The Government is looking at ways of introducing an ACC-like insurance scheme for "people who lose their jobs.
The Productivity Commission earlier this year noted most OECD countries have some form of unemployment insurance, which people can draw down on for a set period of time if they lose their job.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson told interest.co.nz New Zealand needs a sustainable scheme, which gives people security and keeps them connected to the labour market."
"The payment could be claimed for one week for each five weeks the person has worked, up to a maximum of 26 weeks per claim. So someone who has worked continuously for only one year could claim up to 10 weeks’ cover."
Im old enough to have experienced the fallout of the market reforms of the eighties and nineties…indeed I was recently married with two young children when those reforms created the conditions where for 14 months I was unemployed (the longest of a few periods) , under this proposal we would have received 6 months unemployment ……what would we have lived on for the following 8 months Grant?
If Labour are seriously considering an unemployment insurance scheme in the next electoral period then they need to front up with the policy pre election…..indeed any policy to examine would be welcome.
Funny, i thought unemployment insurance was paid for via income tax and all one had to do was to go to the Winz office, fill out some forms, be eligable and then get a hand ful of dollars.
Does the Gentlemen want to increase the taxes on the working stiffs?
funny, innit?
As for having 'unemployment insurance' why yes, in Germany we have that.
On our pay slip it states what taxes are paid for
income income tax
retirement insurance tax
accident insurance ax
unemployment insurance tax
'solidarity tax' (started witht he re-unification of Germany to pay for it,)
religion tax ( one can opt out – goes to roman catholic and protestant churches only)
for this in Germany you get
6 weeks full pay (of the job) if you have an accident at work and then ACC kicks in at 60% of last wage
6 month of unemployement for 1 year worked or 12 month if one has worked and paid into the system for longer then a year, at 60% of last wage and you can calculate that at home cause the WINZ drone in Germany has no 'discretion' they are there to give you a form to fill out, determine your eligablilty and oh, they have to be polite to you and you are allowed access to the toilets when you need. If you don't qualify then you get full social welfare costs, also with appropriate politeness and access to toilets should you need one while waiting for your appointment. Non of this, here have a starvation handful of dollars and don't be upset about it, lest i kick you out without anything. Also you are allowed to take a lover home if you so desire and it will not affect your benefit. Unemployment benefits are also calculated per the tax payer and not any family unit that may or may exist. I.e. you get the full amount irrespective of your partners earning.
Retirement is set at a certain amount of your last wage – depending on how many years one contributed. While this system is inherently bad for women – they now receive years added for child care to make up for the loss of income, the lower pays, etc. Still not great but an attempt was made. One needs to participate i.e. pay in, for a min of 15 years. in abscence of that one will receive at least full social welfare. See about politness of the case worker and access to toilets above.
(the same stipulation of all taxes paid i have also seen in Holland and France – the only country that does not do it (in my working experience)is NZ cause they 'simplyfied' the system as i was explained by my hubby many years ago)
and at the end of the year the germans get to do a tax return for such things as ‘cost of public transport for work’, ‘work clothes’ , job seeking costs ‘i.e. print/copy of references, postal cost, clothing etc’ .
but,
income tax is not as high as it is in NZ, in fact many years ago when i asked why the different parts are not listed i was told that NZ 'wiped all of at' and rolled it up in a higher income tax.
I wonder if the Gentlemen has read the news and realised that people are taking pay cuts in order to protect their jobs, does he realise that people are cutting hours worked in order to keep their jobs, or that they have and are in the process of losing their jobs?
And frankly is this the only tax that this well to do man can think of, because I think his income group could start paying some taxes too, or would that come at a hard time for him?
I never considered Germany a low tax country. Last time I worked there – around 20 years ago – I paid around 50% tax (Einkommensteuer und Gewerbesteuer). At the moment the top income tax rate in Germany is 45% plus Gewerbesteuer (business tax) of around 15%, dependent on your location.
New Zealand has the lowest income related taxes of all countries I’ve ever worked in (Germany, UK, Australia). It’s was also easiest to start a business.
If you’re an employee on a low / medium income, you might be better off tax-wise in Germany.
Germany also has lots of other taxes, Kapitalertragssteuer (CGT), Grundsteuer (Land tax), Grunderwerbssteuer (similar to stamp duty), Erbschaftssteuer (Inheritance tax)… to name a few.
IF you have paid Gewerbesteuer you were self employed.
The local business tax (Gewerbesteuer) is applied as a tax on the profits of business and the objective profitability of a business operation. It is the most important original source of income for cities and towns in Germany.
also here
Basis for taxation
Taxation is based on the profit from the balance sheet or surplus income statement of each company, which is corrected on the basis of income tax and corporate tax law.
Additionally, there are extra calculations and reduction in the profit that apply only to local business tax, for example:
Expenses for interest and rent
Share income and loss from shares in corporations and partnerships
Land
Sole proprietorships and partnerships are also allowed an exempt amount of 24,500 Euro.
so you would have paid income tax on your taxable income and Gewerbesteuer on the business that you ran, taking into account the exempt amount of 24.500 Euro Dollars around 50.000 NZD.
the list that i posted above relates to 'wage slaves' i .e. waged employees who in NZ tend to only pay taxes with no write offs and almost guaranteed humiliation while trying to get their benefits from Winz.
I mean we could start with all the taxes you listed last CGT, Grundsteuer etc, but that would be levying taxes at the rich and very rich which in this country we are loath to do and make no mistake Grant Roberston is not going to increase the taxes on his income class cause that would be so unpleasant and wrong for his peers and even himself.
You are right, 3 month after the PM promised these pay cuts they have come into effect. 10% of 200.000 would come to 20.000 – an amount beneficiaries would love to have as an anual income. So no i am not crying any tears for the poor hard done by Grant Robertson and friends.
Last, this pay cut is a voluntary thing, and something that quite a few Kiwis are currently living with in order to keep their jobs. That is the big difference, that unless Dear Grant decides to quit for good he can live until the end of his life on the government tit to the tune of a few millions or unless he gets voted out.
But for him to call for a new tax on the workers of this country to 'pay for ' unemployment – which already is paid for via Taxation is stink, lazy, tonedeaf.
good post satty. too many tax whiners have never actually worked or started businesses overseas. it is a real eye opener to have to wade through mountains of forms , and the regulations! and the extra taxes that we DONT HAVE.
Nope not a good post dear Woodart, as the taxes Satty talks about relate to businesses and not to waged workers while Grant Robertson is trying to increase the taxes of the waged workers. (He is right about Germany being a High Tax country, its the price they pay for relatively decent benefits and social net – while not perfect for all)
Two different pair of shoes. See the link in my comment to Satty.
Btw, this is not a whinging about paying taxes, this is calling Grant Robertson to task for thinking about raising taxes on the workers – who are the ones currently getting pummeled by the covid recession/depression, while not loudly thinking about the other Taxes Satty mentioned, which are all levyied at the rich and well to do in Germany. I.e. Land tax, CGT and the likes.
Also no we don't have to wade through mountains of 'paper' either, they get monthly pay checks that list what their earnings is, the %age of taxes levied for the individual points, and a end of year statement which is then used to claim back some of the income tax . I.e. cost of transport, cost of finding a job, cost of workclothes and shoes, cost of internet, phone, computer etc if needed for jobs. It can be a good grand or two depending on hte expenses one has to maintain a professional life.
I am all for Grant Robertson levying a few taxes – on his income group, those above him. He can start with CGT, a financial transaction tax, or eve a solidarity tax, but he is talking about pinching pennies from the working poor of this country and that is fucking pathetic and sad.
here from 2015 – and i don't think anything has changed about that
Those who come under the scrutiny of this IRD division must have, or be in control of, more than $50 million.
According to IRD's investigation and advice manager Tracey Lloyd, the unit has identified 200 people who met the criteria.
Of these 200 people, 93 declared their personal income in the 2013 financial year as less than $70,000 – the point at which one is required pay the top tax rate of 33 cents in the dollar.
Maybe they just need to instruct IRD to go as hard after these guys as Winz goes after a single mum with child who may have been overpaid 5.50 in an emergency grant.
and maybe sabine, you shouldnt be so precious and defensive. wasnt commenting about you or your post. I have been a wage slave and started businesses here and overseas,and have hired staff and had premises. so probably know more about tax and paperwork than you. have an ice day..
Yeah, having worked in large international companies here and overseas, having a degree in accountancy, speaking three languages, and having created my own business in a foreign land and actually knowing about tax structures in Germany/France/Holland/NZ and such make me a complete fool.
There's an extremely good analysis of social media sexism on Stuff. I'll just reproduce a single portion but could easily multiple-post with others, the author has provided so many highly-topical quotes & pertinent comments in this comprehensive report.
Leading-edge tech is being applied to measure the toxicity:
They built ParityBOT with the help of student volunteer coders, using the New York Times comments section to develop its natural language processing capabilities. In the 2019 Canadian general election, it tracked 228,255 tweets sent to 314 women candidates, 9987 of which were deemed hateful – a “toxicity” rate of 4.38 per cent.
Colleague Jacqueline Comer, now a Wellingtonian, convinced them to launch in New Zealand and in the 23 days since, @ParityBOT_NZ has tweeted around 3000 times, for a slightly lower toxicity rate than in Canada, of 2.75 per cent.
The trio is now hoping to attract “a small amount” of funding, around $15,000, to develop the system’s capabilities in New Zealand.
One of ParityBOT’s standout features is the data it collects as it automatically measures and tweets; by election day, it should have gathered a much clearer picture of online hate towards women candidates than currently exists.
"“What we do is we maybe employ farmers and breed bucket loads of the bastards and we put them back in huge numbers, so by the time we’ve finished they’re waking up every kid through the night with the incessant croaking of their calls.”"
'It’s going to be our way now': the guerrilla rewilder shaking up British farming
To many ecologists he’s a visionary; to government officials he’s a pain in the arse. In the afternoon I spend with him he swears more than most people would in a lifetime.
So he'd be the right person to bring here on tour. Telling right-wing groups of kiwi males how to do Green farming, his lingo would resonate. Could get mass conversion as a result. Maybe even a political party of deep green rightists.
The Eurasian beaver became extinct in Great Britain in the 16th century. The last reference to beavers in England dates to 1526. A population of Eurasian beaver of unknown origin has been present on the River Otter, Devon in south-west England since 2008. An additional pair was released to increase genetic diversity in 2016.
As part of a scientific study, a pair of Eurasian beaver was released in 2011 near Dartmoor in southern Devon. The 13 beaver ponds now in place impacted flooding to the extent of releasing precipitation over days to weeks instead of hours.
Free-living beaver populations also occur around the River Tay and Knapdale areas in Scotland. The Knapdale population was released by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, while the other populations are of unknown origin. Sixteen beavers were released between 2009 and 2014 in Knapdale forest, Argyll. In 2016, the Scottish government declared that the beaver populations in Knapdale and Tayside could remain and naturally expand. This is the first successful reintroduction of a wild mammal in the United Kingdom.
Another good farming – environmental happening and activity to learn from or compare to what is already started here.
Savory Institute is recognised as a world leader in the education and implementation of regenerative agriculture around the globe, with Allan’s 2013 TED talk ‘
Allan Savory’s mission is to regenerate the world’s grasslands through Holistic Management. His long-term goal is to positively influence the management of 1 billion hectares of grasslands by 2025, thereby contributing to global climate, water and food-security….
Since I started paying attention to their rhetoric in 1970, there's been a half-century of leftists united on only one thing: belief that providing a positive alternative to capitalism is too hard. Suddenly, one of these fish has turned around and is swimming upstream against the flow.
In a bid to incorporate into my socialist blueprint different, often clashing, perspectives I decided to conjure up three complex characters whose dialogues would narrate the story – each representing different parts of my thinking: a Marxist-feminist, a libertarian ex-banker and a maverick technologist.
Another Now begins in the late 1970s, straddles the crises of 2008 and 2020 but also sketches outan imaginary future, and concludes in 2036. There is a moment in the story, on a Sunday evening in November 2025 to be precise, when my characters try to make sense of their circumstances by looking back to the events of 2020. The first thing they note is how drastically the lockdown changed people’s perception of politics.
Before 2020, politics seemed almost like a game, but with Covid came the realisation that governments everywhere possessed immense powers.
The thrilling thing about younger generations is that their steadfast refusal to learn the lessons of history gives them the tantalising possibility of reinventing the wheel.
The massive government interventions misled naive leftists into the daydream that revived state power would prove a force for good. They forgot what Lenin had once said: politics is about who does what to whom. They allowed themselves to hope that something good might transpire if the same elites that had hitherto condemned so many to untold indignities were handed immeasurable power.
Statism is good, thinks the left. Total control. So when the people elect the right…
"They allowed themselves to hope that something good might transpire if the same elites that had hitherto condemned so many to untold indignities were handed immeasurable power."
The first thing you need to do is establish who the elites (or their representatives) are.
"As in oligarchic Rome, financial interests in today’s world have gained control of governments and captured the political and regulatory agencies, leaving democratic reformers powerless to suspend debt service, rent arrears, evictions and depression. The West is becoming a highly centrally planned economy, but its planning center is Wall Street, not Washington or state and local governments."
@Dennis.
" belief that providing a positive alternative to capitalism is too hard. ".
Only in your mind.
Blinkered by the idea that capitalism and socialism are alternatives, you haven't seen the many ideas and effective proposals for progress.
Capitalism, at the level of the tradesperson investing in tools to make money from his work, works.
Yanis, who I’ve been reading for a long time, is not proposing to remove that,
However it doesn't work without the social agreement to pay him/her enough to live, to have a rule of law so the next warlord doesn't steal his earnings, to have a decent State infrastructure. Socialism.
Rightly we condemn dictatorship and totalitarian control. A State which is really democratically controlled is a different kettle of fish.
You seem to have missed all the “lefties” supporting less Government power and more decentralised Democracy,
We don't even need "fresh ideas". We already know what works, Portugal is showing us right now.
"This is an age-old problem. It was solved in the ancient Near East simply by annulling these debt and rent charges. But the West, shaped as it still is by the legacy of the Roman Empire, has left itself prone to the massive unemployment, business closedowns and resulting arrears for these basic costs of living and doing business."
Participatory democracy is certainly that – far older than the Greeks or even literacy, it goes back to the earliest form of human societies, the band cultures.
@Pat. The many different ideas from the left are a good thing.
A difference from the Right, who are determined to march us in lock step towards an Oligarchy of increasing wealth for a few and a failing society.
Dennis and Redlogix have a rather one dimensional view of “The left”. A more typically right wing perspective. As evidenced by their continual repetition of bad faith inaccurate right wing memes.
Describing middle class Greens who want a little more social justice and fairness as “Marxist revolutionaries” FFS.
a rather one dimensional view of “The left”. A more typically right wing perspective
Not really. I don't have a problem with nuances – they often alert us to important dimensions of situations not immediately apparent.
My view of the left is based on the culture of intermittent bouts of internecine intellectual warfare interspersed with periods of bland support of the status quo. The former is evidence of groups who are at least trying – while being hamstrung by their inability to agree on common ground. The latter happens when the forelock-tuggers operate in unison. Servants of capitalist masters.
The cool thing about winning the numbers game, as Jacinda is showing a new generation, is that you can front as a master because few people get how the control system operates. Note how she's never told us she agrees with socialism.
It's great to read the thoughtful ideas coming from you Dennis F and KJT. There is enough in your comments to explain the thought and possible efficacy of whatever's posited so that people can sort of take a bite size and chew on it! Short thoughts are useful too, but good to have substance in comments.
I'll give credit (without having read his book) to Yanis for operating as theoretician and providing an alternative plan for the future:
it is the granting of a single non-tradeable share to each employee-partner that holds the key to this economy. By granting employee-partners the right to vote in the corporation’s general assemblies, an idea proposed by the early anarcho-syndicalists, the distinction between wages and profits is terminated and democracy, at last, enters the workplace.
From a firm’s senior engineers and key strategic thinkers to its secretaries and janitors, everyone receives a basic wage plus a bonus that is decided collectively.
Since the one-employee-one-vote rule favours smaller decision-making units, corpo-syndicalism causes conglomerates voluntarily to break up into smaller companies, thus reviving market competition.
Even more strikingly, share markets vanish completely since shares, like IDs and library cards, are now non-tradeable. Once share markets have disappeared, the need for gargantuan debt to fund mergers and acquisitions evaporates – along with commercial finance. And given that the Central Bank provides everyone with a free bank account, private banking shrinks into utter insignificance.
I'd be happy to give this model a try. It does indeed look likely to tame the capitalist beast (may reserve a diminished role for capital perhaps).
edit
The advances by lefties followed by 'bland' co-operation with capitalism, is because the advance is only in materialistic values. Once the principled as they think themselves, get enough money they then get co-opted into a space made available in the money-tree-house.
This can be likened to the generations in a family where the founder made a success and money in some line, after that the rest of the family follow on expecting to share in the wealth.
The children find useful niches for themselves so they can enjoy their second and third generation advances in the materialistic culture. Even if they remain relatively poor, being part of a monied background is likely to have made a division between them and those from a poor background. And a for instance, the Douglas family had been in Labour a long time, long enough to have come to disregard workers' needs and the ideals of the betterment of the common man and woman.
…His family had strong ties with the trade-union movement, and actively engaged in politics. His grandfather, William Theophilus "Bill" Anderton, (1891–1966), was a left-wing Methodist lay preacher…Roger Douglas's father, Norman Vazey Douglas, (1910–1985), a former trade union secretary, served as MP for Auckland Central from 1960–1975, and as opposition spokesman for labour, education, and social security from 1967–1972. Roger's brother Malcolm Douglas was briefly Labour MP for Hunua 1978– 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Douglas#Early_life_and_background
Oh it'll work alright…for everyone except those made unemployed.
It is essentially the same system used in the US…works real well for them….lots of downward pressure on wages, huge pool of gig economy workers, less tax for corporates and wealthy, less pressure on politicians,
its a win win….if youre a politician or in business.
Or are they only so high because no one else in this country can be forced to pay taxes like the wage slave (- wage slave i term i was given by Gareth Morgan).
not everyone who is a wage slave has debts, just saying, but they all pay taxes through their noses with nothing to write off.
However there are a lot of rich people who are slaves to debt, in fact they would not be 'asset' rich if banks would not loan the money on the other properties that they are still paying mortgage on.
ACC, as originally conceived was a big advance for injured workers.
Previously if injured you either had to be a member of a powerful Union, or rely on the expensive vagaries of the courts, to get compensation. Which is still the US system.
The fact that it is also cheaper for employers than the US system, is why we still have it.
I was working in management, in a company which dabbled in it, when National bought in privatisation options for ACC cover. A short lived and costly failure.
ACC has no (official) time limitation…..as Sabine notes, we have a contributory scheme now (poorly funded as it is) …its called taxation.
Now if the government wishes to make that scheme self funding then the solution lies more in a sovereign wealth fund not an insurance scheme which without details I expect will be administered (and milked of fees) by some private or semi private organisation.
Curious that this should be floated as a shit storm of unemployment is about to hit our economy for years to come.
If you have experience with ACC – or know people trying to access it – the original idea is totally gone. You are treated with all the disdain given to WINZ 'clients' and the sole goal is to decline any claim and reduce any payments. It has devolved into grudging charity – not a right you have earned because you gave up your right to sue the person who injured you.
He is talking about raising taxes on the few of us that still have jobs. Now if he wants to talk about raising the taxes on his class and that of his owners i might be game, but to raise taxes on those that already don't have any money is tone deaf and devoid of any clarity of the situation in regards to the actual people who may i add pay his wages.
And hey the tax system is to narrow, so lets increase taxes on those that can't swindle themself out of paying taxes, or are too poor to hide it in a tax haven, or are too poor to just buy property and flip them for a Tax free Gain.
Surely there are other Taxes he can find he if he gave it a good luck.
Personally if Grant is thinking this then he is absolutely nuts – it's a RW dream. The people who currently work pay say 20% tax, !5% gst ,12% in student loans so 47% in total are now going to pay for their own unemployment? And they will – companies will make sure that this doesn't impact on them and next thing it will be privatised..
Just about anything else would be better.
Measures spreading the available work and money over more people rather than only some being pushed down to zero would be a good start and a hedge against automation. Rather than redundancy – giving people fewer hours, cutting executive payrolls to the agreed minimum and then topping up with welfare and dragging the gig economy in would all be a good start. Booting off our economy the predatory overseas ownership of some sectors and units with a sinking lid policy
Reducing welfare costs by streamlining the power and telco sectors and making them community owned, rearranging over time the rent subsidies to be ownership subsides and putting people into house that they own or co own with the state.
@Weka. Desktop/cellphone and a selection of 4 different browsers. Played with security and pop up settings also. Haven't managed to get replies to work on any of them. They work for my post in the dashboard though.
Even comments only work after refreshing the browser each time.
Originally, like super, and many other tax provided social wages, ACC was a fully funded PAYGO scheme.
Which works fine as we are paying through current taxes/fees for current consumption, and the amount needed is predictable and constant.
Neither need to accumulate money to work. That is just taking more fees than are required to make private finance, money.
The idea of both being like private insurance, where you accumulate investment funds, from fees, to pay out later, is both theft from the fee payers/claimants and a means of making private provision/sale look more competitive and attractive.
Works fine until you have a huge demographic bubble come through at the same time as increasing lifespans. I don't think it is fine for young people to be carrying the burden of Super for the boomers. This problem was obvious for the future when Muldoon set the system up. Not such an issue now with our birthrate consistently at or just below replacement and lifespans becoming stable, but certainly something that should have been more effectively addressed while the situation was unfolding.
Boomer superannuation would not be such a big deal if Bill English had kept the top tax rate up and also the contributions to the Cullen fund. The top tax rate was effectively being levied on basically the boomers in good high earning jobs at the height of their earnings ( and a few others)as a group and being put into the Cullen group fund to level out the super impact of the same boomers. With the youngest boomers now around sixty we could revisit it but it’s fairly late in the day.
Key absolutely squandered an awful lot of financial future proofing.
If, and it currently is a big if, you believe that MMT is a viable theory, then there is no need for taxation or a sovereign wealth fund…personally im undecided but I err to the MMT argument which would mean that the need to generate a return is unnecessary….but either way there is no requirement for that return to be held by the private sector….it could (and imo ) be public
Then take a squiz at this chart and ponder whether military veterans are really a group the tinyfingers twittertwat really wants to go out of his way to personally directly insult.
No mention of the fact that Labour is also against money going to private schools and was involved in the decision and could have blocked it if it had any principles.
No mention of the Green's Wealth Tax. Surely a leftie like Trotter should support this and so give a balanced view of the Greens? errr no it seems.
No mention of Shaw's excellent work on Climate Change-the major issue for this election and for future generations.
No its all about an all-government decision relating to a paltry $11.7m (actually it turns out $2.9m) being sheeted home to Shaw 100%.
Don't worry, BG, ole Chris is just doing his thing. When you write an essay, you need an angle to provide perspective, you need framing so others can get it, and you need to dress it up with rhetoric to give it a bit of punch.
Dunno how much those newspapers who publish his columns pay him, but it would at least supply a steady stream of pocket money, eh?
So there's a thrust of professionalism involved in his writing that we ought to take into account. I wouldn't dismiss his point in this one: James sets himself up for it by presenting as the archetypal suit-wearer. As a bridge between centrists & leftists, he's been fully functional until now. Marketing 1.01 says you gotta talk to customers in the language they understand, right?
So to sell the green message to mainstreamers he must present as someone who exemplifies a professional politician who is competent at working the system while retaining authenticity. The corporate image from his prior career is handy for that.
a genuine Green Party
When Chris wrote those words, he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. An authentic Green Party would represent the entire Green movement. Not just the third of it that self-identifies as leftist.
His political experience was in the New Labour Party 30 years ago when I became a Greens activist. So you're right – he was an Andertonian dinosaur clinging onto the form of the Labour Party the Rogernomes had trashed.
He has admitted in print that his political stance derives from his father. Unreasonable, therefore, to expect him to be able to think for himself – the past defeats the future, being genuinely progressive is rendered impossible. As for being sufficiently radical to provide a positive alternative, forget it! If he was capable of charting new conceptual terrain for us to explore, he'd have done so long ago…
Cheers Dennis…all very true. The problem is that Trotter writes very well, has wide circulation and my guess is that enough people believe what he spouts to do damage to the Green vote.
Chris Trotter may not have a vision for the future (and he is hardly alone in that) but he does have a knowledge of the past…curious thing is the past (especially recent) keeps showing itself to influence the current…whod have thought?
Yeah he's often good with drawing conclusions from the past & pointing to current relevance. That's usually helpful to readers, particularly when reminding us of factors which may have slipped our minds.
Our necessity being post-covid recovery, however, alerts us to a likelihood of the past being irrelevant. Brave new world. The Greek gets that…
Thanks lprent – hope the updating goes smoothly and you can have a glass of something with Lyn and stick your nose outside into fresh air and be in the greenery.
"Super has always been paid for by current production. However you finingle it financially, whether through current taxation or savings, it still comes from the production of the current generation.
If we want to keep super affordable we should tax the current generation to invest in a sustainable future. Invest in energy, housing, education and other infrastructure so that we can keep all our people. Not in financial ponzi schemes which will fall over in the next GFC."
NZ second to Germany, South Korea third even though they have had such a big outbreak. The point is that this can happen anywhere and they take measures to control it unlike some.
Next down – (I looked up Forbes info to find Australia. Why wouldn't Radionz include Australia in their report? Oz is after us again to continue tourism with Queensland and NSW I think!)
Switzerland, which was first, has dropped back to fourth. Japan is fifth, and Australia and China are sixth and seventh.
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
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 ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
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:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
“It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April to meet the Prime Minister’s ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
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The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
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Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
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The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
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A lengthy response to the recently released draft Government policy statement on transport will soon be delivered from Auckland Council to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown. A submission raising concerns about funding distribution and the plan’s treatment of Auckland passed through the council’s transport committee on Wednesday, despite some councillors ...
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The Government is looking at ways of introducing an ACC-like insurance scheme for "people who lose their jobs.
The Productivity Commission earlier this year noted most OECD countries have some form of unemployment insurance, which people can draw down on for a set period of time if they lose their job.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson told interest.co.nz New Zealand needs a sustainable scheme, which gives people security and keeps them connected to the labour market."
https://www.interest.co.nz/insurance/106364/could-labours-first-major-policy-announcement-be-permanent-unemployment-insurance
"The payment could be claimed for one week for each five weeks the person has worked, up to a maximum of 26 weeks per claim. So someone who has worked continuously for only one year could claim up to 10 weeks’ cover."
Im old enough to have experienced the fallout of the market reforms of the eighties and nineties…indeed I was recently married with two young children when those reforms created the conditions where for 14 months I was unemployed (the longest of a few periods) , under this proposal we would have received 6 months unemployment ……what would we have lived on for the following 8 months Grant?
If Labour are seriously considering an unemployment insurance scheme in the next electoral period then they need to front up with the policy pre election…..indeed any policy to examine would be welcome.
Funny, i thought unemployment insurance was paid for via income tax and all one had to do was to go to the Winz office, fill out some forms, be eligable and then get a hand ful of dollars.
Does the Gentlemen want to increase the taxes on the working stiffs?
funny, innit?
As for having 'unemployment insurance' why yes, in Germany we have that.
On our pay slip it states what taxes are paid for
income income tax
retirement insurance tax
accident insurance ax
unemployment insurance tax
'solidarity tax' (started witht he re-unification of Germany to pay for it,)
religion tax ( one can opt out – goes to roman catholic and protestant churches only)
for this in Germany you get
(the same stipulation of all taxes paid i have also seen in Holland and France – the only country that does not do it (in my working experience)is NZ cause they 'simplyfied' the system as i was explained by my hubby many years ago)
and at the end of the year the germans get to do a tax return for such things as ‘cost of public transport for work’, ‘work clothes’ , job seeking costs ‘i.e. print/copy of references, postal cost, clothing etc’ .
but,
income tax is not as high as it is in NZ, in fact many years ago when i asked why the different parts are not listed i was told that NZ 'wiped all of at' and rolled it up in a higher income tax.
I wonder if the Gentlemen has read the news and realised that people are taking pay cuts in order to protect their jobs, does he realise that people are cutting hours worked in order to keep their jobs, or that they have and are in the process of losing their jobs?
And frankly is this the only tax that this well to do man can think of, because I think his income group could start paying some taxes too, or would that come at a hard time for him?
I never considered Germany a low tax country. Last time I worked there – around 20 years ago – I paid around 50% tax (Einkommensteuer und Gewerbesteuer). At the moment the top income tax rate in Germany is 45% plus Gewerbesteuer (business tax) of around 15%, dependent on your location.
New Zealand has the lowest income related taxes of all countries I’ve ever worked in (Germany, UK, Australia). It’s was also easiest to start a business.
If you’re an employee on a low / medium income, you might be better off tax-wise in Germany.
Germany also has lots of other taxes, Kapitalertragssteuer (CGT), Grundsteuer (Land tax), Grunderwerbssteuer (similar to stamp duty), Erbschaftssteuer (Inheritance tax)… to name a few.
IF you have paid Gewerbesteuer you were self employed.
also here
https://wwkn.de/en/about-german-taxes/local-business-tax-gewerbesteuer/
so you would have paid income tax on your taxable income and Gewerbesteuer on the business that you ran, taking into account the exempt amount of 24.500 Euro Dollars around 50.000 NZD.
the list that i posted above relates to 'wage slaves' i .e. waged employees who in NZ tend to only pay taxes with no write offs and almost guaranteed humiliation while trying to get their benefits from Winz.
I mean we could start with all the taxes you listed last CGT, Grundsteuer etc, but that would be levying taxes at the rich and very rich which in this country we are loath to do and make no mistake Grant Roberston is not going to increase the taxes on his income class cause that would be so unpleasant and wrong for his peers and even himself.
They have lowered their income for 6 months. Some 20% most 10%. Tell all Sabine..Good and Bad.
The promised pay cut of our suits in parliament?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12351018
You are right, 3 month after the PM promised these pay cuts they have come into effect. 10% of 200.000 would come to 20.000 – an amount beneficiaries would love to have as an anual income. So no i am not crying any tears for the poor hard done by Grant Robertson and friends.
Last, this pay cut is a voluntary thing, and something that quite a few Kiwis are currently living with in order to keep their jobs. That is the big difference, that unless Dear Grant decides to quit for good he can live until the end of his life on the government tit to the tune of a few millions or unless he gets voted out.
But for him to call for a new tax on the workers of this country to 'pay for ' unemployment – which already is paid for via Taxation is stink, lazy, tonedeaf.
good post satty. too many tax whiners have never actually worked or started businesses overseas. it is a real eye opener to have to wade through mountains of forms , and the regulations! and the extra taxes that we DONT HAVE.
Nope not a good post dear Woodart, as the taxes Satty talks about relate to businesses and not to waged workers while Grant Robertson is trying to increase the taxes of the waged workers. (He is right about Germany being a High Tax country, its the price they pay for relatively decent benefits and social net – while not perfect for all)
Two different pair of shoes. See the link in my comment to Satty.
Btw, this is not a whinging about paying taxes, this is calling Grant Robertson to task for thinking about raising taxes on the workers – who are the ones currently getting pummeled by the covid recession/depression, while not loudly thinking about the other Taxes Satty mentioned, which are all levyied at the rich and well to do in Germany. I.e. Land tax, CGT and the likes.
Also no we don't have to wade through mountains of 'paper' either, they get monthly pay checks that list what their earnings is, the %age of taxes levied for the individual points, and a end of year statement which is then used to claim back some of the income tax . I.e. cost of transport, cost of finding a job, cost of workclothes and shoes, cost of internet, phone, computer etc if needed for jobs. It can be a good grand or two depending on hte expenses one has to maintain a professional life.
I am all for Grant Robertson levying a few taxes – on his income group, those above him. He can start with CGT, a financial transaction tax, or eve a solidarity tax, but he is talking about pinching pennies from the working poor of this country and that is fucking pathetic and sad.
here from 2015 – and i don't think anything has changed about that
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?_id=3&objectid=11392100
Maybe they just need to instruct IRD to go as hard after these guys as Winz goes after a single mum with child who may have been overpaid 5.50 in an emergency grant.
and maybe sabine, you shouldnt be so precious and defensive. wasnt commenting about you or your post. I have been a wage slave and started businesses here and overseas,and have hired staff and had premises. so probably know more about tax and paperwork than you. have an ice day..
Yeah, having worked in large international companies here and overseas, having a degree in accountancy, speaking three languages, and having created my own business in a foreign land and actually knowing about tax structures in Germany/France/Holland/NZ and such make me a complete fool.
Yes dear.
There's an extremely good analysis of social media sexism on Stuff. I'll just reproduce a single portion but could easily multiple-post with others, the author has provided so many highly-topical quotes & pertinent comments in this comprehensive report.
Leading-edge tech is being applied to measure the toxicity:
"“What we do is we maybe employ farmers and breed bucket loads of the bastards and we put them back in huge numbers, so by the time we’ve finished they’re waking up every kid through the night with the incessant croaking of their calls.”"
'It’s going to be our way now': the guerrilla rewilder shaking up British farming
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/its-going-to-be-our-way-now-the-guerrilla-rewilder-shaking-up-british-farming-aoe
That link seems to be truncated, try this one:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/its-going-to-be-our-way-now-the-guerrilla-rewilder-shaking-up-british-farming-aoe
Yeah, chopped link though.
So he'd be the right person to bring here on tour. Telling right-wing groups of kiwi males how to do Green farming, his lingo would resonate. Could get mass conversion as a result. Maybe even a political party of deep green rightists.
There's a history of speculation about beavers in Aotearoa, see https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown-lakes/did-beavers-once-live-south
Another good farming – environmental happening and activity to learn from or compare to what is already started here.
Savory Institute is recognised as a world leader in the education and implementation of regenerative agriculture around the globe, with Allan’s 2013 TED talk ‘
Allan Savory’s mission is to regenerate the world’s grasslands through Holistic Management. His long-term goal is to positively influence the management of 1 billion hectares of grasslands by 2025, thereby contributing to global climate, water and food-security….
The Mulloon Institute
Tony Coote AM Memorial Lecture with Allan Savory
Wed 16th Sep 2020, 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm AEST
https://events.humanitix.com/tony-coote-am-memorial-lecture-with-allan-savory
Since I started paying attention to their rhetoric in 1970, there's been a half-century of leftists united on only one thing: belief that providing a positive alternative to capitalism is too hard. Suddenly, one of these fish has turned around and is swimming upstream against the flow.
The thrilling thing about younger generations is that their steadfast refusal to learn the lessons of history gives them the tantalising possibility of reinventing the wheel.
Statism is good, thinks the left. Total control. So when the people elect the right…
"They allowed themselves to hope that something good might transpire if the same elites that had hitherto condemned so many to untold indignities were handed immeasurable power."
The first thing you need to do is establish who the elites (or their representatives) are.
A clue…
"As in oligarchic Rome, financial interests in today’s world have gained control of governments and captured the political and regulatory agencies, leaving democratic reformers powerless to suspend debt service, rent arrears, evictions and depression. The West is becoming a highly centrally planned economy, but its planning center is Wall Street, not Washington or state and local governments."
https://michael-hudson.com/2020/08/how-an-act-of-god-pandemic-is-destroying-the-west/
@Dennis.
" belief that providing a positive alternative to capitalism is too hard. ".
Only in your mind.
Blinkered by the idea that capitalism and socialism are alternatives, you haven't seen the many ideas and effective proposals for progress.
Capitalism, at the level of the tradesperson investing in tools to make money from his work, works.
Yanis, who I’ve been reading for a long time, is not proposing to remove that,
However it doesn't work without the social agreement to pay him/her enough to live, to have a rule of law so the next warlord doesn't steal his earnings, to have a decent State infrastructure. Socialism.
Rightly we condemn dictatorship and totalitarian control. A State which is really democratically controlled is a different kettle of fish.
You seem to have missed all the “lefties” supporting less Government power and more decentralised Democracy,
We don't even need "fresh ideas". We already know what works, Portugal is showing us right now.
We in fact need some very old ideas
"This is an age-old problem. It was solved in the ancient Near East simply by annulling these debt and rent charges. But the West, shaped as it still is by the legacy of the Roman Empire, has left itself prone to the massive unemployment, business closedowns and resulting arrears for these basic costs of living and doing business."
https://michael-hudson.com/2020/08/how-an-act-of-god-pandemic-is-destroying-the-west/
We in fact need some very old ideas
Participatory democracy is certainly that – far older than the Greeks or even literacy, it goes back to the earliest form of human societies, the band cultures.
@Pat. The many different ideas from the left are a good thing.
A difference from the Right, who are determined to march us in lock step towards an Oligarchy of increasing wealth for a few and a failing society.
Dennis and Redlogix have a rather one dimensional view of “The left”. A more typically right wing perspective. As evidenced by their continual repetition of bad faith inaccurate right wing memes.
Describing middle class Greens who want a little more social justice and fairness as “Marxist revolutionaries” FFS.
a rather one dimensional view of “The left”. A more typically right wing perspective
Not really. I don't have a problem with nuances – they often alert us to important dimensions of situations not immediately apparent.
My view of the left is based on the culture of intermittent bouts of internecine intellectual warfare interspersed with periods of bland support of the status quo. The former is evidence of groups who are at least trying – while being hamstrung by their inability to agree on common ground. The latter happens when the forelock-tuggers operate in unison. Servants of capitalist masters.
The cool thing about winning the numbers game, as Jacinda is showing a new generation, is that you can front as a master because few people get how the control system operates. Note how she's never told us she agrees with socialism.
It's great to read the thoughtful ideas coming from you Dennis F and KJT. There is enough in your comments to explain the thought and possible efficacy of whatever's posited so that people can sort of take a bite size and chew on it! Short thoughts are useful too, but good to have substance in comments.
I'll give credit (without having read his book) to Yanis for operating as theoretician and providing an alternative plan for the future:
I'd be happy to give this model a try. It does indeed look likely to tame the capitalist beast (may reserve a diminished role for capital perhaps).
edit
The advances by lefties followed by 'bland' co-operation with capitalism, is because the advance is only in materialistic values. Once the principled as they think themselves, get enough money they then get co-opted into a space made available in the money-tree-house.
This can be likened to the generations in a family where the founder made a success and money in some line, after that the rest of the family follow on expecting to share in the wealth.
The saying is: “The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it.” https://mustardseedmoney.com/wealthy-lose-money/
The children find useful niches for themselves so they can enjoy their second and third generation advances in the materialistic culture. Even if they remain relatively poor, being part of a monied background is likely to have made a division between them and those from a poor background. And a for instance, the Douglas family had been in Labour a long time, long enough to have come to disregard workers' needs and the ideals of the betterment of the common man and woman.
…His family had strong ties with the trade-union movement, and actively engaged in politics. His grandfather, William Theophilus "Bill" Anderton, (1891–1966), was a left-wing Methodist lay preacher…Roger Douglas's father, Norman Vazey Douglas, (1910–1985), a former trade union secretary, served as MP for Auckland Central from 1960–1975, and as opposition spokesman for labour, education, and social security from 1967–1972. Roger's brother Malcolm Douglas was briefly Labour MP for Hunua 1978– 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Douglas#Early_life_and_background
@Pat.
An ACC like scheme for illness, disability and unemployment may work.
I know many people including businesses, who would support extending it to sickness for one.
Provided it worked more like the original.
And not the deliberately crippled, to feed demand for privatisation, scheme we have now.
Oh it'll work alright…for everyone except those made unemployed.
It is essentially the same system used in the US…works real well for them….lots of downward pressure on wages, huge pool of gig economy workers, less tax for corporates and wealthy, less pressure on politicians,
its a win win….if youre a politician or in business.
Who does the Labour Party represent again?
we already pay for it tho, via our Income taxes.
Or are they only so high because no one else in this country can be forced to pay taxes like the wage slave (- wage slave i term i was given by Gareth Morgan).
A more accurate term is 'debt slave'
not everyone who is a wage slave has debts, just saying, but they all pay taxes through their noses with nothing to write off.
However there are a lot of rich people who are slaves to debt, in fact they would not be 'asset' rich if banks would not loan the money on the other properties that they are still paying mortgage on.
The debt cycle is what requires the continuation of production…why do (enough) people labour to provide the excess for the few?
@Pat.
ACC, as originally conceived was a big advance for injured workers.
Previously if injured you either had to be a member of a powerful Union, or rely on the expensive vagaries of the courts, to get compensation. Which is still the US system.
The fact that it is also cheaper for employers than the US system, is why we still have it.
I was working in management, in a company which dabbled in it, when National bought in privatisation options for ACC cover. A short lived and costly failure.
ACC has no (official) time limitation…..as Sabine notes, we have a contributory scheme now (poorly funded as it is) …its called taxation.
Now if the government wishes to make that scheme self funding then the solution lies more in a sovereign wealth fund not an insurance scheme which without details I expect will be administered (and milked of fees) by some private or semi private organisation.
Curious that this should be floated as a shit storm of unemployment is about to hit our economy for years to come.
If you have experience with ACC – or know people trying to access it – the original idea is totally gone. You are treated with all the disdain given to WINZ 'clients' and the sole goal is to decline any claim and reduce any payments. It has devolved into grudging charity – not a right you have earned because you gave up your right to sue the person who injured you.
@Sabine.
We are talking about the politically possible here.
People are much more inclined to support payments that are going only to a set fund. Such as ACC, where they can see the connection to themselves.
And yes. The tax system is too narrow. Taxes being paid almost exclusively by PAYE earners and buyers of goods and services.
He is talking about raising taxes on the few of us that still have jobs. Now if he wants to talk about raising the taxes on his class and that of his owners i might be game, but to raise taxes on those that already don't have any money is tone deaf and devoid of any clarity of the situation in regards to the actual people who may i add pay his wages.
And hey the tax system is to narrow, so lets increase taxes on those that can't swindle themself out of paying taxes, or are too poor to hide it in a tax haven, or are too poor to just buy property and flip them for a Tax free Gain.
Surely there are other Taxes he can find he if he gave it a good luck.
100% Sabine!
We need to tax the people with wealth – who are universally recognised to pay less proportionally than everyone else.
Yes…theres no point in taxing those who have no ability to pay…and it also reduces inequality….go figure
Personally if Grant is thinking this then he is absolutely nuts – it's a RW dream. The people who currently work pay say 20% tax, !5% gst ,12% in student loans so 47% in total are now going to pay for their own unemployment? And they will – companies will make sure that this doesn't impact on them and next thing it will be privatised..
Just about anything else would be better.
Measures spreading the available work and money over more people rather than only some being pushed down to zero would be a good start and a hedge against automation. Rather than redundancy – giving people fewer hours, cutting executive payrolls to the agreed minimum and then topping up with welfare and dragging the gig economy in would all be a good start. Booting off our economy the predatory overseas ownership of some sectors and units with a sinking lid policy
Reducing welfare costs by streamlining the power and telco sectors and making them community owned, rearranging over time the rent subsidies to be ownership subsides and putting people into house that they own or co own with the state.
KJT, are you using the mobile or desktop version of TS on your phone/pad?
nevermind, looks like neither are working for replies
@Weka. Desktop/cellphone and a selection of 4 different browsers. Played with security and pop up settings also. Haven't managed to get replies to work on any of them. They work for my post in the dashboard though.
Even comments only work after refreshing the browser each time.
Obviously requires a Geek level above mine?
Does it work on a computer?
Yes, Ancient Geek level I believe. Hoping he will be around soon. It's affecting lots of commenters.
@Pat 8.1.
Originally, like super, and many other tax provided social wages, ACC was a fully funded PAYGO scheme.
Which works fine as we are paying through current taxes/fees for current consumption, and the amount needed is predictable and constant.
Neither need to accumulate money to work. That is just taking more fees than are required to make private finance, money.
The idea of both being like private insurance, where you accumulate investment funds, from fees, to pay out later, is both theft from the fee payers/claimants and a means of making private provision/sale look more competitive and attractive.
Not how Woodhouse originally intended.
Works fine until you have a huge demographic bubble come through at the same time as increasing lifespans. I don't think it is fine for young people to be carrying the burden of Super for the boomers. This problem was obvious for the future when Muldoon set the system up. Not such an issue now with our birthrate consistently at or just below replacement and lifespans becoming stable, but certainly something that should have been more effectively addressed while the situation was unfolding.
Boomer superannuation would not be such a big deal if Bill English had kept the top tax rate up and also the contributions to the Cullen fund. The top tax rate was effectively being levied on basically the boomers in good high earning jobs at the height of their earnings ( and a few others)as a group and being put into the Cullen group fund to level out the super impact of the same boomers. With the youngest boomers now around sixty we could revisit it but it’s fairly late in the day.
Key absolutely squandered an awful lot of financial future proofing.
If, and it currently is a big if, you believe that MMT is a viable theory, then there is no need for taxation or a sovereign wealth fund…personally im undecided but I err to the MMT argument which would mean that the need to generate a return is unnecessary….but either way there is no requirement for that return to be held by the private sector….it could (and imo ) be public
When "even Fox News" starts trending, you know exactly what's happened, right?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-military-even-fox-news_n_5f52a628c5b6946f3eb1b5ab
Then take a squiz at this chart and ponder whether military veterans are really a group the tinyfingers twittertwat really wants to go out of his way to personally directly insult.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/250366/percentage-of-us-population-who-are-veterans/
That dinosaur Chris Trotter never misses a chance to give the Greens a kicking. Does he want Collins as PM?
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-sorry-excuse-for-green-party.html
No mention of the fact that Labour is also against money going to private schools and was involved in the decision and could have blocked it if it had any principles.
No mention of the Green's Wealth Tax. Surely a leftie like Trotter should support this and so give a balanced view of the Greens? errr no it seems.
No mention of Shaw's excellent work on Climate Change-the major issue for this election and for future generations.
No its all about an all-government decision relating to a paltry $11.7m (actually it turns out $2.9m) being sheeted home to Shaw 100%.
Trotter hates the Greens.
Don't worry, BG, ole Chris is just doing his thing. When you write an essay, you need an angle to provide perspective, you need framing so others can get it, and you need to dress it up with rhetoric to give it a bit of punch.
Dunno how much those newspapers who publish his columns pay him, but it would at least supply a steady stream of pocket money, eh?
So there's a thrust of professionalism involved in his writing that we ought to take into account. I wouldn't dismiss his point in this one: James sets himself up for it by presenting as the archetypal suit-wearer. As a bridge between centrists & leftists, he's been fully functional until now. Marketing 1.01 says you gotta talk to customers in the language they understand, right?
So to sell the green message to mainstreamers he must present as someone who exemplifies a professional politician who is competent at working the system while retaining authenticity. The corporate image from his prior career is handy for that.
a genuine Green Party
When Chris wrote those words, he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. An authentic Green Party would represent the entire Green movement. Not just the third of it that self-identifies as leftist.
His political experience was in the New Labour Party 30 years ago when I became a Greens activist. So you're right – he was an Andertonian dinosaur clinging onto the form of the Labour Party the Rogernomes had trashed.
He has admitted in print that his political stance derives from his father. Unreasonable, therefore, to expect him to be able to think for himself – the past defeats the future, being genuinely progressive is rendered impossible. As for being sufficiently radical to provide a positive alternative, forget it! If he was capable of charting new conceptual terrain for us to explore, he'd have done so long ago…
Cheers Dennis…all very true. The problem is that Trotter writes very well, has wide circulation and my guess is that enough people believe what he spouts to do damage to the Green vote.
So I will continue to worry .
Chris Trotter may not have a vision for the future (and he is hardly alone in that) but he does have a knowledge of the past…curious thing is the past (especially recent) keeps showing itself to influence the current…whod have thought?
Yeah he's often good with drawing conclusions from the past & pointing to current relevance. That's usually helpful to readers, particularly when reminding us of factors which may have slipped our minds.
Our necessity being post-covid recovery, however, alerts us to a likelihood of the past being irrelevant. Brave new world. The Greek gets that…
The past is never irrelevant
Thanks lprent – hope the updating goes smoothly and you can have a glass of something with Lyn and stick your nose outside into fresh air and be in the greenery.
@Bearded Git 14
Nobody reads Trotter anyway. He’s just an old windbag. So why get worked up about it?
Hope you are right Scott.
ScottGN Nobody you know reads Trotter. Quite a limiting factor I think.
He's a bit variable, but now and then he hits the mark pretty well.
@Solkta and RBCV at 12.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-new-zealands-retirement-income.html
"Super has always been paid for by current production. However you finingle it financially, whether through current taxation or savings, it still comes from the production of the current generation.
If we want to keep super affordable we should tax the current generation to invest in a sustainable future. Invest in energy, housing, education and other infrastructure so that we can keep all our people. Not in financial ponzi schemes which will fall over in the next GFC."
Covid-19 ratings for countries most prepared etc. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/425315/new-zealand-ranked-second-safest-covid-19-country-by-forbes
NZ second to Germany, South Korea third even though they have had such a big outbreak. The point is that this can happen anywhere and they take measures to control it unlike some.
Next down – (I looked up Forbes info to find Australia. Why wouldn't Radionz include Australia in their report? Oz is after us again to continue tourism with Queensland and NSW I think!)
Switzerland, which was first, has dropped back to fourth. Japan is fifth, and Australia and China are sixth and seventh.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/03/the-100-safest-countries-for-covid-19-updated/#2b346257909e
@Bearded Git 16.1
I don’t think anyone seriously believes that Trotter has the capacity to shift even one vote. Read him for the entertainment if you want (I used to).