Labour is seeking an urgent debate in Parliament today to give New Zealand the opportunity to scrutinise exactly how National and Act are planning to address productivity, Labour’s Associate Finance Spokesman David Parker said today.
“There are growing fears that the National-Act productivity drive is code for a return to the policies of the 1990s which National has until now pretended it has left behind. In the 1990s wages for most workers stagnated and the gap between the rich and the poor widened,” David Parker said.
“All the signs are there. Privatisation cheerleader Don Brash has this week been shoulder tapped to lead a productivity taskforce.
“Dr Brash is well known for his extreme views. For example, he has argued that productivity could be improved by removing the minimum wage. He has opposed initiatives which focused tax reductions on lower and middle incomes with families with children, has opposed initiatives to improve savings needed to improve our investment base. He favours lower taxes for those who are already better off.”
“On productivity, Dr Brash has said; ‘We would all benefit if those who are worth $5 an hour can be employed and earn $5 an hour. Better to do this than keep a minimum wage of $7 an hour and deny jobs to those who were worth less’.
“John Key’s real views on the sell off of public assets are increasingly clear.”
“At the weekend he said on TV One’s Q + A he said: ‘I’ve never said I’m philosophically opposed to the sale of state assets in some form, and I’ve never said that that is off the agenda forever, but I live in an horizon where I need to operate in the next three years, that’s the parliamentary cycle I’ve got’.”
“For these reasons Labour is seeking this urgent debate in Parliament. John Key and Bill English have both repeatedly said that productivity is the number one issue facing New Zealand today.
“The public has a right, through its elected representatives across all parties, to get a clear understanding right from the start of how the Government intends to meets its goals.
“Otherwise, the resurfacing of Don Brash will inevitably fuel public fears that the Government’s real agenda is once again to cut employees’ rights in the workplace, lower the safety net for the vulnerable in our communities and sell off our assets to overseas investors,” David Parker said.
Contact: Richard Trow 021 278 7233.
