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Latest press releases
Refinery closure strategic mistake
30 June 2020
by Chris Leitch, Leader, Candidate for Whangarei
Shutting down New Zealand's capability to refine oil by turning Refining New Zealand into an importer of pre-refined fuel would be a grave strategic mistake.
Such a move would put New Zealand at the mercy of international oil powers and remove completely our ability to refine oil extracted from New Zealand fields should it become necessary to rely on those sources.
Should the oil company owners of the refinery decide to close it, the government should step in and compulsorily purchase it and turn it into a State Owned Enterprise. Read more ...
Potential ISDS problems post Covid-19
29 June 2020
John Ring, Foreign Affairs Spokesperson
"The presence of investor - state dispute settlement provisions in international treaties is likely to cause major problems in the post - Covid 19 world," John Ring, Social Credit Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, said today.
"One of the arguments against the Transpacific Partnership Agreement was that it involved investor - state dispute settlement clauses, which allow foreign - owned companies to sue governments without using the courts. Read more ...
28 June 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
The Greens’ new poverty action plan released today may have admirable aims but it will introduce a vastly more intrusive level of investigation into business and private affairs and a bureaucracy that will be enormously costly and will cause more people to hide their assets offshore.
Tax lawyers will no doubt start making sizeable donations to the Greens campaign fund. Read more ...
Publicly Funded Broadcasting Allocation Condemned
09 June 2020
A joint press release from:
Social Credit Party
Māori Party
New Conservative Party
NZ Outdoors Party
Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
The just announced allocation of publicly funded money to parties for broadcasting for the election campaign is unjust, unfair, and an affront to voters.
National and Labour have been given $2.5 million between them (even more than last election) with the remaining $1.65 million spread over 17 other parties. Read more ...
Orr challenged to provide evidence
28 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
Social Credit leader Chris Leitch is calling for Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr to produce the specifics on why he claims current legislation governing the Bank would prohibit it from “money financing” - creating money to finance emergency Government borrowing.
In an interview with Stuff reporter Thomas Coughlan today, Mr Orr said “Currently, I wouldn’t be able to do it - it would be outside our legislation”. Read More ...
National's stance on benefit payments hypocritical
27 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
For the party with a long established record of cutting benefits, aiming for balanced budgets and promoting strict fiscal responsibility, National’s bleating about unemployment benefit payments being unfair is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
National is crying crocodile tears over the payments, knowing full well that if it was the government any payment it made to those who have lost their jobs would be substantially less – likely just the standard job seeker rate.
It also knows that if it wins the treasury benches in September it will introduce an austerity regime to rival that imposed by former finance minister Ruth Richardson in her ‘mother of all budgets’ in 1991.
The car may have a new driver, but the make and model and what’s under the bonnet is still the same. Read more ...
23 May 2020
Kaipara’s Mayor should make good on the election promise he made of a fresh start for the district and pay back the penalties the Council imposed on Mangawhai ratepayers Bruce Rogan and his wife Heather.
For Jason Smith to fall back on the fact that the Supreme Court had ordered the Rogans to pay $115,000, which included penalties for unpaid rates, is not a fresh start, it’s carrying on in the same vein the old council had started. Read more ...
14 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
The suggestion by former ANZ bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie that the retirement age should be raised to help with the government's fiscal repair job seems like a massive own goal.
What Mr Bagrie is suggesting is that older people will be required to remain in jobs longer, meaning less jobs available for people who are now unemployed as a result of the Covid-19 crisis and costing the government more in ongoing unemployment benefits. Read more ...
12 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
The additional $4 billion in health funding and an increased budget for Pharmac are fantastic moves which Social Credit has been calling for, for a long time.
In 2018, nurses went through a prolonged series of strikes in order to get better wages and conditions and an additional 500 nurses employed to reduce the shortage and consequent stress on existing nursing staff. That deal worth an estimated $520 million dollars is not due for completion until August this year.
In January 2019, 3300 junior doctors started 5 rounds of strike action ... Read more ...
Treasury Apparatchiks Won the Day
08 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
Treasury apparatchiks proved with today’s budget that they still have the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, by the short and curlys.
Instead of ordinary kiwis, it was they, and the banking fraternity they hail from, who won all the prizes from the giant spend the government is undertaking.
Kiwis have been saddled with massive additional debt and interest payments which will fund bigger profits for the overseas shareholders of banks and other financial institutions. Read more ...
Social Credit Economic Policy Launched
08 May 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
Social Credit has released a $20 billion economic policy programme for this year’s general election.
Reclaim Our Future will be launched with full page advertisements in major newspapers on Saturday.
As the country moves out of the Covid-19 lockdown, a new economic direction is required to support thousands of unemployed, rebuild business, lift people on low incomes out of poverty, address inadequate housing, develop secondary industry and more self sufficiency, move primary producers towards regenerative farming, and protect and enhance the environment. Read more ...
Ideological purity costing taxpayer billions
12 April 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
Over the coming decades taxpayers will spend billions of dollars paying off the government’s economic rescue package because the Reserve Bank and the Government don’t want to ”blur the lines between fiscal and monetary policy” according to RBNZ’s assistant governor, Christian Hawkesby.
That means funding of the rescue package will be done through an economic merry-go-round that will see a massive transfer of wealth from citizens to the mainly overseas shareholders of the country’s banks and investment funds. Read more ...
Boards, Top Executives and Politicians need to take a cut too
07 April 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
He Waka Eke Noa – We are all in this together, according to the Prime Minister.
Except that we’re not……………………..
After pressure from employees, Fletcher Building executives have shown the way with their decision to take a 30 per cent pay cut and now other company boards, top executives and central and local body politicians need to follow their lead and take a cut too. Read more ...
Government called on to pay the country's next rates bill
02 April 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
The government needs to step up and pay the next rates instalment to councils on behalf of property owners and businesses as part of its economic support package.
People are facing unprecedented financial stress directly due to the measures implemented by the government, and it needs to support property owners and renters by taking the rates burden off their shoulders. Read more ...
24 March 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
In 2018, nurses went through a prolonged series of strikes in order to get better
wages and conditions and an additional 500 nurses employed to reduce the shortage and consequent stress on existing nursing staff. That deal worth an estimated $520 million dollars is not due for completion until August this year.
It took five offers from the government and DHB's before agreement was finally
reached. Nurses were repeatedly told there was no more money.
In January 2019 3300 junior doctors started 5 rounds of strike action to address
issues around fatigue, good patient care and training, and under-staffing. That was finally resolved in August. Read More ...
Bernard Hickey recommends using Social Credit economic policy
19 March 2020
From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader
In May last year Treasury suggested the government and the Reserve Bank might have to consider ‘unconventional tools’ like Quantitative Easing and helicopter money, both of which are similar to Social Credit economic ideas.
The Reserve Bank this week announced that it was preparing to undertake QE, and today on National Radio, economic commentator and Newsroom Pro editor Bernard Hickey claimed the government needed to introduce a modified version of helicopter money - a Universal Basic Income, similar to National Superannuation, for all citizens. Read more ...