not traditionally National voters.
But opening up the best of our national parks to the diggers has unleashed huge dissent among all sectors of the population. So why do it?
Because it is in a bind of its own making.
John Key talks about “step change”. The problem is that his version of it puts one of New Zealand’s biggest income earners at real risk. One only has to look at the latest Economist magazine or stories in newspapers like the Guardian to see the risks we face.
Tourism, which depends on our inspired 100% Pure NZ image to attract visitors, makes $20 billion a year and employs one in 10 of our population in one way or another. 95% Pure NZ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
We rely on our image as being efficient, clean, green and natural. One only has to recall the fight we had to put up against the flawed “food miles” argument run by UK lobby groups, which if successful would have cost our exporters dearly.
National has been forced to resort to a desperate defence of its mining plan. It has been exposed as fudging the numbers on our mineral wealth and has attempted a laughable attack on Labour’s mining record to somehow justify its plans.
It is plain wrong. Labour has always and will continue to support mining, where appropriate and with proper environmental safeguards. But we never mined protected Schedule 4 land and oppose National’s stupid decision to mine these most beautiful areas. Labour will not budge on its position and will put back into Schedule 4 any land National removes.
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Welfare Reforms
Last week John Key and Social Development Minister Paula Bennett announced welfare reforms that will see many Kiwis on benefits work tested and required to look for part time work.
Sounds tough and no nonsense eh? But instead of dog whistling that the unemployed don't want to work why doesn't National put its energies into creating more jobs? Australia did it and now it has an unemployment rate a third lower than New Zealand’s.
If it is so keen to get people off benefits why has it stood back and allowed unemployment to treble since Labour was in government?
Most Kiwis can and want to work. Who can forget the sight of 3500 people lining up for 150 low paid supermarket jobs in Auckland?
Instead of putting the boot into the unemployed, perhaps John Key could do something positive about jobs and training.
National's reforms are unfair, and embarrassingly for the Government, senior Cabinet Minister and Attorney-General Chris Finlayson thinks so too.
In his report, mysteriously only made available to the public the day after the Government's announcement, Mr Finlayson slammed the reforms saying they discriminated on "three prohibited grounds: sex, marital status and family status,”
Trevor Mallard put it well on the Labour MPs blog site Red Alert, where he asked Paula Bennett:
"How is it fair for a guy whose late wife has been the breadwinner is work tested while he brings up the kids but a woman whose husband dies isn’t?
And while you are at it – why is it fair for a woman in her fifties who has never had kids to be exempt from a work test and paid a benefit while a woman of the same age who has three kids is forced to go out to work? "
Quite simply this Government's focus is in the wrong place - New Zealand needs a plan for jobs.
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