Discussion
"...it's certainly true that as a result of their tax cut package, and their failure to substantially cut spending, despite their rhetoric, they have widened the operating deficit, to more than it may have even been under Labour.
So if you want to call that borrowing for tax cuts, they have done that. Its certainly true that the amount of borrowing by the government is as bad as it was under Labour..."
(1/2)
So, during the 2023 election campaign NatACT First claimed they would cut public spending and borrowing, and they have *not* done that.
But OK, sometimes things emerge postelection and plans need to change. This is the rationale for electing representatives instead of making every law change a referendum.
What's really shocking is that the governing parties are still implying they *have* done these things. I'm calling this out as the political gaslighting it is. Why is this legal?
(2/?)
We really need to criminalise political fraud. If a politician or someone acting for a political party makes claims in public that *they know* to be untrue or seriously misleading, there ought to be legal consequences.
For a start, it certainly ought to make that person ineligible as a candidate for public office. Perhaps fines and prison sentences could be appropriate too, at a similar level to those for corporate fraud like insider trading.
(3/?)
Now the most obvious risk of unintended consequences of a law against political fraud is its use to nobble political opponents. The standard of evidence required to even bring a prosecution would have to be very high.
Convicting someone would have to require proving beyond reasonable doubt that;
* the public claim was false, or could lead a reasonable citizens to believe something false
* the person making the claim *knew* it to be false or misleading at the time they made it
(4/4)
Anyway, having had his brief flirtation with the truth, Hooten goes back to confidently lying, this time on the sale of public infrastructure;
"John Key went to the public over that issue in 2011 and received a mandate for recycling 49% of the shares in his energy companies."
Hooten ignores the small matter of an election not being a referendum on any particular policy. Especially when 67% of voters in the Citizens Initiated Referendum on that policy said "no!".
(1/?)
Oh and did anyone else catch the freudian slip there, where Hooten said "his" energy companies, instead of "our" energy companies?
(2/?)
Anyway, moving on to Hooten's Lie #2 ...
"The asset sales, even the way they were managed in the early days of the 80s and 90, were not overwhelming unpopular. The governments which conducted those sales were reelected after all ..."
This argument holds less water than a leaky sieve. I'm going to need at least 500 characters to go through all the ways this is bollox, probably more.
(3/?)
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
