Author Archive

Simeon Brown peddling porkies about gas shortage

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, August 27th, 2024 - 43 comments

Energy Minister Simeon Brown is peddling lies about a gas shortage. The country exports around 40 percent of its annual gas production as methanol. More is used to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, a nasty greenhouse emission source, for our farms. We don’t need expensive LNG distribution facilities while exporting the bulk of our own gas.

National set to renege on Paris Agreement

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, October 5th, 2023 - 16 comments

National says it is not interested in meeting its financial obligations under the international Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by the previous National government. Reneging on the accord will have huge trade, diplomatic and reputational damage implications.

Is Labour heading for Muriwai-scale landslide win?

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, February 22nd, 2023 - 37 comments

Here’s my prediction: Labour will not just win the October election, but it will complete a landslide of similar proportions to the 2020 election. It has been Labour’s response to the cyclones that will be the decisive factor in October. Luxon’s low energy performance helps.

Sturgeon, like Ardern, a casualty of online abuse

Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, February 21st, 2023 - 65 comments

Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation as Scotland’s First Minister was something of a replay of Jacinda Ardern’s resignation. While subject to widespread abuse, both were reluctant to cite this as their main reason for quitting. But the abuse undoubtedly played a major role. But the misogynist trend is endemic and needs to be quelled.

Windfall tax on bank super-profits needed to help fund repair

Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, February 20th, 2023 - 69 comments

The repair bill for the recent cyclones will be similar to the direct cost to government of the Canterbury earthquakes, in the $13 billion region. Banks are currently making obscene profits. The time is right to impose a one-off banking windfall tax. If a conservative Margaret Thatcher can do it, it is pretty hard to argue why a Labour government can’t.

Govt public media reform performance makes AB’s look good

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, August 31st, 2022 - 7 comments

The government’s reform of public broadcasting has made Ian Foster’s quest for rugby’s World Cup look like a cinch.
The way the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill is drafted, suggests worse calamities than the All Blacks loom for the public broadcasting sector, according to leading media critics.

Best yet in National Party splatter series in production

Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, July 28th, 2022 - 46 comments

The kicker in Andrea Vance’s Blue Blood, her insider’s view of the splatter-movie that has been the National Party since John Key stepped down, is that the best yet is in production. She chronicles treachery that has become the modus operandi of the vacuous vipers inhabiting the caucus. Details of the dirty work induce you to turn the page for more. It doesn’t look like Luxon is the redeemer.

Is Parker procrastinating or scene setting for fairer tax system?

Written By: - Date published: 3:40 pm, April 27th, 2022 - 49 comments

Is Revenue Minister David Parker’s plan to gather tax data on the wealthy just more procrastination by this Labour government on making the tax system fairer? Or is it recognition the public debate needs a long-term frame to get a capital gains, or wealth tax, over the line?

Labour has overseen massive inequality increase – Bernard Hickey

Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, January 27th, 2022 - 154 comments

The Government’s Covid 19 response, mainly via Reserve Bank measures, has enabled a mind-boggling increase in inequality, according to influential financial commentator Bernard Hickey. Covid response has saved multiple lives, but its refusal to simultaneously address inequality via taxes raises uncomfortable questions about how a leftist government has overseen a once-in-a-generation shift in wealth

Is National’s Luxon among the quick or the dead?

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, December 8th, 2021 - 136 comments

Simon Louisson has been observing Chris Luxon with a journalists eye over the last week, especially with regard to the Jack Tame interview.  A bit of a mixed bag. Fast thinking but with baggage. It will be interesting to see whether the electorate will again suppress its egalitarian instincts and vote for a smooth-talking rich man.

Govt unprepared for transition when Queen dies

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, November 4th, 2021 - 70 comments

“We will soon be required to face the question, ‘After Elizabeth — what next?’,” Peter Hamilton wrote in his just published memoir, New Moons for Sam. He says it would be completely inappropriate for Elizabeth’s son Charles or his heir, William, to become Aotearoa’s next head of state. A head of state elected by 2/3rds of Parliament perhaps?

Why isn’t govt hitting utes much harder?

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, July 26th, 2021 - 51 comments

Aotearoa has been super sizing its vehicle fleet for over a decade and given Jacinda Ardern claim that Climate Change as her generation’s nuclear-free moment, why is her government not smacking ute owners and other gas guzzlers much harder than the just the feebate? Large vehicles increase climate change and wild weather. Fringe Benefit tax is payable on them and usually not collected. Plus they are deadly dangerous to pedestrians and other vehicles.

Media crisis may be most problematic

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, November 27th, 2020 - 34 comments

The government is simultaneously grappling with the Covid, economic and housing crises, but its failure to act urgently and boldly on the crisis in our Fourth Estate may have the most damaging longer-term effect. Bernard Hickey has lashed out at Broadcasting and Media Minister Kris Faafoi and Jacinda Ardern, for their fiddling-while-Rome-burns response to an industry in meltdown.

Large caucuses can be devilishly dangerous as National showed

Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, October 25th, 2020 - 17 comments

A post mortem of the 2017-2020 parliament shows that far from being the “opposition from hell” as they had threatened, National’s caucus was as ineffective as Donald Trump dealing to Covid 19. It is a salutary lesson for the new Labour caucus which has won 64 seats in the new parliament. There may be many backbench MPs who are underemployed.

Will consensus building paralyse Ardern?

Written By: - Date published: 7:14 am, October 21st, 2020 - 33 comments

Jacinda Ardern aims to bet both ways on our future – transforming Aotearoa to rid us of inequality and poverty, and building consensus. She has won a mandate with her historic, landslide victory but can she do both? My question is whether Labour are willing to do that because of her desire to maintain consensus and not rock the waka.

Will Jacinda Ardern meet her promise to transform?

Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, September 4th, 2020 - 62 comments

Neoliberalism has run its course and displayed its profound inability to address inequality issues. It makes the poor get ever poorer while the affluent top 10% ticks of society get bloated and increasingly insufferable on untaxed capital gains. In 2017 Jacinda Ardern set a goal of bringing all children out of poverty within six years. So how is that going? And what are the next steps?

Aotearoa’s free-market waste experiment dumped

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 1st, 2020 - 13 comments

Environment Minister Eugenie Sage this week announced the beginning of the end of Aotearoa’s unfortunate experiment with free-market waste management that has trashed our environment. It may be just a baby step, but moving away from a failed free-market approach seems a good first step.

Depression looms as rapidly as Covid spreads

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, April 7th, 2020 - 93 comments

New Zealand, like many other nations, is hurtling towards economic depression faster than Covid-19 spreads. “We are going to have a depression”. “This is like an asteroid hit the global economy”. “We can print our way of this”. Reflections on what lies ahead by Simon Louisson, Bernard Hickey and others.

New book reveals Le Carré’s bleak view of post-Brexit world 

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, January 3rd, 2020 - 5 comments

John le Carré’s 26th book, Agent Running in the Field, which, according to the publishers is his take on Brexit, and suggests a dystopian future for European liberal democracies in a post-Brexit world. It follows John le Carré’s overarching theme – with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Wellington mayor-elect flip-flops on sale of Wellington Airport

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, October 30th, 2019 - 26 comments

One of the first acts of Wellington mayor-elect, Andy Foster has been to reverse his stance on the council’s 34% holding in Wellington International Airport Ltd (WIAL). Whether he can get his plan to sell the airport stake past a once hostile public or a leftist-dominated council also seems about as likely as his desire to bulldoze through another tunnel through Mt Vic.

Tough, swift leadership needed to police social media

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 am, April 10th, 2019 - 73 comments

The government has been rightly lauded for swiftly acting to ban assault weapons after the Christchurch massacre, but is its failure to decisively call social media giants to order just as weak and unacceptable as the failure to act on Aramoana massacre back in 1990?

We need more than capital gains tax to address inequality

Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, March 25th, 2019 - 46 comments

The most important comment in the Tax Working Group’s Final Report is that even the reasonably comprehensive capital gains tax proposed is likely to have only a minor impact on addressing inequality — what is needed is a more progressive income tax system that lifts the top marginal tax rate 

Power pricing not just a rip-off, it’s immoral

Written By: - Date published: 3:23 pm, March 22nd, 2019 - 43 comments

Submissions for the final report on the Electricity Price Review closed today at noon. My recent experience with Genesis Energy reveals pricing by power company majors not only rips customers off, but is immoral. The initial report of the EPR is unlikely to address this issue.

Banning Rambo weapons not a knee-jerk

Written By: - Date published: 5:35 am, March 21st, 2019 - 185 comments

Passing stringent gun controls is far from a knee-jerk reaction to the Christchurch massacre – our politicians of all stripes have procrastinated over this ever since the 1990 Aramoana massacre. We already have the 13 recommendations of the 2017 Law & Order committee that were rejected. Let us at the very least now accept those.

Too many jobs being created

Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, November 7th, 2018 - 14 comments

The latest unemployment data showing the jobless rate falling to under 4% follows the equally bad 1.0% economic growth in the September quarter and a budget surplus of $5.5b, confirming the economy is going down like Donald Trump, as predicted by the ANZ Bank’s business confidence survey

Ross saga quiescent, but donations scandal needs addressing

Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, October 25th, 2018 - 21 comments

The Jami-Lee Ross scandal may have quietened down but issues raised by his explosive tape recording of Simon Bridges still need addressing. Does the $100k Zhang Yikun donation suggest we are going down the US track and, if so, what needs to be done about that

No smoking gun but plenty of sunlight from Bridges tape

Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, October 18th, 2018 - 207 comments

Maybe not a smoking gun, Jami-Lee Ross’s tape recording of Simon Bridges sheds plenty of sunlight on the influence that money can buy within the National Party, casual racism endemic within National, the manipulation of ethnic communities and, most importantly, insights into the wielding of “soft power” by China.

Ross resigns, to lay corrupt practices complaint against Bridges with police

Written By: - Date published: 12:41 pm, October 16th, 2018 - 171 comments

Jamie-Lee Ross will seek to win a by-election as an independent. Says that Simon Bridges is corrupt and unlikeable and that he could prove it.  Refutes Simon Bridges claim against him of harassment of women. Said the by-election would be a referendum on Bridges’ leadership. Updated: Simon Bridges responds – what he doesn’t say is more interesting

 

Wellington bus debacle deeply damaging to Govt’s transport policy

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, September 24th, 2018 - 66 comments

Wellington has been the poster city for public transport in Aotearoa, but the debacle of introducing the hated hub system to Wellington’s bus system not only threatens that status but has wide implications for the success of government’s policy of favouring public transport over cars. Intervention is needed.

Tax Working Group report depressing reading

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 pm, September 21st, 2018 - 66 comments

The Tax Working Group says the gaping holes in our tax system make it unfair and undermine its integrity, but the prospect of the electorate embracing even its limited recommendations on taxing capital gains make for depressing contemplation.

GDP figures expose business confidence survey nonsense

Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, September 20th, 2018 - 99 comments

ANZ Bank’s Outlook business confidence survey has been forecasting gloom and doom for the economy ever since the surprise election result turfed out the National Party. Today’s GDP data showed the economy has actually been pumping along faster than the Reserve Bank believes is good for it.