Author Archive

Land tax – what’s the down side?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:22 am, May 12th, 2016 - 75 comments

The Nats are using spurious data to justify dropping a proposal for a land tax on foreign buyers of housing. Why?

Key lashes out with the smears over tax haven status

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:36 am, May 11th, 2016 - 122 comments

Key was disgraceful in parliament yesterday, doing his buffoon act to try and trivialise the tax haven issue, and lashing out with the smears.

APN Fairfax NZ merger?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:31 am, May 10th, 2016 - 20 comments

A healthy democracy requires a healthy media, and in NZ both are getting sicker.

John Key vs the world

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:02 am, May 10th, 2016 - 22 comments

Is John Key the only international leader defending tax havens? Includes bonus international media round up of yesterday’s revelations.

NZ exporting poverty

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:23 am, May 9th, 2016 - 15 comments

By enabling tax evasion for the rich in other (notably South American) countries NZ is exporting poverty. It’s all perfectly legal. And that’s exactly the problem.

Alberta burning

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:29 am, May 8th, 2016 - 31 comments

The Canadian wildfire is “unprecedented” in its size and ferocity. There have been mass evacuations, and whole suburbs burnt out. Wildfires have doubled in Canada since the early 70’s – “And we’ve published work that states that this is because of human-caused climate change.”

Panama leaker’s statement singles out John Key

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:31 am, May 7th, 2016 - 162 comments

Over night the Panama Papers leaker “John Doe” released a “manifesto”.

In it he/she mentioned just one national leader by name, singling out our very own John Key, for his “curious silence”…

Pharmac underfunded and education cuts

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:18 am, May 6th, 2016 - 30 comments

It’s a steady attrition, the death of a thousand cuts.

Unemployment jumps

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:38 am, May 5th, 2016 - 212 comments

After eight long years of National there are almost 40,000 more unemployed than when they came to power.

Indiana vote

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:55 am, May 4th, 2016 - 151 comments

Keep an eye on the Indiana US primary vote today. Trump has crushed all opposition and Bernie is going to pull off an upset win.

Update: Rumours that Cruz is dropping out of the race! Update: True – Cruz is gone.

National standards – a failed crusade

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:35 am, May 3rd, 2016 - 260 comments

National told us “New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school.”

Budget month

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:36 am, May 2nd, 2016 - 14 comments

National’s budgets are boring affairs, but they will be hoping for some distraction from current events.

Tax haven questions for National

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:02 am, May 2nd, 2016 - 36 comments

The weekend saw the pressure stay on National over our tax haven status, and the role Key might have played in protecting it.

Who needs water anyway

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:09 am, April 30th, 2016 - 46 comments

Or waterways are starting to stink as much as our murky tax havens.

Trade deficit worst in seven years

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:49 am, April 28th, 2016 - 122 comments

Add it to our record debt, our record pollution, our record housing unaffordability, our rising inequality, our terrible carbon emissions…

Key’s land tax – too weak

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:11 am, April 28th, 2016 - 76 comments

Reaction to Key’s land tax has been luke warm at best, with strong calls for more effective action. Labour is promising “a ‘tidal wave’ of big housing reforms”…

RSNZ report – Transition to a low-carbon economy

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:43 am, April 27th, 2016 - 30 comments

Today the Royal Society of NZ released the second of two reports into climate change and the actions NZ should be taking. Great work. Now all we need is great action.

The poll shift and the flag fiasco

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:17 am, April 27th, 2016 - 37 comments

A straight 3.5% swap National to NZF looks to me like the impact of the flag fiasco.

Technology and democracy

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:30 am, April 26th, 2016 - 23 comments

Preliminary evidence shows how social media giants like Facebook and Google could influence elections. Should we be worried?

NZ – The underarm bowlers of climate change

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:34 am, April 23rd, 2016 - 18 comments

NZ under the Key government has hit new depths of ignominy as per capita the world’s biggest climate change cheat. And we plan to keep using the fraudulent “credits” we have purchased.

Housing crisis solved!

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 4:10 pm, April 22nd, 2016 - 26 comments

I don’t like to boast, but I have solved the housing crisis.

Key launches war on P

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:22 am, April 22nd, 2016 - 89 comments

“My message to the gangs is clear. This Government is coming after your business and we will use every tool we have to destroy it. We will be ruthless in our pursuit of you and the evil drug you push.”

Leftie Kiwis

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:14 am, April 21st, 2016 - 66 comments

Received political wisdom is that NZ is a conservative country, tending to the right. Interesting then, to see this data on our voting preferences re American presidential candidates.

Stalled global economy and helicopter money

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:08 am, April 20th, 2016 - 21 comments

The global economy has been stuck in an ongoing crisis since 2008. Printing more money won’t fix it, but it looks like we’re going to try it anyway.

National gets a smacking on the housing crisis

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:21 am, April 20th, 2016 - 59 comments

Fair to say that Simon Bridges’ claim that there is no housing crisis has – not gone down well. National – you have a problem.

Housing crisis

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:34 am, April 19th, 2016 - 57 comments

Housing is very much in the news again. Short term profit and bugger the consequences!

Climate change – that ship has sailed

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:55 am, April 18th, 2016 - 57 comments

Our models and our plans for responding to climate change are already out of date.

What tax evasion robs us of – in NZ

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:07 am, April 18th, 2016 - 111 comments

Gareth Morgan estimates that NZ could be missing out on up to 25% of total income tax because the rich aren’t paying their fair share. What could a government do with an extra $7.5bn a year?