Annette King, deputy leader of the opposition. Key member of the Labour Party road trip. Can’t do math though!
It would seem that Labour are campaigning for National Standards given their performance with spelling and basic math errors to date. Annette appeared on Sunrise this morning to be interviewed with Oliver Driver (why I was watching Sunrise is beyond even me!). She was interviewed on a number of issues, managing to contradict her views expressed on Newstalk ZB with Mike Hosking on the whaling issue fairly well. The best line though came near the end of her interview when asked a question on GST.
Oliver basically asked her how the bus trip was being received in the small towns, Annette gleefully explained that they were being well received, especially when they pointed out to people that they would be paying 20% more for items like bread and butter. That made my ears prick up a touch for two reasons.
1- GST is applied to everything, so following the logic of Annette, that would mean a pencil would go up by 20% and a new LED TV would go up by 20%.
2- She is lying. Say your bread from the supermarket costs you $1.00. Of that $1.00, $0.11 goes straight to the tax man in the form of GST, giving you a pre-GST price of $0.89. IF GST is to increase to 15% the new retail price would be $1.02. So, how does that compare to a 20% increase? Well, she get the first number right, and that is about it. A whooping 2% increase.
So, Annette is a massive 90% out on her figures, either she is lying through her teeth or simply struggles with basic math.
I will get the video up later when it is loaded on the TV3 website.
Tags: Annette King, GST, Labour, Sunrise
