I hate to say it, believe me, but the cartoon in yesterday’s Dompost accurately sums up the way the National party is allowing themselves to be portrayed.
They seem to be dithering, distracted by things that simply don’t matter, while they ponder and mull over their stance on the Zero-Carbon Bill, the biggest economic hand-grenade a government of New Zealand has ever considered pulling the pin on.
They need to oppose this Bill in the strongest possible terms, they need to be holding feet to the fire, they need to stay on message and point – this bill is economic sabotage and, it’s a fact, we will all be worse off, especially the lower earners.
They need to be especially targeting global-warming emperor-with-no-clothes Shaw and his blithe let-them-eat-cake shrug-off towards this bill’s victims:
“The modelling suggested the poorest 20 per cent of households could be twice as worse-off thanks to climate action as their counterparts on the average income, thanks to them spending a higher proportion of their income on products likely to increase in cost.
Shaw said any change would be gradual and Government interventions such as the Families Package would be key. The Families Package greatly increased the amount of money the poorest families gain from Working For Families and other benefits.”
Oh, OK, James, so the poor will only gradually get poorer, that’s nice, and only gradually more reliant on welfare hand-outs. I’m sure they’ll take comfort from that. These points need to be hammered home, hard! But instead, what do we get?
Never a truer thing spoken by Stuff: “National doesn’t bite”. At a time when we need an opposition dog prepared to tear into this bill and its proponents, ripping them a new rear entrance if necessary, we get a toothless poodle who doesn’t want to “play politics”.
Get going, Mr Bridges, or get gone!
