Cam Slater: National Launches Welfare for the Middle Classes

Christopher Luxon yesterday launched a new policy that should be called “Welfare for the Middle Classes”, but is instead being sold as a means to ease the burden of the cost of living crisis.

If the public service stops hiring so many consultants, National Party leader Christopher Luxon says it could afford greater childcare subsidies.

During his State of the Nation speech on Sunday, Luxon promised he would order the public service to cut $400 million from its consultancy bill. That money, he said, would fund a new childcare policy, giving a 25 per cent rebate to most families’ childcare bills.

The childcare rebates were expected to cost about $250 million per year, and would be available per household – not per child.

Stuff

Luxon and National are going to stop spending on consultants and instead splash that cash on providing subsidies for the middle classes so someone else can raise their kids.

Hmm, not very conservative is it?

This is nothing other than a shameless appeal to middle-class women, to get them to move from Labour to National. He’s ostensibly replacing one-off consultants costs with intergenerational costs to the taxpayer via subsidies for childcare.

There must have been some massive donations to National from the childcare sector, who are going to benefit enormously from such subsidies.

Here’s the thing: they’ll never rein in those consultants’ costs, either. The bureaucrats know how to keep a good thing going.

What we will see is increased impost by way of subsidies and the consultants’ bill remain the same, meaning the state has expanded yet again.

There’s a name for that – Socialism – and here is the National Party wrapping their arms around expanded state services like the good little socialists they are.

‘Vote National to change the Government’, those with blue blinkers on say, except the Government doesn’t really change: they are still socialists, but now they wear blue shirts.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE.