>It’s Day 5 of living under the Daddy State and the NZ Herald have finally stopped putting John Key on the Front Page, yesterday it was a shot of him holding a kitten on the steps of Parliament, apparently afterwards he ate the kitten to the applause of the editorial staff. He’s in a hurry off to APEC and having the Government sworn in before the final count is actually announced may seem rude but any chance to swap Prime Ministerial business cards for John with the real Obama might snap him out of the ‘stoned-blank-child-in-the-candy-shop’ look he seems to have adopted since winning the election on Saturday night. The spin however to start softening the public up for the right wing reforms has begun I note, yesterday Rodger Kerr from the Business Round Table, a man well know for his genuine concern for healthcare to the poor and certainly not the private health industry was explaining why inefficiency in our healthcare made him sad and his solution – stunningly enough – was more private health industry, not because he’s on the Business Roundtable with his mates from the private health industry mind you, but because he cares about you and me. Today in the Herald we are being spun that beneficiaries on sickness benefits with depression should be kicked off the benefit after 2 months because it’s hurting them more then helping them, I’m waiting for the seminar where we get to harvest the organs directly from the poor as a way to help create incentives for beneficiaries who stay 3 months on the benefit.
The spin to soften you up for the hardline changes that nACTional are intending to implement won’t really prepare you for the changes though, as NZ looks to 6.1% Unemployment and a new law allowing bosses to end your employment after 90 days with no questions asked doesn't start to sound like the change that the real Obama was talking about. NZers who rushed enthusiastically to give the least experienced Prime Minister NZ has had for 100 years total power with one of the lowest voter turn outs in 100 years to elect one of the most rabid right wing party’s into a coalition in everything but name with ACT may now be suffering buyers remorse as they watch ACT, a party bloated to significance by death penalty fantasists and global warming deniers, start to pass medieval law and order policy that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like the Greens after a smoke.
You have to hand it to the Beige Obama’s hollow brain though, Steven Joyce. The man so central to Don Brash’s racist bid last election sure knows how to play the game. Hit Winston repeatedly in the months leading up to the election with a public crucifixion via the media that eventuated in Winston being cleared by the Electoral Commission, the Serious Fraud Office and the Police – has any political party been so scrutinized? Certainly not National or their Waitemata Trust, although in an ironically hypocritical twist ACT were caught out be the Electoral Commission and the complaint that Rodney’s Yellow Jacket was an election hoarding and as such needed a signature that Hide used as further proof that the Nanny State were suffocating democracy with the EFA turned out to be a complete fabrication after the complainant being outed as an ACT activist. Joyce has skillfully calculated that NZ will be frightened by the changes and needs moderately inclusive window dressing, with 6.1% unemployment, manipulating the Maori Party will come in handy when the policies sharply come into effect, any time John needs to jump to the Right for Law and Order policy or changes to the ETS, he cuddles Rodney, when he wants to pass something that ACT consider disgusting like the abolition of slavery for example, John will cuddle Pita and Tariana. With the likelihood that National will try and claim that we don’t need a Royal Commission as was suggested and will in fact try and push for a direct and ill funded educational referendum on MMP to distract and drain the Left for the 2011 campaign, the hollow brain has shown himself to be a 'multidimensional' strategist of the connect 4 variety.
Unemployment at 6.1% and house prices having dipped 6% in value over the last year when they are predicted to lose 30% of value, times are going to become very tough and I am interested to see if NZ will enjoy the change they voted for, and remember as shocking as the changes in the first 100 days will be, remember this is ‘National lite’, you don’t get to see the rich creamy full bodied National Right until 2011, so as bad as the pinch feels now, it ain’t nothing to the full Daddy State next election.
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