John Key MP - National Party Finance Spokesman

24 January 2006

Job losses highlight Govt's failures

News of the latest job losses illustrates the failure of Government policies over the last six years says Finance spokesman John Key.

"The Government's squandered the golden years," Mr Key says. "The redundancies are the first of many."

"The truth is the Government's got it wrong in a number of ways by putting more costs in the system - most of which have hit business competitiveness.

"It has also fuelled inflation by massively expanding Government spending since 1999 - which in turn has fuelled interest rates that are now the highest in the Western world.

"That, in turn, has produced a run on the New Zealand currency and made our exporters uncompetitive in the face of the very high exchange rate.

"By contrast, the Australian Government has used the golden economic weather to constantly drive a pathway of competitiveness."

Mr Key says it has introduced workable public-private partnerships to fund infrastructure projects, substantially cut taxes, reformed industrial relations, promoted exports, and made other business-friendly changes.

"In contrast, the Labour-led Government has increased taxes, renationalised ACC, amended employment laws, and introduced new taxes and charges all over the place.

"Axing the carbon tax was simply cancelling what would have been yet another cost. That's not a positive, that's just the elimination of one of the negatives.

"Growing the economy is a long-run game and a few lines of spin from the Prime Minister back from her Norwegian skiing holiday is too little too late.

"Dr Cullen is partly to blame. He's overcooked the domestic economy with massive hikes in Government spending. His latest efforts to stave off crisis - sending officials to Japan to talk the economy down to Japanese investors - are futile and too late."

ENDS

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