Nosferatu Rises Yet Again.- The Twilight of New Zealand

The NACT vampire, Roger Douglas, has risen further from his grave carrying the instructions his assistant, Rodney Hide, will champion, as official Key lead policies, into the cabinet where the ministers are too busy rorting the taxpayer to scrutinise the sketched out legislation presented within the ACT written briefing papers. Given that Rodney's scenario, outlined at his ACT fundraiser breakfast in Christchurch is true (and judging from the Rape of Auckland legislation one doesn't doubt it) then we can see this NACT government presiding over the wholesale wreckage of the welfare state in order to satisfy the blood-lust of the corporate vampires forever circling the lobbies of this government.

Douglas' alternate budget,given prominence on the ACT website, will see,as reported in the national party's apologist organ, The Herald, the following:

A flat income tax rate, of one dollar in six, above a threshold of $31,200 with a higher tax-free threshold for those with dependents. (discredited when he proposed it during the 1980s - but revived here to capitalise on the NACT cabinet's memory losses.)

GST would rise to the same rate (16.66 per cent).

Company tax would be abolished, to be replaced by a flat asset tax of 0.8 per cent for all enterprises and for households with assets of more than $1 million. (who will be sucking whose blood? Another bite into the State's income rather than investment in the welfare of the country.)

Sir Roger's Budget would cut Government expenditure by more than a quarter within one year.

People would be expected to pay for their children's primary and secondary education directly; tax credits would be available for those whose tax cuts were insufficient to cover those costs directly.

They would also be expected to take out catastrophic health insurance and meet more minor health costs like GP visits, out of pocket. Accident, sickness and unemployment insurance would also be a matter of individual responsibility.

(So why not go the whole hog and remove all State support mechanisms and reintroduce voluntary charities and localised parish poor laws so the wealthy can feel good about themselves as they gaze over their estates?)

Trade barriers should be unilaterally removed and restrictions on the use of land, from zoning or the Resource Management Act, should be removed.

Labour markets should be further deregulated and immigration rules should be radically changed "allowing hard-working and entrepreneurial immigrants to freely enter New Zealand".

(Let's really, really screw the worker and reward the exploiter - and why would any hard-working, entrepreneurial individual want to come to a country whose policy is to exploit and screw them into the ground or is entrepreneurial code for "NACT only rewards those who know how to dine at the public trough and then claim justification (like "all my mates are doing it" Hide claimed )for the naked rort?"