Welcome fellow kiwi 
I'm from the Shakey City btw, it's chaos so i've escaped to my parents house for a while.
And John Key ruled out adding interest to student loans...
Oh, and even if the Government cut their salaries (which they should) the amount recovered would be a rather pithy amount, hardly making a dent in the deficit.
The quake is going to cost us $20 billion (how much of that is insured privately i'm not sure), if you're against cutting spending to pay for it you have two options... 1) Raise taxes, 2) Borrow more (we already owe 15 Billion...), neither of these are great options, they are in all likelihood much worse than cutting spending and subsidies.
Another solution that they'll never go for (sadly) would be to remove all taxes in Christchurch for the next 5 years and relax building regulations which would 1) Make reinvesting in Christchurch an opportunity and not a burden 2) Make it easier for people to rebuild their homes. Even then we would have to cut spending to account for the lost tax revenue in Christchurch, but that is far better than borrowing to fund it.
And removing interest free loans is NOT "cutting education" it's shifting the burden back to the people who chose to study - Less people will chose to study but they're mostly the ones who will drop out anyway.
I'm from the Shakey City btw, it's chaos so i've escaped to my parents house for a while.
And John Key ruled out adding interest to student loans...
Oh, and even if the Government cut their salaries (which they should) the amount recovered would be a rather pithy amount, hardly making a dent in the deficit.
The quake is going to cost us $20 billion (how much of that is insured privately i'm not sure), if you're against cutting spending to pay for it you have two options... 1) Raise taxes, 2) Borrow more (we already owe 15 Billion...), neither of these are great options, they are in all likelihood much worse than cutting spending and subsidies.
Another solution that they'll never go for (sadly) would be to remove all taxes in Christchurch for the next 5 years and relax building regulations which would 1) Make reinvesting in Christchurch an opportunity and not a burden 2) Make it easier for people to rebuild their homes. Even then we would have to cut spending to account for the lost tax revenue in Christchurch, but that is far better than borrowing to fund it.
And removing interest free loans is NOT "cutting education" it's shifting the burden back to the people who chose to study - Less people will chose to study but they're mostly the ones who will drop out anyway.
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