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6:00 am, May 4th, 2022 - 88 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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There's a dark cloud hanging over the government, according to the AM newsreader. Gosh, I wonder who put it there!
Luxon’s explaining his poll boost as due to cost of living increases. Govt spending on “middle management & bureaucrats & consultants”. Didn’t say he would target those three groups for emasculation though…
I've been looking through the US media about the Supreme Court and the abortion issue.
The state apparently will have the power to dictate to women about their bodies. Conservative people seemingly love that.
Not so long back, a lot of people, including conservatives I presume, were very upset about the idea of the state imposing on what they should do with their bodies. When mandates to wear masks were mooted and introduced, "my body, my choice" became a mantra.
Mmmm…
Thank you for discussing this Peter (though I have to assume it was a topic on yesterday's OM, I am a bit short on time these days). I haven't yet read the original Politico piece which published the leaked draft, but this Guardian piece has been useful. Got to agree with Sanders on this one!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/02/roe-v-wade-abortion-supreme-court-draft-opinion
This will only affect birthing bodies, and if you are not a birthing body it will not affect you. 🙂
Well it will affect birthing bodies who would rather not do the birthing thing, but then who cares about these bodies…..really?
Also the democrats could codify RvsW into law, bugger the filibuster, but then they won’t let go of the filibuster, so rather then make this ‘law’ law, they will use it to grandstand, cry woe betide the bodies we can not define as anything, and please send us money much money for the mid term elections.
Never mind the last person appointed to the supreme court could not define a birthing body as a thing because they are not a biologist. Maybe instead of hiring supreme court justices they should hire biologists, they would then make more sense.
thought of you this morning when I saw this tweet (2nd one)
https://twitter.com/RogerTidy/status/1521398161172058112
they were replying to this disgrace,
https://twitter.com/StateRepHong/status/1521298873859334145
That is almost as good as The Lancet's front cover talking about "Bodies with vaginas".
She's getting well ratio-ed. I'd have thought politicians would understand that at least.
Why would you think that? that is the same left that nominated a person to the US Supreme Court as the 'first black woman' who then could not define what a “woman” was as that nominated cervix haver was not a biologist.
At some stage one must come to the conclusion that the left and the right are working hand in hand to dismantle womens rights and to redefine just who is a woman.
And the birthing bodies are not woman and i would assume in the eyes of many left and right are not even human. Just a thing that makes babies, sandwiches and which is nice to have around for ‘sex’.
A person trying to be on the US Supreme Court as the 'first black woman' defining what a “woman” was would have been pilloried, sneered at and treated with absolute contempt.
So she said what she said (or didn't say) and was attacked, pilloried, sneered at and treated with absolute contempt.
What should she have said to Ted Cruz when he asked the questio? "Fuck off you low-life wanker."
For that she would have been attacked, pilloried, sneered at and treated with absolute contempt. And everyone would have got on and voted as they eventually did. (Although some Republicans may have changed to vote for Jackson for boldly and accurately describing Cruz.
She could have said to much laughter ( and of that i am actually sure) something like this:
I am the first black 'woman' nominee to the Supreme court and last i checked i was / still am a 'woman', and also i am black.
or this
The President and the Democratic Party who support my nomination seem to believe that i am a woman. 🙂
Anything but ' I don't know'. I guess the biologist part was to be the fun part but that did not work.
So yeah, the left can't, won't define woman because they are scared of men who identify as 'woman' (what ever that means considering that we can't define the word anymore) or the lobby that pulls the TWAW and thus will lose. You can not defend what you can't name, and you can not cry 'sex based rights' if you want to pretend that sex is not important and that only an imagined gender needs to be promoted/respected/given privileges too.
And this Supreme Court is now seated with people who are there to abolish womans right and with a few people who don't know what women are in the first place. And this is by the choices of both parties.
Yeah, i guess the men in the US will have to get used to having many more children, or to wear condoms, or get vasectomies, or shoot in the air in order to prevent pregnancy, oh and abstinece of course that too will prevent unwanted children. Or find partners for sex that are not birthing bodies.
It is not as if the the birthing bodies are going to be the ones deciding how many times that body is gonna give birth to.
but for us ordinary women and the likes of the women in Speak Up for Women, we face abuse and the ridiculous smear that we are bigots and transphobes. Some of us have even been cancelled from Pride (lesbians I am talking about here) and even had the police called on them by the Pride organisers.
I know it is hard for women in this climate to speak up for biological reality. Some of us have the courage of our convictions. Given the new Supreme Court judge was going to be pilloried anyway, she had some choices about what she would be pilloried about.
What happened with Cruz?
re the tweet, all she had to do was say women and non binary people. Birthing bodies is demeaning and dehumanising, there’s just no way around objectifying women like that
Birthing bodies have a right to abortions.
But that is not what a birthing body wants, they do not want to birth – they want an abortion- which makes them 'non-birthing' bodies aka men, and as a result men gets to decide on abortions
Hang on visubversa, that's a bit old hat…. bodies with vaginas…
Don'tcha know that "bodies with vaginas" are now exclusively men?
Women are bodies with "front holes".
(Anyone on the fence reading this, finally thinking…. WTF?!)
Source: https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/Trans_Safer_Sex_Guide_FINAL.pdf
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQ84OxCX0AMAAXp?format=jpg&name=large
And to continue the institutional confusion of sex and gender identity, and the contortions some will go to in an attempt to avoid using the word women to mean… women.:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/28/midwifery-students-taught-help-men-give-birth/
You could not make this stuff up – could you? See the recently released paper on Perinatal Mental Health from the Helen Clark Foundation. I know that kissing up to Gender Ideology is now a requirement for obtaining any sort of public or private $$$$ – but this paper indulges in some extraordinary linguistic contortions to avoid using the heretical word "woman" in any sort of discussion about actually having babies.
The state apparently will have the power to dictate to women about their bodies.
You might wish to explain what the problem is with the State having so much power. In New Zealand, the State introduced vaccine mandates. Experienced professionals lost their jobs as a result of declining the vaccine. The right to an abortion, like the right to speak freely, isn’t absolute.
As for wearing masks, they’re useless.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360320982_The_Bangladesh_Mask_study_a_Bayesian_perspective?channel=doi&linkId=62703fd83a23744a725db627&showFulltext=true
I had to go to hospital a fortnight ago. The staff who tended me wore masks. (I did too.) I did not tell them masks were useless.
I have to go back to have something else done. Should I tell them masks are useless?
You could. But ties could also be considered useless, and yet people wear them still.
I had the experience of being in a waiting room at hospital with a woman loudly declaring she didn't need a mask. She was in a waiting room with people undergoing chemotherapy. No concern for elevating their already high anxiety and stress levels by adding another possible risk factor to their health. No consideration of the fact that even a normal cold or infection may be hindered from transmission.
You have no idea of the health or immunity of others in the hospital environment by looking at them. They are often vulnerable to any infection – not just Covid.
If you think of it as a courtesy, then perhaps you will not have to justify it to yourself in such black and white terms. A hospital appointment is not necessarily a long time to wear a mask in most cases.
An anti-vaxx loon's un-reviewed pre-print concluded that a prior study was flawed.
FIFY.
/
Academics from large British universities have put their names to an “extremely irresponsible” document that claims the spike in second wave deaths may have been caused by vaccines.
[…]
The report, described as “ridiculous” and “bizarre” by other senior scientists, is produced by Hart, a lockdown-sceptic group whose members include four academics at Queen Mary University of London, and three from the University of Nottingham.
Among the 41 academics named in its foreword, several of whom subsequently promoted it on social media, are Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology at Nottingham University, and the group’s spokeswoman, Marilyn James, professor of health economics at the University of Nottingham, and Norman Fenton, professor of risk information management, Queen Mary University of London.
https://archive.ph/fWLZG (thetimes)
Strictly speaking – vaccine mandates did not affect people's bodies – nobody was absolutely required to have a vaccine or not have one. In certain occupations it would affect your livelihood (not your body) if you didn't have one – because you were deemed an unacceptable risk to others. So I find the comparison with pregnancy & childbirth a bit unserious or frivolous.
You are correct though that the right to an abortion is not unlimited – just about everyone recognises that at some point the rights of the foetus come into play. The more conservatively this point is set by the law, then the greater the obligation of the state to help women avoid ending up in terrible situations, However, what we observe in reality is that strict the abortion laws are usually accompanied by minimal social support – and we can interpret this particularly vicious combination only as a deliberate form of enslavement and subordination.
nobody was absolutely required to have a vaccine or not have one.
To continue in their employment, some workers were required to be vaccinated. Some workers were terminated because they refused to do so. Women who want an abortion don’t have an absolute right to an abortion. Nevertheless, those wanting an abortion will likely be able to get one.
“it would affect your livelihood (not your body)“
But for some it did affect their body. The medical profession and ACC can attest to that.
The state already has that power, which is why we have abortion laws in the first place. If women had sovereignty over their own bodies, abortion would be like any other medical procedure not needing special legislation.
Women's rights are still up for debate and we are a long way from them being safe.
Not all medical interventions/procedures are equal. Abortion is not like a wisdom tooth extraction. Even a flu shot requires filling out and signing a consent form. Some people (F & M) consider abortion a life-or-death decision and if one considers for a moment the hoops & hurdles for another life-or-death decision such as medically-assisted euthanasia one can fairly easily see that abortion is and cannot be simply (!) viewed as a decision by the woman alone, i.e. strictly and purely as a woman’s sovereignty over her own body.
Another issue is the quality of life, of both the child and the mother; the latter usually has the responsibility of primary caregiver. These are definitely secondary arguments, but a neoliberal (and utilitarian) argument may include QUALYs too (although not necessarily viewing life as a disease!).
I do have fairly close-up experience with abortion and suffice to say it is complex and an emotional rollercoaster – the emotional burden (scars) of either decision (to abort or not to abort) can last a lifetime and negatively affect multiple people.
John Herlihy was re-elected for a third term as president of the Republic of Whangamōmona (population 126) in 2021.
Republicans hot to trot ought to put it on their calendar: "the next Republic day, which is set for January 2023." Pre-book!
Yesterday was a big news day! I was dealing with stuff during school hours and kids afterwards, so didn't get to have a look in till nearly midnight.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/02/roe-v-wade-abortion-supreme-court-draft-opinion
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/crime/victim-hails-hero-wife-after-countdown-stabber-jailed
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/466382/parties-meet-to-discuss-trespass-notices-for-protesters
So what is the lead story and most of Daily Review (haven't looked at yesterday's OM yet) on TS about? Poll results. It's more than a year to the general election, and the area where political action is likely to be effective this year will be the local body elections. Polling about that, I would be interested in seeing,
The horse-race coverage of parliament's up and downs is a bit irrelevant and tedious – to me, at least.
Progress = tech + economy. That's a formula proven by history. However, the key driver is only evident in the tacit psychological sub-text – incentive structures. Inventors produce new tech when they get incentivised to do so. For example, the genesis of mass production, and the instance provided here:
Call it a public/private partnership and you won't be wrong. But the key point is motivation to generate the required result. And the tech produced that result by design of a system: organised labour = info + materials + energy x time (process).
Should the govt get out of the way & let industry do it's thing? Hell no! The example given shows why not. All you'd get is bau – moronic neoliberalism. Instead, the positive alternative is intelligent design. Labour & National will have to break with tradition and recruit intelligent designers instead of morons. To make progress happen.
So looks like the Greens have done something interesting for a change:
Points to the media headline you didn't see: Greens kill own governance structure! The Exec has maintained hegemony over the party for 30 years, since it replaced the Green Council. That group was democratically elected to do strategic guidance, and it established the Executive to do admin & governance.
Quite why the GC became defunct was never clear to me at the time – I was in charge of the rules process but most of the other activists were busy steering the Greens into the Alliance. I suspect the GC suffered from leftist destabilisation in consequence. Anyway, looks like a belated recognition of the lack has prompted a strategic reversal.
Since the Exec has been operating like a leftist cabal in recent years, alienation in the ranks seems to have produced a democratic rebellion. Good luck with that – control freaks are good at jumping horses in mid-ride so it could just rearrange the deckchairs.
Interesting indeed. Especially in conjunction with the requirement that one party co-leader must also be Maori.
Somewhere in a 1970’s issue of Craccum I recall reading a droll line about the ideal person according to intersectional theory was a one-legged, Maori, lesbian ditch-digger. Seems the Greens are well on their way to nirvana.
Still thinking at the level of a low-brow university magazine is disappointing, RedLogix.
Plenty of stuff from early '70s Craccum in my archives, all rather high-brow! But could be that Muldoon's accession in '75 killed that culture & reduced the students to mumbling incoherence…
You don't regard the reference RedLogix made as "high-brow" do you, Dennis?
You mean intersectional theory? Wasn't around back then. Does seem somewhat intellectual though. I suspect an academic dreamt it up.
Or did you mean "a one-legged, Maori, lesbian ditch-digger"? Somewhat hypothetical, perhaps, but employing multi-dimensional categorisation as a nexus of identity politics for illustrative purposes does seem high-brow…
"one-legged" is a high-brow portrayal of people with disabilities?
Hmmmm….
You're right to suggest that a person with one leg is disabled, and that noting the fact is merely common sense. Not high-brow in itself. It's the holistic usage of the example via postmodernism that seems cerebral.
I agree – would have hoped the Greens well past the 70's by now.
You're portraying present Green discussions/decisions as "70's", RedLogix and would have us believe your portrayal as real.
Why?
Realistic inasmuch as the schism between the authentic Greens & the leftists that killed Values back then is still causing problems. The first bunch want to build consensus and the second bunch just wannabe partisans.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/466386/green-party-leaders-proud-of-constitution-changes
Personally I am not that keen on Shaw remaining as coleader. But I am not currently a GP member either. It seems that Davidson deserves a crack at being senior coleader before the 2026 (maybe 2027 if Labour gets a 4year term ammendment through). The 2017 debacle with Clendon (good riddance) & Graham (more of a loss) leaving the party before Turei stood down goes a long way to explaining the current gender imbalance in GP MPs.
Yes, the list rankings are technically influenced by gender and ethnicity (plus location – minimum 10% from Te Wai Pounamu from memory, which was mooted as requirement for coleader last year, but must have been too tricky to implement), but by far the biggest determinant of list ranking is who is currently an MP, with the public profile that brings, at the time of the vote.
I've cut out some of your long copypasta. Please don't make them so long, it's a hassle for scrollers esp on phones. Selected copy and pastes to support your points works better. ka pai the link.
The link was from RL above (@ 6.1), I was quoting from it mainly because they hadn't. I was going to trim and tie the quote to the comment more, but then my number got called in the waiting room and I pushed publish without properly proofreading. I have no idea what those grey slashes at the bottom of the comment are doing there. Also I omitted the age criteria in party list ranking; with some proportion having to be under 35, but can't recall the details off the top of my head.
My conclusion was going to be that the GP should ditch Shaw (with due recognition for his work these past 7 years) and get Tuiono in his place. Though I think I have said as much before, if not on this site, then elsewhere.
Scratching my head at your commentary. The changes you quote look entirely consistent with GP values, policy and direction around democracy. But we are working off very little information. Need to see the new constitution.
Need to see the new constitution.
It would be helpful. If they intend to prove the operation is democratic, they will put it on the public part of their website. Don't hold your breathe.
I'm just being sceptical though. Wouldn't surprise me if they're motivated by a spirit of authenticity in configuring the new process. Perhaps some journo will attempt an in-depth description of these changes…
Political party constitutions get published on the Electoral Commission's website. I expect the GP one will be updated at some point. Democracy would be explaining that process to the public and giving a timeframe.
https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/political-parties-in-new-zealand/register-of-political-parties/
What a load of crap. If people don't like the Exec then they should get along to their province AGM and vote for a different Executive Networker, or even run for that office themselves.
(The only voting positions on the Green Party Executive are the Executive Networkers who are elected by and responsible to the Province. The Co-convenors of the Exec do not even get a vote. Any Exec Net can force a vote on any issue and the status quo stands unless a 75% vote can be achieved.)
have you seen the proposals that were voted on? Are they in the public domain?
I've been taking a break so not directly engaged at the moment, but i have been aware that these proposed changes have been going through the process. An email sent on Sunday said that they are "working on a publishable version of the final new constitution and will make that available as soon as it is ready." It says that there were some minor changes made at the SGM.
(The only voting members at an SGM or AGM are delegates from branches.)
it's a shame the party isn't front footing this and is leaving it to Hooton and the Herald to establish the narrative. Shaw's corridor statement yesterday nonetheless.
Really? These are hardly minor changes. Do they mean other changes (that are minor)?
Minor changes made to the proposals put to the SGM.
👍
Possible the Herald reporter got it wrong, I suppose. We await confirmation that the decision to disestablish the Executive has actually been made…
Your statements were historical. Just because the structure has changed doesn't make your statements true.
The relation between history and truth is forever fraught..
Maybe Chloe will be a co leader sooner than I thought.
It's pretty legal…
/
Art, and damn fine social commentary. Quite impressive that a 5 minutes video can strip our society bare.
See anz profit was 968m
That's about 1000$ per customer!!!!!! PROFIT!!!!
Winston's play to re-enter parliament as the spearhead of the Rebel Alliance:
Are the rebels good for 5% on next election day? We know they're not really allied, but his spearhead could seem a useful tool for them.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
wrong post?
Oh yeah. Thanks for shifting it.
Yesterday he definitely said protesters and people speaking to the protesters should be treated differently.
this is ok?
https://twitter.com/kehetauhauaga/status/1520948214282678272
"One of the big problems is that Parliament and politicians are seen as out of touch, elite, and aloof. To get a better understanding of the problem, in 2018 Parliament actually commissioned a Colmar Brunton survey into how the public feels about Parliament. The results were so bad they were buried.
Here’s what New Zealanders think of Parliament:
https://democracyproject.nz/2022/05/04/bryce-edwards-trevor-mallards-petty-fiefdom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bryce-edwards-trevor-mallards-petty-fiefdom
Any wonder democracy is under threat?
I think Dr Bryce might have received a trespass notice and is bitter about it.
Good job.
So sheeple have a balanced view of parliament: "27% trusted Parliament, compared to 29% who expressed distrust", and presumably the other 44% felt that the question made their head hurt so much they couldn't decide.
Could be Mallard's spies were secretly monitoring the heavyweight visitors to assess their stance. If Winston failed to assert his disapproval like Dr Bryce, they would have put a black mark alongside his name.
All this hooha about the trespass has failed to specify if Mallard's job description includes the power to do that. Perhaps his contract uses vague clauses (as if written by a lawyer seeking to create employment opportunities downstream) and Winston wants a day of judgment.
The poll was taken in 2018
Bloody hell, XRBristol. Protesting at a WPUK meeting?
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/gallery/more-50-trans-activists-protest-7032705
Why is there a decreasing number of environmental groups that focus on environmental issues?
https://twitter.com/XRBristol/status/1521462318693076993
what is the carbon footprint of a penis inversion and fake boob surgery?
Do you think they have an online calculator for that?
here are some cost curtesy
How much will it cost? https://genderkit.org.uk/article/vaginoplasty/#:~:text=The%20cost%20of%20a%20vaginoplasty,%2C%20clitoroplasty%20and%2For%20labiaplasty.
The cost of a vaginoplasty performed in the UK along with labiaplasty and clitoroplasty is currently around £15000 (last updated April 2021).
this is what an arm/leg penis will cost https://genderkit.org.uk/article/phalloplasty/
If not funded by the NHS, the cost of a phalloplasty performed in the UK is approximately £40,000-£70,000 (last updated July 2020).
And that is just for hte surgeries, no estimate on costs for all the jazz before surgery and after, and certainly no costs for the several after operations on vagina to keep it from closing up or liposuctions on the fake dick cause the leg material they took tends to grow fat cause females.
But yeah, someone should ask these dears how many carbon credits they are happy to waste on some fake genitals and hrt for boys to grow tits.
Well, at least the NHS is swimming in money, and so the high cost of not clinically necessary, and perhaps damaging cosmetic surgery, doesn't impact on the health and wellbeing of all British people.
"Clitoroplasty"? Don't make me laugh. The clitoris has thousands of nerve endings and a whole structure behind its "head". Sewing the head of a penis onto the approximate place does not construct one of those. Plus there is a high rate of failure – they get necrotic and fall off. Neo vaginas are inverted penis offcuts – plus bits of intestine. They do not self clean, so require regular douching. They also require lubrication, and to be kept open by regular use of a "former" to keep them from healing up. Basically, one needs to sit on a dildo for hours every day to keep it open. There is a very high failure rate and expensive correction surgery is frequently required. Jazz Jennings vaginoplasty was done by Dr Marci Bowers who is one of the best in the business, but it still split,
RBNZ financial stability report ,highlights an unsustainable housing market ( in a high inflation regime) with higher interest rates coming due to excessive building costs.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/466415/unsustainable-housing-market-poses-risk-to-economy-reserve-bank
Over the last 40 years we have been fairly consistent with excessive housing prices.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1521337905817530369?cxt=HHwWgsC5ufqw8JwqAAAA
Bit late to start considering financial stability as the bubble bursts.
RBA yesterday,Fed tomorrow (likely .5) RBNZ another .5 ( as it does not affect the nz$) and already being priced in.
Highest yield in the developed world in government bonds and increasing.
https://twitter.com/RobinBrooksIIF/status/1521562146156466179?cxt=HHwWhsCylbut1p0qAAAA
On the positive side,only 6500 houses sold last month ( 16500 agents ) so an increased pool of labour will become available shortly.
Every cloud has a silver lining….though not sure the 'skills' are transferable.
And the dollar still has plenty of room before it threatens historic lows
The low dollar works in our favour,as it makes local manufacturing more competitive some what smoothing transport gauging.
eventually (if the confidence to invest in local production exists)…. in a net importing nation it is also inflationary.
Mallard must resign.
Reversing the trespass order against Winston Peters shows he has exceptionally poor judgement.
He's lost confidence of the PM and I bet Hipkins is v dark on it.
Also shows Shaw to be a vindictive little twerp for piling on with Mallard yesterday.
So it just means the afore-mentioned threat assessors changed their mind about Winston being a threat. No big deal. Not a hanging offence. Trev ought not to resign just because someone else changed their mind – it would set a serious precedent.
Ardern, for instance, might feel obliged to resign because Hipkins changed his mind about mask-wearing being govt strategy recently. Everyone might get palpitations due to anxiety about who was going to change their mind next.
Winston 1; Mallard Nil
"Mallard said that the actual decision to trespass Peters and King was not made by him," Jacinda said "I see it as entirely as a matter for the Speaker how he chooses to deal with the aftermath of the protest and the attendance of protesters," the Prime Minister said.
Jacinda Ardern, Christopher Luxon won't say if trespassing former National MP Matt King appropriate | Newshub
Mallard just 'ducking' for cover trying to shift the blame.
Your saving Mallard out for a duck for his (anticipated) resignation?
It's absolutely standard operating procedure for ministers and CEs to delegate powers under legislation to staff, and the Speaker's powers are no different in that regard.
I would be very surprised if a minister or CE was personally involved in issuing trespass notices anywhere else, so I don't expect that of the Speaker either.
Probably need to rewrite the delegation instrument however to change who makes decisions on trespassing former MPs. A lack of nous on the part of whoever drafted that, and obviously the Speaker for agreeing to it (also a lack of nous shown by whoever did issue the trespass notices in not at least checking in with the Speaker).
One of National's attack lines has been dismissed by Adrian Orr today:
It seems current Government spending has nothing to do with inflation. Covid relief in 2020 and 2021 certainly added to it but the electorate was very supportive of that.
So, nowhere for Willis and Luxton to go on this unless they continue to push false narratives.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/nicola-willis-to-robertson-orr-reserve-bank-over-wages-housing-inflation-costs/MUOSZIHMSVTC6VSHYGSZ4QRIMI/
The herald reporting however doesn't really note that the oppositions main theory of inflation has it that NZ is presently functioning as high wage economy. If you get your news from the Herald its possible to believe that Willis has a lucid plan for dealing with NZ inflation.
And even to me (knowing the lingo quite well) some of the governments responses to Willis and Luxon in parliament seemed a bit tangential. It would be much simplified to cotton onto the understanding that
a) the government can legitimately buy public services in the public interest.
b) when it does that its employing NZers and residents while paying them income.
c) aiming for surpluses reduces both the available public services and the income earned in providing those.
d) unless the public services are directly competing with private goods and services (see Kiwibuild) this has negligible impacts on inflation.
From the article, other than reducing government spending, Willis offered two other suggestions:
Relieving costs from the economy presumably means tax cuts and throwing open the borders in order to push wages down. Reducing supply bottlenecks probably also means importing huge amounts of cheap labour.
Where are they all going to live?