As the year closes and another one begins, and we rush off to the beach for our summer holidays, now is a good time to reflect on the brief reasons why it would be good to kick the Nats out in 2010!
The proposed opening up to competition of the ACC work account ( the part paid by employers for workplace accidents) is the first step in the privatisation of the state run accident insurance scheme. The Minister of ACC, Nick Smith, is scaremongering when he says that the ACC scheme is financially unsustainable. Such “smoke and mirror” statements by Nick Smith bears no serious scrutiny as the basic fact that more is collected in levies than is paid out! To qualify this ACC has $11 billion in reserves and last year collected $1 billion more than it spent on claims.
The
recent national conference of the Labour Party – held after their
recent defeat in the elections – produced some
interesting controversy around the question of what Labour should do
if it gets back into office. The ideas of Marxism were present in the
debate.
Up
to a thousand EPMU Solid Energy miners are entering their third week
of industrial action as the stand-off over negotiations over
multi-employer collective agreement.
