Written By: - Date published: 6:46 am, December 13th, 2024 - 14 comments
Government sneakily shifts the numbers on the cancelled Kiwirail i-Rex project from $3b to $4b as Luxon and Willis defend their plan for a plan.
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, November 10th, 2024 - 10 comments
Nicola Willis deflects a question on why National are spending billions on roads without a business case – after cancelling the 2026 i-Rex – which had a strong business case and required $1.4bn more to complete seismic upgraded ports and next generation ferries.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, September 26th, 2024 - 24 comments
There appears to be an impasse in the Coalition’s ranks with Act and National not wanting rail enabled replacement ferries but Winston Peters demanding that they be rail enabled.
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, September 4th, 2024 - 26 comments
Nicola Willis’s bungling of the Kiwirail Interislander project cancellation has so far cost Kiwis $1bn, but that’s not all. Today RNZ’s reporting reveals the government may have also undermined NZ’s relationship with South Korea.
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, July 12th, 2024 - 5 comments
As reports confirm that the Government intends to sell off Kiwirail ferries, the question has to be asked: “Why is the Government paying thousands of dollars to former National Party members for advice” and when is independent advice not reliable?
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, July 11th, 2024 - 40 comments
Nicola Willis’s decision to cancel the Kiwirail i-Rex contract without a back up plan is coming back to bite. As costs pile up for the taxpayer, we have already lost half a billion dollars, but that won’t be the final bill. And there are still no ferries.
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, June 27th, 2024 - 45 comments
The Government is in a rather precarious position relating to the contract to replace the ageing Cook Straight ferries, which clearly need replacing.
Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, June 25th, 2024 - 27 comments
Last week Northland had a power pylon simply fall down on a still day. 100,000 properties lost power. Quickly restored, it underscored how vulnerable the Far North is.
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 27th, 2024 - 41 comments
I don’t agree with people from New Zealand Initiative often. Mostly I just growl. But Oliver Hartwich who is the Initiative’s Executive Director wrote a article in The Australian “Christopher Luxon’s challenge for NZ economy: fiscal discipline or tax cuts”. Hard to find anyone aware of the current recession who could disagree outside of a small political minority in the National caucus.
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, December 24th, 2023 - 20 comments
Someone should tell the Taxpayer’s Union. Some Local Councils are planning to put rates up by double digit figures. And the Government is planning on exempting them from discussing this with ratepayers.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, May 19th, 2023 - 28 comments
Almost all of the extra heat that humans have captured by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere over the last few centuries has wound up warming the deep oceans. We’re now starting to feel the effects of that excess heat.
Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, February 26th, 2023 - 44 comments
National has announced its alternative to the Three Waters Policy with the standout feature being greater central control of asset management and investment plans than offered by Three Waters and even greater loss of local control.
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, November 7th, 2022 - 32 comments
The text of an excellent speech given by Kelvin Davis to the Labour Party conference on climate change.
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, January 2nd, 2022 - 15 comments
The Standard server is going down for a few hours later today for maintenance. Some of the drives in the archive array are getting old. The SSDs in The Standard array are showing wear. Needs a good vacuum – for which I mostly blame the cat….
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, December 12th, 2021 - 23 comments
New Zealand is seeing a strong, business-led recovery. But what will we do with this success?
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, October 6th, 2021 - 53 comments
With all the unfortunate rhetoric around “giving up on the elimination strategy”.
Small businesspeople around me, who have quietly carried on with the program, and have been supportive of the Government strategy of elimination, even though, in many cases, it has been personally costly, are telling me,, “why did we bother”!
It doesn’t matter if it is the actual Government intention, or the media interpretation, the damage has now been done.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, September 24th, 2020 - 100 comments
This is a backpocket election – and that’s where most of Labour’s effort is going as it rightly should.
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, September 4th, 2020 - 78 comments
Everyone has recently had an education on “Socialism” working in practice.
And a graphic illustration of the shortcomings, of under regulated “Free market” Capitalism, Globalism, tax cuts for the rich, and the mania for monetising everything in sight, and “running it like a business”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, July 26th, 2020 - 126 comments
The Greens have released a detailed policy document that sets out what they want to achieve if they are part of the next Government and their Labour Relations policies could be considered to be more pro union than Labour’s policies.
Written By: - Date published: 7:55 am, July 26th, 2020 - 41 comments
What is the strangest recent proposal for development in New Zealand?
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, April 26th, 2020 - 69 comments
Just as most industries in New Zealand are firing thousands of people to cut costs, local government is getting ready to do the same.
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, April 25th, 2020 - 20 comments
“Othering” has long been a staple of Governments that want to remain in power for the benefit of an Oligarchy, an “Elite”, a small ruling class, or the ones with, “the money”. Deflecting blame for economic and social issues on, an ethnicity, a class, the elderly, the poor, the young, the unemployed, young solo mothers, the disabled, immigrants, or any other convenient group that can be demonised. Very soon more of us may become the “others” we didn’t care about.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, April 2nd, 2020 - 22 comments
Idiot/Savant writes: “While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in”
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, March 25th, 2020 - 10 comments
Fairly soon every group and their dog are going to come out with recovery plans for New Zealand. First off the block – even before we went into lockdown – is the ten point plan from Infrastructure New Zealand.
Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, December 1st, 2019 - 35 comments
Is the Government commitment to the budget responsibility rules weakening? Because at the Labour Party Conference Grant Robertson has indicated that the Government will shortly announce a big capital spend on infrastructure.
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, October 8th, 2019 - 33 comments
Stuff had an interesting piece looking at rates, taxes and local infrastructure “Rates are much lower than you think, and they’re responsible for miserable growth in cities”. They just missed out one crucial factor. The way that PPP debates often block infrastructure. Interesting that got missed..
Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, July 13th, 2019 - 52 comments
A tunnel is like a wormhole to another dimension. It changes people’s behaviour ever so slightly, ever so briefly, without them realising.
Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, December 21st, 2018 - 287 comments
China has apparently been sprung hacking hundreds of western businesses and Government agencies, including some here in NZ. Should we be worried?
Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, December 12th, 2018 - 56 comments
Letting fees are a thing of the past. Labour’s Phil Twyford has outlawed the practice of charging tenants an upfront fee for a non existent service. It’s about fairness and it’s about time.
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 pm, December 8th, 2018 - 62 comments
I like my Huawei phone. Apparently the US National Security Agency can’t break its encryption. That’s presumably the “security” issue why Spark is being blocked from using Huawei, and why Meng Wanzhou is held hostage in Canada at the behest of US neocons.
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 pm, November 20th, 2018 - 82 comments
China certainly has interfered in New Zealand politics, most notably by the offer of a free trade deal which delivered huge benefits to our economy. Party and government officials all stressed to us that they were grateful for New Zealand’s support for their accession to the World Trade Organisation, the rule-based trade body. The US and Australia in contrast want to build a military base on Manus Island north of Papua.
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
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