Author Archive

Getting there

Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, April 5th, 2013 - 32 comments

So, the trend in the Roy Morgans continues, ever so painfully slowly to move in the Left’s favour. Since Labour recovered from its election disaster level to 30+, the Left’s support has risen at a bit under 0.2% per month, the Right vice versa. Lab+Green now outpolls National as often as not. But ‘if these trends continue’ is the most dangerous phrase in politics.

Caveat emptor

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, April 3rd, 2013 - 15 comments

Analysts are apparently ‘not worried’ about the impact of the increasingly likely-looking closure of Tiwai Point on the price of electricity and, hence, on the value of the assets National is trying to hock. A 12% reduction is all one analyst sees in Mighty River’s price is Meridian floods the market with some of the cheapest power going. The analysts have missed the politics.

Key loses 30,000 jobs in a single year

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, March 26th, 2013 - 148 comments

Key reacts to criticism of his appalling jobs record: “Throw criticism if you see things that we are not doing, but in terms of trying to stimulate jobs we’ve done a lot of things on that front. We’ve done everything from 90 day probation periods, to starting out wages.” That’s his solution? Cut wages and work rights? Meanwhile, a government department is firing people today.

On the accuracy of online polls

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, March 25th, 2013 - 30 comments

mighty river power prereg 2

Granny Herald: from flawed data, false conclusions

Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, March 23rd, 2013 - 17 comments

Three of the Herald’s political staff has a crack at trying to explain why National polled 48.5% in the latest Herald-Digipoll. Consensus seems to be that John Key’s an angel sent to earth to do very little but keep enough of the middle class happy enough who’ll never lose. May I humbly suggest an alternative theory – that the Herald-Digipoll is broken.

All that glitters

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 89 comments

2.5% GDP growth last year. The Right’s jumping out of their skin at finally achieving the long-run average growth rate. But even on their good days, they’re doing it wrong: “The “consumer-centric” mix of growth was understandable, with low interest rates stimulating the housing market while a high dollar throttled exports, but it was the exact opposite of what was required”

One day older and deeper in debt

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, March 21st, 2013 - 105 comments

There’s this almost puritan kind of myth that we’ve got so much international debt as punishment for our spendthrift ways. We ‘live beyond our means’, apparently. But it’s not true. If ‘our means’ is the money we make in exports, then most of the time, they exceed what we spend on imports. Yet, we run a $10 billion deficit as a country. Why? Because of the profit outflow.

English in denial on climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 18th, 2013 - 172 comments

Corin Dann interviewed Bill English very well on climate change and the drought yesterday on Q+A. It was clear that English has his head in the dust. Despite claiming that the government is leading on climate change, English would barely let the ‘cc’ words pass his lips and referred ‘dry cycles’, as if climate change is just temporary, so not really worth worrying about.

The manufacturing crisis & the Right’s wilful blindness

Written By: - Date published: 3:18 pm, March 16th, 2013 - 19 comments

You would have thought that, less than 24 hours after another 185 manufacturing jobs were lost, the Right might be keeping their head down when it comes to the crisis in manufacturing. But no. Farrar’s popped up to cite a rinky-dink survey from Business NZ. The real surveys are very, very clear: 17,200 manufacturing jobs lost in the last year.

1 in 10 houses being bought by overseas buyers

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, March 15th, 2013 - 96 comments

A survey of real estate agents has revealed that 9% of house sales result in the house going to an overseas buyer. Half say they plan to come and live here – that leaves 5% going to overseas investors. For some reason, the BNZ is trying to pretend that’s a small number. I find it a staggering number. Until now, I would have guess maybe 1 in 50 house sales went to overseas buyers.

The big dry

Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, March 13th, 2013 - 77 comments

We’re now experiencing the worst drought in the North Island in recorded history. It comes just five years after the previous severe drought and there was a lesser one in between. Let’s not beat around the bush, it’s climate change. Bill English came very close on Monday to admitting that climate change induced-droughts will make bailouts unsustainable.

In his own terms

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, March 12th, 2013 - 16 comments

So, John Key is heading back from yet another overly long ‘trade mission’ that seemed to involve little in the way of actual meetings and a lot in the way of trying on silly hats. His only act of note was somehow managing to snub our biggest export destination in the region at a sensitive time. But how well is the ‘wheeler and dealer’ doing, in his own terms?

You pays your money & you takes your chances

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, March 9th, 2013 - 97 comments

Analysts are talking about risks of investing in Mighty River Power in the media today. Weather, electricity demand, overseas expansion. I’ll tell you what would make me think twice: everyone acknowledges the power companies over charge. Right now, the government has 400m reasons a year not to do anything about it. But that’s about to change.

Throw another mil on the barbie

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 5th, 2013 - 104 comments

National’s going to spend a million taxpayer dollars just on advertising trying to convince Kiwis to sign up to buy something we already own and just in the ‘pre-registration’ phase of the Mighty River sale. God knows what the full cost of the sale will be. They’ve wasted $26m already and seem determined to keep throwing good money after bad while ignoring Kiwis’ howls of protest.

Room left for Greens in Labour reshuffle

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, February 26th, 2013 - 49 comments

I think the Labour reshuffle is quite clever in how it signals the portfolios that its willing to give to the Greens and encourages them to set about being lead opposition spokespeople on those topics. Sure, the reshuffle has some weird stuff in it – ChCh Earthquake spokesperson a backbencher!, 6 ex-staffers in the top 10, Mallard’s ‘demotion’ that isn’t. But there’s some smarts there too.

The poll gods must be crazy

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, February 25th, 2013 - 43 comments

nation in the polls

Nats’ fossil fuel bet & culture of excess bankrupted Solid Energy

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, February 22nd, 2013 - 164 comments

A look at Solid Energy’s books highlights the diseased culture of the corporate elite in this country and National’s failed bet on fossil fuels. The blistering pace that executives’ ridiculous paypackets rose at shows a culture of pocket-lining in the company. The massive expansion of liabilities in the lignite bet, which has crippled the company, was part of National’s fossil fuels strategy.

A-G reveals details of Nats’ dirty deal with SkyCity

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, February 19th, 2013 - 129 comments

The Auditor-General’s report catalogues a dirty deal hatched between Key’s office and SkyCity execs to give SkyCity more pokies ‘in return for’ a convention centre. It shows the bidding process was a farce and reveals that the whole ‘trade-off’ of pokies for convention centre is a con hatched by SkyCity and the Nats. And there’s a deeper issue.

Boot camps

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, February 19th, 2013 - 27 comments

We knew from overseas that military-style boot camps are expensive, don’t reduce recidivism, and breed sadistic violence towards inmates. It’s not just overseas experience; these were all reasons we got rid of borstals. National knew this when they introduced boot camps but they did it anyway for the populism. Now, boot camps have failed again, can we stop this stupidity?

Nats have already spent $26m on asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 17th, 2013 - 78 comments

The Greens have revealed that National has spent $26m on asset sales so far. They haven’t even sold anything yet! They haven’t even really begun the sales process! And they’ve wasted $26m of our money. The bill’s going to get a whole lot longer if the sales actually go ahead. There’s $106m budgeted for the sales and huge unbudgeted costs like the looters’ bonus

RBNZ lying on manufacturing

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, February 15th, 2013 - 23 comments

Why are Treasury and Reserve Bank presenting clearly trumped up numbers to pretend the economy is doing better than it is? They’ve been caught out lying that the banks weren’t excessively profitable by international standards, that private electricity suppliers aren’t more expensive, and that we’re not unequal by OECD standards. Now, the Reserve Bank is telling blatant lies about the manufacturing sector.

The green economy

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, February 11th, 2013 - 90 comments

There’s a lot of talk about the benefits of moving to a green, sustainable economy but details on what that looks like in practice in New Zealand are often frustratingly thin. Greenpeace is releasing a report – The Future is Here – that puts meat on the bones. The main thing is getting us off expensive, polluting, imported oil and on to clean, local energy.

Against a four year term

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, February 8th, 2013 - 159 comments

Key and Shearer want 4 year terms. Why? Efficiency, they reckon. 3 years is ‘too short to govern’. Well, they wouldn’t be the first politicians to argue that less democracy would be more ‘efficient’. In New Zealand, we are unique among democracies in the degree to which power is held by the government. Regular opportunities to vote the bastards out is all we have.

Nats lose 30,000 jobs in a year

Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, February 7th, 2013 - 25 comments

When was the last time you heard John Key promise 170,000 new jobs? Just before the election in 2011, I reckon. Well, this last year 30,000 jobs were lost. Put that in context, it’s the 3rd largest annual job loss in history. The largest was 1988 as Douglas put the economy to the sword. The next was 2009 during the recession. And now, we’re losing 600 jobs a week during the ‘recovery’.

The unemployment curse

Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, February 2nd, 2013 - 151 comments

Oamaru lost 192 jobs on Thursday as Summit Wool Spinners closed its doors. The knock-down effect could claim hundreds more. Events like this can cripple a small town and consign the workers to long-term unemployment. Now, the Greens have revealed that long-term unemployment has quadrupled with John Key at the helm.

$300,000 homes in Key’s own electorate

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, January 31st, 2013 - 78 comments

While Labour flounders around talking about 4 bedroom houses for $485,000 (who wants a four bedroom house, anyway), Metiria Turei cut to the quick in a question to Key: “has he never visited his own electorate and taken a look at homes such as those on Hobsonville Road, Cyril Crescent, and Mona Vale that are stand-alone family homes costing around $300,000?”

Jobs friendly government?

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, January 30th, 2013 - 9 comments

More work in prisons, fewer mail deliveries, fewer WoF checks. I won’t say these are bad policies – done right there’s some merits. But I will point out this: 2,000 job losses from fewer WoF checks, up to 3,000 jobs gone with three day a week delivery, and the very real risk of prison labour displacing free workers. So much for a relentless focus on jobs.

There is an alternative

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, January 29th, 2013 - 48 comments

Some people who don’t really understand economics think it’s all about confidence – if business would be more confident, they would then invest more and hire more people. In truth, confidence is merely an indicator that the fundamentals for growth are right. So, when Joyce accuses manufacturing bosses of ‘talking down’ the economy, he’s missing the point. Probably intentionally.

If these trends continue

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 pm, January 18th, 2013 - 173 comments

Key’s government is falling apart, yet one fact remains stubbornly true: walk down the street and nearly 1 in every 2 people you see supports National, while less than 1 in 3 supports Labour (and the 1 in 8 who support the Greens don’t quite make up the difference). When tonight’s Roy Morgan came out I put down my whisky and pulled by my Roy Morgan excel doc. It’s some grim reading.

Time for Joyce to end the pipe-dream

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, January 16th, 2013 - 62 comments

The oil and gas industry employs fewer people than have lost their jobs in manufacturing every 4 months under National. Yet, Joyce devotes all his efforts to doing favours for the foreign oil companies and ignores our local manufacturers. Now, another of the foreign oil companies has packed their bags. It’s a reminder that a […]

This time, it’s different

Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, January 16th, 2013 - 98 comments

For the 5th year running, it’s that time of year, when the economists start promising the recovery is here. (remember ‘green shoots‘ in 2009?) Meanwhile, in the real world, there are twice as many jobless Kiwis as five years ago, and rising. If the pattern holds, later this year the economists will be lamenting the mysterious under-performance of the economy, as petrol hits a record price again.

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