Bill English is using a mixture of bribery and fear of the unknown to cajole caucus into supporting him.
Judith Collins is offering up a policy prescription that shows she isn’t a one trick pony with tax cuts like Bill and John were.
Judith Collins says she will not go ahead with tax cuts and may review iwis’ role in planning decisions if she is made Prime Minister.
Her policy agenda would also include major reforms of health and safety laws and the Resource Management Act (RMA).
Collins is standing for Prime Minister John Key’s job alongside Finance Minister Bill English and Health Minister Jonathan Coleman. She is the outsider in the contest, and has not yet received any public declarations of support from MPs.
The Corrections and Police Minister is known for her hardline stance on law and order, which has led to tougher bail laws, harsher sentencing for some offences, and the crushing of boy racers’ cars.
She supports the Government’s position of not reviewing the age of eligibility for pensions. For people who worked in manual labour “65 was a long time to wait”, she said.
But her stance on other issues, including tax cuts, means she cannot be easily categorised as right-wing. She is socially liberal and is the only one of the three candidates who voted to legalise same-sex marriage.
In an interview with the Herald today, she said tax cuts were not a priority for her. No constituent she had spoken to was asking for tax relief – which has been proposed by Key, possibly in the form of a “family package”.
“What they’re saying to me is, and certainly my area in the South Auckland … is we need infrastructure,” Collins said.
“Most people don’t work in the Beehive. They don’t live in luxury homes. Most people actually get by, and they don’t want to spend an hour and a half or two hours getting to work.”
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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him. But you can’t ignore him.
