In the last week we have had some very interesting rhetoric from both sides of the centre. Labour, like all good socialists want to spend everyone elses money until it runs out and National want to sell minority stakes in SOE’s.
I have complained consistently to anyone who will listen over the last couple of years that National has had no ideology, just a “whatever makes us popular” attitude. JK has spend all this time smiling and waving and kissing babies and has managed almost JFK style popularity. And yet they haven’t really done anything… I know thats partly to do with the fact that we went broke overnight and that Labour spent our last couple of billion on a very expensive train set. Sure they cut a few taxes here, built a new bridge there, scraped a little bit of paper off the RMA.. but we still seem to have bad roads, high taxes and no money…
Well last week we finally got some ideology back! The announcement came through “we are going to sell stuff, provided we have a mandate from the public to do so.” So all looks good, but are they going far enough? Does the Government need to hold a stake in the power companies? An Airline? And why in gods name are they not selling Kiwibank?
Labour are running around bleeting about selling off the family silverware… but in fairness its not really silverware is it? I mean the airline has only been under partial government control for 10 years and power stations? Silverware err no. Selling Government House would be like selling off the silverware, but power generators? Not really.
For many people a jump back to the right by National is just what they want to see. I have been saying for the past 8 months that I would vote ACT this year, but now maybe not, now that National have found their spine they may get my vote again.
Furthermore the icing on the cake came out this morning, National will not work with Winston, hurrah! The xenophobic, Nationalist will not make it into Parliament, his supporters on the right do not like Labour, and his supporters on the left won’t want to risk not having Labour in power and his other supporters are probably dead…
