So now we know...

[MisterD]

So why did they go into coalition the the Nats?? The greens don't know what colour they are. Red or blue? It's all a bit of a mystery to them.

A memorandum of understanding is (thankfully) not a coalition.

[Swoop]

Thank goodness. A sensible approach to a budget.
If the Looney Labourite Sect had been honest with the books, and presented the facts, they would have been kicked out anyway. Only the truly blind would still be in love with them.

yeah but whats' $1,500,000,000 between friends... It'd beasy for Cullen to lose that kind of chump change wouldn't it?

... the bastard should be in prison.

Thank goodness we no longer have inept fools like him in charge!
He really should be put against a wall for what he did to the country.

Its just the natural cycle of NZ politics, Labour fuck things up and then National get in and have to clean up their mess and in doing so have to make heaps of cut backs to spending which pisses everyone off so they swing back to Labour who fuck it up all over again.

Possibly the best post ever on KB.
Well said!

[Robert Taylor]

Well if nothing else after 9 dark years of enduring that ugly bucktoothed bitch its great to see the left squirming, and they dont like it.

[Mully]

Well if nothing else after 9 dark years of enduring that ugly bucktoothed bitch its great to see the left squirming, and they dont like it.

One thing that's uncanny is how much Phil-In sounds like Helen. Same sentence structure (stopping in the middle of sentences), and even the same tone.

Scary.

[Owl]

I voted National, but it had nothing to do with the promise of tax cuts. I can live without another for the betterment of the country!

[want-a-harley]

Next time Bill English is on the telly, look away, he sounds exactly like Helen Clark.

[James Deuce]

The tax cuts were a waste of time anyway. You ended up with just enough to buy a basic Lotto ticket at the end of the process. If they want to see an increase in revenue and GDP, then drop income tax to 20% and raise GST to 15%.

Drop company tax to 20% for locally run businesses. Make it 15% if you employ people. Make it 30% for those with majority ownership by overseas shareholders. Require demonstrable reinvestment in local infrastructure.

Then you'll see some economic churn.

[Ocean1]

If they want to see an increase in revenue and GDP, then drop income tax to 20% and raise GST to 15%.

Drop company tax to 20% for locally run businesses. Make it 15% if you employ people. Make it 30% for those with majority ownership by overseas shareholders.

Yeah, I wish.

You’re going to lose some foreign investment, better start offering tax breaks for qualifying on-shore investment schemes and taxing the bejesus out of consumer goods imports. You could start by assigning, say 60% of the super fund to locally owned banks with incentives to loans for R&D investment. With a bit of luck and a couple of decades we might start to see NZ inc actually owning some of our business assets again.

I like GST exemptions for local product too, but if the above ain’t already provocation enough that’s just begging our trading partners to start slamming doors to their markets. But then, they’re onto that already…

[MSTRS:Me]

The fuck she could. In the late 70's NZ lamb landed in the UK at half the price of the local product, but it sold across the counter for almost 4 times that much.

I can't speak for profiteering at the market end, but 'landed at half the price' says it all. 'We' made that possible, and boy, did we pay for that.

...I'd prefer a left-leaning coalition with a strong Green influence. Maybe we should try that sometime?

They can lean whatever way they like...after being tied to a post and shot. Leave them there awhile and they'll go green as well.

[Robert Taylor]

Next time Bill English is on the telly, look away, he sounds exactly like Helen Clark.

Well when you compare two blokes, Bill is a heck of a lot closer to being an oil painting, plus he has obviously visited a dentist.

[James Deuce]

I like GST exemptions for local product too, but if the above ain’t already provocation enough that’s just begging our trading partners to start slamming doors to their markets. But then, they’re onto that already…

Give them tax breaks for the equivalent value of infrastructure reinvestment.

Fact is, the US, Europe, Rusia and China can slam any door in our face they want, whenever they want. The US is rather more guilty of that behaviour than any of the other culprits though.

[Ocean1]

I can't speak for profiteering at the market end, but 'landed at half the price' says it all.

IIRC 'er majesty's customs & excise were responsible for most of that, enough to put wholesale prices a touch more than local product. That's the purpose of protectionist policy, after all. The rest was indeed local market forces, NZ lamb was simply seen to be worth more, far be it from Sainsbury Ltd to argue.

'We' made that possible, and boy, did we pay for that.

What made that possible was, firstly grazing densities an order of magnitude better than anything in Europe, and secondly the invention of the Bell refrigeration machine.

Give them tax breaks for the equivalent value of infrastructure reinvestment.

Yeah. Need to be very specific, there, or all of a sudden every commercial interest in the country is coding almost all of their expenditure to “infrastructure". You get the same thing in Aus with the R&D tax breaks for mining, everything is related to mining research.

Fact is, the US, Europe, Rusia and China can slam any door in our face they want, whenever they want. The US is rather more guilty of that behaviour than any of the other culprits though.

That they are. And fucking with market indicators and regulatory mechanisms to shove exchange rates in their favour. I wonder if a new world market standard will slow that down any…