May 03, 2013
Asset sales no substitute for jobs
Labour’s regional development spokesperson says selling state assets will do nothing to get New Zealanders into jobs.
Today is the last day for people to apply for shares in Mighty River Power, and the Government has indicated it wants to partially privatise at least one other power company by the end of the year.
Shane Jones says buyers of the shares have been given fair warning that a future Labour-Green government will regulate to ensure customers aren’t gouged to pay dividends to Remuera merchant bankers.
He says the shrillness with which Prime Minister John Key and Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce attacked the Labour-Green plan is because they have no answers.
“They’ve failed on the question of jobs. Never mind which way they cut it; we need 38,000 jobs per year created to recover where we’ve been. They’re about 35-40 percent away from that figure so they’ve got a big crisis themselves in how to convince more New Zealanders that it’s all ok to have flowery rhetic but not jobs but also there’s no plan B,” he says.
Shane Jones says National’s only plan is to take taxpayer assets and hand them over to its supporters like birds of carrion.
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