An interesting thread at Reddit: What’s the worst thing National’s done since being in power?
When assessing these it is worth considering whether a different Government could have done better – or is likely to have done worse.
Defunding youthline when NZ has the worst youth suicide of all time and removing money from mental health services in general.
Youth suicide and mental health in general is definitely up there as one of the biggest issues that has been completely swept under the rug. What a completely nasty bit of budgeting to cut the funding, looking back it’s unforgivable.
Modifying the definition of acceptable levels of E.coli in swimmable water from 1% to 5% to make it easier to meet targets for cleaner water.
Disbanded the democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council in order to install commissioners favourable to irrigation. Regardless of the arguments for and against water storage, you don’t remove democracy because it’s not delivering the result you want (or, as they labelled it, ‘dysfunctional’).
Stopping contributions to the Super fund has meant that it is currently about $20 billion less than it could have been.
The worst thing they have done is nothing. They squandered the largest reserve of political capital seen in a generation. Think of how much good Key could have done if he decided to use his popularity for enacting politically challenging changes that everyone knows are important but won’t act on, rather than reinforcing the status quo.
They used Goldman Sachs to sell half of our power companies to private interests on the eve of the electric car revolution, so now we have a profit focussed instead of utility focussed power sector right as we are about to transition from oil to electricity. And the interest saved on the money they got is a tiny fraction of what we as the taxpayers would have got from returns on those companies.
…they sold 49% of the SOEs. So, no actual structural change; just a one-off cash grab. If you truly in your heart of hearts believe that the private sector is the best place for these things, then fucking sell the whole things and be done with it. Their approach was worst of all worlds — one-off cash injection they didn’t need, combined with lower dividends in perpetuity, without any of the purported benefits of privatisation.
The combination of increasing the regressive tax GST to 15% and removing the top income tax bracket of 40% on the rich was a massive blow to egalitarianism in New Zealand, and has harmed not only poor people but our economy as a whole.
Rushing a law through in a day to overturn a case where it was ruled carers of disabled who were related to their children should receive money from the government. They also took away their ability to complain to the Human Rights commission about it. Harmed constitutional integrity of the nation and was bad for human rights.
Inaction on the housing crisis. For years they denied there’s a problem and now there is likely going to be a whole generation of people that can’t afford to buy. Doesn’t help the inequality situation.
The Resource Legislation Amendment Act. It will slowly destroy the New Zealand wilderness we grew up with. Pokey old alpine lodges in the wild places of NZ will be replaced by a private billionaires’ playground.
The thing that angers me the most is the constant threats and cuts to important services like Women’s Refuge, and Suicide prevention/ Rape Crisis helplines. The money is so small and they constantly cut or put tight restrictions on funding, then they look benevolent when they give some back or restructure it’s crazy.
…child poverty. Has anyone said anything about child poverty? How did we miss this… it was bad when they took over from Labour and things have not improved at all and in some measures gotten worse.
As a teacher the worst thing I’ve seen them do is remove teacher voice from our own professional body. They stripped away our right to elect representatives to the Teachers Council, making it a totally Minister-appointed body with the ability to re-write our standards and raise our fees however they see fit. It’s literally taxation without representation. They did the same to the university governing bodies as well.
Privatization of social services. Selling off assets. Rise in inequality, Housing cost, Living costs, and all in all just being out of touch with most kiwis.
Defunded evening classes for adults.
Told a boat load of lies about the Kim Dotcom case.
They sold our assets while the country screamed “NO!”.
They destroyed our privacy rights while the country screamed “NO!”.
They stormed ahead with the TPPA while the country screamed “NO!”.
They used things like Salmon Snapper Quotas and Flag changes to distract the population from the real stuff.
Imo they have a tendency to govern based on personal opinions and beliefs. When presented with facts, evidence, proof, they somtimes bend. Other times it is clear they aren’t interested.
Implementing a broken-by-design emissions trading scheme, and knowingly counting fraudulent carbon credits towards our emissions reductions targets.
If you want to get into any profession that requires post graduate study, you have to have well off parents to pay for your living costs. If you’re from a poor family, you can forget about being a vet or a doctor unless you’re happy to borrow to support your living costs as well.
The Student Allowance will no longer be available for postgraduate study (except Bachelor degrees with honours).
Studylink Budget 2012
…the proposed flag change – the entire process is indicative of National… starting with an idea with some merit and completely fucking up every single stage in the process to end up with a result that satisfied nobody.
Removing voting rights for prisoners in NZ. Anyone who is detained in prison is de-registered and cannot re-register until they are released from prison. The High courts have since ruled that the legislation is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In passing the legislation they sent it the Law and Order select committee instead of the Justice and Electoral select committee. A majority of submissions to the select committee were against the bill (skewed by an Otago uni paper assessment) and only two were for. One of those two was the bills sponsor. Voting rights are fundamental to a functioning democracy.
Passed the “Hobbit law” under urgency, which has since destroyed workers rights in the film and television industry, at the behest of Warner Brothers.
Letting the regions flounder and die.
They didn’t take global warming seriously. None of these other issues matter because when our environment is destroyed, it won’t be able to support a society.
Kept the Act party alive.
Surveillance state.
Boy racer act. Solved nothing and is anti-youth.
Continuing the failed war on cannabis in this country I would count as a failure on National’s watch.
Obviously this went much further than the worst that the National Government has done and there are a number of less major additional gripes. There’s quite a bit of discussion on many of those.
Which is the worst?
Which of these are unfair criticisms?
Which are just ideological differences?
