GARDERMOEN (VG) Kirsti Bergstø (SV) attacks the “labour line” in Norwegian politics, and attacks billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke in her first national assembly speech.
Kirsti Bergstø will give her first speech to SV’s national meeting as party leader on Sunday. She sends a greeting to the rich tax refugees who have taken their wealth with them and traveled abroad.
Aker billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke in particular receives a personal greeting from the SV leader.
– Røkke robbed the coast and ran away to Switzerland. He can smoke and travel for me!
– But the quotas and values that the community has secured, they must stay, she said.
Røkke is Norway’s seventh richest, according to Capitaland is good for over DKK 45 billion.
Will break the work line
The new SV leader also has a message for Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre:
– Help increase performance. Join us in wrecking the failed line of work.
“Arbeidslinja” is a guideline for Norwegian welfare policy. It is about getting as many people as possible into work, and that “it should pay to work”.
– We all agree that work and activity are good, but the so-called work line has become a poverty trap. For many years, the largest parties have been more afraid of someone getting a little too much in social security than of people living in poverty, she says.
– The mantra that “It should pay to work” is of little help as a justification for low benefits for people who actually cannot work.
– Wheels instead of legs
The SV leader believes that if it does not pay for someone to work, then it is the salary that is too low, not the social security that is too high
– It doesn’t make sick people healthy, it makes sick people poor. Therefore, we must have benefits to live on.
Bergstø says she wants a more inclusive working life.
– A truly inclusive working life that lets more people in and doesn’t shut people out if you have wheels instead of legs or a cane to see with.
– We have to get rid of the work line that punishes those who can’t, and create a working life that lets everyone who wants it out.
Long SV career
Kirsti Bergstø (41) was the only candidate to take over from Audun Lysbakken (45) as SV leader – after Kari Elisabeth Kaski (35) withdrew from the leadership race at the start of January.
She is a parliamentary representative, trained as a child welfare teacher, raised in Nesseby in Finnmark and now living in Nittedal in Akershus.
Bergstø has been leader of Socialist Youth from 2006 to 2008 and deputy leader of SV since 2017.
The new leader was Audun Lysbakken’s state secretary from 2010 to 2012, when he was Minister for Children, Family and Equality. Both Lysbakken and Bergstø left in March 2012 after Dagbladet’s revealed that a subgroup of SV’s youth party SU, Jenteforsvaret, had been allocated NOK 154,000 by their ministry.
