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First planes, now trains

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 2:09 pm, March 6th, 2008 - 43 comments

It is looking more likely that the Government will buy back New Zealand’s rolling rail stock from Australian-based Toll. Toll has been a classic asset-stripper: buy a key piece of infrastructure that should never have been sold, take as much profit as possible with minimal investment, and force the Government to buy the infrastructure back […]

Key caught out

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 10:22 am, March 5th, 2008 - 22 comments

The government’s move to strengthen the Overseas Investment Act on Monday was met with predictable criticism from the â€˜markets first, people second’ brigade. National Deputy Leader Bill â€˜Privatise â€˜em all’ English came out quickly on the side of big foreign money against New Zealand control of vital assets. But Bill’s supposed leader, John Key, didn’t […]

Foreigners think NZ is great, why doesn’t National?

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 2:45 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 38 comments

One of National’s strategies is to constantly talk down New Zealand, arguing that other countries have it better, that to catch up we have to sell off our assets, cut our social services, cut wages, and work harder. The line is repeated in the media, most often in comparison with Australia. The thing is if […]

Protecting New Zealand’s assets

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:10 am, March 4th, 2008 - 90 comments

The government has made a series of moves to prevent strategic New Zealand assets being exploited by foreign companies. Last week tax law was changed to prevent the Canadian Pension Fund avoiding tax in its bid for Auckland Airport. Yesterday, the government changed the Overseas Investment Act to give Ministers veto power when strategic land […]

Key: pay cuts for you, backhanders for my mates

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:47 am, February 21st, 2008 - 32 comments

Even as he flounders from one excuse to the next over his ‘we would love to see wages drop’ statement, it has emerged that John Key is offering hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to his big business mates. Key promised a $200 million suspensory loan to a new merger of Southland meat exporters. Not […]

Keeping it Kiwi

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 4:26 pm, February 18th, 2008 - 19 comments

Dairy farmers have rejected the Fonterra Board’s short-sighted plan to sell 20% of the company. Fonterra wanted to raise cash with a stock-market float to fund expanding its dairying operations in other countries but in the long-run Fonterra would have paid out far more in dividends to (offshore) stockholders. The dairy farmers would end up […]

Swan to build surplus as economic stabiliser

Written By: John A - Date published: 3:44 pm, February 12th, 2008 - 2 comments

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan has announced that he intends to lift the target for the budget surplus, so that fiscal policy can help ease upward pressure on interest rates. He will proceed with tax cuts announced in the election campaign, but according to The Australian newspaper his comments signal that there is unlikely to be […]

Say chee$e

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 5:46 pm, February 10th, 2008 - 35 comments

At the supermarket earlier this week I was browsing the aisles and noticed the price of cheese. It seems now that for a kilo of this yellow gold (hold on isn’t gold kinda yellow anyway?) you’ll be paying $16. Now that’s a lot of money for what is pretty much a Kiwi staple but it’s […]

Solution to wage-gap in hands of business

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 10:48 am, February 8th, 2008 - 61 comments

Larger (but still small) numbers of kiwis are leaving for Australia and higher incomes are part of the attraction. At the same time unemployment here is at a record low, which is good but employers are complaining about a lack of workers. To keep skilled workers in New Zealand higher wages are needed. The government […]

Unemployment at record low (again)

Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 1:14 pm, February 7th, 2008 - 18 comments

From Stuff: Growing numbers of women in the workforce pushed New Zealand’s unemployment rate down to a new record of 3.4 per cent in the December quarter. The rate dropped 0.1 of a percentage point from the September quarter, which itself had been the lowest unemployment rate recorded since the Household Labour Force Survey started […]

National’s hoax on unemployed workers

Written By: Tane - Date published: 11:32 am, November 12th, 2007 - 41 comments

Last week Stats NZ announced unemployment had dropped to a record low of just 3.5%, after reaching double-digit figures under National in the 90s. That reminded me of an old press release from Bill English just before the 1999 election where he called unemployment in the range of 3% “a hoax” and suggested 6% might […]

National: it’s not worth the pay cut

Written By: Tane - Date published: 1:46 pm, October 19th, 2007 - 58 comments

The National Party are clearly worried. They’ve done pretty well so far with the populist rallying cry of tax cuts, but they always knew their record on wages would come up at some point. Because as National themselves are fully aware, while tax cuts might on the face of it put more money into workers’ […]

Overtaxed?

Written By: Tane - Date published: 9:57 am, October 12th, 2007 - 18 comments

There’s a lot of talk on the right about the surplus being evidence of ‘overtaxation’. But where exactly is the Government’s huge tax grab? According to Treasury, tax as a percentage of GDP has barely moved since 1998 – when we had no Working for Families, no Cullen Fund, no Kiwisaver, virtually no investment in […]