November 25, 2011 11:17am by David Farrar

10 bad policies you will get from a Labour-led Government

I blogged yesterday on some of the policies I liked from Labour and other minor parties. Today is the policies I think will be awful for New Zealand, if we get a Labour-led Government.

No path out of debt and back into surplus. If Labour were to govern alone, then the extra debt might only be $12b. But the Greens and NZ First (and the Maori and Mana parties) have literally tens of billions of dollars of spending promises. Winston makes Greece seem fiscally conservative by comparison.
A return to 1970 style national industry agreements. Labour’s industrial relations policy was written by the CTU. Unions would gain the power to get a Government appointed body unilaterally impose terms and conditions on every employer in an industry.
Repeat violent and sexual offenders will get out of jail much earlier. Labour has vowed to repeal the three strikes law. Under this law an offender whose third strike is a rape will get 20 years with no parole. Labour will repeal the law so that they get out much earlier. Many murderers have multiple previous convictions for previous violent and sexual offending. Off memory, it is around 80. If they had not been released early on parole, many of their victims would still be alive.
$70/week more to stay on a benefit. Labour is pledging to give parents who are beneficiaries an extra $70/week. Parents who are not beneficiaries will only get $10/week. This rewards people for not working.
Parents will no longer know how their kids are doing at school. Many parents have complained in the past that school reports do not tell them are their kids reading, writing and doing maths at the level expected for their age. Labour will repeal National Standards which required parents to be told how they are doing against the appropriate age standard for numeracy and literacy. This will lock in the 20% of kids who leave school with no qualifications as they were not identified early on as needing assistance. It is too late by the time they reach secondary school.
10 extra costs on businesses. Labour are proposing 10 extra costs on businesses. The cumulative impact of their policies will be destruction of jobs, leading to more people on welfare, fewer taxpayers and greater debt.
A directionless health system. Labour will return the health system to what we had in 2008 where the public health service had 13 health priorities, 61 objectives, 10 health targets and 47 indicators. The result was massive waiting times for elective surgery, Kiwis having to go to Australia for cancer radiation treatment, and huge delays in A&E centres.
Increased power prices. Labour will retain 100% of the energy SOEs and milk them for dividends as they did in the last Government. Labour’s record was a 65% increase in power prices and raking in over $3b of dividends. They are budgeting for dividends from SOEs to massively increase to pay for their spending plans. On top of that their ETS changes will also push power prices up even further, and their ban on future non-renewable energy will be a third factor pushing prices up
Youth Unemployment will not drop. Since Labour abolished youth rates in 2008, youth unemployment has skyrocketed. Labour’s policy is that should be illegal for a 16 year old with no skills, no experience and no qualification to work even part-time for less than $15 an hour. Young people will continue to face huge difficulty in gaining their first job.
The cost of living to go up, up, up. Don Brash may have struggled as Leader of ACT, but he was globally recognized as the world’s best Reserve Bank Governor whose job was to keep inflation down. Labour and the other left parties want to ditch the bipartisan agreement on monetary police we have had for 25 years, and remove the focus of the Reserve Bank from being just keeping inflation and prices down. This means that prices will go up across the board. On top of that Labour’s extra spending will increase debt and also fuel inflation. Rents will also go up due to their Capital Gains Tax.