Latest / The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Using blunt instruments and magical thinking to ignore evidence of harm
This week we learned:
* The new National/ACT/NZ First Coalition Government ignored advice from Treasury that it didn’t have to reduce net public debt to an arbitrary range of 20%-40% of GDP and could instead borrow up to $80 billion in coming years to create an investment pipeline to grow productivity;
* instead, the new Government created a series of blunt and arbitrary instruments to cut spending in health, education, health, transport and social services in ways that are causing dangerous and poverty-inducing conditions in hospitals, schools and in housing, all to pursue a debt reduction…
The skinny
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