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Sylviagony fact-checks National's and Kiwi's claims about Socialist Alliance's policies in a podcast
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Hello everyone! Thank you for joining me here today! So as you might have noticed, National has suddenly decided to focus a lot of their attacks on Socialist Alliance, making rather extreme claims. So I am here today to check these claims, and confirm whether they're true or false. Let's just get right into it.

The mask has slipped. The socialists will fight for unions over children.

I believe this billboard was in response to a poster by /u/gavingrotegut, which showed teachers striking for higher wages. So first of all, claiming we support unions over children is not based on any facts or statements made by our party, but is nothing more than slanderous insults. Of course the population comes first, and that includes children, but we do not believe these are mutually exclusive, and in fact helping one will also help the other. Supporting unions and allowing solidarity strikes leads to workers earning more money. These can be teachers of the children, but they can also be their parents. Either way, ensuring the parents and teachers of children are better off also helps the children indirectly.

85% estate tax under Alliance. Ransacking the elderly is no way to pay for unaffordable socialist political promises.

Some very important details are missing here. the 85% estate tax is only on estates worth over $3 million. Now I am aware that National is led by a bunch of rich people who don't care about the poor, but the average person doesn't just have $3 million lying around, not even in their property. Claiming this is ransacking the elderly is just completely false as it only affects a very small minority of the richest citizens. And besides, what does a dead person need millions of dollars for? That money would otherwise be sent to their children, lifting them up to the upper class and further helping inequality expand. We believe in equal chances for everyone and having people become rich out of nowhere is not helping anyone, except the one person. It would be much better spent elsewhere.

addictions experts say socialist plan to decriminalize all drugs "not worth the risk."

First of all, note how no sources have been cited, the billboard just claimed that this is the truth, without backing anything up. Anyway, let's take a look at Portugal, which has decriminalised drug use nearly 20 years ago, and is often looked at as an example for why drug decriminalisation is a good idea. Since drug use has been decriminalised in Portugal in 2001, HIV diagnoses decreased by 17% among drug users, 90% even for drug-related infections, there has been a reduction in drug-related deaths, drug use among adolescents and "problematic" users declined, value of drugs significantly decreased, number of drug-related deaths went down from 131 in 2001 to 20 in 2008, and in 2012 drug-related deaths were nearly a sixth of the EU average. And while drug use has increased since 2001, the same increase has also been seen in other countries, regardless of whether they have decriminalised drugs or not.

The socialist "justice" plan will give white-collar criminals complete anonymity.

This is again taking out important context. Yes, we do believe they should get complete anonymity, but only until the case's conclusion, and this is not limited by job type as National seems to do here for some reason. This anonymity is to ensure that innocent people who end up court but turn out to be innocent do not end up taking the blame or getting unfairly hurt for actions they had nothing to do with, and it extends to all parties in the court case, including witnesses, who should most certainly be kept anonymous by default, as their relation to the culprit can have a serious effect on a case's result.

Your family home is under threat from the socialists. If elected, they'll let the Minister of Lands expropriate your home much faster and without any compensation.

Yes, we are streamlining the process and making it easier to do, but this won't just be applied anywhere, and "no compensation" is not a requirement, simply a possibility. If someone were to lose their house through this process, they will be compensated fairly. But this is mainly for the acquisition of companies, as they are better off in the public sector considering the free market just leads to suffering of the people.

Anyway that is all the attacks from National I could find, so as an added bonus have some Kiwi attacks as well.

They will fight for only their friends, in the unions they control. They won’t fight for you, they fight for them.

I wasn't aware that we control unions, this is complete news to me. Or I guess it's just another false claim based on nothing. We do not control any unions, we have no "union friends", we simply wish to help the workers earn a fair wage and unions organise strikes to achieve this. To fight for a union is to fight for the workers. To fight for the workers is to fight for a union.

They want to waste their lives getting high on the most dangerous of drugs and spend no time actually listening to the people. They just want to damage themselves and others.

As I already explained, decriminalisation of drugs only offers positive results. Looking at Portugal we can see all sorts of positive effects, and to claim we are "damaging" ourselves and others is the opposite of the truth.

They want to transform New Zealand into a Communist State, going against the will of the people and changing the name of the country without consulting the people.

We don't want to establish a "communist state" as for one this is an oxymoron, and assuming the Kiwi Party is referring to examples such as the Soviet Union and China here, is the opposite of our goals. We do not want a strong state that controls all actions of the people and persecutes people for being different. And "without consulting the people" is also completely false. Just like how we had a referendum on our flag and voting system, so will we have a referendum on changing the official name. Besides, the change is comparable to Swaziland renaming to eSwatini. The name is still the same, just in another language. This country has always been Aotearoa, long before Europeans arrived and only got its name many years later. It is only natural to go back to a name that represents the indigenous population rather than oppressive colonialism.

Anyway, that is it for this podcast, hope you enjoyed and learnt that these parties are nothing but snakes who will just twist around our words, claiming things we do not support and leaving out things we do support that make the policies far better. And don't forget to vote Socialist Alliance this Saturday!

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