'Rolling Maul' going well

.... as the number of people claiming unemployment benefit soars to 50,000 (1). That's the one's claiming, mind. The actual number of jobless workers out ther is estimated to be 114,000 at the end of March.

Nice.

Look, John, we appreciate it is the middle of a recession and that makes things tricky. But you set yourself up for this. Instead of following the lead of the rest of the developed world, you made a big fuss about fiscal responsibility, refused to provide sufficient fiscal stimulus, instead promising a "rolling maul of Jobs and Growth initiatives" (2). It never rolled.

Instead, your right hand man hit us with a budget based on presenting the worst case scenario as if it was the most likely, so you could slash back public spending pare back on public service positions. Everything your government has done since taking office has made things worse. True, maybe people are paying a bit less tax. But a lot more of them don't have any wages to tax.

1 - "Dole numbers worse than expected," by Claire Trevett, published in the New Zealand Herald, 13th of July, 2009. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10584065)
2 - "Jobs and Growth: Speech to the Waitakere Enterprise Business Club," speech by John Key, delivered on the 4th of February, 2009. Reproduced on beehive.gov.nz. (http://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/jobs+and+growth+speech+waitakere+enterprise+business+club)