The Invisible Man Speaks
Hark! What is that strange disembodied twittering that I hear? Is it a ghost? A telephone answering machine? a vague afterthought? Yes! It’s all three ! It’s the Invisible Phil…
Once again, Phil abandons invisibility in order to utter an inanity. It’s rather like watching a Klingon Bird of Prey on Star Trek, de-cloaking and firing, only not nearly as interesting.
Seizing on naked political opportunism, Phil uses the sad sight of 2500 people queueing for 150 jobs to pitch a sob-story:
“Labour is accusing the National Government of doing nothing to prevent rising unemployment.
“Figures released today showed the number of people on the unemployment benefit rose 13 per cent last month, with 66,328 people receiving the benefit at the end of December, up from 58,541 in November.”
Paula Bennett notes the obvious, that this is simply the usual end of year increase as students leave school and university and enter the job market. Of course Phil would like to make this number bigger by raising the minimum wage to $15/hour. And even more opportunism follows:
“Labour leader Phil Goff said more than 2500 had queued for hours for one of 150 jobs at a new supermarket in South Auckland yesterday.
““These are not dole bludgers, they are Kiwis who are desperate to work.””
Well, Duh. This would be why they are queueing to get a job, wouldn’t it? Nobody is suggesting for a moment that the rise in people on the dole is due to a rise in dole bludging, so the remark is completely fatuous (as are so many of Phil’s remarks).
National’s initiatives to combat unemployment have seen little real take-up in the business world. The Left like to portray this as a failure and a joke, but it is likely the low uptake means that the recession was simply less bad than we thought it was going to be and that these measures were not needed. The only other explanation would be that businesses thought the measures economically damaging, but this is adubious explanation, as the measures were suggested by the business leaders themselves.
In contrast, the thrill of Phil produces exactly zero in the way of suggestions to combat unemployment, both when it really mattered last year and now, when the recession is receding and unemployment is starting to level off. If ever there was an illustration of how Labour is devoid of ideas, this is it. It is going to be interesting to hear his comments when the unemployment rate starts falling.
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Jan 23 10 9:19 am
No – Phil Goff is doing what any self respecting leader of the opposition should be doing.
That is highlighting the human tragedy that this sight implies – queuing for 7 hours to try and get a minimum wage job with a very high probability on the individual level that you wont.
I wouldn’t trust Phil Goff and his crew to be able to rectify this situation, just the converse in fact but it is an indictment on us and our society that this situation exists.
Jan 23 10 9:23 am
Some commentators are likening Phil’s approach as a reconnect with Labour’s old 1970s base. Who knows.. he might turn up at a few square dances yet.
JC
Jan 23 10 11:34 am
It’s funny he has no ideas because we’re all told that Labour fixed this problem when they came in.
Of course, the reality is that the policies in the 90′s took a while to catch hold, and Labour just got the credit while bashing those same policies.
Any government is powerless (short of a centrally controlled economy, and we *know* how successful those were!) only way to get private (i.e. independent actors) businesses to hire new workers is for them to have confidence that it’s going to pay off in the long term. One of the ways to do that is to avoid big shakeups – i.e. what Labour call “do nothing”.
The other way is to make life easier for business and those who control them, Labour have several names for that, none of them particularly flattering.
.-= scrubone´s last blog ..I just had to! =-.
Jan 23 10 12:37 pm
Phil can beat up this “surge” in unemployment as much as he wants, but it was little more than half the percentage increase of 2008, and the same as the percentage increase in 2007.
.-= Inventory2´s last blog ..The tax burden =-.