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Is it time for a change?

Wednesday 14th of September 2005

After my last post I have been having an interesting discussion with an adviser - who suggests I keep out of politics! More seriously he suggests one votes on what is good for the long-term future of the country not what is good for our industry.

His view is that Cullen inherited an economic structure put together by the last National government and Roger Douglas before that and they simply rode a wave of good luck.

Clark is insufferably arrogant. Cullen is insufferably arrogant.

"Having said that I was low key Nat supporter until threee weeks ago now I think they all suck - they forget they work for us," he says.

His view is that the only way forward for New Zealand is two terms Labour and two terms National - a lurch left and then a lurch right and so on.

"Never give them three terms - the arrogance takes over."

He also thinks Labour lost all credibility when they said there is no spare money and then came out with the (not costed) student loan bribe.

I don't disagree about the arrogance. Is arrogance reason enough to throw out a government which has presided over six good years? To me it seems to be a toss up between arrogance and known factor v bumbler and ditherer. With Brash it seems to be the problem of teaching old dog new tricks.

I reckon that the Nats aren't ready yet, but in three years time they will be. If you put them in now lacking experience and with a worsening economy they will only be a weak one-term government.

Where we do agree is that I don't have a lot of time for either lot at the present and I am sick of bribes and the petrol tax one the worst especially coming from Brash the economist.

As for Labour and its hand out - I disagree with that and suggest that the media, economists and commentators let us down by not showing that in the budget there was all this unallocated money to spend.

What's best for the long-term future of the country is certainly the key and I don't think one-off short term tax cuts are the answer (be different if they were corporate tax cuts). The key is to increase productivity and wages.
One piece I enjoyed as it summed things up well is this one written by Rod Oram.

The idea of the blog was to get people talking - I figure the industry are mainly right leaning (or in some cases lying on their right hand side) and it would be good to challenge their thinking. Your comments are welcome.


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