Peters + Brash = Stability? Hello?

Business lobby group bureaucrats that go around the country saying a coalition between Don Brash and Winston Peters would deliver the best government for business are letting their membership down, Progressive leader Jim Anderton said today.

"I am told that the chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers' Association (Northern), Alasdair Thompson, is quoted by one media outlet today to have said that business would prefer a Brash-Peters coalition over the Labour-Progressive one.

"Mr Thompson, the former unsuccessful Social Credit candidate for Parliament, should consider how an unstable and fractious coalition between Brash and Peters would affect business confidence and investment before rushing out to endorse such a nightmare scenario for our country.

"There is only one way that a National-led government could be imposed on New Zealanders and that is if NZ First somehow gets enough votes to make such a catastrophe possible.

"The Northern Employers Association is doing its membership no service at all by endorsing a National-NZ First government.

"Many individual business people that I talk to know that a Don Brash-Winston Peters coalition would be as unhappy and short-lived as the ill-fated Jenny Shipley-Winston Peters alliance was.

"It only lasted a few short months, but the toll in that period of political instability was high on investor confidence and business activity and the cost was lost business opportunities, higher-than-necessary interest rates and lower-than-optimal job creation," the Progressive leader said.

"Business activity and investment are always closely tied to investor confidence and investment and activity suffered under the Shipley-Peters coalition because investors and employers never knew, from day to day, how long the inherently unstable and unhappy coalition would last.

"New Zealand small businesses can't afford a repeat of that fiasco," Jim Anderton said.

ENDS

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