Drunken Seaman John Key: borrowed $40 billion in 3 years to spend on his mates

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, November 3rd, 2011 - 222 comments
Categories: accountability, campaigning, debt / deficit, economy, election 2011, john key, leadership, national - Tags: , ,

You show me the money John boy. You’ve racked up record levels of debt, created record levels of unemployment, and earned us a double credit downgrade.

What have you got to show for burdening the next three generations of New Zealanders with debt?

hattip William Joyce

222 comments on “Drunken Seaman John Key: borrowed $40 billion in 3 years to spend on his mates ”

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  1. Tribeless 1
    3 November 2011 at 9:01 am

    Completely agree the government shouldn’t be borrowing. But regarding who it is borrowing for, remind me again who pays the taxes that have to fund 100% of public debt and the welfare state?

    And have you heard of the global financial crisis (of crony capitalism) and Big States over-reaching themselves?

    • the sprout 1.1
      3 November 2011 at 9:08 am

      who pays the taxes that have to fund 100% of public debt and the welfare state?

      certainly not those who’ve benefited the most from Key’s tax cuts

      • Tribeless 1.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 9:21 am

        And who are these mysterious businesses then, benefiting so much?

        Again, do we at least accept on this blog that 100% of government is ultimately funded by the tax payer?

        And then once you get there, you must be uncomfortable with these facts:

        1) 44% of households take more from the tax system than they put into it.

        2) 10% of households fund 71% of taxation.

        3) 17% of households fund 97% of taxation.

        4) 23% of all babies born in 2010 were in a family (including single parent) reliant on a direct benefit by the end of the first year of life. (That’s a quarter of new born babies in families living entirely on welfare – and that doesn’t include the ‘soft’ redistribution of Working for Families, etc, just the hard benefits, DPB, Sickness …)

        Hardly seems fair to businesses does it. A whole system built on theft, and the thieves still greedily want more and more and more.

        • Lanthanide 1.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 9:31 am

          Are these numbers from Farrar’s completely flawed and debunked magical cumulative taxation chart that somehow have only the top income earners paying net tax?

          • felix 1.1.1.1.1
            3 November 2011 at 9:34 am

            Yes.

              • Tribeless …
                3 November 2011 at 9:44 am

                Direct from Bill English via Hansard:

                Quote:

                Michael Woodhouse: Which groups now pay most of the tax collected by the Government?

                Hon BILL ENGLISH: Our tax and transfer system is highly redistributive, and the number of people paying income tax is surprisingly small. The lowest-income 43 percent of households currently receive more in income support than they pay in income tax. The 1.3 million households with incomes under $110,000 a year collectively pay no net tax—that is, their total income support payments match their combined income tax. The top 10 percent of households contribute over 70 percent of income tax, net of transfers—over 70 percent of income tax, net of transfers. This system is highly redistributive and we believe it is fair.

                • Bunji …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:23 am

                  Bill’s a wizz with statistics! It’s just a shame about reality.

                  The top 10 percent pay 70 percent of income tax IF those households on less than $110k don’t “pay tax” they just transfer their money to those on the dole, DPB, WFF etc. So we can all be grateful to the wealthy for paying for our schools and hospitals, while those on middle incomes can feel resentful about how all their money is frittered away on useless bludgers.

                  At least that’s the angle Bill’s going for. It’s a shame that reality doesn’t divide tax up like that for him and we all put into one big pot to pay for all the necessities of a civilised society. Quite a number of us on less than $110k do in fact “pay tax”.

                  If Bill spent a bit less time on statistics and a bit more time on the economy, it might not be such a mess.

                • Hayden …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:33 am

                  LOLWUT?

                  I earn around 100,000 p.a., pay roughly 30,000 p.a. in income tax, and receive no income support, (two adults with two children), so I’m quite surprised to find that in fact I pay no income tax at all. Or am I reading that wrong?

                • KJT …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:38 am

                  Income tax.

                  Add up the other taxes. Like power company dividends to Government, Petrol taxes, GST etc etc etc. Most are strongly regressive in their effect.

                  Which is why BS artists like Farrar and English only count income tax.

        • pollywog 1.1.1.2
          3 November 2011 at 9:32 am

          A whole system built on theft, and the thieves still greedily want more and more and more.

          WORD…FUCK CORPORATE GREED !!!

          CRASH THE BANKS

        • felix 1.1.1.3
          3 November 2011 at 9:33 am

          “And who are these mysterious businesses then, benefiting so much? “

          For several decades labour productivity has been rising while real wages have remained static or gone backwards. This is a worldwide trend since the dawn of neoliberalism and NZ is no exception. http://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/productivity-inequality-poverty/

          If you were genuinely concerned about the the WFF subsidy to employers and about widening the tax base you’d be arguing for higher wages.

        • framu 1.1.1.4
          3 November 2011 at 9:37 am

          “Again, do we at least accept on this blog that 100% of government is ultimately funded by the tax payer?”

          what about the dividends returned from our most profitable publicly held assets?

        • The Voice of Reason 1.1.1.5
          3 November 2011 at 9:40 am

          Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman to the rescue! 
           
          Any explanation for the complete failure of 30 years of Randian economics to deliver results for the majority, Tribeless? Nah, didn’t think so. Let me help you out. Neo-liberalism is the tiny minority exploiting the vast majority under the false flag of freedom. It’s history, pal, the world has moved on from greed is good, apart from small outbreaks of circle jerking in our universities and the sadder cafes in Parnell.

          • Tribeless 1.1.1.5.1
            3 November 2011 at 9:51 am

            Crony capitalism is to capitalism (laissez faire) as sea horses are to horses.

            So, where’s the Randian economics? Since the 1930’s Keynesian socialism has ruled, and the chickens are now coming home to roost in West.

            The welfare state was always a cruel illusion.

            • KJT 1.1.1.5.1.1
              3 November 2011 at 10:02 am

              History has proved Keynes was correct. It is a pity more notice is not taken.

              Neo-Liberals have to re-write history to debunk him.

              In the meantime the shift towards neo-liberal economics has been a total failure.

              Unless you are the few who get excessive profits from it. I suppose for those people it is a howling success.

              • Tribeless …
                3 November 2011 at 10:09 am

                Why do the left have so much trouble with reality. The multiplier is less than one: look at the US and Europe. What caused the asset bubbles that burst in 2008? Keynesian economics.

                Here’s a good quotation from Cafe Hayek to explain the problem with Keynes:

                http://cafehayek.com/2011/10/drunk-with-keynesian-prejudices.html

                The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending it is only resolved by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending.

                It’s just as if a drunk, waking up severely hung-over, proclaims to his wife

                The central irony of my medical crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence in my ability to hold my drink, and by too much drinking, it can only be resolved with more confidence in my ability to hold my drink, and by more drinking. Bottoms up!

                …..

                I recommend reading a good smattering of the articles in the Mises Bailout reader:

                http://mises.org/daily/3128

                But above all, this question is philosophical: the only economic system consistent with liberty of the individual is laissez faire. Everything else is slavery to the State.

                • KJT …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:29 am

                  More counterfactual crap.

                  Try reading Paul Krugman. An economist who actually has some relationship to what actually happened.

                  Laissez faire just ends up with slavery to the few morally bankrupt individuals that have accumulated all the money capital, by cheating.

                  I would rather we have democratic control of our own destiny.

                  • Tribeless …
                    3 November 2011 at 10:46 am

                    Try reading the comprehensive debunking of just about all Krugman’s output:

                    http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/

                  • Tribeless …
                    3 November 2011 at 10:54 am

                    And ‘democratic control of our own destiny’ is an oxymoron, given democracy is a tyranny of the majority.

                    For example, assume there are 10 people in a democracy, 7 white people and 3 black. The democracy holds a plebiscite on the motion that white people shouldn’t have to work, and they are legally entitled to live off the efforts of black people. The motion is won 7 to 3: black people by majority vote in the democracy are now legally enslaved.

                    No liberty to be found here. Liberty can only be found by protecting the smallest of all minorities: the individual, via constitution in a libertarian styled minarchy.

                    • Puddleglum …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:44 pm

                      Pardon?

                      How about not reducing ‘democracy’ to a show of hands? Isn’t it ‘rule by the people [demos]’?

                      Or, if you prefer, “Government by the people, of the people, for the people”.

                      ‘Show of hands’ democracy is simply an individualistic, emaciated rendering of something much more profound. 

                      I suppose if you can only think individualistically then democracy would simply amount to majority rule.

                      Ideally, democracy is more like an organised ‘marketplace’, if you like, where people come together to discuss, debate and decide. It implies a strong faith, ironically enough, in the idea that the best decisions come out of interactions between individuals but at the collective level rather than at the level of the individual (this, in fact, aligns with research on the relative merits of group versus individual decision making).

                      The conflict between laissez faire capitalism and democracy is between the arena within which such free interaction should be prioritised.

                      I think it should be in the political arena, first and foremost; you think it should be in the economic arena, first and foremost.

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:59 pm

                      No. It’s not a market place, that implies voluntary transactions. The State doesn’t work on a voluntary basis: it works by brute force.

                    • NickS …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:13 pm

                      /facepalm

                      I heart brainless libertarians that use strawman arguments about modern democracies and show an understanding of human social systems and behaviours that makes ASD people look normal in comparison.

                      Calling modern democracies “teh tyranny of the majority” ignores the fact that none of the groups active in democracies are monolithic, in short even if you have a party with 51% of the vote/seats, some members will break away if the party leadership attempts things individual legislators/whatever find immoral/antidemocratic/illegal etc etc. Then there the judicial branch which can shit-can laws etc on the basis of constitutional, legislative or prior precedence issues. Further more, public protests from minority groups can quite easily sway politicians (depending on the issue + how much noise they make), and the legislature is more than capable of passing laws without public support, say for example making homosexuality/abortion/civil unions legal, particularly on human rights angles in liberal/semi-liberal democracies. In effect, unless it’s a coup situation, it’s very difficult for any form of tyranny of a majority to exist, as there multiple interactions occurring in western democracies. Even in republic systems like the USA, where money is exceedingly useful to drive law changes and so has eroded the democratic system somewhat, fucking over all but a small minority of Americans.

                      As for your example, it’s laughably naive and ignores completely theory of mind, but also the role of resistance and violence (particularly monopolies when dealing with state level actors) amongst other things.

                      Though I shouldn’t expect more from someone who lives in a magical land where reality is perfectly ignorable when it clashes with teh words of a authority figure, much like the old-school stalinists/communists/trotsky-ites.

                    • NickS …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:16 pm

                      No. It’s not a market place, that implies voluntary transactions. The State doesn’t work on a voluntary basis: it works by brute force.

                      PolSci101 fail detected. Please retake 2nd year+ papers on governments and history therein of and philosophies and a side of anthropology history focusing on tribal leaderhship structures.

                    • Ari …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:29 pm

                      Your example is incredibly facetious and ignores the fact that there might well be solidarity between white and black people, so that the vote wouldn’t go 3/7 even if you consider democracy to always be majoritarian voting, which most of us here do not.

                    • Puddleglum …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:53 pm

                      “The State doesn’t work on a voluntary basis: it works by brute force.”

                      I was talking about democracy, not the State. My understanding is that the nation state arose to impose and enforce capitalism (and trade between capitalists) as the dominant economic system. 

                      “It’s [i.e., democracy’s] not a market place, that implies voluntary transactions.”

                      Democracy does imply voluntary transactions (of ideas, arguments, etc.) – it is principally defined as debate and decision making as equals; hence, how can equals enforce involvement in debate and discussion or force someone to ‘transact’ one idea rather than another??
                      I think that what you might not like is that once a collective decision is reached it then would apply to all participants? (e.g., not to overuse a resource by placing some communal ban on its use beyond a certain point).

                      I think, though, that 90% of that concern arises from people’s sense that they did not have an equal voice in a collective decision (i.e., the decision was made by others and then imposed). That is, the sense of a lack of democracy and hence control.

                      The necessity of living as a social animal is a trade-off. It’s messy and sometimes causes problems; but economic individualism isn’t the solution. 

                    • mik e …
                      3 November 2011 at 6:23 pm

                      Tribeless you’ve spelt your name wrong clueless.their is no country other than somalia and a few other countries that run laissez fair economies economies that don’t have a decent welfare state and fair tax system have crashed and burned and are in need of huge bail outs.
                      Stop reading propaganda get some well researched economics then come back and have a reel argument
                      Look at a recent study done in collaboration with the BBC
                      It showed that the higher taxed states grew in this recession in the US thats turning into a depression
                      Lower taxed states are in recession and are moving into long term depression
                      this is because they are not investing in infrastructure education R&D health care which keeps people at work
                      Your just a blind faith idiot who has been sucked in by the cult of Neo Liberal propaganda

            • KJT 1.1.1.5.1.2
              3 November 2011 at 10:06 am

              From the 30’s to the 70’s we had reasonable mixed economy.

              Rather too much crony capitalism in NZ. But regulated so as not to be too dysfunctional.

              Since the 80’s Neo-liberal greed has ruled. Worldwide it has caused financial failure, misery and starvation.

              History has proved Keynes was correct. It is a pity more notice is not taken.

              Neo-Liberals have to re-write history to debunk him.

              In the meantime the shift towards neo-liberal economics has been a total failure.

              Unless you are the few who get excessive profits from it. I suppose for those people it is a howling success.

              • Tribeless …
                3 November 2011 at 10:16 am

                Debunking GFC as being due to de-regulation: again, Cafe Hayek:

                http://cafehayek.com/2011/10/horwitz-on-the-financial-crisis-and-recession.html

                Quoting economist (Austrian) letter to editor – note particularly second and third paragraphs:

                Letters to the Editor
                Watertown Times
                260 Washington St.
                Watertown, NY 13601

                To the Editor,

                In his letter of October 23 criticizing George Will’s column on Elizabeth Warren, Mark MacWilliams of Canton repeats a number of fallacies about the recession and financial crisis that should not go unchallenged.

                MacWilliams refers to Congress deregulating the financial industries but offers no specifics. In fact, since 1980, Congress has passed four new sets of regulations for every one deregulatory act, and between 2001 and 2008, there were nine new sets of regulation and not one bit of deregulation. Those recent regulations included the Basel capital requirements, which created powerful incentives for banks to sell off the mortgages they originated and buy them back as mortgage backed securities, which they otherwise would not have done.

                Contrary to MacWilliams, our current mess was not the result of “predatory capitalism,” but the predictable consequence of government intervention and crony corporatism. Nowhere does he mention the Federal Reserve’s role in pushing interest rates so low that banks were being paid to borrow, nor does he have a word to say about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having privileged access to the Treasury to buy up all of the questionable mortgages that banks originated. He also ignores two decades of Congress’s role in mandating that banks lend to marginal borrowers.

                MacWilliams needs to ask himself why, if this was really capitalism, banks would make loans to people they thought could not pay them back. If corporations are greedy profit-seekers, why would they risk customers not being able to pay unless they believed that those mortgages could be sold off to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie and Freddie who would, as they did, get bailed out by the government?

                If all the traffic lights in Watertown were stuck on green, we’d hardly blame the drivers for the ensuing accidents. When government distorts the signals and incentives facing producers and consumers, the blame for the resulting disaster should fall on government not the private sector. The crisis and recession are what happens when you put “people before profits.”

                Finally, MacWilliams should learn who does assure that his toaster doesn’t explode by actually looking at it. He’ll find the stamp of not a government agency, but Underwriters Laboratory, a private firm that provides quality assurance for appliance makers and consumers. Unlike the government cartel of financial rating agencies that failed miserably last decade, the privately operated UL has decades of success behind it.

                Sincerely,

                Steven Horwitz

                • KJT …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:24 am

                  Bullshit.

                  Both the Austrians and the Chicago school have been thoroughly de-bunked by reality.

                  The above is just the banks self justification for their venery. Helped by economists, who should know better, but spent too long trying to get the answers that agreed with their hypothesis without noting their experiment had failed.

                  The GFC had very little to do with Freddie May etc. It was caused by unregulated financial double dealers finding ever more original ways to burgle more money from the system.

                  Ultimately the crash will be because they have taken so much from the system that financial earnings far exceed the productive sectors ability to cover them.

                  • Tribeless …
                    3 November 2011 at 10:34 am

                    I’ve linked you to the Mises Bailout reader so forum members can read for themselves the truth behind Keynesian socialism and it’s necessary crony capitalism: the harm it has done and the Statist slavery at it’s heart.

                    Given that ‘bullshit’ is not a good technical argument, link us all to the ‘thorough’ debunking of the Austrian school (not Chicago) and theory of the business cycle?

                    • Rob …
                      3 November 2011 at 11:02 am

                      Its no point in arguing with KJT. KJT has already explained to us manytimes  that he is an expert in marine disaster recovery , specifically in the area of cold viscous bunker oil transfer.  We now have learnt that KJT is in fact also an international expert on economics theory alongside the other self promoted fields of expertise.  There is nothing KJT does not know. 

                    • clandestino …
                      3 November 2011 at 11:41 am

                      How is me not making 100% on my labour after repaying my employer the cost of their capital investments etc. not THEFT, tribeless??? 

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:00 pm

                      Clandesto, what are you talking about? Are you saying someone is forcing you to work with your particular employer?

                      Because that’s the analogy with tax: State coercion and initiation of force.

                    • One Anonymous Bloke …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:07 pm

                      Don’t be so dimwitted, Tribeless. The force came first: we had to create democratic governance to protect ourselves from thieving banksters in the first place.

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:22 pm

                      I always worry about people who used the word ‘governance’. I give you, again, copied from above, the problem with democracy:

                      … assume there are 10 people in a democracy, 7 white people and 3 black. The democracy holds a plebiscite on the motion that white people shouldn’t have to work, and they are legally entitled to live off the efforts of black people. The motion is won 7 to 3: black people by majority vote in the democracy are now legally enslaved.

                      I don’t want to be ‘governanced’ like that. I want the classical liberal society where the State is my servant, protecting me from the initiation of force of others, not our social(alist) democracy in which the State is the chief abuser of my rights through the use of force in pursuing a Gulag of Good Intentions.

                      And the banks are part of the crony capitalist system, not laissez faire, for quite different reasons I have as much against them as you do, and they should never have been bailed out with taxpayer money, and in a capitalist system they would not have been.

                      But liberty. It’s all about that. Hundreds of millions of men and women died fighting for it in the 20th century … There’s a great movie called ‘Lives of Others’: watch it please.

                    • KJT …
                      3 November 2011 at 12:56 pm

                      Where do I start.

                      You sound like someone who has just found a few economic “thinkers” who support you in your greed and misconceptions. like Rand, Mises and Friedman.

                      Note that Rand was such a believer in her own bullshit, that she lived off socialist benefits and healthcare for the last third of her life.

                      Try Frier, Keynes, Adam Smith, Schumpeter, for starters. Then get back to me for some more reading.

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:01 pm

                      No, KJG, that’s just ad hominem again. Try arguing based on economic facts drawn from the real world.

                    • KJT …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:17 pm

                      Been doing that for a while now.

                      http://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/

                  • KJT …
                    3 November 2011 at 2:52 pm

                    Rob.

                    Pleased to have my brilliance recognised at last.

                    Though my comments on the Rena were from, a large group ,of us currently employed on the NZ coast. Some, because of their employment did not want to make them publicly. So I cannot really claim the credit alone.

            • Galeandra 1.1.1.5.1.3
              3 November 2011 at 2:43 pm

              Yeah, I hate socialism,too. Welfare-ism sucks.
              Bailing out spendthrift bankers and tax-supporting the third-world style wagebills of tightfisted petit bourgeois capitalists who have no moral or social concern for anyone else.

        • dave brown 1.1.1.6
          3 November 2011 at 11:11 am

          “Hardly seems fair to businesses does it. A whole system built on theft, and the thieves still greedily want more and more and more.”

          The system is based on theft but not in the way you think. The systematic theft occurs when capital expropriates surplus value produced by the working class and renames this theft as its ‘profits’. Redistributing some of those profits back to pay for the ‘social wage’ (i.e. state provision of costs of living not met by the market wage) is hardly theft. Its actually a form of re-expropriation of value back to those who produced it in the first place.
          Of the course the right wing will never admit to such systematic theft because that would wipe out any legitimacy claimed by the system instantly.
          Fortunately the system is breaking down under the sheer weight of stockpiled wealth that is not invested productively while the living standards of the creators of wealth plummet. Its called capitalism in crisis. Solution? Revolution.

          • KJT 1.1.1.6.1
            3 November 2011 at 12:58 pm

            + 1.

            Don’t forget lending back the money required to live, which they took off our earnings in the first place. And charging for it.

          • Tribeless 1.1.1.6.2
            3 November 2011 at 1:05 pm

            Dave, where do you think the following quantities fit into your prescription:

            80 million.
            60 million.
            20 grams.

            ?

            And I’m not right wing. I’m Objectivist first. I vote Libertarianz second.

            And here’s another great quote from The Rational Capitalist:

            http://dougreich.blogspot.com/2011/10/ows-dogs-chasing-cars.html

            The inability and unwillingness for the left to argue critically for its agenda is a recurring theme that I have blogged about for years. Clearly, a sheer unanimity of angst exists among them related to perceived societal injustices, yet the vaguest sense of cause and effect, context, or solutions does not. The corollary is that they rarely understand or even acknowledge the implications of their own positions. For example, socialism necessitates the initiation of force against innocent people – that is the point of the redistribution of wealth and the abrogation of property rights. However, most will become angry, switch topics or even deny the reality of that logic to the point of denying the facts of history.

            The left chooses not to acknowledge or clarify their demands because it brings into focus the actual political policies necessary to achieve them. And why would that be bad? Because, at root, socialism necessitates the violent transfer of wealth from one group to another group, a rather frightening position to explicitly advocate. Such a program is not only highly impractical, since it leads to stagnation, poverty and misery, but is profoundly immoral as it treats the productive as slaves authorizing the state to perpetrate acts of escalating violence against innocent individuals who want to own the products of their labor.

            • The Voice of Reason 1.1.1.6.2.1
              3 November 2011 at 1:12 pm

              “And I’m not right wing. I’m Objectivist first. I vote Libertarianz second.”
               
              And delusional the rest of the time, apparently. It’s a bit rich you lecturing the left if you don’t even know your own political position.

              • McFlock …
                3 November 2011 at 1:36 pm

                oh, but objectivists are above it all. Don’t you know that, VoR? 

                 
                I agree with tribeless in one respect, though – socialists do have a habit of being upset about social injustices. Something to do with their completely irrational tendency to empathise with and care about the well-being of their fellow citizens.

            • KJT 1.1.1.6.2.2
              3 November 2011 at 1:24 pm

              “”The Right chooses not to acknowledge or clarify their demands because it brings into focus the actual political policies necessary to achieve them. And why would that be bad? Because, at root, capitalism necessitates the violent transfer of wealth from one group to another group, a rather frightening position to explicitly advocate. Such a program is not only highly impractical, since it leads to stagnation, poverty and misery, but is profoundly immoral as it treats the productive as slaves authorizing the state to perpetrate acts of escalating violence against innocent individuals who want to own the products of their labor.””

              Had to fix it for a RWNJ again!

              Why right wing “Libertarians” always vote for more police power.

              • Tribeless …
                3 November 2011 at 1:33 pm

                Lovely people here aren’t they. Good examples I why free men wouldn’t want the Left making rules that run their lives.

                I’m not right wing. I just want the freedom to pursue my happiness: and that is not possible in our social(alist) democracy where I have no privacy or freedom from the State. The conservative god faring right wing can no more give me that than the left can: both sides believe the State is my master rather than my servant. New Zealand today is literally far closer to 1984 than to 1776, and that is a cause of great sadness to me, particularly as I am forced to pay for a society I have little philosophical agreement with.

                By the way KJT, your last comment about Libertarians shows you don’t know what one is.

                • McFlock …
                  3 November 2011 at 1:38 pm

                  shrug off to somalia if you want freedom from the state.

                  • Tribeless …
                    3 November 2011 at 1:45 pm

                    Oh, excellent, Somalia. The man who does all my face to face work has written well on why Somalia could not only be further removed from a libertarian minarchy, but in some major areas more closely approximates our socialist democracies.

                    To Sacha Dylan – The Standard: No, Somalia is Nothing Like A Libertarian State. Couldn’t be Further From it.

                    And a bit disappointed no one has figured out my numbers above, yet. Or does no one actually read anyone else’s posts in here?

                    • lprent …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:52 pm

                      Yep. But first they have to be convinced that you’re worth expending the effort on…

                      So far to me you look like a run of the mill egotist with a cheap understanding of an idea – which as per the usual, you mistake for wisdom. We’ve all seen such acts before, and mostly we’ve giving up participating in such public masturbatory displays.

                      Does that make it clearer how many here view you?

                      BTW: You’ll probably find this thread in OpenMike soon. It looks like being out of context with the post and I suspect I’ll be moving it when I start moderating.

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 1:56 pm

                      Would you like to add some substance, rather than just random abuse. Argue the points raised on my link.

                      And you’re a moderator in here? Blimey. You’re quite quickly turning your blog into the Soviet Union.

                      [lprent: That wasn’t abuse – that was a description of a boring dickhead. My abuse tends to be somewhat more pointed.

                      Read the policy. You’re just stupid enough to have not already read it to find out what is permissible on our site. Having the rule of the sysop and moderators that are enforced is a major reason why we had the large numbers of page views last month and the loudmouth egofests that you’d approve of tend to not have comments. ]

                    • McFlock …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:28 pm

                      Typical simplistic “analysis” – by overemphasising the tribal influences of Somali society (I won’t speculate as to why he makes this mistake) he argues that Somalia can’t be a libertarian society. The trouble is that Somalia is exactly what a libertarian society looks like in practise – because the state provides no assistance, people are forced to band together using other social structures – e.g. religious, regional, or indeed tribal. These become threats to your minimalist state (e.g. Al-Shabaab). The result is anarchy.

                      Societies are more complex than slogans. (Except that one)

                      [edit: strangely appropriate that you linked to a site called “solopassion”]
                        

                    • NickS …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:39 pm

                      And you’re a moderator in here? Blimey. You’re quite quickly turning your blog into the Soviet Union.

                      My irony meter has doth exploded…

                      As an objectivist, you’re meant to respect an individual’s property rights and lprent has rather obvious property rights over this place. Ergo, he has the right to do with it what he sees fit, along with the content posted by commenter’s. Thus complaining about censorship is a disingenuous fundamental breach of lprent’s property rights…

                      lololololololol.

                      Stupid stupid whining ignorant hypocritical objectivist twit, don’tcha know, if you what your own freedom of speech get your own goat-fucking blog.

                    • Rusty Shackleford …
                      3 November 2011 at 5:00 pm

                      Tribeless, this is a pretty common theme here. Yell “RANDIAN, RWNJ!!!! GO BACK TO SOMALIA!!!!!!”. Then shut down the debate. Saying something substantive isn’t the purpose of this blog.

                    • Rusty Shackleford …
                      3 November 2011 at 5:02 pm

                      lprent has the right to use his server space as he pleases. However,shutting down the debate just because your minions can’t defend their side is intellectually dishonest, at best. I think he knows that deep down.

                    • lprent []
                      3 November 2011 at 5:23 pm

                      Nope. It is more basic than that. I really couldn’t give a damn about whatever rubbish he was pouring out. I have seen it too many times before and it just reads like mosquito whines.

                      How is it that libertarians seem to have been crushed through the same tool – they act more like indoctrinated boring clones from a hive than actual opinionated people. It isn’t unique to them, just more consistent. Like toy soldiers out of a injection mould.

                      He was just annoying me because the “debate” was in a post that it bore virtually no topical relationship to. It should have been in OpenMike (where I wouldn’t have bothered with it). Effectively this juvenile arsewipe hijacked a post.

                      His debating ‘style’ just reminds me of every other obnoxious twerp I have run across who comes in boots and all into a forum area without bothering to check out the local “law”. That is a very fast way to find out how fast and hard you can get kicked. You should find out if only so you know when you’re in danger. Dickhead didn’t, which means that I wind up with the wearisome chore of yet again educating someone whose testicle hormones are overpowering their common sense.

                      I find using a club to be the most effective educational use of my time. It teaches them to be a wee bit more cautious. I’ll usually do it after I see them starting to demand actions from others with all the grace of a spoiled child.

                      And Rusty, you’ll know exactly what I mean from your own past experience.

                    • McFlock …
                      3 November 2011 at 5:16 pm

                      1: Nobody’s “shut down the debate”. Tb packed a snoot and called it “censorship” simply because their use of idiotic catch-calls tirggered the moderation queue. 
                       
                      2: I fucking love yelling “Somalia” at libertarian morons. Why? Because Somalia is objectivism in actuality, not the psuedo-intellectual circle-jerk that is the libertarian blogosphere.

                      3: You never say anything substantive, Rusty – you misinterpret other people’s points of view to “answer” straw arguments that nobody asked, and your “answers” are simple repetitions of the objectivist catechism, performed by rote and without understanding.

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 5:46 pm

                      Let’s see. You give me a one week ban so I go away. Every one here piles in because I can no longer ply my argument. Then you actually change your post that banned me lprent, or whatever, to take away the one week ban part that was previously printed, so it looks like I’ve simply not stuck around.

                      Well, actually, with bad faith like that, Sacha, why would anyone who wanted to debate stick around?

                      I wouldn’t. If anyone wants to debate where debate is welcomed, then you can do so here.

                      And for the record, trying to wade through the stock in trade ad hominen here, no one has yet refuted my Somalia debunking post, other than in your dreams.

                      To end by answering to my numbers above.

                      80 million: the estimate of Chinese citizens murdered by the State pursuing Dave’s ideals.

                      60 million: the estimate of Soviet citizens murdered by the State pursuing Dave’s ideals.

                      20 grams; the current daily food ration of a North Korean pursuing Dave’s ideals.

                      Take away free markets, you take away your liberty first, then you lose everything.

                      Oh, my first post was fully on topic, per your moderation policy. No one deigned or was able to answer it, then, as is the nature of Internet blogs, discussion became diffuse as I defended the multitude of attacks from every conceivable angle. What’s your problem with that; it’s the internet. Look to your flunkies first if you want to keep debates on a narrow track.

                      [lprent: I reread my note and decided I was being too grumpy – since I had already banned two people earlier. You were a newbie, and quite evidentially young, stupid and gullible – all of which are correctable conditions.

                      But I am always willing to help out. Would you like a ban? I could just escalate it so you can seriously feel victimized. Of course it rather define you. ]

                    • NickS …
                      3 November 2011 at 6:02 pm

                      lprent has the right to use his server space as he pleases. However,shutting down the debate just because your minions can’t defend their side is intellectually dishonest, at best. I think he knows that deep down.

                      What part of “property rights” do you not understand? Because what you’re doing is trying to run over some of lprent’s property rights via a silly moral argument.

                      lolirony.

                    • mik e …
                      3 November 2011 at 6:31 pm

                      Tribeless you want that sort of crap go to kiwiblog .we are alot more refined and economically educated I’ve been studying economics for over thirty years and have read libraries and none of your propaganda adds up tell me the top five performing economies in the world not one of them follows your pathetic prescription but when it comes to the worst performing economies you will find it very close to your percsription

                    • joe90 …
                      3 November 2011 at 7:47 pm

                      80 million: the estimate of Chinese citizens murdered by the State pursuing Dave’s ideals.

                      60 million: the estimate of Soviet citizens murdered by the State pursuing Dave’s ideals.

                      Compare and contrast.

                      http://www.newscientist.com/embedded/20worst

                    • McFlock …
                      3 November 2011 at 8:16 pm

                      (80…60…20… yadda yadda)
                       
                      Lol.
                      If you’re not with us you’re a maoist-stalinist-whateverthehellNKis-ist?
                        
                      Typical randian BS masquerading as a “discussion”. have fun with your solitary passion.
                       

                • KJT …
                  3 November 2011 at 1:46 pm

                  Yes it does. Hypocrites!

                  • Tribeless …
                    3 November 2011 at 1:53 pm

                    Yes what does?

                    • Tribeless …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:00 pm

                      Right, I’m being moderated all of a sudden.

                      At least have the decency to put up this last post, unedited. I will not debate where I am moderated. If anyone wants unmoderated debate, follow my above link to the Libertarian State is not Somalia.

                      And really, the left, get over all the heavy handed, and censoring BS. Or don’t you actually want debate?

                      See ya.

                    • the sprout []
                      3 November 2011 at 2:04 pm

                      no keep your boufant on, you’re not being moderated.
                      “soviet” triggers the arsehole filter is all, it’s not actually about you

                    • KJT …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:16 pm

                      Looks like the ideal Libertarian Neo-Liberal State to us.

                      No Taxes, No Government.

                      Wealthy do whatever they like.

                      Endless supply of cheap labour.

                      Pay for your own police, roads, army, if you want them, and have the money.

                      Isn’t that what you lot cream your pants over.

                    • clandestino …
                      3 November 2011 at 2:20 pm

                      What, so when you can’t convince anyone of the merits of your argument you run away? I imagine that’s what libertarians would do in a true libertarian state, run away and hide behind their gates and blue shirted thugs. 

                      And they are blind to the problems of their ideology. Not everyone is motivated by ‘rational’ greed, unfettered markets do not allocate resources efficiently, and externalities are either ignored or shrugged off as something that will be dealt with by the ‘market’, mechanisms tba. 

                      Dave is correct, the surplus value of labour must be expropriated or capital inequalities will continue to build. When the best argument he can come up with is ‘change jobs’, you know he doesn’t get it.

              • Tribeless …
                3 November 2011 at 8:41 pm

                comment deleted
                [sprout: now you are just getting boring boring. initially you were amusingly, absurdly boring, but the fun’s worn off. in case you’re unfamiliar, i am not a moderate moderator. if people derail discussion on my posts intentionally, through being persistently boring, unimaginative or just plain crazy or creepy – i delete them. to save you responding here’s your bit – wah wah freedom of speech wah victim wah wah]

                • McFlock …
                  3 November 2011 at 8:57 pm

                  I’m a mid-30s IT professional. You’re free to leave the country any time you want.
                   
                  BTW who paid for your degrees?

                • Puddleglum …
                  3 November 2011 at 9:08 pm

                  “I’m a 46 year old professional with an A+ average across three tertiary degrees. ”

                  Blimey, I could be your older twin!

                  Seriously, I think you need to add some wisdom to that intelligence.

                  Start by not being so judgmental (kindergarten?). And, please realise that it’s irrelevant whether others judge you – that doesn’t abrogate your responsibility to become wise and not judge. You should know better if you’ve seriously applied that intelligence to understanding others. 

                  Follow that up by feeling a bit of compassion for others. You are not being ‘burdened’ by others. They are the reality of this life and world and they are the closest thing in this universe to you – and that’s not a bad thing.

                  Finally, get out more. And I mean that intellectually. I’ve seen too many very intelligent people become trapped by deliciously crystalline, beautiful but sparsely furnished, fleshless ideologies and theoretical frameworks.

                  Find your way out of the fly bottle … (never trust an ideology – even Objectivism – that is too good to be true; it probably is). 

                • lprent …
                  3 November 2011 at 9:19 pm

                  So?

                  You sound stupid and naive to me – for instance in your preconceptions. I’m 52, worked in management for many years, spent even more writing software in c++ and running development teams and building software companies because I like programming. I did a BSc In earth sciences, a MBA at Otago in operations, and a couple of looser degrees part time for interest.

                  I have been running local political campaigns as a volunteer for longer than your work record for Helen. In income terms, you can guarantee that it is likely I have paid more taxes than you have had income, especially since you appear to have spent so much time getting academic success. I spent most of my full time student time in the army, as a barman, poking around volcanic deposits or learning to code.

                  I have also been around the net in NZ since before it started.

                  There are quite a lot of commentators here that I can respect because of what they do or for what they know – despite their views that I usually disagree with. So far you don’t sound like one. You sound like you are so full of your own sense of importance that you haven’t bothered to look for the flaws and gotchas in your favorite theories. You’re also peddling stuff that I got bored with from repiticious waffling on usenet when you were high school.

                  Perhaps you should check your silly preconceptions, stop screaming “look at me” and start listening as well. There is an art form to projecting personality over social media. You project male adolescent

                • NickS …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:00 pm

                  If degrees conferred intelligence and wisdom, I wouldn’t see idiots with BSc’s, BE etc and higher saying evolutionary biology is teh wrongzors!111!! for all sorts of utterly stupid reasons.

                  And your original post is even more hilarious given the time in which you got your degrees you would have received quite a lot of funding from the government, amounting to a free ride.

                  And especially amusing to me, despite being nearly twice my age, you haven’t picked up on some the basic social and group behaviour stuff that took me until I was 21 to fully learn. Nor can you seemingly grasp anything overly complex enough to argue here and now, in spite of those degrees. Leading me to think that you didn’t go into post grad and those are all undergrad degrees.

                • Tribeless …
                  3 November 2011 at 10:33 pm

                  comment deleted
                  [sprout]

                  • McFlock …
                    3 November 2011 at 10:38 pm

                    Seriously? A Gulag? Because a moderator got fed up with you being a stupid dick?
                    lol.
                    Rourke wasn’t such a whiney little creep. Rand would have spat on you.

                    • Tribeless …
                      4 November 2011 at 8:33 am

                      comment deleted
                      [sprout]

                    • The Voice of Reason …
                      4 November 2011 at 8:54 am

                      And yet the Standard remains popular despite your criticisms. Could it be that you don’t know your arse from your elbow? Let’s let the market decide, eh?

                    • Tribeless …
                      4 November 2011 at 9:10 am

                      comment deleted

                      [sprout] your comment after this one, comparing me to a mass murderer (which is very impolite and suggests you are incapable of taking hints about your behaviour) has now got you banned.
                      that’s one less tribe.
                      bye bye.

                      [lprent: Added to the auto-spam list as being too stupid a troll to be bothered with. I will copy his messages into spam as well to give the heads up to other wordpress sites. ]

                    • One Anonymous Bloke …
                      4 November 2011 at 9:20 am

                      Tribeless once again you distort reality. Are you seriously advancing the position that the welfare state caused Deutschebank et al to sell multiple cdo’s that they knew were worthless? Are you going to claim that Alan Greenspan was a secret Marxist?
                      Oh, and your cherry-pick of 2010 says something about you, but nothing whatsoever about economic or social trends.

                  • NickS …
                    3 November 2011 at 11:20 pm

                    Oh man, you should so start posting over at Pharyngula, then you’ll have something to really complain about cupcake as they love objectivists* over there…

                    Also, my first through upon gazing at your blog was “oooh, he’s just like the old, authoritarian communist nutters we had at Canty parroting empty ideological rhetoric”…

                    And the lulz, oh Cthulhu, it’s like stumbling over a creationist forum that’s lain untouched by trolls. Though much like creationists, I some how doubt you’ll respect “free speech” when it’s making fun of you and doing 50 [insert dictator here] posts/pain series/evidence based cluebats.

                    ________________________________
                    *note: this unit finds the term rather amusing given the philosophical issues endeared by both the name, the movements claims and the actions of it’s numerous delusional members.

                    • Rusty Shackleford …
                      11 November 2011 at 1:47 pm

                      Ha, I love it! “We’re not shutting down the debate, just banning anyone who we can’t respond to”. Intellectual integrity at its finest.

            • Ari 1.1.1.6.2.3
              3 November 2011 at 11:42 pm

              For “socialism”* as you call it to violate property rights, it would first have to acknowledge them in a form which contradicts its communitarian policies. It makes no such acknowledgement to a right to property, and is in fact rather stringent on what counts as property, and rather ambiguous as to whether you have any rights to any property beyond what is needed for everyone to live a decent life.

              *We’re really talking about social democracy, as nobody has been advocating communal ownership of capital in this thread, as far as I can see.

        • lefty 1.1.1.7
          3 November 2011 at 7:39 pm

          Tribeless said
          “And who are these mysterious businesses then, benefiting so much? ”

          The banks for a start. They are doing just fine. And guess where Mr Key worked before becoming a politician.

          A system built on theft?
          Yes.
          Capitalism is based on bosses creating profits through stealing the labour of workers. Thats exactly how it works, no question about it, but the current hegemony is to deny and disguise it.

          Benefits are required so the reserve pool of labour can survive in case the capitalists need to steal some labour off them one day.

          You shouldn’t be complaining the 99% come cheap.

          • mik e 1.1.1.7.1
            3 November 2011 at 11:46 pm

            41 percent increase in profit in a recession who’s doing well out of this economy not the productive sector or any one else except the top ten percent

    • Draco T Bastard 1.2
      3 November 2011 at 2:06 pm

      Ah, look at that, the dictator (Tribeless) has come back. He has, over on Red Alert somewhere, told us that democracy is the problem and that he doesn’t want anybody interfering with what he does – even when what he does affects them.

      • McFlock 1.2.1
        3 November 2011 at 2:33 pm

        why does that not surprise me?

      • Ari 1.2.2
        3 November 2011 at 11:44 pm

        If someone who believes in welfare for corporations is a vulgar marxist, does that make someone who believes in absolute freedom only for themselves a vulgar libertarian? LOL.

  2. lan 2
    3 November 2011 at 9:02 am

    Beautiful!

    • joe90 2.1
      3 November 2011 at 2:49 pm

      One of my favourites. What’s wrong with libertarianism.

      In short:

      First, the worship of the already successful and the disdain for the powerless is essentially the morality of a thug. Money and property should not be privileged above everything else– love, humanity, justice.

      Second, it’s the philosophy of a snotty teen, someone who’s read too much Heinlein, absorbed the sordid notion that an intellectual elite should rule the subhuman masses, and convinced himself that reading a few bad novels qualifies him as a member of the elite.

      Third, and perhaps most common, it’s the worldview of a provincial narcissist. As I’ve observed in my overview of the 20th century, liberalism won its battles so thoroughly that people have forgotten why those battles were fought.

      It’s hard to read libertarians without concluding that they’ve never been out of the country– perhaps never out of the suburbs. They don’t know what Latin American rule by the elite looks like; they don’t know any way of running an industrial economy but that of the US; they don’t know what an actually oppressive government looks like; they’ve never experienced a depression; they’ve never lived in a slum or experienced racial discrimination. At the same time, they have a very American sense of entitlement: a gut feeling that they’ve earned the prosperity they were born into, that they owe the community nothing, that they deserve to have whatever they want, that no one should stand in their way.

      In short, they’re spoiled, and they’ve evolved a philosophy that they should be spoiled.

      • fmacskasy 2.1.1
        4 November 2011 at 10:05 am

        Libertarianism advocates that a government is involved in only three things;

        1. National defence

        2. Policing

        3. Enforcing contracts

        The rest is up to individuals to sort out themselves, on a strictly user-pays system.

        But hang on a minute. If we take User Pays to it’s end, ridiculous ultimate conclusion – then Policing should be left up to individuals as well.

        Why should I, in a Libertarian Nirvana, pay for a police force I might not use, and which is focused on other peoples’ problems?

        People should pay for their own police or protection. After all, if I choose not to have possessions in a Libertarian Nirvana, then why should I need Police?

        In effect, Libertarianism is the ultimate destruction of any sense of community. Somalia, in some ways, is an example of Libertarianism in many respects.

  3. Hami Shearlie 3
    3 November 2011 at 9:04 am

    John won’t give a fig about debt he caused for the people of NZ – he’ll have left a trail of destruction behind him and be living in Hawaii with his knighthood! Cosy eh?

    • Draco T Bastard 3.1
      3 November 2011 at 2:13 pm

      Of course he gives a fig about it – he’ll be making a government guaranteed profit from it somewhere (probably through his BoA shares).

  4. Richard Down South 4
    3 November 2011 at 9:06 am

    $40 billion? source?

  5. Peter 5
    3 November 2011 at 9:23 am

    Nice picture. Give us some quotable facts.

    • Diane 5.1
      11 November 2011 at 12:19 pm

      Bernanke has been publicly quoted as saying they have just lent 9 billion to NZ from the IMF which comes from the Federal Reserve Bank. He says this has been lent in for an exchange of credit. What I would like to know is what are they terms of this loan and over what period is this paid back, what are the interests costs and what is the money being used for.What is the exchange for credit that our country has given.

      This money has been created by the Federal Reserves and Central banks of the world out of thin air, backed by what? air and we have to pay it back at compounding interest. This is fraud and these bankers should be locked up for stealing and deceiving the people of every nation. We will never pay it off the our future generations will never pay it off. This whole economic system is built on corruption and it is will continue to enslave the nations. The only beneficiaries in this are the owners of these private banks and corporations who control the world economic system.

      You only have to look at what this economic system has done to the world economies and see what’s going on. It’s obviously not working.

      • Rusty Shackleford 5.1.1
        11 November 2011 at 1:48 pm

        Gross. I was not aware of this, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any play in the media. How people can say capitalism is the problem when this sort of anticapitalism is going on is beyond me.

        • McFlock 5.1.1.1
          11 November 2011 at 2:06 pm

          Real-world capitalism, not the unachievable (and somewhat naive) “no true scotsman” you uphold.

  6. higherstandard 6
    3 November 2011 at 9:38 am

    Come on now wasn’t the only real case of drunken semen in parliament during recent times that of Darren Hughes ?

    • The Voice of Reason 6.1
      3 November 2011 at 9:42 am

      You seem to know a lot about it, HS, Anything you want to get off your chest or out of your closet?

      • higherstandard 6.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 9:47 am

        It’s true VoR I’ve always had a thing for gingas………… my secret shame !

        • One Anonymous Bloke 6.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 10:00 am

          hs it’s a bit sad, really, when you strip away the anecdotal arguments, and the blinkered adherence to economic fairytales, how many people on the right simply reveal themselves as bigots.

          • Tigger 6.1.1.1.1
            3 November 2011 at 10:35 am

            HS – I’d watch out with that type of remark. If you righties want to go there just be prepared to take a couple of your own team down.

            • higherstandard 6.1.1.1.1.1
              3 November 2011 at 12:06 pm

              Couldn’t care less Tigger if you’ve got dirt on politicians feel free to dish it – people should know who they’re voting for.

              • Campbell Larsen …
                3 November 2011 at 12:42 pm

                People should also know WHAT they are voting for – and not have the details hidden in secret negotiations which undermine sovereignty like the TPPA, or have radical policies which the majority of the population disagree with implemented on the flimsy pretext of the ‘mandate of an election’
                If you had any consistency that wasnt troll you would be as zealous in demanding transparency on these issues.

              • One Anonymous Bloke …
                3 November 2011 at 7:09 pm

                “Dirt”? You mean like having a blind trust that isn’t blind then setting policy as a member of cabinet that directly affects your personal investments, like corrupt lying John Key does?

          • fender 6.1.1.1.2
            3 November 2011 at 10:35 am

            Its standard practice for those who feel they are above the rest, they even claim to have “higher standards” but we know their necks are very very red.

  7. Terry 7
    3 November 2011 at 9:41 am

    Yes, right. I am even more bothered by his mass of drunken sailor supporters.

  8. KJT 8
    3 November 2011 at 9:57 am

    Over 60% of all taxes are paid by middle income earners.

    Keys claim that GST is progressive is obvious lying.

    The BS numbers from Farrar, claiming huge proportions of tax are paid by the top few

    The top 10% of households may pay 71% of income tax, (Though that is debatable. The lower income families in that range, the 150k to 200k pay proportionately more tax than the really high earners) but definitely not even 40% of total taxes paid.

    Half the wealthiest households do not pay tax!

    Anyway. It is fair that us, who are better off, who benefit most from our society, pay the most taxes.

    I am surprised Goff did not hammer Key back on his numbers, which are extremely dodgy.
    Maybe he was too flabbergasted by the bare faced lying.

    • queenstfarmer 8.1
      3 November 2011 at 10:09 am

      I am surprised Goff did not hammer Key back on his numbers, which are extremely dodgy.
      Maybe he was too flabbergasted by the bare faced lying.

      Oh please – are you seriously suggesting that Phil is so weak that he can be thrown-off by his opponent just like that? Phil is in his 4th decade in Parliament. He is far more experienced than John in that regard, and he can cut-and-thrust with the best of them. Most commentators agree that Phil was clearly caught out on the spending hole issue.

      • Craig Glen Eden 8.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 10:23 am

        Caught out I dont think so I think Key entered the parlor, the last laugh will be telling. Labour’s figures will be delivered all in good time, I only wish Key could deliver the jobs for the nations sake instead of his constant spending in the interest of the extreme rich. Just think if he actually could deliver and get people of the benefits like he promises closed the wage gap with Aussie we really would have a brighter future the evidence however shows over the last three years he’s all talk.

        • queenstfarmer 8.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 11:30 am

          Labour’s figures will be delivered all in good time

          Good time would have been in the leaders debates. It is quite extraordinary that Phil turned up unable to answer that basic question.

          • One Anonymous Bloke 8.1.1.1.1
            3 November 2011 at 11:35 am

            Here’s the answer: “We haven’t released our budget yet, John, how would you know what it says? This is the third different figure you’ve come up with now, stop making things up and act like a leader for a change.”

          • bbfloyd 8.1.1.1.2
            3 November 2011 at 12:46 pm

            so an economic policy for the whole country that can be explained in 20 seconds…. sounds like the sort of idiocy that most tories have got the attention span for….which gives us a good pointer as to why we always end up deep in the shit every time we get a national govt

    • the sprout 8.2
      3 November 2011 at 10:25 am

      too flabbergasted by the bare faced lying

      I got the impression he was… like, where do you start

      • KJT 8.2.1
        3 November 2011 at 10:33 am

        Probably.

        It is debating technique to demand short answers to ones that can only be answered in detail.

        One that is favoured by journalists and fudgers who have already decided on the answers they want.

    • Kaplan 8.3
      3 November 2011 at 10:48 am

      “Maybe he was too flabbergasted by the bare faced lying.”

      That was exactly my thought. When Key started with his ‘show me the money stand-up routine’ I though how the hell does Phil answer that without simply calling Key out as a disgrace and a liar, again?

      If Key is going to keep bareface lying to the public it’s pretty damn hard to answer it any other way I would have thought. The details and truth are just going to be lost under Key’s desperate cries of ’17 bullyon, 14 bullyon’. (Can’t get his lies straight… )

    • William Joyce 8.4
      3 November 2011 at 11:56 am

      I am surprised Goff did not hammer Key back on his numbers, which are extremely dodgy.
      Maybe he was too flabbergasted by the bare faced lying.

      It seemed to me that Goff had to hold back sometimes, and let things slide, else he would be seen as too aggressive, shouting over the top of Key, or any of the other stupid criteria that people use to rubbish their ideological opponents. 
      Such is the nature of such debates (much as I would have liked to see Key cowering in the corner, whimpering and crying for his mother in the face of the truth!)

  9. Tom Gould 9
    3 November 2011 at 10:29 am

    Nice work, but too late. The MSM has bought his lies for 3 years, so they have convinced themselves that the most reckless ‘borrow and spend’ government New Zealand has ever seen, with the possible exception of Muldoon, is in fact prudent with the people’s dough. Besides, none of it is their fault, remember. Meanwhile the longest media honeymoon in history carries on.

  10. In Vino Veritas 10
    3 November 2011 at 11:02 am

    “created record levels of unemployment”

    Now this is just plain mischief making since it is untrue. Mr Goff would probably call it a “lie”.
    Unemployment reached a historical high (record) of 11.20% in September of 1991.Unemployment in NZ has averaged 6.25% between 1985 and 2010, and therefore,the 6.5% unemployment rate at end June 11 quarter is not particularly worse than the average. It is also pertinent to note that the average OECD rate for the June 11 quarter was 9.2%, significantly higher than NZ’s (who rank 12th from 34 in the OECD).

    Sprout, suggest you get your facts right before making mischief.

    • ak 10.1
      3 November 2011 at 11:24 am

      Yeah Sprout, you mischiefy little scamp you. Fancy pointing out the shocking rise in unemployment under Key when we all know that previous right-wingers have done much, much worse. Give the poor bugger time, he’s still only a learner at this poor-bashing stuff. One thing at a time eh, he’s busy ripping babies from their mothers’ arms at the mo.

      • the sprout 10.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 11:45 am

        Sprout, suggest you get your facts right before making mischief.

        ouch!
        good thing i didn’t mention the record lows in wage and economic growth

        • In Vino Veritas 10.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 11:59 am

          Hmm, sorry, I get it, never let the facts get in the way of a personal opinon that gets published as the truth. No wonder all left wing systems have been abject failures. For one, they rely so much on propaganda.Socialism is great, until you run out of other peoples money. Check out Greece, socialists did well there, didnt they?

          • One Anonymous Bloke 10.1.1.1.1
            3 November 2011 at 12:02 pm

            “From 04 – 09 under New Democracy, it ranged between 100% and 110%. Though to be fair, it was trending upwards.” In Vino Veritas.
            So you even debunk your own lies within minutes of telling them.

            • the sprout 10.1.1.1.1.1
              3 November 2011 at 12:49 pm

              nice 😆

            • In Vino Veritas 10.1.1.1.1.2
              3 November 2011 at 1:00 pm

              And then it jumped 32% in less than two years under PASOK. At least I said it how it is\was, but as always One, you read and re publish the bits that suit your argument, rather than the overall picture.

              • One Anonymous Bloke …
                3 November 2011 at 1:40 pm

                No, I quoted the bit that showed you were lying, in your own words. I haven’t expressed an opinion on the roots of Greece’s opportunity/problem at all.

                • In Vino Veritas …
                  3 November 2011 at 2:48 pm

                  And I certainly dont see where I have told any lie. Read the original post I made. Socialists have been in power for 13 of the past 18 years in Greece. I pointed out that Greece’s % debt to GDP had trended up from 100 to 110% under the Democratic party, it got to 100% under Socialism in the first place, then jumped to 142% under Socialism after they took power in 2009. As I say, didnt the Socialist do well?

                  I repeat, you read and re publish the bits that suit your argument, rather than the overall picture.

                  KJT, French banks own more Greek soveriegn debt than industry in Greece, that’s why the French are currently packing themselves, under the bailout scheme they have to take a 50% bath on the debt and along with other EC banks stump up with a share of $100bn to make the bailout work.

          • KJT 10.1.1.1.2
            3 November 2011 at 1:52 pm

            The Greeks average longer hours for less money than the Germans and the French.
            Who have money to lend to them because they are paid more and they own a lot of Greek industry.

            Who is really living beyound their earnings is not that simple..

          • Galeandra 10.1.1.1.3
            3 November 2011 at 5:41 pm

            Greece? Other posts already made the point over’n over but here goes anyway. You can read?

            (This is repeating on me like a bad cheerio at a Tory wake)
            .
            http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/the-spanish-tragedy/

            As Europe is roiled by sovereign debt fears, it’s important to realize that the crisis in the largest of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) has nothing to do with fiscal irresponsibility. On the eve of the crisis, Spain was running a budget surplus; its debts, as you can see in the figure above, were low relative to GDP.
            So what happened? Spain is an object lesson in the problems of having monetary union without fiscal and labor market integration. First, there was a huge boom in Spain, largely driven by a housing bubble — and financed by capital outflows from Germany. This boom pulled up Spanish wages. Then the bubble burst, leaving Spanish labor overpriced relative to Germany and France, and precipitating a surge in unemployment. It also led to large Spanish budget deficits, mainly because of collapsing revenue but also due to efforts to limit the rise in unemployment.

            • Nick C 10.1.1.1.3.1
              3 November 2011 at 6:55 pm

              Sure, monetary union without fiscal union is a stupid idea (thats no nessesarily a principle which should go along ideological lines but until recently it was mostly people on the right saying it). Reality is though that very few European states would commit to a true fiscal union.

              Lets accept Krugmans analysis that Spain got screwed over in that respect. Doesn’t explain Ireland, Italy, Portugal or Greece does it?

              The exact graph he used to exonerate Spain of fiscal stupidity pretty much convicts the rest of them in that regard.

    • mik e 10.2
      3 November 2011 at 6:43 pm

      Sou you forget the 100,000 that have left permanently to Australia while they still can afford to do so with the polls and polsters saying this could be a three term National Govt you can understand the reasoning as New Zealand will continue to decline under National like it has before
      Its even scarier that National have only promised 57,000 new jobs which really means there will be 150,000 more unemployed and heading to Australia for a brighter future

  11. Richard Down South 11
    3 November 2011 at 11:22 am

    On a related note… ANZ posted a nice profit… anyone know if they pay any NZ tax as they are Aussie owned? http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5901375/ANZ-NZ-annual-profit-jumps-25-per-cent

  12. randal 12
    3 November 2011 at 11:29 am

    went to town yesterday and a mince pie from the cafe was $4.80.
    So who’s zooming who?

    • Lanthanide 12.1
      3 November 2011 at 11:47 am

      Mince pies will go up in price if Labour puts up the minimum wage.

      • bbfloyd 12.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 12:56 pm

        not to mention higher fuel costs passed on through prices from wholesalers…. higher energy prices….falling sales(but not for long when more people on minimum wages can afford to buy pies)…. not forgetting that the vast majority of bakeries are family owned and run….

        so it’s obvious that the raising of the minimum wage is the one thing that will wreck everything….. really… it’s so obvious….. isn’t it?

        • Lanthanide 12.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 1:34 pm

          The main cost in petrol is the price of crude oil. Putting the minimum wage up to $15 might increase the price at the pump by 1 or 2 cents.

          Similarly, electricity companies aren’t going to be employing many minimum wage people, so it’ll have practically no affect on that.

          Also I never said that “raising of the minimum wage is the one thing that will wreck everything”, what I said is that the price of mince pies will go up once it’s been raised.

          • thejackal 12.1.1.1.1
            3 November 2011 at 7:23 pm

            Lanthanide

            The main cost in petrol is the price of crude oil. Putting the minimum wage up to $15 might increase the price at the pump by 1 or 2 cents.

            Bullshit! The oil companies put the price of petrol up prior to the 2008 election in dramatic fashion with the MSM regularly giving soundbites as if this was Labours fault. Since the last election prices have remained stagnant until last month when they started to decrease.

            Oil companies favour National because they have less restrictions on exploitation of the environment. National ensures that any imposable fines on the oil and gas industry for their polluting of the environment are minimal or non existent.

            Wage increases have no effect on this dynamic but everything to do with peoples ability to save. Your malleable argument is particularly soft La 57.

            • Lanthanide 12.1.1.1.1.1
              3 November 2011 at 9:08 pm

              http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/WTI_price_96_09.svg

              Notice the big spike in 2008? You know, highest price of oil per barrel in history?

              You can read some more about how petrol prices in New Zealand are *actually* set, here: http://www.aa.co.nz/motoring/aa-torque/motoring-blog/petrolwatch/?start=0

              There also exists somewhere on the internet a graph showing the average retailer margin on a litre of petrol. It usually hovers around 8c. For every litre the petrol station charges you $2.12 for, they get 8c in profit.

              About 50-55% of the price of petrol at the pump goes to the government in taxes in one form or another, including carbon tax, GST and a petrol levy.

              Diesel is much cheaper at the pump because the road user tax is excluded and paid for separately (because lots of farmers use it in tractors that never go on the road, etc). In the US, diesel costs more than petrol.

              But hey, if you want to keep believing that it’s some conspiracy between the National party and the oil companies, I’m sure I can’t stop you, no matter how much evidence I present.

              • vto …
                3 November 2011 at 9:20 pm

                “they get 8c in profit”

                no, they get 8c in revenue. very different.

                • Lanthanide …
                  3 November 2011 at 9:38 pm

                  Yes, sorry.

                  This only underlines even more that a $15 minimum wage is barely going to affect petrol prices.

              • thejackal …
                3 November 2011 at 9:27 pm

                You’ve not presented evidence that the conspiracy does not exist Lanthanide… just that there’s other dynamics in how the price of petrol is set. But hey, you can also believe what you like… isn’t that a novel argument.

                • Lanthanide …
                  3 November 2011 at 9:41 pm

                  Oh, so I have to prove there’s no conspiracy, do I? I guess for your next trick, you’ll demand that I prove there are no teapots travelling around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

                  How about you prove the conspiracy does exist.

                  I don’t recall the media specifically blaming Labour for the price of petrol in 2008, but you should recall that they introduced the ETS, which did increase the petrol price by about 4-5c overnight, and were talking about introducing legislation that would allow regional councils to collect tax on petrol in their area to use to fund their local transportation infrastructure. Auckland city council was mooted to opt for the full 10c tax. It is highly likely that most articles blaming the price of petrol on Labour were talking about these issues.

                  • thejackal …
                    3 November 2011 at 10:50 pm

                    How’s this for starters?

                    Strange that I get shit for not remembering something that happened in 2002 re the worm but people are fine with you not remembering occurrences in 2008. Pot calls kettle black.

                    If you say something does not exist… then you need to have evidence to base that assertion on… especially when there’s evidence pointing towards the conclusion that oil and gas companies would manipulate the market to influence who is governing. You have no evidence and have therefore lost the argument.

                    You could always try another argumentum ad logicam… But I find such things tedious! It would also seem off topic.

                    • The Voice of Reason …
                      3 November 2011 at 11:11 pm

                      “If you say something does not exist… then you need to have evidence to base that assertion on…”
                       
                      You’re not religious are you? I seem to recall having that sort of illogical construction thrown at me the last time I laughed at the idea of a god.
                       
                      On the petrol and wages issue, Standardistas might consider choosing to buy their gas from BP Connect servos. The staff are unionised and paid well above the adult minimum rate. I’m also told that BP will not be using the 90 day provision, so there’s another good reason to go there.

                    • Lanthanide …
                      3 November 2011 at 11:17 pm

                      So you’re linking to your own blog as evidence of… something?

                      I don’t know what that graph is supposed to show. I already linked to a graph of the price of oil showing a massive spike up during 2008. Your graph shows the same. Where’s the conspiracy, exactly?

                      My argument is that the price of crude oil and taxes dictate (at least) 90% of the petrol price and that employees being paid $13 or $15 minimum wage will barely make a dent in the price of petrol at the pump. You are claiming that somehow National was in cahoots with the oil companies in 2008 and that’s the only reason petrol prices in NZ were so high. Sorry, but if you do a little research, you will find that petrol prices rose to record highs in all parts of the western world in 2008, perfectly correlated with the high oil price. The US was up to over $4/gallon as the average price, for example. If you want to argue that petrol prices in the US were a result of Labour being in government in NZ, go right ahead.

                      And yes, it is quite apparent that you find logic tedious and have little time for it.

                      As for the worm in 2002, it was effectively wall-to-wall in the media, when United Future went from polling around 0.5% to 7% over night and ended up getting 9 MPs. That’s a pretty big thing to apparently have completely missed.

                    • thejackal …
                      3 November 2011 at 11:43 pm

                      My religious beliefs are not relevant to the debate VoR, but thanks for asking.

                      However your assertion that the argument is religious in origin is because it’s often used by atheists… I’m refering to Lanthanides teapots travelling around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter stupidity of course.

                      Lanthanide

                      So you’re linking to your own blog as evidence of… something?

                      You asked for evidence. There’s the Google public data graphic concerning the rise.

                      My argument is…

                      Again… you only prove that there are other dynamics involved.

                      If you want to argue that petrol prices in the US were a result of Labour being in government in NZ, go right ahead.

                      Thank you master. May I shine your fallacious little shoes first?

                      As for the worm in 2002, it was effectively wall-to-wall in the media, when United Future went from polling around 0.5% to 7% over night and ended up getting 9 MPs. That’s a pretty big thing to apparently have completely missed.

                      Now the worm in 2002 was broadcast more than the “it’s Labours fault the petrol prices are increasing” bullshit in 2008? Get real Lanthanide.

                    • One Anonymous Bloke …
                      4 November 2011 at 4:45 pm

                      Russell’s teapot is a perfectly good analogy for the demand for evidence to disprove a conspiracy.

                  • thejackal …
                    4 November 2011 at 12:04 am

                    Lanthanide

                    And yes, it is quite apparent that you find logic tedious and have little time for it.

                    It’s logical that the oil and gas companies would work towards their goal of being able to conduct deep sea oil drilling in New Zealand. They would prefer whatever political organization might further those goals.

                    It appears that they’ve previously promoted a public belief that Labour equals higher fuel prices when this is not the case. Their greed equals higher fuel prices.

                    I do not see that this is an illogical argument. It is what I believe is the case and I do not have to provide airtight evidence to hold that belief… no matter how much you might try to demoralize me to win the argument Lanthanide.

                  • Lanthanide …
                    4 November 2011 at 12:05 am

                    So your evidence that National are in a conspiracy with the oil companies to rise the price of petrol in New Zealand, is a graph showing that the import costs of oil increased in 2008?

                    That’s it? That’s your only evidence?

                    “Now the worm in 2002 was broadcast more than the “it’s Labours fault the petrol prices are increasing” bullshit in 2008? Get real Lanthanide.”

                    Find me some articles blaming Labour for the petrol price rise (outside of the ETS and regional fuel tax, as I have already explained above) and you might have some evidence to base this assertion on.

                    As mildly entertaining as this exchange has been, it’s clearly going nowhere. So I’ll leave you with the slogan from the NZ Sceptics Society: When you hear the sound of hoofbeats in the night… think first of horses, not of zebras.

                    • clandestino …
                      4 November 2011 at 1:01 am

                      Hahaha, funniest exchange i’ve read since the 9/11 truthers way back in September. Methinks the jackal doth logic:fail too much.

                    • thejackal …
                      4 November 2011 at 4:39 pm

                      As mildly entertaining as this exchange has been, it’s clearly going nowhere.

                      Agreed Lanthanide. Will get back to you sometime with further information/evidence regarding this. Although it’s not something that government’s or the oil and gas industry usually write about in articles.

  13. Anyonewhobelievesapoliticianwhentheysaytheyarehonestisafool 13
    3 November 2011 at 11:39 am

    Is this really the best the Left can do after their messiah was made to look weak and without a grip on the details of his election package?

  14. Craig Glen Eden 14
    3 November 2011 at 12:32 pm

    I guess standard and poors are the liars then? Oh no thats right, National have got our country a credit down grade and John Key was not at the meeting!

    Oh just so we are clear on some reality.

  15. John for PM 15
    3 November 2011 at 12:58 pm

    Ekshully that headline is completely false. I havunt been drunk on semen since my uni days

  16. Blue 16
    3 November 2011 at 1:03 pm

    Key’s opened up a can of worms. He challenged Phil to show him the costings. And when Labour produces theirs, the heat should go on Key to explain his own numbers, which are full of holes.

    It’s only a victory to Key if it doesn’t come back to bite him in the arse later.

  17. rain33 17
    3 November 2011 at 1:09 pm

    Regardless of anything, Labour need to get those figures out….and fast. “Show me the money”..is everywhere today, and as everyone knows perception is everything. Goff made huge inroads on Monday night, but last night Goff ended up on the ropes regarding this issue, which is disappointing as otherwise it would have hands down been a win for Goff, but that bit of sh*t really stuck.

    To not be able to come up with a satisfactory answer was a terrible look. I can understand that it is near impossible to deliver budget like figures in a debate environment…but that is no excuse for getting caught with your pants down. You have to come back with something other than a ‘i’ll get back to you’ type response. Uuggh.

    (show me the money, just heard it being referenced to again on the radio while typing)..anyway, there could have been no doubt that National were going to come out swinging after Monday night, it was a sea-shift moment. However, that could all account for nothing if Labour don’t get up swiftly and deliver a ‘right-back-at-ya’ moment.

    Hurry up guys…tick, tick, tick……

  18. Campbell Larsen 18
    3 November 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Show me the jobs, Shon, show me the jobs. Times ticking, tick, tick, tick….

    • rain33 18.1
      3 November 2011 at 1:25 pm

      Of course you’re right, but if you read the headlines out there today, the ball is in Labour’s court and they must produce the numbers…now! Every Labour supporter out there should be screaming out for them to come up with the numbers, for every minute that passes by is like oil leaking from the Rena…it’s damaging!

      • Campbell Larsen 18.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 1:43 pm

        While I’m all for Labour being able to produce the information, I also think that quietly and confidently choosing the moment to relaese the information on ones own terms is preferable to pandering to a desperate faction of the MSM who erroneously believe that they have scented blood.
        This is especially so given the lack of detail from the Rats about there own policies, or more accurately the lack of policy from the Rats.
        Referencing the Rena is a bit of a stretch, this is not a shipwreck for Goff or Labour and is not likely to become so – Shonkeys supporters may wish it was but it is not.

        • Rob 18.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 2:07 pm

          What, like Nov 28th Campbell.

        • rain33 18.1.1.2
          3 November 2011 at 2:21 pm

          If Labour were well ahead in the polls I could agree with you. However, any gains made (and there definitely have been over the past couple of weeks) have to be hung on to, as those gains could disappear in a nanosecond. Unfortunately the average voter are a fickle bunch, and the die-hards are already locked in. So all of a sudden there is a group of people suddenly looking at Goff as a serious contender, but any sort of ‘stutter’ could see that evaporate very quickly.

          Labour supporters need to demand a ‘no stutter’ standard. You cant win on the back foot, Labour need to be front-footing it, their opening television address was far and away ahead of Nationals, which was unbelievably appalling, so get on it..no time for sitting back and waiting!

      • Anne 18.1.2
        3 November 2011 at 7:48 pm

        +1

        Last night’s taunts by Key over Labour’s policy spending should have been anticipated. Goff should have been supplied with appropriate reprisals to counteract them.

  19. Roflcopter 19
    3 November 2011 at 1:32 pm

    Maybe there’s a second “panel of experts” yet to be appointed, and it’s caused delays in getting the spreadsheet completed.

    • Rob 19.1
      3 November 2011 at 2:00 pm

      This is the clear difference between career politicians and people that are employed in business or manage and lead businesses.  Not knowing your numbers is suicide.  At budget presentations if you cannot articulate your forecasts at various lines of a P&L you are mince meat. Last night unfortunatly what we see was a presentation of fairy tales by Phil Goff.  If he does not know how much they cost or even when they will start being effective (ie what fricken year they start kicking in) in the manner he is promoting then he is not fit to lead or even be involved. Also mentioning that he has a team knocking it up on a  spreadsheet was just lame and so second rate, most of us sort of expect that was probably done prior (does this guy think its 1978), get current man.

      So delay the number chaps, that will really work in your favour.

  20. Bovver 20
    3 November 2011 at 1:52 pm

    3 more years boys and girls

  21. Uturn 21
    3 November 2011 at 2:43 pm

    It’s amazing.

    Given some of the ideas here, National should’ve been obsolete years ago. The reasons National give for their policy is supported by people calling for solutions that ACT policy would fix. It would have given them what they wanted, starting 2008.

    But for some reason they don’t vote for what they say they want. Hmmm. Strange people.

  22. Tombstone 22
    3 November 2011 at 7:31 pm

    What is National doing to improve the living standards, work opportunities and wages for ordinary, hard working Kiwis? Responsibly managing the economy? Bullshit they are and any donkey dick that says different is as good as kidding themselves. Look at the stats … National’s track record so far is bloody shocking. What the hell is there to crow about ya bunch of muppets!

  23. randal 23
    3 November 2011 at 8:07 pm

    no bover.
    no more three years for the national party.
    if just selling the assets were enough the there are other plums as well, like new management contracts and new staff.
    nice work if you can get it.
    can they pull it off?
    who wins?
    the country is in need of reorganisation but only labour is trustworthy enough to take not only the hard decisons but the right decisions.

  24. dad4justice 24
    3 November 2011 at 8:31 pm

    Key is a wimp and Goff a sick joke.

    Would a REAL KIWI LEADER PLEASE STAND UP>>>PLEASE STAND UP?

    yeah right – dreams are free.

    Poor New Zealand. 

    • vto 24.1
      3 November 2011 at 8:38 pm

      d4j, your river been treating you well? I seem to recall some comment in days past about judges and gangsters mooching together in the whitebait chase …

      • dad4justice 24.1.1
        3 November 2011 at 8:45 pm

        kewl vto, a chess player, Justice Potter and Peter Davis.

        Game over nerd. Go away and whitebait your Dan Carter underwear.

        I have payback in mind. Stay away as you might break a fingernail darling.    

        • vto 24.1.1.1
          3 November 2011 at 8:54 pm

          so clever you foolish fool. Just stick to them sticky sewery eastern drains. bleeaargh…. puke….. that oily sheen is the perfect mirror for you

  25. Harry Dupont 25
    3 November 2011 at 10:34 pm

    Lets have a look at what’s happened in the last 3 years which may have caused the government to borrow a lot of money, increase unemployment levels and cause credit downgrades…

    Oh, that’s right. Canterbury suffered two catastrophic seismic events, another less severe but still damaging which further impacted the province’s ability to recover. Oh, and nearly 8000 aftershocks.

    Now, what does this have to do with government borrowing, spending, unemployment, etc? Well. These events have led to the government needing (or choosing, I guess, but realistically if they didn’t, things for New Zealand would be far worse than you guys seem to think they are) to bail out EQC and the rest of the insurance industry. Having a great deal of Canterbury businesses out of action has caused a downturn in tax revenue. And (as you’ll see below) an increase in unemployment/people drawing on the unemployment benefit. So there’s your deficit/borrowing increase.

    Next up: Unemployment. Any idea what happens when the part of our countries (still) second largest city has it’s densest area of commercial space completely out of action for almost a year? Yep, that’s right, people lose their jobs. And a lot of people lost their jobs. Less people employed means less people spending means more jobs lost because businesses can no longer afford to/no longer need to employ as many staff. So massive increase in unemployment. Increase in welfare payments (see above).

    Credit downgrades? Well, I’d think it’s fairly obvious that with bailouts of various industries, global economic downturn and various other things are going to lead to this kind of downgrade. So, yeah. There’s that.

    Seriously, so many people get high and mighty about what’s happened under National’s/John Key’s government, but do you stop to think that a huge portion of the things they complain about are outside of the government’s control. How exactly was the Rena disaster Mr Key’s fault? Did he set of earthquakes in Canterbury?

    Please, climb down off your high horses and remember that a Labour government would have ended up with the same issues.

    • Harry Dupont 25.1
      3 November 2011 at 10:48 pm

      Oops, my grammar toward the end there got pretty atrocious, but oh well. I think my point was/is sufficiently made.

    • thejackal 25.2
      3 November 2011 at 11:21 pm

      Harry Dupont

      How exactly was the Rena disaster Mr Key’s fault? Did he set of earthquakes in Canterbury?

      Please, climb down off your high horses and remember that a Labour government would have ended up with the same issues.

      I think this argument has been made numerous times before.

      Nobody is saying that John Key drove the Rena into the Astrolabe reef… what we are concerned with is the safety of ships and the skill employed on them in New Zealand’s waters… not to mention the ability of authorities to respond adequately when things go wrong.

      National did not respond well at all and there appears to be no proper infrastructure to deal with a relatively small oil spill (not that approximately 380+ tonnes of heavy fuel oil is a small amount) or any other hazardous substance that ships regularly carry through our water for that matter.

      We will never know if Labour would have done better… but I would hazard a guess that they might have initiated an increase in the maximum fines able to be imposed under the law. They may have also ensured that the recommendation to purchase a dedicated emergency response vessel was upheld.

      Please don’t try to negate Nationals responsibility for their obvious failures just because Labour might not have done any better… It’s an insult to all those affected by a disaster that is still unfolding.

      • mik e 25.2.1
        3 November 2011 at 11:53 pm

        Thats Nationals policy export middle class labour voters
        Stay in power we need every expat kiwi to vote then start blogging

    • Puddleglum 25.3
      4 November 2011 at 12:04 am

      Hi Harry Dupont,

      I think you’ll find that the unemployment rate was rising some time before the Canterbury earthquakes. I think the safer argument (for National) is the global recession.

      On that, I think I recall that most right wing commenters here were praising National for not doing anything (i.e., no stimulus) to improve the unemployment statistics. Despite the supposed ‘Job Summit’, that is, the approval was for no government intervention to encourage job growth. It was all about – according to right wingers – tightening government expenditure, trying to keep the books in some semblance of ‘order’ and … waiting it out. The unemployed were simply collateral damage.

      I think that’s what people on the left had a problem with. 

  26. mik e 26
    3 November 2011 at 11:54 pm

    borrow and hope
    blame game
    Nationals policy

  27. fmacskasy 27
    4 November 2011 at 12:27 am

    It may be appropriate to share this current project I’m working on. It’s not complete – but, I believe it shows fairly well the differences in Labour’s and National’s handling of the economy.

    Fair warning to Nat supporters: you won’t like this one little bit.

    http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/labour-the-economic-record-2000-2008/

    (Please note: still to be completed. The best is yet to come.)

  28. BLiP 28
    4 November 2011 at 4:51 am

    Sure, by all means, show John Key the money. Just don’t let him anywhere near it.

  29. muzza 29
    4 November 2011 at 10:12 am

    This thread is a disgrace, what is with all the academic garbage one upmanship, my failed ideology it better than yours , its like a bloody sandpit..

    It is clear like other blog sites there are no more than a handful of people who are pugged into reality, and not hiding behind their self perceived academic superiority!

    This thread is a classic example of why NZ is in the shit, because the egos of the nerds and theoretical ninnies can’t even play nice n such simple terms.

    • NickS 29.1
      4 November 2011 at 10:49 am

      Translation: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Iz soo much betters than alls of you cos I don’t bother thinking critikally abouts truth claims!

      And nice, both tone trolling and anti-intellectualism in one post.

    • lprent 29.2
      4 November 2011 at 11:09 am

      I wasn’t too happy about that (I was working too hard yesterday to do much moderation). It avoided the entire question of the post because of a libertarianz idiot running diversions.

      I think that I’ll have to run a zero tolerance program against the type. It is easy enough to add their favourite phrases to auto-moderation and start treating those as troll statements. They get restricted to comments in OpenMike because like Tribeless they tend to not respect anyone elses rules or property

  30. Campbell Larsen 30
    4 November 2011 at 10:47 am

    Muzza you are an ass. You accuse others of arrogance whilst at the same time implying that you are somehow able to determine who is ‘plugged into reality’
    Your comment is full of childish name calling eg ‘nerd’ and ‘ninnie’ – it’s like you have been transported here from a bad 80’s movie – you insult those you presumably want to hear your message and expect others to play nice while exempting yourself from the same requirements.
    If there is anyone who is not out of the sandpit I suspect that it is you sir.

  31. pat 31
    4 November 2011 at 5:14 pm

    key and his minders knew that labours costings were not finished and had to be signed off,so his minders directed him to attack this,knowing goff couldn’t answer,key’s notes told him what to say as he always has his notes to refer to, now what nz needs is to know just exactly what national’s costings are,although national have never been honsest with the public anyway.
    National have borrowed $40b of tax payer funds to help his prefered sector of the public.
    National only focuses on labour to deflect any scrutiny of their own plans,one reveals a $35b issue
    of govt bonds at the cost of $100-$150 million a year to tax payers, $1.3b of govt bonds held at
    national and westpac banks have already been downgraded,so there are 3 downgrades under
    national and stratospheric debt and they will borrow more and kill the economy just like they
    did with ets and gst,then wonder why the economy has stalled,idiots or what.
    National can not manage a country’s economy,they are used to the wheeling and dealing
    of the sharemarket and the money market,a country’s economy affects 4.5 million people,sharemarkets and the money market only affects themselves and if this economic illiteracy
    continues under national,nz will be another greece.

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    A chronological listing of news and opinion articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Sep 24, 2023 thru Sat, Sep 30, 2023. Story of the Week We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation The renowned US ...
    Skeptical Science
    4 hours ago

  • Clusterf**ck of Chaos.
    On the 11th of April 1945 advancing US forces liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald near Weimar in Germany. In the coming days, under the order of General Patton, a thousand nearby residents were forced to march to the camp to see the atrocities that had been committed in ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    9 hours ago

  • The party of business deals with the future by pretending it isn’t coming
    Years and years ago, when Helen Clark was Prime Minister and John Key was gunning for her job, I had a conversation with a mate, a trader who knew John Key well enough to paint a helpful picture.It was many drinks ago so it’s not a complete one. But there’s ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    10 hours ago

  • 2023 More Reading: September (+ Old Phuul update)
    Completed reads for September: The Lost Continent, by C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne Flatland, by Edwin Abbott All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque The Country of the Blind, by H.G. Wells The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles ...
    A Phuulish FellowBy strda221
    23 hours ago

  • Losing The Left.
    Descending Into The Dark: The ideological cadres currently controlling both Labour and the Greens are forcing “justice”, “participation” and “democracy” to make way for what is “appropriate” and “responsible”. But, where does that leave the people who, for most of their adult lives, have voted for left-wing parties, precisely to ...
    Bowalley Road
    1 day ago

  • The New “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
    “‘BUT HE HASN’T GOT ANYTHING ON,’ a little boy said ….. ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’ the whole town cried out at last.”On this optimistic note, Hans Christian Andersen brings his cautionary tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to an end.Andersen’s children’s story was written nearly two centuries ago, ...
    Bowalley Road
    1 day ago

  • BRYCE EDWARDS: The vested interests shaping National Party policies
      Bryce Edwards writes – As the National Party gets closer to government, lobbyists and business interests will be lining up for influence and to get policies adopted. It’s therefore in the public interest to have much more scrutiny and transparency about potential conflicts of interests that ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 day ago

  • LINDSAY MITCHELL: A conundrum for those pushing racist dogma
    Lindsay Mitchell writes – The heavily promoted narrative, which has ramped up over the last six years, is that Maori somehow have special vulnerabilities which arise from outside forces they cannot control; that contemporary society fails to meet their needs. They are not receptive to messages and ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 day ago

  • CHRIS TROTTER:  The greater of two evils
    Not Labour: If you’re out to punish the government you once loved, then the last thing you need is to be shown evidence that the opposition parties are much, much worse.   Chris Trotter writes – THE GREATEST VIRTUE of being the Opposition is not being the Government. Only very ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 day ago

  • The Hoon around the week to Sept 30
    Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Labour presented a climate manifesto that aimed to claim the high ground on climate action vs National, ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    1 day ago

  • Litanies, articles of faith, and being a beneficiary
    Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two weeks.Friday 29Play it, ElvisElection Hell special!! This week’s quiz is a bumper edition featuring a few of the more popular questions from last weekend’s show, as well as a few we didn’t ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    1 day ago

  • Litanies, articles of faith, and being a beneficiary
    Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two weeks.Friday 29Play it, ElvisElection Hell special!! This week’s quiz is a bumper edition featuring a few of the more popular questions from last weekend’s show, as well as a few we didn’t ...
    More than a fieldingBy David Slack
    1 day ago

  • The ‘Recession’ Has Been Called Off, But Some Households Are Still Struggling
    While the economy is not doing too badly in output terms, external circumstances are not favourable, and there is probably a sizeable group of households struggling because of rising interest rates.Last week’s announcement of a 0.9 percent increase in volume GDP for the June quarter had the commentariat backing down ...
    PunditBy Brian Easton
    2 days ago

  • Climate Change: The wrong direction
    This week the International Energy Association released its Net Zero Roadmap, intended to guide us towards a liveable climate. The report demanded huge increases in renewable generation, no new gas or oil, and massive cuts to methane emissions. It was positive about our current path, but recommended that countries with ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    2 days ago

  • “Racism” becomes a buzz word on the campaign trail – but our media watchdogs stay muzzled when...
    Buzz from the Beehive  Oh, dear.  We have nothing to report from the Beehive. At least, we have nothing to report from the government’s official website. But the drones have not gone silent.  They are out on the election campaign trail, busy buzzing about this and that in the hope ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    2 days ago

  • Play it, Elvis
    Election Hell special!! This week’s quiz is a bumper edition featuring a few of the more popular questions from last weekend’s show, as well as a few we didn’t have time for. You’re welcome, etc. Let us press on, etc. 1.  What did Christopher Luxon use to his advantage in ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    2 days ago

  • Pure class warfare
    National unveiled its fiscal policy today, announcing all the usual things which business cares about and I don't. But it did finally tell us how National plans to pay for its handouts to landlords: by effectively cutting benefits: The biggest saving announced on Friday was $2b cut from the ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    2 days ago

  • Ask Me Anything about the week to Sept 29
    Photo by Anna Ogiienko on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for an hour, including:duelling fiscal plans from National and Labour;Labour cutting cycling spending while accusing National of being weak on climate;Research showing the need for ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    2 days ago

  • Weekly Roundup 29-September-2023
    Welcome to Friday and the last one for September. This week in Greater Auckland On Monday, Matt highlighted at the latest with the City Rail Link. On Tuesday, Matt covered the interesting items from Auckland Transport’s latest board meeting agendas. On Thursday, a guest post from Darren Davis ...
    Greater AucklandBy Greater Auckland
    2 days ago

  • Protest at Parliament: The Reunion.
    Brian’s god spoke to him. He, for of course the Lord in Tamaki’s mind was a male god, with a mighty rod, and probably some black leathers. He, told Brian - “you must put a stop to all this love, hope, and kindness”. And it did please the Brian.He said ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    2 days ago

  • Labour cuts $50m from cycleway spending
    Labour is cutting spending on cycling infrastructure while still trying to claim the higher ground on climate. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Labour Government released a climate manifesto this week to try to claim the high ground against National, despite having ignored the Climate Commission’s advice to toughen ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    2 days ago

  • The Greater Of Two Evils.
    Not Labour: If you’re out to punish the government you once loved, then the last thing you need is to be shown evidence that the opposition parties are much, much worse.THE GREATEST VIRTUE of being the Opposition is not being the Government. Only very rarely is an opposition party elected ...
    Bowalley Road
    2 days ago

  • Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39 2023
    Open access notables "Net zero is only a distraction— we just have to end fossil fuel emissions." The latter is true but the former isn't, or  not in the real world as it's likely to be in the immediate future. And "just" just doesn't enter into it; we don't have ...
    Skeptical Science
    3 days ago

  • Chris Trotter: Losing the Left
    IN THE CURRENT MIX of electoral alternatives, there is no longer a credible left-wing party. Not when “a credible left-wing party” is defined as: a class-oriented, mass-based, democratically-structured political organisation; dedicated to promoting ideas sharply critical of laissez-faire capitalism; and committed to advancing democratic, egalitarian and emancipatory ideals across the ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    3 days ago

  • Road rage at Kia Kaha Primary School
    It is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha Primary School!It can be any time when you are telling a story.Telling stories about things that happened in the past is how we learn from our mistakes.If we want to.Anyway, it is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    3 days ago

  • Road rage at Kia Kaha Primary School
    It is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha Primary School!It can be any time when you are telling a story.Telling stories about things that happened in the past is how we learn from our mistakes.If we want to.Anyway, it is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    3 days ago

  • Road rage at Kia Kaha Primary School
    It is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha Primary School!It can be any time when you are telling a story.Telling stories about things that happened in the past is how we learn from our mistakes.If we want to.Anyway, it is not the school holidays yet at Kia Kaha ...
    More than a fieldingBy David Slack
    3 days ago

  • Hipkins fires up in leaders’ debate, but has the curtain already fallen on the Labour-led coalitio...
    Labour’s  Chris Hipkins came out firing, in the  leaders’ debate  on Newshub’s evening programme, and most of  the pundits  rated  him the winner against National’s  Christopher Luxon. But will this make any difference when New  Zealanders  start casting their ballots? The problem  for  Hipkins is  that  voters are  all too ...
    Point of OrderBy tutere44
    3 days ago

  • Govt is energising housing projects with solar power – and fuelling the public’s concept of a di...
    Buzz from the Beehive  Not long after Point of Order published data which show the substantial number of New Zealanders (77%) who believe NZ is becoming more divided, government ministers were braying about a programme which distributes some money to “the public” and some to “Maori”. The ministers were dishing ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    3 days ago

  • MIKE GRIMSHAW: Election 2023 – a totemic & charisma failure?
    The D&W analysis Michael Grimshaw writes –  Given the apathy, disengagement, disillusionment, and all-round ennui of this year’s general election, it was considered time to bring in those noted political operatives and spin doctors D&W, the long-established consultancy firm run by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Known for ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    3 days ago

  • FROM BFD: Will Winston be the spectre we think?
    Kissy kissy. Cartoon credit BoomSlang. The BFD. JC writes-  Allow me to preface this contribution with the following statement: If I were asked to express a preference between a National/ACT coalition or a National/ACT/NZF coalition then it would be the former. This week Luxon declared his position, ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    3 days ago

  • California’s climate disclosure bill could have a huge impact across the U.S.
    This re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Andy Furillo was originally published by Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The California Legislature took a step last week that has the potential to accelerate the fight against climate ...
    Skeptical Science
    3 days ago

  • Untangling South East Queensland’s Public Transport
    This is a cross post Adventures in Transitland by Darren Davis. I recently visited Brisbane and South East Queensland and came away both impressed while also pondering some key changes to make public transport even better in the region. Here goes with my take on things. A bit of ...
    Greater AucklandBy Guest Post
    3 days ago

  • Try A Little Kindness.
    My daughter arrived home from the supermarket yesterday and she seemed a bit worried about something. It turned out she wanted to know if someone could get her bank number from a receipt.We wound the story back.She was in the store and there was a man there who was distressed, ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    3 days ago

  • What makes NZFirst tick
    New Zealand’s longest-running political roadshow rolled into Opotiki yesterday, with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters knowing another poll last night showed he would make it back to Parliament and National would need him and his party if they wanted to form a government. The Newshub Reid Research poll ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    3 days ago

  • September AMA
    Hi,As September draws to a close — I feel it’s probably time to do an Ask Me Anything. You know how it goes: If you have any burning questions, fire away in the comments and I will do my best to answer. You might have questions about Webworm, or podcast ...
    David FarrierBy David Farrier
    3 days ago

  • Bludgers lying in the scratcher making fools of us all
    The mediocrity who stands to be a Prime Minister has a litany.He uses it a bit like a Koru Lounge card. He will brandish it to say: these people are eligible. And more than that, too: These people are deserving. They have earned this policy.They have a right to this policy. What ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    4 days ago

  • More “partnerships” (by the look of it) and redress of over $30 million in Treaty settlement wit...
    Buzz from the Beehive Point of Order has waited until now – 3.45pm – for today’s officially posted government announcements.  There have been none. The only addition to the news on the Beehive’s website was posted later yesterday, after we had published our September 26 Buzz report. It came from ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    4 days ago

  • ALEX HOLLAND: Labour’s spending
    Alex Holland writes –  In 2017 when Labour came to power, crown spending was $76 billion per year. Now in 2023 it is $139 billion per year, which equates to a $63 billion annual increase (over $1 billion extra spend every week!) In 2017, New Zealand’s government debt ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    4 days ago

  • If not now, then when?
    Labour released its fiscal plan today, promising the same old, same old: "responsibility", balanced books, and of course no new taxes: "Labour will maintain income tax settings to provide consistency and certainty in these volatile times. Now is not the time for additional taxes or to promise billions of ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago

  • THE FACTS:  77% of Kiwis believe NZ is becoming more divided
    The Facts has posted –        KEY INSIGHTSOf New Zealander’s polled: Social unity/division 77%believe NZ is becoming more divided (42% ‘much more’ + 35% ‘a little more’) 3%believe NZ is becoming less divided (1% ‘much less’ + 2% ‘a little less’) ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    4 days ago

  • Gordon Campbell on the cynical brutality of the centre-right’s welfare policies
    The centre-right’s enthusiasm for forcing people off the benefit and into paid work is matched only by the enthusiasm (shared by Treasury and the Reserve Bank) for throwing people out of paid work to curb inflation, and achieve the optimal balance of workers to job seekers deemed to be desirable ...
    Gordon CampbellBy lyndon
    4 days ago

  • Wednesday’s Chorus: Arthur Grimes on why building many, many more social houses is so critical
    New research shows that tenants in social housing - such as these Wellington apartments - are just as happy as home owners and much happier than private tenants. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The election campaign took an ugly turn yesterday, and in completely the wrong direction. All three ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    4 days ago

  • Old habits
    Media awareness about global warming and climate change has grown fairly steadily since 2004. My impression is that journalists today tend to possess a higher climate literacy than before. This increasing awareness and improved knowledge is encouraging, but there are also some common interpretations which could be more nuanced. ...
    Real ClimateBy rasmus
    4 days ago

  • Bennie Bashing.
    If there’s one thing the mob loves more than keeping Māori in their place, more than getting tough on the gangs, maybe even more than tax cuts. It’s a good old round of beneficiary bashing.Are those meanies in the ACT party stealing your votes because they think David Seymour is ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    4 days ago

  • The kindest cuts
    Labour kicks off the fiscal credibility battle today with the release of its fiscal plan. National is expected to follow, possibly as soon as Thursday, with its own plan, which may (or may not) address the large hole that the problems with its foreign buyers’ ban might open up. ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    4 days ago

  • Green right turn in Britain? Well, a start
    While it may be unlikely to register in New Zealand’s general election, Britain’s PM Rishi Sunak has done something which might just be important in the long run. He’s announced a far-reaching change in his Conservative government’s approach to environmental, and particularly net zero, policy. The starting point – ...
    Point of OrderBy xtrdnry
    5 days ago

  • At a glance – How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?
    On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
    Skeptical Science
    5 days ago

  • How could this happen?
    Canada is in uproar after the exposure that its parliament on September 22 provided a standing ovation to a Nazi veteran who had been invited into the chamber to participate in the parliamentary welcome to Ukrainian President Zelensky. Yaroslav Hunka, 98, a Ukrainian man who volunteered for service in ...
    Open ParachuteBy Ken
    5 days ago

  • Always Be Campaigning
    The big screen is a great place to lay out the ways of the salesman. He comes ready-made for Panto, ripe for lampooning.This is not to disparage that life. I have known many good people of that kind. But there is a type, brazen as all get out. The camera ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    5 days ago

  • STEPHEN FRANKS: Press seek to publicly shame doctor – we must push back
    The following is a message sent yesterday from lawyer Stephen Franks on behalf of the Free Speech Union. I don’t like to interrupt first thing Monday morning, but we’ve just become aware of a case where we think immediate and overwhelming attention could help turn the tide. It involves someone ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago

  • Competing on cruelty
    The right-wing message calendar is clearly reading "cruelty" today, because both National and NZ First have released beneficiary-bashing policies. National is promising a "traffic light" system to police and kick beneficiaries, which will no doubt be accompanied by arbitrary internal targets to classify people as "orange" or "red" to keep ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    5 days ago

  • Further funding for Pharmac (forgotten in the Budget?) looks like a $1bn appeal from a PM in need of...
    Buzz from the Beehive One Labour plan  – for 3000 more public homes by 2025 – is the most recent to be posted on the government’s official website. Another – a prime ministerial promise of more funding for Pharmac – has been released as a Labour Party press statement. Who ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    5 days ago

  • Bryce Edwards: The Vested interests shaping National Party policies
    As the National Party gets closer to government, lobbyists and business interests will be lining up for influence and to get policies adopted. It’s therefore in the public interest to have much more scrutiny and transparency about potential conflicts of interests that might arise. One of the key individuals of ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    5 days ago

  • Labour may be on way out of power and NZ First back in – but will Peters go into coalition with Na...
    Voters  are deserting Labour in droves, despite Chris  Hipkins’  valiant  rearguard  action.  So  where  are they  heading?  Clearly  not all of them are going to vote National, which concedes that  the  outcome  will be “close”. To the Right of National, the ACT party just a  few weeks  ago  was ...
    Point of OrderBy tutere44
    5 days ago

  • GRAHAM ADAMS: Will the racists please stand up?
    Accusations of racism by journalists and MPs are being called out. Graham Adams writes –    With the election less than three weeks away, what co-governance means in practice — including in water management, education, planning law and local government — remains largely obscure. Which is hardly ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago

  • Gordon Campbell on whether Winston Peters can be a moderating influence
    As the centre-right has (finally!) been subjected to media interrogation, the polls are indicating that some voters may be starting to have second thoughts about the wisdom of giving National and ACT the power to govern alone. That’s why yesterday’s Newshub/Reid Research poll had the National/ACT combo dropping to 60 ...
    Gordon CampbellBy lyndon
    5 days ago

  • Tuesday’s Chorus: RBNZ set to rain on National's victory parade
    ANZ has increased its forecast for house inflation later this year on signs of growing momentum in the market ahead of the election. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: National has campaigned against the Labour Government’s record on inflation and mortgage rates, but there’s now a growing chance the Reserve ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    5 days ago

  • After a Pittsburgh coal processing plant closed, ER visits plummeted
    This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Katie Myers. This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Pittsburgh, in its founding, was blessed and cursed with two abundant natural resources: free-flowing rivers and a nearby coal seam. ...
    Skeptical Science
    5 days ago

  • September-23 AT Board Meeting
    Today the AT board meet again and once again I’ve taken a look at what’s on the agenda to find the most interesting items. Closed Agenda Interestingly when I first looked at the agendas this paper was there but at the time of writing this post it had been ...
    Greater AucklandBy Matt L
    5 days ago

  • Electorate Watch: West Coast-Tasman
    Continuing my series on interesting electorates, today it’s West Coast-Tasman.A long thin electorate running down the northern half of the west coast of the South Island. Think sand flies, beautiful landscapes, lots of rain, Pike River, alternative lifestylers, whitebaiting, and the spiritual home of the Labour Party. A brief word ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    5 days ago

  • Big money brings Winston back
    National leader Christopher Luxon yesterday morning conceded it and last night’s Newshub poll confirmed it; Winston Peters and NZ First are not only back but highly likely to be part of the next government. It is a remarkable comeback for a party that was tossed out of Parliament in ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    5 days ago

  • 20 days until Election Day, 7 until early voting begins… but what changes will we really see here?
    As this blogger, alongside many others, has already posited in another forum: we all know the National Party’s “budget” (meaning this concept of even adding up numbers properly is doing a lot of heavy, heavy lifting right now) is utter and complete bunk (read hung, drawn and quartered and ...
    exhALANtBy exhalantblog
    6 days ago

  • A night out
    Everyone was asking, Are you nervous? and my response was various forms of God, yes.I've written more speeches than I can count; not much surprises me when the speaker gets to their feet and the room goes quiet.But a play? Never.YOU CAME! THANK YOU! Read more ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    6 days ago

  • A pallid shade of Green III
    Clearly Labour's focus groups are telling it that it needs to pay more attention to climate change - because hot on the heels of their weaksauce energy efficiency pilot programme and not-great-but-better-than-nothing solar grants, they've released a full climate manifesto. Unfortunately, the core policies in it - a second Emissions ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    6 days ago

  • A coalition of racism, cruelty, and chaos
    Today's big political news is that after months of wibbling, National's Chris Luxon has finally confirmed that he is willing to work with Winston Peters to become Prime Minister. Which is expected, but I guess it tells us something about which way the polls are going. Which raises the question: ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    6 days ago

  • More migrant workers should help generate the tax income needed to provide benefits for job seekers
    Buzz from the Beehive Under something described as a “rebalance” of its immigration rules, the Government has adopted four of five recommendations made in an independent review released in July, The fifth, which called on the government to specify criteria for out-of-hours compliance visits similar to those used during ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    6 days ago

  • Letter To Luxon.
    Some of you might know Gerard Otto (G), and his G News platform. This morning he wrote a letter to Christopher Luxon which I particularly enjoyed, and with his agreement I’m sharing it with you in this guest newsletter.If you’d like to make a contribution to support Gerard’s work you ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    6 days ago

  • LINDSAY MITCHELL: Alarming trend in benefit numbers
    Lindsay Mitchell writes –  While there will not be another quarterly release of benefit numbers prior to the election, limited weekly reporting continues and is showing an alarming trend. Because there is a seasonal component to benefit number fluctuations it is crucial to compare like with like. In ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    6 days ago

  • BRIAN EASTON: Has there been external structural change?
    A close analysis of the Treasury assessment of the Medium Term in its PREFU 2023 suggests the economy may be entering a new phase.   Brian Easton writes –  Last week I explained that the forecasts in the just published Treasury Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU 2023) was ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    6 days ago

  • CRL Progress – Sep-23
    It’s been a while since we looked at the latest with the City Rail Link and there’s been some fantastic milestones recently. To start with, and most recently, CRL have released an awesome video showing a full fly-through of one of the tunnels. Come fly with us! You asked for ...
    Greater AucklandBy Matt L
    6 days ago

  • Monday’s Chorus: Not building nearly enough
    We are heading into another period of fast population growth without matching increased home building or infrastructure investment.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Labour and National detailed their house building and migration approaches over the weekend, with both pledging fast population growth policies without enough house building or infrastructure investment ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    6 days ago

  • Game on; Hipkins comes out punching
    Labour leader Chris Hipkins yesterday took the gloves off and laid into National and its leader Christopher Luxon. For many in Labour – and particularly for some at the top of the caucus and the party — it would not have been a moment too soon. POLITIK is aware ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    6 days ago

  • Tax Cut Austerity Blues.
    The leaders have had their go, they’ve told us the “what?” and the “why?” of their promises. Now it’s the turn of the would be Finance Ministers to tell us the “how?”, the “how much?”, and the “when?”A chance for those competing for the second most powerful job in the ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    1 week ago

  • MIKE GRIMSHAW:  It’s the economy – and the spirit – Stupid…
    Mike Grimshaw writes – Over the past 30-odd years it’s become almost an orthodoxy to blame or invoke neoliberalism for the failures of New Zealand society. On the left the usual response goes something like, neoliberalism is the cause of everything that’s gone wrong and the answer ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 week ago

  • Safeguarding Tuvalu language and identity
    Tuvalu is in the spotlight this week as communities across New Zealand celebrate Vaiaso o te Gagana Tuvalu – Tuvalu Language Week. “The Government has a proven record of supporting Pacific communities and ensuring more of our languages are spoken, heard and celebrated,” Pacific Peoples Minister Barbara Edmonds said. “Many ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    6 hours ago

  • New community-level energy projects to support more than 800 Māori households
    Seven more innovative community-scale energy projects will receive government funding through the Māori and Public Housing Renewable Energy Fund to bring more affordable, locally generated clean energy to more than 800 Māori households, Energy and Resources Minister Dr Megan Woods says. “We’ve already funded 42 small-scale clean energy projects that ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Huge boost to Te Tai Tokerau flood resilience
    The Government has approved new funding that will boost resilience and greatly reduce the risk of major flood damage across Te Tai Tokerau. Significant weather events this year caused severe flooding and damage across the region. The $8.9m will be used to provide some of the smaller communities and maraes ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Napier’s largest public housing development comes with solar
    The largest public housing development in Napier for many years has been recently completed and has the added benefit of innovative solar technology, thanks to Government programmes, says Housing Minister Dr Megan Woods. The 24 warm, dry homes are in Seddon Crescent, Marewa and Megan Woods says the whanau living ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    4 days ago

  • Te Whānau a Apanui and the Crown initial Deed of Settlement I Kua waitohua e Te Whānau a Apanui me...
    Māori: Kua waitohua e Te Whānau a Apanui me te Karauna te Whakaaetanga Whakataunga Kua waitohua e Te Whānau a Apanui me te Karauna i tētahi Whakaaetanga Whakataunga hei whakamihi i ō rātou tāhuhu kerēme Tiriti o Waitangi. E tekau mā rua ngā hapū o roto mai o Te Whānau ...
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    5 days ago

  • Plan for 3,000 more public homes by 2025 – regions set to benefit
    Regions around the country will get significant boosts of public housing in the next two years, as outlined in the latest public housing plan update, released by the Housing Minister, Dr Megan Woods. “We’re delivering the most public homes each year since the Nash government of the 1950s with one ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    1 week ago

  • Immigration settings updates
    Judicial warrant process for out-of-hours compliance visits 2023/24 Recognised Seasonal Employer cap increased by 500 Additional roles for Construction and Infrastructure Sector Agreement More roles added to Green List Three-month extension for onshore Recovery Visa holders The Government has confirmed a number of updates to immigration settings as part of ...
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    1 week ago

  • Poroporoaki: Tā Patrick (Patu) Wahanga Hohepa
    Tangi ngunguru ana ngā tai ki te wahapū o Hokianga Whakapau Karakia. Tārehu ana ngā pae maunga ki Te Puna o te Ao Marama. Korihi tangi ana ngā manu, kua hinga he kauri nui ki te Wao Nui o Tāne. He Toa. He Pou. He Ahorangi. E papaki tū ana ...
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    1 week ago

  • Renewable energy fund to support community resilience
    40 solar energy systems on community buildings in regions affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and other severe weather events Virtual capability-building hub to support community organisations get projects off the ground Boost for community-level renewable energy projects across the country At least 40 community buildings used to support the emergency response ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    1 week ago

  • COVID-19 funding returned to Government
    The lifting of COVID-19 isolation and mask mandates in August has resulted in a return of almost $50m in savings and recovered contingencies, Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Following the revocation of mandates and isolation, specialised COVID-19 telehealth and alternative isolation accommodation are among the operational elements ...
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    1 week ago

  • Appointment of District Court Judge
    Susie Houghton of Auckland has been appointed as a new District Court Judge, to serve on the Family Court, Attorney-General David Parker said today.  Judge Houghton has acted as a lawyer for child for more than 20 years. She has acted on matters relating to the Hague Convention, an international ...
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    1 week ago

  • Government invests further in Central Hawke’s Bay resilience
    The Government has today confirmed $2.5 million to fund a replace and upgrade a stopbank to protect the Waipawa Drinking Water Treatment Plant. “As a result of Cyclone Gabrielle, the original stopbank protecting the Waipawa Drinking Water Treatment Plant was destroyed. The plant was operational within 6 weeks of the ...
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    1 week ago

  • Govt boost for Hawke’s Bay cyclone waste clean-up
    Another $2.1 million to boost capacity to deal with waste left in Cyclone Gabrielle’s wake. Funds for Hastings District Council, Phoenix Contracting and Hog Fuel NZ to increase local waste-processing infrastructure. The Government is beefing up Hawke’s Bay’s Cyclone Gabrielle clean-up capacity with more support dealing with the massive amount ...
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    1 week ago

  • Taupō Supercars revs up with Government support
    The future of Supercars events in New Zealand has been secured with new Government support. The Government is getting engines started through the Major Events Fund, a special fund to support high profile events in New Zealand that provide long-term economic, social and cultural benefits. “The Repco Supercars Championship is ...
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    1 week ago

  • There is no recession in NZ, economy grows nearly 1 percent in June quarter
    The economy has turned a corner with confirmation today New Zealand never was in recession and stronger than expected growth in the June quarter, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. “The New Zealand economy is doing better than expected,” Grant Robertson said. “It’s continuing to grow, with the latest figures showing ...
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    1 week ago

  • Highest legal protection for New Zealand’s largest freshwater springs
    The Government has accepted the Environment Court’s recommendation to give special legal protection to New Zealand’s largest freshwater springs, Te Waikoropupū Springs (also known as Pupū Springs), Environment Minister David Parker announced today.   “Te Waikoropupū Springs, near Takaka in Golden Bay, have the second clearest water in New Zealand after ...
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    1 week ago

  • More support for victims of migrant exploitation
    Temporary package of funding for accommodation and essential living support for victims of migrant exploitation Exploited migrant workers able to apply for a further Migrant Exploitation Protection Visa (MEPV), giving people more time to find a job Free job search assistance to get people back into work Use of 90-day ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    2 weeks ago

  • Strong export boost as NZ economy turns corner
    An export boost is supporting New Zealand’s economy to grow, adding to signs that the economy has turned a corner and is on a stronger footing as we rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle and lock in the benefits of multiple new trade deals, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. “The economy is ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    2 weeks ago

  • Funding approved for flood resilience work in Te Karaka
    The Government has approved $15 million to raise about 200 homes at risk of future flooding. More than half of this is expected to be spent in the Tairāwhiti settlement of Te Karaka, lifting about 100 homes there. “Te Karaka was badly hit during Cyclone Gabrielle when the Waipāoa River ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • Further business support for cyclone-affected regions
    The Government is helping businesses recover from Cyclone Gabrielle and attract more people back into their regions. “Cyclone Gabrielle has caused considerable damage across North Island regions with impacts continuing to be felt by businesses and communities,” Economic Development Minister Barbara Edmonds said. “Building on our earlier business support, this ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • New maintenance facility at Burnham Military Camp underway
    Defence Minister Andrew Little has turned the first sod to start construction of a new Maintenance Support Facility (MSF) at Burnham Military Camp today. “This new state-of-art facility replaces Second World War-era buildings and will enable our Defence Force to better maintain and repair equipment,” Andrew Little said. “This Government ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • Foreign Minister to attend United Nations General Assembly
    Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta will represent New Zealand at the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York this week, before visiting Washington DC for further Pacific focussed meetings. Nanaia Mahuta will be in New York from Wednesday 20 September, and will participate in UNGA leaders ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • Midwives’ pay equity offer reached
    Around 1,700 Te Whatu Ora employed midwives and maternity care assistants will soon vote on a proposed pay equity settlement agreed by Te Whatu Ora, the Midwifery Employee Representation and Advisory Service (MERAS) and New Zealand Nurses Association (NZNO), Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. “Addressing historical pay ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • New Zealand provides support to Morocco
    Aotearoa New Zealand will provide humanitarian support to those affected by last week’s earthquake in Morocco, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today. “We are making a contribution of $1 million to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to help meet humanitarian needs,” Nanaia Mahuta said. ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • Government invests in West Coast’s roading resilience
    The Government is investing over $22 million across 18 projects to improve the resilience of roads in the West Coast that have been affected by recent extreme weather, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today.  A dedicated Transport Resilience Fund has been established for early preventative works to protect the state ...
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    2 weeks ago

  • Government invests in Greymouth’s future
    The Government has today confirmed a $2 million grant towards the regeneration of Greymouth’s CBD with construction of a new two-level commercial and public facility. “It will include a visitor facility centred around a new library. Additionally, it will include retail outlets on the ground floor, and both outdoor and ...
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    3 weeks ago

  • Nanaia Mahuta to attend PIF Foreign Ministers’ Meeting
    Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta will attend the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, in Suva, Fiji alongside New Zealand’s regional counterparts. “Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply committed to working with our pacific whanau to strengthen our cooperation, and share ways to combat the challenges facing the Blue Pacific Continent,” ...
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    3 weeks ago

  • PREFU shows no recession, growing economy, more jobs and wages ahead of inflation
    Economy to grow 2.6 percent on average over forecast period Treasury not forecasting a recession Inflation to return to the 1-3 percent target band next year Wages set to grow 4.8 percent a year over forecast period Unemployment to peak below the long-term average Fiscal Rules met - Net debt ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 weeks ago

  • New cancer centre opens in Christchurch
    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall proudly opened the Canterbury Cancer Centre in Christchurch today. The new facility is the first of its kind and was built with $6.5 million of funding from the Government’s Infrastructure Reference Group scheme for shovel-ready projects allocated in 2020. ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 weeks ago

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