Thursday, April 28, 2005

Better check with the boss, Judith!

Frequent Howick and Pakuranga Times contributor, and New Zealands own Margaret Thatcher of the South Seas, Judith Collins is becoming a law unto herself.

After she recently made some fairly extreme comments about docking money going to sole-parent familes, she had to be pulled into line by Don Brash, who forced her to publicly tone down her sloganeering rhetoric.

I wonder what he will make about the statement she has released today about the Working for Families Pacakge. In it, she makes a number of nonsense claims about the package being the cause of "high" interest rates (funny how they were often higher while Brash was RB Govenor and National was in government huh?).

Presumably then, she would right this monstrous injustice by repealing Working for Families? Her bold comments further on in the statement would certainly suggest so. The only problem with that implication from National's Welfare spokesperson, is of course that Brash has publicly vacilated on the issue, suggested that a National government may well keep the current programme in place.

Of course the last National welfare spokesperson was sacked for not being on board with Party policy - we can only hope.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Michael,

The comments by the ANZ and Deutsche economists seemed easonable to me. The timing of it seems to be the big bone of contention. Similar to the Transpower Pylons being pushed back till after the elections.

IE if its good for the government (Working Families Package) then rush it through before elections, if it is bad for the government (Transpower Pylons) then push it back till after the elections.

Quote from the PR:
ANZ chief economist John McDermott has been reported as saying that although the Working for Families package only took effect this month, the economic impact of it had already been factored in by the Reserve Bank in the markets.

In the same report, Deutsche Bank chief economist Ulf Schoefisch questioned the timing. He said: ".the timing is pretty risky. It would perhaps have been better to delay it somewhat."

Cheers Toa

Michael Wood said...

Hi Toa,

I guess I would make a couple of quick comments in response:

1) Any large piece of government spending will have an economic stimulatory effect, which is what the bank economists are referring to. There's no indication at this stage that headline inflation is roaring out of control, so I find it difficult to follow that the package constitutes a "risk" in that sense. Additionally, the government has done the responsible thing by phasing the package in over 3 years - so there isn't a suddenly a huge surge in expenditure.

2) It's the right thing to do. Working families with kids need some support, and in most devloped countries (ie; Australia) it's there. This package just puts us in the international mainstream.

Cheers,
Michael.

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