Some additional figures
New Zealand gives 0.26% of GNI to official development assistance. In 2004/2005, this was $259,228. $14,500 of that went to emergency and disaster relief.
In comparison, the cost of Labour’s student interest write-off plan is $100,000,000 in the first year. Annual operating cost rises to $390,000,000 by third year, and to $500,000,000 after six years, and by 2019 will be $924,000,000.
National’s tax cuts plan was thought to cost a grand total of $1.165 billion
So the $14,500 spent on disaster relief is 0.0145% of the cost of the student loan interest write-off for the first year alone. My calculator failed to calculate what it would be by 2015, it gave up on it (which means it’s a very small number, and I have a very bad calculator).
It’s not that the write-off, or the tax cuts are bad, but I think there’s a few better things we could be doing with our money.
Posted by in 05:04:23
What about the $1m that NZAid is giving? They’re a government agency right? Or does that money come from a different source?
Still $1m/$100m=1%…
(p.s. if it’s $14,500 in 2019, that’s 0.00157%)
I blame the media. Except for Salient. Salient is cool.
Different source, channelled through the same agency.
Government decided to be nice and give some extra, unfortunately now we’ve officially spent all our extra and official disaster relief. However if something drastic did happen tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that a Labour government would give something anyway, they’re usually good like that . . . I’d be less sure about a National government, they’re not big fans of aid.
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