I’m interested in other people’s thoughts on the fair way to tax capital. Ianmac yesterday linked to The Opportunity Party’s release on their proposed capital tax (which doesn’t have much detail). On the assumption that it’s similar to the Comprehensive Capital Income Tax that Gareth Morgan has proposed before, I’d be worried about the following unintended consequences. http://www.top.org.nz/top1?utm_campaign=top1_members&utm_medium=email&utm_source=garethmorgan
1) Social effects on the housing asset rich/cash poor. Suggested mitigations are unconvincing to me. While this is likely to be the focus of most debate, right now I’m more interested in other aspects listed below.
2) May cause collapse of businesses that would otherwise survive, from the ongoing extra cashflow required to service the capital tax.
3) Discourages foreign investment. Why would any business want to set up where they start getting taxed long before they earn a penny of profit?
4) Favours low-capital businesses, and discourages businesses from investing more capital per worker. This is already a problem causing low productivity in New Zealand, do we want to make it worse?
5) Because land is such a high-capital item, it would push farmers towards a high-intensity high-input farming model. Which is a high-pollution low-resilience model, exactly the opposite of what we want.
6) No models to learn from elsewhere. Canada had some (at much lower rates), but those seem to have been abolished.
7) Encourages the use of debt to reduce the amount of liable capital for taxation.
Personally I favour a capital gains tax on all assets (including the family home, but with a rollover provision for family homes), payable whenever there’s any kind of change of ownership of the asset. There’s plenty of examples from other jurisdictions to learn from. It’s not much of a hassle to comply (I paid Capital Gains Tax on my primary home in the US), and while it’s slow to start collecting revenue eventually it reaches the point of fairly catching income from capital.
Yes I’m keen for a UBI and then look at how to tax it as a secondary issue. So it seems crazy to me that UBI is not the main focus.
I think there needs to be a radical change to taxation to make sure that everyone has to pay their share. There are so many loop holes at present it makes it easy for those with more money and access to tax experts to avoid taxes. We need new ideas because the old ones only tax the middle and seem to avoid the super rich and global citizens.
We are having situations when banks are causing GFC being bailed out by tax payers and then being allowed to go on as usual and still make the rules on what’s fair to tax.
At the same time there seems to be a very punitive punishment approach to government taxation – at the end of the day it should be like a non profit co operative insurance scheme – you put money in – and then there is a basic level nobody is allowed to fall below (UBI) and then you need enough from everybody to make sure that the bills on health, education and so forth are met.
The whole premise of governments seem to be skewed with neoliberalism – that’s why we can afford Saudi sheep bribes for millions but put more and more hoops in for the most vulnerable to stop them getting a basic benefit. Wellington council can afford to pay Singapore airlines 8 million, Auckland wants to steal the harbour and put it into COO hands, but at the same time they are obsessed with cutting basic services like libraries, rubbish and keeping the berms mowed – because we can’t afford it.
Tax on the gain at sale, arbitrary taxes on capital can penalise many for holding over a long term gain with zero intent to gain from any sale or sell at all.
The funds exist from the sale and it clips the ticket as the punter has realised the profit. Effectively a transaction based tax, much easier to enforce as holdings can be hidden very easily.
Oz has had this type of CGT since the 80’s and you don’t see their right rushing to repeal it being a lot more mature in their economic management than ours.
Some other jurisdictions have loopholes that allow avoiding capital gains taxes by such means as gifting assets to a trust, gifting assets to a charity and claiming a tax credit for the full value of the asset. Which is why I said “payable whenever there’s any kind of change of ownership”.
I like it – it only charges tax for assets that aren’t already generating sufficient taxable income to meet the threshold, so people are encouraged to use capital better. Assuming GST or income tax are reduced to offset it, most people, including most homeowners, would be better off in terms of disposable income.
Agreed, though some provision would have to be made for businesses which, though they would normally run profitably, happen to make a loss, whether through bad luck or poor management. The trouble is, many will find ways of taking advantage of such provision to avoid the tax.
” it only charges tax for assets that aren’t already generating sufficient taxable income to meet the threshold”
Do you really think it’s good to further reinforce the idea that the only value anything has is for the income that can be generated from it?
I’m also aware of several farms and small businesses where the owners are running them in a low key way just generating enough income to keep happy and not really trying to maximise returns. They’re also unusually good at looking after their staff and surroundings. Under a capital tax regime, they would become totally non-viable as is and would either need to close or start operating in a much more ruthless manner.
Do we really want to force that choice? Particularly if the alternative CGT achieves the same result in the end of getting the beneficiaries of asset price growth to share some of the gains with the society that makes those gains possible?
I’ve only read his policy document Andre so I don’t know the finer points but it looks like typical Morgan to me where he gets a bee in his bonnet and takes it too far.
With houses he appears to be targeting freehold owner-occupiers rather than investors/landlords or even those with a mortgage. His basic premise is that living in a freehold house is a form of income and should be taxed because the capital invested in the house would be taxed in any other investment scenario.
Now for those who have a mortgage it would be rather complicated to work out what their capital actually is before you could tax it. The property itself isn’t the capital, they’ve borrowed to buy it. Their capital would either be the equity or the deposit plus principal paid off. Working out the equity would be a nightmare with oodles of loopholes that investors would exploit to minimise their tax…. like they do already.
I can’t see it solving anything and it would make the system messier. A capital gains tax levied annually on investment properties is all that’s required IMO.
“A capital gains tax levied annually on investment properties is all that’s required IMO.”
A higher rates calculation on investment properties could be used to provide a social housing fund at local government level, and would be fairly easy to implement. If the owner is not occupying the property, the rates kick in at a different level. Rates are already taxing property owners, what this would do is increase that tax in recognition of the capital gains that landlords benefit from, that single home buyers and renters do not.
The reason I would exclude the owner occupied property is that investors are able to claim maintenance and other expenses (including interest paid) on their properties that owner occupiers must meet out of their income.
Rate are already a tax on property ownership.
Increased rates on investment properties recognise the anomaly above, and provide a social housing fund that increases locally as number of renters increase.
The reason I would exclude the owner occupied property is that investors are able to claim maintenance and other expenses (including interest paid) on their properties that owner occupiers must meet out of their income.
Have you considered that being able to claim expenses for tax purposes is the problem?
If tenants had better security of tenancy, and a comprehensive method of ensuring that all maintenance needs are met in a timely manner – I’d consider agreeing with you. But the likelihood is that if maintenance and repairs were not able to be expensed then a large number of landlords (especially in this housing climate) would avoid paying out for as long as possible.
Not all homeowners are speculative purchasers.
My partner and I bought a home for reasons other than capital gain. Stability of housing for one ( had been moved on from rentals due to increased rents more than once).
But owning also provided the opportunity to do other things that are unable to be done in a lot of rented homes:
– Planting trees and gardens,
– Having several people staying with us over the years while they get on their feet,
– Looking after family pets for friends and family while they go away.
None of this would be possible in a rented home, unless we were very lucky to find a very relaxed and accommodating landlord.
Any more taxing on a household like ours (especially for capital gains that we have no practical or financial benefit from unless we sell and don’t require another home), and our precarious balance of finances would break.
But the likelihood is that if maintenance and repairs were not able to be expensed then a large number of landlords (especially in this housing climate) would avoid paying out for as long as possible.
They’re called slumlords and they already exist and are in NZ.
None of this would be possible in a rented home, unless we were very lucky to find a very relaxed and accommodating landlord.
And what if you had a state rental that was lifetime lease, allowed you to plant trees, gardens and do renovations as well as kept the place well maintained?
Again, all the problems that people have with rentals and the tax regime that allows a few to dodge paying tax is private ownership.
“And what if you had a state rental that was lifetime lease, allowed you to plant trees, gardens and do renovations as well as kept the place well maintained?
If that were possible Draco, I’d be living there.
But until we have a cross party consensus on the importance of affordable, healthy, secure housing, we will continue to have our communities broken up. For the moment, I – and many others do what we can with what we have.
I don’t think that’s necessary Molly. Simply assessing them for tax each year, and collecting it, would do the trick IMO.
As it stands investors are leveraging off their capital gains to borrow more money to buy more properties. If they had to pay tax on those gains they’d instead be borrowing a third of it to pay the tax. That would lower the demand for property and get the housing inflation down…. and boost the tax coffers.
Morgan’s scheme looks unworkable to me, can’t say I’m taken with the theory either but its the practice that looks unwinnable.
1. Seems reasonable to me.
2. Businesses are supposed to collapse if they can’t maintain themselves. That’s the whole point of capitalism. It’s not up to the rest of us to keep them going.
3. Foreign investment needs to be banned as it’s detrimental to society.
4. No it doesn’t. If anything, it encourages high capital investment as the high investment is more likely to return greater amounts. It’s our low wages that are encouraging low capital investment now.
5. We already have that happening now. The solution is proper regulation.
6. So we should never try new ideas?
7. I’m pretty sure that Morgan has an answer to that as well.
Personally I favour a capital gains tax on all assets
I think that Morgan’s CCT is a much better idea. Done well it would make it impossible to be asset rich, cash poor which would be good for the economy and our society.
There’s plenty of examples from other jurisdictions to learn from.
Yeah, there are. One of those lessons is that a standard CGT doesn’t really work.
To be honest Draco, I was expecting you to advocate getting rid of private ownership completely and then the question becomes moot. 🙂
“One of those lessons is that a standard CGT doesn’t really work.”
What do you mean by works? No, a CGT on it’s own doesn’t prevent bubbles. All I really see it doing is helping make sure the owners of capital eventually contribute something towards the society that helps those assets increase in value. Collecting it at time of sale (when the sellers have the cash in hand) doesn’t feel punitive in the way the proposed CCT (or the existing FIF tax) does feel punitive by demanding the payment whether or not you’ve got the cashflow to support it. ( I realise you would be all for setting up systems that made asset-holders feel punished regularly, but trust me very few people agree with you on that).
“So we should never try new ideas?”. When we try to reinvent a wheel, it seems we regularly come unstuck with all kinds of unintended consequences. If there’s models from elsewhere we can learn from, why not copy the best aspects?
Doesn’t prevent bubbles and doesn’t prevent the rich from avoiding their obligations.
All I really see it doing is helping make sure the owners of capital eventually contribute something towards the society that helps those assets increase in value.
Do they truly increase in value?
Collecting it at time of sale (when the sellers have the cash in hand) doesn’t feel punitive in the way the proposed CCT (or the existing FIF tax) does feel punitive by demanding the payment whether or not you’ve got the cashflow to support it.
That’s part and parcel of our chosen market system. If you don’t have the cash then you just don’t have the item.
I realise you would be all for setting up systems that made asset-holders feel punished regularly
Completely wrong. I want to make it so that people can’t afford to have can’t assets in the first place.
If there’s models from elsewhere we can learn from, why not copy the best aspects?
I’d say that Morgan’s CCT is based upon the old CGT. What you’re saying is that we shouldn’t try this small change because it hasn’t been done before. Under such stupidity the wheel would never have been invented.
“I’d say that Morgan’s CCT is based upon the old CGT. What you’re saying is that we shouldn’t try this small change because it hasn’t been done before. Under such stupidity the wheel would never have been invented.”
Morgan’s CCT is very close to the Foreign Investment Fund tax introduced by Cullen, as far as I can tell. I pay it every year, and it’s a real pain and I certainly wouldn’t make any new investment into anything covered by it.
I’ve also paid Capital Gains taxes in the US (and will again in the future unless Trump manages to do away with them). It’s only a minor hassle, and doesn’t feel unfairly punitive the way the FIF tax does. Potential liability for CG taxes certainly wouldn’t stop me investing in something.
“Fake news” is a specific subset of the attempted deceptions around us all the time, but the pushers and beneficiaries of fake news are trying make the idea of fake news meaningless by calling everything fake news.
It all just reinforces the importance of fact-checking, researching the credibility of the source, keeping the bullshit detector on high alert at all times, looking at everything with a cynical view that some agenda is being pushed.
“On Twitter, some were quick to suggest the President Elect followed in the company of Hitler, Stalin and Putin who had also received the iconic title.
… The magazine’s annual award names the person who has had the “greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, The Ebola Fighters, The Pope, President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Former President George W Bush, and Julian Assange have also won the title before.”
“On Twitter, some were quick to suggest the President Elect followed in the company of Hitler, Stalin, George W. Bush, Putin, and Obama who had also received the iconic title.”
—There you go, Marty, I’ve fixed up that first sentence to remove the reflexive self-censorship and dishonesty.
A near perfect summation – from an Australian, in a British newspaper – of John Key and John Key’s New Zealand.
“…Key was like a Tony Blair of the South Seas: a certain level of personal charisma and a socially inclusive façade allowed both Key and Blair to sell the nasty side of neoliberalism…”
You’d never get NZ political journalists with insight like this. As their reactions of shock indicate, most of them were firmly besotted by John Key’s cham right to the moment he basically told them to all fuck off.
So what was the nasty side of neo-liberalism he was selling?
High growth rate (3.4%)
Low unemployment (less than 5%)
Budget surpluses
NZers returning home
Infrastructure spending
Majority of NZers saying the country is going in right direction
So long as the Left are obsessed by the term “neo-liberalism,” they will loose. It shows a disconnect with the mood of the public.
If you want to win focus on the pragmatic, the things that actually influence voters, not ideological labels.
You really do talk tosh. You need to pay a lot more attention to world events Wayne.
The supporters of the neoliberal establishment have been in trouble all this year.
Heard of Brexit?
Heard of Trump?
Heard of the Italian referendum?
It is clearly the supporters of the neo-liberal establishment who have been shown in 2016 to have a disconnect with the mood of the public.
Here is some reading for you…on the assumption you are actually uninformed as opposed to willfully spinning on behalf of your masters.
Did you read the piece that Sanctuary linked? It not only critiques John Key’s leadership, it also briefly explores the prevailing narrative that fed his popularity, …they kept voting Key in because they believed in the equation that “good with money” equals “morally upstanding” and further suggested that the left will only gain traction when they are able to successfully counter this idea. According to the author, …this money story not only has currency, it is the currency of the reigning monetarist fiscal discourse.
One alternative story is to return “the broader public good’ to the position that “the monetarist fiscal discourse” now occupies. Your list suggests that the public good is being served within the current framework, but that is only true if you draw the line firmly behind the heels of the comfortable middle class, and accept that hardship and insecurity for those outside of the fold is “worth it.” And since you tend to dismiss those who privilege the public good as “hard left” you can hardly complain if they dismiss your lot as “neoliberal.”
NZers returning home – To do with the fact that the global economy is failing perhaps, or maybe they are returning home on student visas.
Infrastructure spending – Is it effective infrastructure spending, or appropriate? Doesn’t seem to be the case.
Majority of NZers saying the country is going in right direction
I don’t understand how often this is used as justification. If, as a teenager I hid the underage drinking and jumping out the window from my parents, and then listened to them praise me, then I wouldn’t use that as approval of my behaviour – just blissful ignorance.
The lack of transparency and information sharing (not withstanding Dirty Politics and journalist shaming) by this government has resulted in the same.
Nothing to be proud of, and definitely not something to to try pass off as informed support.
The nasty side of neo-liberalism is apparent to all who value humans over economic growth, and community and environment over short-term profit and long-term consequences.
Growth driven by excessive immigration, housing price rises, and earthquakes. The real measure, per capita, is negative.
Unemployment is only low, because National counts one hour a week as employment.
Budget fudges. With current account and social deficits increased to cover it.
Infrastructure spending. I wish. Roads of significance to the trucking industry is similar to spending on buggy whip factories.
“Country going in right direction”. I have to congratulate National on the effectiveness of their propaganda. Even the Neo-liberal cheer leaders in treasury think National is heading for disaster.
Lastly. Key has headed for the lifeboats before the ship sinks.
Where are the Headlines? Surely there should be ones like:
National Party Leadership Battle splits Caucus!
Angry MPs Dispute Leadership Plans.
Leadership Battles Rips Caucus Apart.
Will be Years Before National Party Revives Credibility After Bitter Infighting.
Probably because its going to be over rather quickly, which is smart thinking on Nationals part. How can you really have those type of headlines when the result is going to be known on Monday/
Sure the ructions after will prove to be more then interesting but theres simply not enough time for those type of headlines to be used.
Love Granny propaganda (sarc) – even when the Leader resigned it’s all good press for Natz candidates. Not a peep about Collins and all her transgressions and Double dipper English!!
“Bennett said her relationship with English was “fantastic” and described him as “awe-inspiring”. The two work together on finance and social housing, and they are part of the top tier of ministers, called the “Kitchen Cabinet”. But English has also worked closely with Bridges on Auckland’s transport problems.
In a sign of a potentially tense contest, Bridges said he would make a better deputy than Bennett because he marked a complete generational change. Bridges came into Parliament three years later than Bennett, in 2008.”
In spite of this they still have to run spiteful anti Labour articles such as Claire Trevett’s
“100 not out: Labour party battles for its political future”
Yes true, I’m assuming it will be sorted by Monday, like its a fait accompli kind of thing especially since the next budget surplus is supposed to be a whopper
It might not of course, however if I was a betting man I’d bet it’ll be over on Monday…the puckish side of me would like to see it continue on for a while though 🙂
Bill at the helm of a leaking, bloated tanker heading for the reefs. His crew! Oh dear! And First Mate! A cargo of rancid fat and snake oil. Oh dear, oh dear!
Fortunately (unfortunately) there’s just enough momentum for the good ship National to make it to the port of the 2017 election win, thanks to a budget surplus and the assistance of the tugboat of NZFirst and the tugboat of another bye-election Labour can’t afford
After that there may be some slight cause for concern 🙂
It’s as though the All Blacks were facing their most critical test match and were reliant on their one star player upon whom success depended, let’s call him, “John Richie”, when an hour before kick off, John declares that he is not going to play, he’s talking his ball and going home, because his girlfriend want to spend quality time with him.
Yeah imagine what would happen to the All Blacks if Richie, Dan, Kevin, Tony, Ma’a and Conrad left all at the same time taking over 700 caps and all that experience with them 🙂
what you are eluding to might be true , if it wasn’t for the fact that the rugby equivalents of parmjeet ,misa fia and tobbacy todd wouldn’t make the taumarunui eels team let alone the the all blacks up incomers
Well I was linking the tier 1 test record to a record fourth term for National but please tell me you aren’t suggesting Labour is like the Irish rugby team
Well, the Irish team currently has a 50% win record against the All Blacks in its past two encounters (aren’t stats wonderful- a bit like Treasury and Budget figures).
The Irish team has charm, wit and size.
It embraces the whole of Irish society, north and south, inclusively.
Like the Left in general the Irish have got the best songs.
And lastly, they especially despise the English!
So, Puckish Rogue, in the best sense of fun, some great parallels between the NZ Labour Party and the Irish Rugby team of very recent history! 😉
Disclaimer: though my moniker is Mac1 there is no blarney or bias in this summation, at all at all at all.
I was speaking to a CYFS worker just yesterday, and those in her office are spending much of their time coming up to the holidays looking for motels to place children. When I asked who was there to provide caregiving, she shrugged her shoulders and said “Who?”.
Molly it’s all about physical assets, such as motels and the buying and selling of them. The actual social part of it, does not appear in the neoliberal manuals so just sort of falls off the radar. People are not considered assets under neoliberalism they are just vehicles of loss .
Similar to the conference centres (to create jobs but the job bit is the fudge, in fact rather than create jobs for locals you just import workers in because they are cheaper, then you have a housing crisis to solve to house all the new people etc), the homeless crisis, (rezone land and then let the market do ‘it’s thing’, the immediate housing is irrelevant), etc etc.
More grievous ignorance of sports history in the media. Morning Report, RNZ National, Thursday 8 December 2016, 8:25 a.m.
This morning featured a report from Indira Stewart of the Pacific Radio Network, stating that Joseph Parker and David Tua are the “only two New Zealanders to have ever fought for the World Heavyweight title.”
That is nonsense, of course. On Thursday 26 July 1928 Gisborne’s own Tom Heeney fought Gene Tunney for the title at Yankee Stadium. The fight was stopped in the 11th round.
Neither Susie Ferguson nor Guyon Espiner seemed to notice, and simply carried on with the next item.
For those who, unlike Indira Stewart, care to know something about boxing history, here’s a tape of the fight…
Assuming you don’t have access to the same resources RNZ have its an easy error to make, unless you come from Timaru of course in which case there’s no excuse 🙂
Ok then we’ll just turn a blind eye to the frauds then because somebody is making a short term buck and it will expose the governments underfunding of education, so they are doing nothing and leaving the short term housing issues and longer term problem of all our fraudster residents to another government … from Granny
“Yet it seems no one can really tackle the student visa rort because we now depend on it.
The country makes $4.28 billion a year from international students, our fourth biggest industry behind dairy, tourism and meat. Put aside legitimate questions over how much of that money stays in New Zealand and circulates in the wider economy, as opposed to the immigrants themselves. If we turned off the tap tomorrow – the Government’s nightmare scenario after the sudden collapse of the Chinese market in 2003 – many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town. Even reputable education providers would go broke and most polytechnics and universities could not make ends meet with domestic students alone. Economic activity would also take a hit, as international students are doing the difficult, low-paid jobs that most New Zealanders avoid – at least until the students get their residence visa.
In short, fundamental changes are unlikely to come from the top because too many powerful interests are benefiting from the current system, despite its obvious flaws. The only hope is for more honest people within the student visa scam to stand up and be counted.”
If we turned off the tap tomorrow … many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town. Even reputable education providers would go broke and most polytechnics and universities could not make ends meet with domestic students alone.
Gosh, that would be a disaster! Good job there’s no proposal on the table to ban international education outright then, eh? Cleaning up the industry would make it worth less, but would still leave universities, polytechs and schools teaching a lot of international students.
The actual reason the government won’t do anything about the scam is in this bit:
…international students are doing the difficult, low-paid jobs that most New Zealanders avoid – at least until the students get their residence visa.
That is, the success of this scam to bypass our immigration standards and ensure a supply of cheap, easily-exploited labour for National’s constituents, with downstream effects on local pay and conditions, is the government’s main reason for not cleaning up the international education “industry.”
“many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town.”
What happened to the cherished Number 8 approach to solving problems with innovation? Empty office buildings in Queen Street + homeless in Auckland should = conversion to family apartments and a community revitalisation of Auckland central.
As for the other, fund education to sustainable levels.
Gareth Morgan tells Paul Henry the truth.
And Paul Henry hates being shown up for being the selfish git he is.
Morgan to Henry…
“You’re telling me that you don’t give a toss about New Zealand being fair. ‘Pull up the ladder, Jack, and the rest of you can get stuffed’. What sort of New Zealand values do you have, man?”
“You’re just a tax loophole cowboy, that’s all you are,”
“I’m about making New Zealand fair. You’re self-centred and you don’t give a toss about being fair in New Zealand.”
“Don’t tell an economist what a reverse mortgage is mate.”
“In media soundbytes are important, that’s why your sort of media is dying mate.”
And Henry’s retort, with his expensive house, European car and entitled lifestyle threatened.
Morgan is a communist.
Watch it. It’s great to see the tosser Henry being dealt to.
Morgan needs to become less defensive when he’s discussing his party’s policies.
I certainly support his Comprehensive Capital Tax. If you have an asset that returns some benefit then it should be taxed at the commensurate income of that benefit.
I agree Morgan did not help his case, loosing his cool, playing the man not the ball, never a good look unless your of a Paul persuasion and just want to see Henery abused
I do not totally agree with Morgan, but at least he has us discussing these things, and his heart is in the right place.
I don’t see what a CCT can do, that conventional inheritance, income and CGT combined, along with getting rid of private trusts immunity from claims, cannot.
Only someone as truely ignorant as Henry, can have such confidence.
I don’t blame Morgan for getting annoyed with the bumptious twit.
I don’t see what a CCT can do, that conventional inheritance, income and CGT combined, along with getting rid of private trusts immunity from claims, cannot.
1. Gets rid of land banking. The land will have to produce an income year to year else it’s just going to cost too much. A CGT may get the tax once the land is sold but it doesn’t prevent it.
2. Encourages people living in large, expensive houses to shift into smaller houses with smaller land thus freeing up more land for housing thus encouraging density increases.
I don’t blame Morgan for getting annoyed with the bumptious twit.
Neither do I but he shouldn’t have shown it. His sitting back, hands tightly crossed before him shows that he’s on the defensive and is exactly the reaction that Henry was going for.
He needs to be able to sit there, calm, arms open, answer the questions and, yes, call Henry a bumbling, selfish idiot.
If he can’t handle Henry how is going to handle the rest of the pressure that’ll come, its all well and good to say what you think should happen and get nice media fluff pieces but hes thrown his hat in the ring and now what he says is going to be picked over with a fine tooth comb and he’d better be ready with some answers
No he doesn’t. and he’s most definitely not a communist. He’s very much a capitalist – he’s just one that sees many of the limitations that the way capitalism operates and how it doesn’t pay it’s full costs and puts those costs on the poor instead.
I’d have thought he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to include the family home in this, I can’t imagine any political party thinking that’s an idea the voters will go for, not even the Greens
Yes I’ve seen first hand how paranoid and touchy the entitled property class is about their inflating asset values.
They expect to sit on their million dollar+ houses and bank capital gains of 80K per year for ever. If anyone suggests this model is neither sustainable nor fair then they are shouted out of the room.
This unreasonable, greedy behaiour is sowing the seds of class war. I suppose this is the ugly side of Pakeha culture. They stole Aotearoa in the first place and now (like some kind of landed gentry), they expect the serfs to slave away paying high levels of tax and rent. Wealthy boomers have come to expect a well paid retirement with no means testing or CGT.
Well the average house price is $600 000.00 but please go ahead and suggest to the voters that taxing the family home, the house the retired have worked for entire lives to own (while paying taxes) is a really good idea
Why should some people (who have also worked their whole lives) have to keep paying high rents for ever, while others who managed to climb into property ownership get free accommodation and tax breaks and full super without any form of means test?
Not sustainable, not fair, and kinda gross in the middle of a housing crisis
what about Maori land Ropata… how many Maori (or Pakeha for that matter) have the income to pay yearly taxes on their capital?
All that will happen is what is already happening, Kiwis can’t afford to live in their own country with all the taxes and the low wages and foreigners will buy us up cheap.
That’s where Morgan’s ideas falls down.
I’m more into the Sanders and Corbyn approaches on Robin hood taxes on banks and transaction style taxes.
I am not a policy analyst nor am I a spokesperson for Morgans TOP vehicle. I just think he talks a lot of sense and in principle I agree with his fair minded ideas.
Morgan’s tax is aimed at the top few% of wealthy property holders who are banking tax free capital gains. He reckons his LVT will be either neutral or advantageous for most people because he will also drop income taxes.
Anyway I think this party is just a way for him to get the ideas of his Foundation into mainstream media. In the current volatile economic climate his is a vital counter narrative to the standard capitalist dogma we swim in.
Remember this is in the context of an unprecedented housing crisis, Morgan’s ideas are not cooked up in a vacuum.
I think he got frustrated that Henry kept coming up with stupid examples, but there was no need for Morgan to stoop to Henry’s level of childish insults.
Wow! a strange thing happened, somehow, somewhere, someone came to the conclusion that for true comparison of two different systems, they need to be measured with the same criteria.
But our favorite hologram disagrees, seems if there’s money involved, and a contract to enforce well…………. it’s just a bit confusing for the average Joe/Jane and at that point we should bow out and leave it to him and the other “experts”.
I was going to put up a link to the interview on Natard this morning with Paula Bennett and how she will make a truly awesome Dep Leader of the Natzional Party but the website appears to be having access problems….but never mind, I’ll do a Morrissey and give y’all a transcript.
Ms. Bennett….what qualities do you believe you have for the Deputy Leaders role?
hahahahahahahahahahahah….pause for gurgling breathhahahahahahahahahahah
This is a fascinating article about how a gunman attacked a pizza parlour in Washington after conspiracy theorists claimed Hilary Clinton was running a child sex operation out of it. It argues that mis-information is being used as a political tool.
In 1938 President Roosevelt warned that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” The Democrats saw concentrated corporate power as a form of dictatorship. They broke up giant banks and businesses and chained the chainstores. What Roosevelt, Brandeis and Patman knew has been forgotten by those in power, including powerful journalists. But not by the victims of this system.
One of the answers to Trump, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğan, Salvini, Duterte, Le Pen, Farage and the politics they represent is to rescue democracy from transnational corporations. It is to defend the crucial political unit that is under assault by banks, monopolies and chainstores: community. It is to recognise that there is no greater hazard to peace between nations than a corporate model that crushes democratic choice.
Since the 1980s we’ve let the corporations rule and it’s become obvious that it’s detrimental to us as a community.
So true, the NZ government was seduced and subverted in 1984 and now it’s become a schizoid institution that purports to represent the people of New Zealand, but is instead complicit in their exploitation.
It’s not exactly secret, all this has been well documented (see cafca.org.nz), but since it has been a slow and ongoing process the sale of NZ piece by piece to foreign interests doesn’t make the news cycle.
Just read the whole thing — how depressing. Maybe democracy was just a temporary aberration and the natural state of the human race is feudalism and internecine tribal conflict.
When the USA was founded corporations were deliberately outlawed because the founders had seen what they did to Europe. Sadly that didn’t last long
Democracy does seem to be more of an aberration with dictatorships and oligarchies ruling most of the time. Of course, the oligarchies and dictatorships always collapse due to the hubris and greed of the rich. And when they do we go back to being a democracy which then builds up society which the rich then take over and destroy.
It seems to be an iterative process as we learn more our democracy gets better but, unfortunately, we haven’t learned to prevent people from getting rich yet.
Thanks for that, xanthe. Don’t expect anything on this to appear on our television news this evening. (Time constraints due to extended banter between the autocue readers and the sports guy and the weather guy.)
The report showed Vanguard Military School on Auckland’s North Shore and Te Kura Hourua O Whangarei Terenga Paraoa reported they had met their 2014 NCEA leaver targets – but when the figures were analysed, they did not.
Vanguard reported a 100 per cent pass rate for NCEA Level 2. However, when revised in line with NCEA standards it dropped to just 60 per cent. It met Level 1 standards.
At Te Kura Hourua, neither Level 1 or Level 2 NCEA standards were met once revised: Level 1 dropped from 82 per cent to 77.8 per cent, and Level 2 dropped from 80 per cent to 55.6 per cent.
Labour Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins, who obtained the documents, said they showed charter schools have been “massively overstating” their pass rates when compared with the rest of the country’s schools.
A trust with close ties to the Government – including former All Black and National Party supporter Michael Jones – was given a $500,000 charter school contract. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Trust given $500,000 charter school contract without going to tender
Minister of Education Hon Hekia Parata. Photo / Dean Purcell
Charter schools getting performance bonus despite not meeting targets
I hate the concept of charter schools, but then I met Alwyn Poole. Photo / Steven McNicholl
Peter Lyons: Charter schools deeply flawed, but not this one
“In one case a school reported a 93.3 per cent pass rate when the facts show only 6.7 per cent of leavers achieved NCEA Level 2,” he said.
“Brought into line” means there’s been a corrupt system working and now it’s been outed.
Hekia Pariah and the Epsom Idiot have been spinning crap about it today to try to make people with ordinary intelligence believe it is something it wasn’t. I didn’t need to go to a charter school to recognise bullshit when I see it.
Ok so Little was safe until the next election because, lets all be honest now, Little was going to lose to Key but that was keeping him safe because anyone else would have to lost to Key as well
Now Keys gone and English is in charge, English who has lost before, English who isn’t exactly Mr Charisma, English who is beatable…Little might win and that’ll mean six years and then National will be back in so that’s a long time to wait if you’re an MP
But Little hasn’t improved Labours numbers, in fact it’d be fair to say Labours numbers, being positive, stagnating and if National don’t drop below 40% and NZFirst stay above 10% then that’s another term for National
So in light of the new developments is there someone in Labour that will answer the call to arms?
On a completely unrelated matter, what are the chances Robertson is going to be firing up the ol’ BBQ over Summer? 🙂
If there’s one thing to be learned from the Trump, Key, Cameron phenomena it is that policy is totally irrelevant and in fact it switches people off. What people vote for is a smiley wavey confident snake oil sales person. Even Obama and Trudeau benefited from this mindless herd behaviour. (Scott Adams made some excellent observations of Trump’s persuasion techniques and NLP type shit)
Maybe Labour needs to put up All Blacks and TV personalities instead of serious candidates.
I kind of agree with this but you’d be hard pressed to find a Labour supporting All Black although Chris Laidlaw is probably still hanging around if you want to use him
Labour is appearing more solid by the day, all the dead wood is being pruned game on pucky , the planet key lotus eaters will awake from their stupor in time for the right man to be the next PM.
i think they are addicted to the property price inflation koolaid and will keep drinking it until NZ sinks into the sea. or some other unthinkable disaster happens like “interest rates”
CV will be delighted to learn Trump’s rumored pick for FDA director reckons big pharma should release new drugs, whether they work or not.
/
O’Neill also could push the agency in new directions. In a 2014 speech, he said he supported reforming FDA approval rules so that drugs could hit the market after they’ve been proven safe, but without any proof that they worked, something he called “progressive approval.”
“We should reform FDA so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety — and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety,” O’Neill said in a speech at an August 2014 conference called Rejuvenation Biotechnology. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
Hosking’s done his “Best PM Ever” shit now he’s checking out the Blinglish (invented word) ‘rectalia’. He’s a bit shameless with his rat-up-drainpipe styles is Hosk’.
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 ...
It’s being explained as an “inadvertent error”. However, National MP David MacLeod’s excuse for failing to disclose $178,000 in donations for his election campaign last year is not necessarily enough to prevent some serious consequences. A Police investigation is now likely, and the result of his non-disclosure could even see ...
The relentless drone coming out of the Prime Minister and his deputy for a million days now has been that the last government was just hosing money all over the show and now at last the grownups are in charge and shutting that drunken sailor stuff down. There is a word ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to riot-torn New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. Today’s flight will carry around 50 passengers with the most ...
Precious declaration saysYours is yours and mine you leave alone nowPrecious declaration saysI believe all hope is dead no longerTick tick tick Boom!Unexploded ordnance. A veritable minefield. A National caucus with a large number of unknowns, candidates who perhaps received little in the way of vetting as the party jumped ...
Rex Ahdar writes – The Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, likes to trace his political lineage back to the pioneers of parliamentary Maoridom. I will refer to these as the ‘big four’ or better still, the Four Knights. Just as ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper ...
That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? ...
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and spoke about the upcoming US elections and what the possibility of another Trump presidency means for the US role in world affairs. We also spoke about the problems Joe … Continue reading → ...
Hi,Two years ago I briefly featured in Justin Pemberton’s Web of Chaos documentary, which touched on things like QAnon during the pandemic.I mostly prattled on about how intertwined conspiracy narratives are with Evangelical Christian thinking, something Webworm’s explored in the past.(The doc is available on TVNZ+, if you’re not in ...
The Government is leaving the entire construction sector and the community housing sector in limbo. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government released the long-awaited Bill English-led review of Kāinga Ora yesterday, but delayed key decisions on its build plan and how to help community housing providers (CHPs) build ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Farmers who can’t sleep, worrying they’ll lose everything amid increasing drought. Youth struggling with depression over a future that feels hopeless. Indigenous people grief-stricken over devastated ecosystems. For all these people and more, climate change is taking a clear toll ...
New Zealand’s relationship with China is becoming harder to define, and with that comes a worry that a deteriorating political relationship could spill over into the economic relationship. It is about more than whether New Zealand will join Pillar Two of Aukus, though the Chinese Ambassador, more or less, suggested ...
Been hoping we would see something like this from Sir Geoffrey Palmer. This is excellent.The present Bill goes further than the National Development Act 1979 in stripping away procedures designed to ensure that environmental issues are properly considered. The 1979 approach was not acceptable then and this present approach is ...
He’s Got The Moxie: Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.IT’S ONE OF THE ...
Tree-huggers may well accuse the Government of giving them the fingers, after Energy Minister Simeon Brown announced new measures to protect powerlines from trees, rather than measures to protect trees from powerlines. It can be no coincidence, surely, that this has been announced at the same as Fisheries Minister Shane Jones ...
Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour ...
Barrister Gary Judd KC’s complaint to the Regulatory Review Committee has sparked a fierce debate about the place of tikanga Māori – or Māori customs, values and spiritual beliefs – in the law.Judd opposes the New Zealand Council of Legal Education’s plans to make teaching tikanga compulsory in the legal curriculum.AUT ...
Alwyn Poole writes – In New Zealand we have approximately 460 high schools. The gaps between the schools that produce the best results for students and those at the other end of the spectrum are enormous.In terms of the data for their leavers, the top 30 schools have ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be ...
Brian Eastonwrites – The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am ...
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open. ...
On Thursday 17 May, the Mayoral Proposal for Auckland’s Long Term Plan 2024-2034 was passed by Auckland Council, 20 to 1. It is set to be formally adopted by the Governing Body at its June 27th meeting. The entire process took 8 hours, with the vast majority of that time ...
Pakanga o muaTukua, ka ngaroPuritia taku ringaNgaro ana te ara ki pae rauThere's a battle aheadMany battles are lostBut you'll never see the end of the roadWhile you're travelling with meLate yesterday morning I headed to Wynyard Quarter to see Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick give their pre-budget State of ...
Maybe the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister expected the worst, so they mounted a stout defence of the Budget tax cuts to their party faithful at a party conference over the weekend. In turn, they were greeted with applause, which, though it may have been less than wildly enthusiastic, ...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 12, 2024 thru Sat, May 18, 2024. Story of the week “The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and ...
TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
Te Pāti Māori have launched a petition to stop the repeal of Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act. This announcement comes prior to the first reading of the Section 7AA repeal bill in Parliament today. “Section 7AA forces the Government to adhere to Te Tiriti o Waitangi with respect ...
The Government has yet again failed to do the one thing that needs to happen to ensure houses can be built – commit to ongoing funding, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Kia ora koutou, good morning, and zao shang hao. Thank you Fran for the opportunity to speak at the 2024 China Business Summit – it’s great to be here today. I’d also like to acknowledge: Simon Bridges - CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. His Excellency Ambassador - Wang ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing them ...
The Coalition Government will introduce legislation this year that will enable roadside drug testing as part of our commitment to improve road safety and restore law and order, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributing factor in fatal road crashes in New Zealand. In ...
The Government has announced a series of immediate actions in response to the independent review of Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “Kāinga Ora is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5 billion of expenditure each year. It ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour is pleased that Pseudoephedrine can now be purchased by the general public to protect them from winter illness, after the coalition government worked swiftly to change the law and oversaw a fast approval process by Medsafe. “Pharmacies are now putting the medicines back on their ...
Tēnā koutou katoa. Da jia hao. Good morning everyone. Prime Minister Luxon, your excellency, a great friend of New Zealand and my friend Ambassador Wang, Mayor of what he tells me is the best city in New Zealand, Wayne Brown, the highly respected Fran O’Sullivan, Champion of the Auckland business ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Reacting to today’s Budget Speech from Labour’s Finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “It is encouraging to see that one of Labour’s stated priorities is to focus on creating ‘a level ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Turner, System Lead, Sustainable Economies, Climateworks Centre atk work/Shutterstock In the budget last week, the government was keen to talk about its efforts to turn Australia into a renewable superpower under the umbrella of the Future Made in Australia policies. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Opposition Leader Peter Dutton might have done us a favour. As part of his budget reply speech on Thursday night he promised to stop foreigners buying existing Australian homes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Maguire, Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle The request by Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders is a significant step in the effort to ...
RNZ Pacific A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia. Professor David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Renwick, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand Fonterra caught the business world by surprise last week with plans to sell off its consumer brands and businesses – including supermarket mainstays such as Anchor, Fresh’n Fruity and Mainland. The move ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Small, Senior lecturer, Above the Bar School of Educational Studies and Leadership, University of Canterbury With an air force plane on its way to rescue New Zealanders stranded by the violent uprising in New Caledonia, many familiar with the island’s history ...
A New Zealand government plane is heading to New Caledonia to assist with bringing New Zealanders home. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today confirmed it was the first in a series of proposed flights. Peters said the flight would carry around 50 passengers with the most pressing needs from Nouméa ...
Regional councils must focus on building meaningful and enduring relationships with iwi and hapū to support better freshwater management, says the Auditor-General in a new report. ...
Chris Glaudel, Deputy Chief Executive of Community Housing Aotearoa, sees the announcement as a step towards addressing New Zealand’s high and rising levels of homelessness by improving our approach and system to delivering affordable homes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research fellow, Middle East studies, Deakin University The death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash this week occurred during one of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s most challenging periods. Raisi, a prominent figure in the political elite, ...
The end of universal flu shot funding for under-12s is a step backwards for New Zealand child health, say experts from the University of Auckland and the University of Otago. New Zealand’s decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent ...
The PSA is taking action to force the Ministry of Education to comply with its legal obligations to do everything it can to find other roles for staff it is laying off because of the Government’s spending cuts. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, Senior Lecturer & Research Fellow, Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University Netflix There has been much excitement in the lead up to the first four episodes of Bridgerton’s season three, featuring leading couple Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa De Bortoli, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research Taylor Flowe/Unsplash, CC BY Australian teenagers have more disruptive maths classrooms and experience bullying at greater levels than the OECD average, a new report shows. But in better news, Australian ...
Poet, editor and former bookseller Jane Arthur’s debut children’s novel Brown Bird is the story of a shy, self-conscious 11-year-old – partly based on her childhood self – venturing out of her quiet comfort zone. Children’s books are close to my heart because mostly I believe that adults are rings ...
Peter Jackson is bringing Lord of the Rings back to Wellington, producing two new Gollum films in Wellington. Madeleine Chapman (Gollum) argues with Madeleine Chapman (Smeagol) about it. First of all, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Of course it’s great news!I don’t know, it gives me ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a part-time media librarian and superannuitant explains how he spends and saves. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Male Age: 65 Ethnicity: EuropeanRole: Media librarian ...
The Government’s Environmental Select Committee is refusing to engage meaningfully when it matters the most over new fast tracking environmental legislation, says Ngāti Ruanui. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Marsh, Senior Research Fellow in Public Health, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Christoph Soeder/dpa New Zealand’s decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent gains in uptake. And it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexis Anja Kallio, Deputy Director (Research), Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University Many young people in contact with the justice system come from backgrounds of extreme poverty, parental abuse or neglect, parental incarceration and disrupted education. These complex traumas often manifest as addictions ...
The agency was found to be underperforming and ‘not financially viable’, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A damning report A government-ordered ...
Asia Pacific Report For more than 76 years, Palestinians have resisted occupation, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, culminating in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Yet in the midst of this catastrophic seven months of “hell on earth”, it is a paradox that there exists an extraordinary oasis of peace and nature. ...
You’ll never set foot in one. But its emissions still effect you. Shanti Mathias reports on a campaign to make private jet owners pay for their emissions in some way. The private jet passengers saunter down the red carpet, wearing sunglasses and heels; paparazzi cameras flash. The sky is blue, ...
Quality teachers back on the front line can only be a good thing. One of the difficult things we teach in senior English classes at secondary school is the development of an idea. This involves deepening your argument, without instead “going sideways” and merely adding examples while repeating the same ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 21 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: As an indication of the eye-watering sums involved for the mega-prison plans announced two weeks ago by Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell, consider that $932 million has already been spent on a separate facility due to open at Waikeria next year – that’s about $1.5 million for each of the ...
Opinion: People with certain types of health conditions are more likely than others to have their symptoms dismissed, minimised or disbelieved. These conditions are diagnosed based on the patient self-report of symptoms, where there is no definitive diagnostic test that can prove the existence of disease or demonstrate structural or ...
The intensity of it, ironically, can feel like bullying. Social media activism is reaching something of a peak with the war in Gaza, using the hashtag Blockout2024. It started at this year’s MetGala when influencer and model Haley Kalil was caught on video muttering ‘let them eat cake’ – suddenly ...
It’s 2011 and I am 43 years old. My partner, Christine, and I got together when I was 36. We had been friends for about 10 years before that. One of the first things I asked Christine was whether she wanted to have kids. I had just come out of ...
New Caledonia’s Tontouta International Airport remains closed, and Air New Zealand’s next scheduled flight is on Saturday — although it is not ruling out adding extra services. Air NZ’s Captain David Morgan said on Monday evening flights would only resume when they were assured of the security of the airport ...
Asia Pacific Report As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948. The 1948 Nakba . . . more than ...
Young people on the streets in New Caledonia are saying they will “never give up” pushing back against France’s hold on the Pacific territory, a Kanak journalist in Nouméa says. Pro-independence Radio Djiido’s Andre Qaeze told RNZ Pacific young people had said that “Paris must respect us” and what had ...
This episode of A View from Afar podcast was recorded live from 12:45pm May 20, 2024 (NZST). Political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine: The United States and how the world is engaging with it geopolitically.Specifically, Paul and Selwyn analyse what has changed in this regard in ...
Analysis - Power is not being abused, but it is not being well managed either. New Zealand democracy, unique and currently brittle, should be handled with greater care, Alexander Gillespie writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Forest Conservation Victoria, CC BY-NC-ND Victoria’s native forest logging industry ended on January 1 this year. The news was met with jubilation from conservationists. But did logging really ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Crosby, Professor, Monash University Rose Marinelli/ShutterstockThis article is part two of The Conversation’s “Business Basics” series where we ask leading experts to discuss key concepts in business, economics and finance. How governments should manage their budgets, and how ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole George, Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland On Sunday afternoon, Australian citizens who have been trapped in New Caledonia were called to a meeting at one of the large hotels in the capital, Noumea. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer and Socio-cultural researcher, UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia International students have come under fire from both sides of federal politics in the past week. The Albanese government introduced legislation to parliament last Thursday to put ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Renzella, Lecturer, Director of Studies (Computer Science), UNSW Sydney An example of shrimp Jesus.Shutterstock AI Generator If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua McLeod, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University Being a sport administrator comes with many perks, so it’s no surprise many want to stay in their positions as long as possible. Recently, a trend has emerged whereby leaders in sport are seeking ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland Joyisjoyful/Shutterstock If you buy your olive oil in bulk, you’ve likely been in for a shock in recent weeks. Major supermarkets have been selling olive oil for up to ...
A conversation with artist and home cook Prairie Hatchard-McGill, aka @cacioeprairie. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. A few weeks ago, I spotted Prairie strolling down Ponsonby Road at sunset, a bunch of celery tucked under her arm. She was too far away for me ...
The Haka Challenge invites anyone to learn and record the Ka Mate haka as performed by the All Blacks, to show their support for "the South Pacific's greatest truth teller". ...
At the Christchurch rally in support of Palestine, he started his hunger strike and vowed to continue until the government stops supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. ...
With Shearer gone, who will be the contenders for the Mt Albert by-election early next year?
Will be good to see Little have a safe seat. Will he move to Auckland?
I’m interested in other people’s thoughts on the fair way to tax capital. Ianmac yesterday linked to The Opportunity Party’s release on their proposed capital tax (which doesn’t have much detail). On the assumption that it’s similar to the Comprehensive Capital Income Tax that Gareth Morgan has proposed before, I’d be worried about the following unintended consequences. http://www.top.org.nz/top1?utm_campaign=top1_members&utm_medium=email&utm_source=garethmorgan
1) Social effects on the housing asset rich/cash poor. Suggested mitigations are unconvincing to me. While this is likely to be the focus of most debate, right now I’m more interested in other aspects listed below.
2) May cause collapse of businesses that would otherwise survive, from the ongoing extra cashflow required to service the capital tax.
3) Discourages foreign investment. Why would any business want to set up where they start getting taxed long before they earn a penny of profit?
4) Favours low-capital businesses, and discourages businesses from investing more capital per worker. This is already a problem causing low productivity in New Zealand, do we want to make it worse?
5) Because land is such a high-capital item, it would push farmers towards a high-intensity high-input farming model. Which is a high-pollution low-resilience model, exactly the opposite of what we want.
6) No models to learn from elsewhere. Canada had some (at much lower rates), but those seem to have been abolished.
7) Encourages the use of debt to reduce the amount of liable capital for taxation.
Personally I favour a capital gains tax on all assets (including the family home, but with a rollover provision for family homes), payable whenever there’s any kind of change of ownership of the asset. There’s plenty of examples from other jurisdictions to learn from. It’s not much of a hassle to comply (I paid Capital Gains Tax on my primary home in the US), and while it’s slow to start collecting revenue eventually it reaches the point of fairly catching income from capital.
tops plan sounds complicated and unsalable , he’s already lost my interest, i was hoping for a simplification of the tax system ,
It also seems he’s not going to try to push UBI this cycle. Which is what I would have been really interested in.
“As for a Universal Basic Income he hinted at earlier in the day, Morgan said it wouldn’t be on the cards this time.
“[That would be in] phase two, if we’re still about,” he said.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/87330737/gareth-morgans-divisive-policy-to-tackle-inequality
he just gave henry his pedigree in a mess of an interview , which was amusing but not helpful in selling his story.
Yes I’m keen for a UBI and then look at how to tax it as a secondary issue. So it seems crazy to me that UBI is not the main focus.
I think there needs to be a radical change to taxation to make sure that everyone has to pay their share. There are so many loop holes at present it makes it easy for those with more money and access to tax experts to avoid taxes. We need new ideas because the old ones only tax the middle and seem to avoid the super rich and global citizens.
We are having situations when banks are causing GFC being bailed out by tax payers and then being allowed to go on as usual and still make the rules on what’s fair to tax.
At the same time there seems to be a very punitive punishment approach to government taxation – at the end of the day it should be like a non profit co operative insurance scheme – you put money in – and then there is a basic level nobody is allowed to fall below (UBI) and then you need enough from everybody to make sure that the bills on health, education and so forth are met.
The whole premise of governments seem to be skewed with neoliberalism – that’s why we can afford Saudi sheep bribes for millions but put more and more hoops in for the most vulnerable to stop them getting a basic benefit. Wellington council can afford to pay Singapore airlines 8 million, Auckland wants to steal the harbour and put it into COO hands, but at the same time they are obsessed with cutting basic services like libraries, rubbish and keeping the berms mowed – because we can’t afford it.
Tax on the gain at sale, arbitrary taxes on capital can penalise many for holding over a long term gain with zero intent to gain from any sale or sell at all.
The funds exist from the sale and it clips the ticket as the punter has realised the profit. Effectively a transaction based tax, much easier to enforce as holdings can be hidden very easily.
Oz has had this type of CGT since the 80’s and you don’t see their right rushing to repeal it being a lot more mature in their economic management than ours.
“Tax on the gain at sale”
Some other jurisdictions have loopholes that allow avoiding capital gains taxes by such means as gifting assets to a trust, gifting assets to a charity and claiming a tax credit for the full value of the asset. Which is why I said “payable whenever there’s any kind of change of ownership”.
I like it – it only charges tax for assets that aren’t already generating sufficient taxable income to meet the threshold, so people are encouraged to use capital better. Assuming GST or income tax are reduced to offset it, most people, including most homeowners, would be better off in terms of disposable income.
Agreed, though some provision would have to be made for businesses which, though they would normally run profitably, happen to make a loss, whether through bad luck or poor management. The trouble is, many will find ways of taking advantage of such provision to avoid the tax.
” it only charges tax for assets that aren’t already generating sufficient taxable income to meet the threshold”
Do you really think it’s good to further reinforce the idea that the only value anything has is for the income that can be generated from it?
I’m also aware of several farms and small businesses where the owners are running them in a low key way just generating enough income to keep happy and not really trying to maximise returns. They’re also unusually good at looking after their staff and surroundings. Under a capital tax regime, they would become totally non-viable as is and would either need to close or start operating in a much more ruthless manner.
Do we really want to force that choice? Particularly if the alternative CGT achieves the same result in the end of getting the beneficiaries of asset price growth to share some of the gains with the society that makes those gains possible?
I’ve only read his policy document Andre so I don’t know the finer points but it looks like typical Morgan to me where he gets a bee in his bonnet and takes it too far.
With houses he appears to be targeting freehold owner-occupiers rather than investors/landlords or even those with a mortgage. His basic premise is that living in a freehold house is a form of income and should be taxed because the capital invested in the house would be taxed in any other investment scenario.
Now for those who have a mortgage it would be rather complicated to work out what their capital actually is before you could tax it. The property itself isn’t the capital, they’ve borrowed to buy it. Their capital would either be the equity or the deposit plus principal paid off. Working out the equity would be a nightmare with oodles of loopholes that investors would exploit to minimise their tax…. like they do already.
I can’t see it solving anything and it would make the system messier. A capital gains tax levied annually on investment properties is all that’s required IMO.
“A capital gains tax levied annually on investment properties is all that’s required IMO.”
A higher rates calculation on investment properties could be used to provide a social housing fund at local government level, and would be fairly easy to implement. If the owner is not occupying the property, the rates kick in at a different level. Rates are already taxing property owners, what this would do is increase that tax in recognition of the capital gains that landlords benefit from, that single home buyers and renters do not.
The reason I would exclude the owner occupied property is that investors are able to claim maintenance and other expenses (including interest paid) on their properties that owner occupiers must meet out of their income.
Rate are already a tax on property ownership.
Increased rates on investment properties recognise the anomaly above, and provide a social housing fund that increases locally as number of renters increase.
Have you considered that being able to claim expenses for tax purposes is the problem?
So?
If tenants had better security of tenancy, and a comprehensive method of ensuring that all maintenance needs are met in a timely manner – I’d consider agreeing with you. But the likelihood is that if maintenance and repairs were not able to be expensed then a large number of landlords (especially in this housing climate) would avoid paying out for as long as possible.
Not all homeowners are speculative purchasers.
My partner and I bought a home for reasons other than capital gain. Stability of housing for one ( had been moved on from rentals due to increased rents more than once).
But owning also provided the opportunity to do other things that are unable to be done in a lot of rented homes:
– Planting trees and gardens,
– Having several people staying with us over the years while they get on their feet,
– Looking after family pets for friends and family while they go away.
None of this would be possible in a rented home, unless we were very lucky to find a very relaxed and accommodating landlord.
Any more taxing on a household like ours (especially for capital gains that we have no practical or financial benefit from unless we sell and don’t require another home), and our precarious balance of finances would break.
I don’t think that would be an unusual scenario.
They’re called slumlords and they already exist and are in NZ.
And what if you had a state rental that was lifetime lease, allowed you to plant trees, gardens and do renovations as well as kept the place well maintained?
Again, all the problems that people have with rentals and the tax regime that allows a few to dodge paying tax is private ownership.
“And what if you had a state rental that was lifetime lease, allowed you to plant trees, gardens and do renovations as well as kept the place well maintained?
If that were possible Draco, I’d be living there.
But until we have a cross party consensus on the importance of affordable, healthy, secure housing, we will continue to have our communities broken up. For the moment, I – and many others do what we can with what we have.
It is possible if we all demand it.
But it will take a lot of work to bring it about.
I don’t think that’s necessary Molly. Simply assessing them for tax each year, and collecting it, would do the trick IMO.
As it stands investors are leveraging off their capital gains to borrow more money to buy more properties. If they had to pay tax on those gains they’d instead be borrowing a third of it to pay the tax. That would lower the demand for property and get the housing inflation down…. and boost the tax coffers.
Morgan’s scheme looks unworkable to me, can’t say I’m taken with the theory either but its the practice that looks unwinnable.
1. Seems reasonable to me.
2. Businesses are supposed to collapse if they can’t maintain themselves. That’s the whole point of capitalism. It’s not up to the rest of us to keep them going.
3. Foreign investment needs to be banned as it’s detrimental to society.
4. No it doesn’t. If anything, it encourages high capital investment as the high investment is more likely to return greater amounts. It’s our low wages that are encouraging low capital investment now.
5. We already have that happening now. The solution is proper regulation.
6. So we should never try new ideas?
7. I’m pretty sure that Morgan has an answer to that as well.
I think that Morgan’s CCT is a much better idea. Done well it would make it impossible to be asset rich, cash poor which would be good for the economy and our society.
Yeah, there are. One of those lessons is that a standard CGT doesn’t really work.
To be honest Draco, I was expecting you to advocate getting rid of private ownership completely and then the question becomes moot. 🙂
“One of those lessons is that a standard CGT doesn’t really work.”
What do you mean by works? No, a CGT on it’s own doesn’t prevent bubbles. All I really see it doing is helping make sure the owners of capital eventually contribute something towards the society that helps those assets increase in value. Collecting it at time of sale (when the sellers have the cash in hand) doesn’t feel punitive in the way the proposed CCT (or the existing FIF tax) does feel punitive by demanding the payment whether or not you’ve got the cashflow to support it. ( I realise you would be all for setting up systems that made asset-holders feel punished regularly, but trust me very few people agree with you on that).
“So we should never try new ideas?”. When we try to reinvent a wheel, it seems we regularly come unstuck with all kinds of unintended consequences. If there’s models from elsewhere we can learn from, why not copy the best aspects?
Doesn’t prevent bubbles and doesn’t prevent the rich from avoiding their obligations.
Do they truly increase in value?
That’s part and parcel of our chosen market system. If you don’t have the cash then you just don’t have the item.
Completely wrong. I want to make it so that people can’t afford to have can’t assets in the first place.
I’d say that Morgan’s CCT is based upon the old CGT. What you’re saying is that we shouldn’t try this small change because it hasn’t been done before. Under such stupidity the wheel would never have been invented.
“I’d say that Morgan’s CCT is based upon the old CGT. What you’re saying is that we shouldn’t try this small change because it hasn’t been done before. Under such stupidity the wheel would never have been invented.”
Morgan’s CCT is very close to the Foreign Investment Fund tax introduced by Cullen, as far as I can tell. I pay it every year, and it’s a real pain and I certainly wouldn’t make any new investment into anything covered by it.
I’ve also paid Capital Gains taxes in the US (and will again in the future unless Trump manages to do away with them). It’s only a minor hassle, and doesn’t feel unfairly punitive the way the FIF tax does. Potential liability for CG taxes certainly wouldn’t stop me investing in something.
“Fake news” is a specific subset of the attempted deceptions around us all the time, but the pushers and beneficiaries of fake news are trying make the idea of fake news meaningless by calling everything fake news.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/12/stop_calling_everything_fake_news.html
It all just reinforces the importance of fact-checking, researching the credibility of the source, keeping the bullshit detector on high alert at all times, looking at everything with a cynical view that some agenda is being pushed.
sometimes I wish the news was fake
“On Twitter, some were quick to suggest the President Elect followed in the company of Hitler, Stalin and Putin who had also received the iconic title.
… The magazine’s annual award names the person who has had the “greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, The Ebola Fighters, The Pope, President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Former President George W Bush, and Julian Assange have also won the title before.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11762705
funny one that ‘TIME Person of the year’.
“On Twitter, some were quick to suggest the President Elect followed in the company of Hitler, Stalin, George W. Bush, Putin, and Obama who had also received the iconic title.”
—There you go, Marty, I’ve fixed up that first sentence to remove the reflexive self-censorship and dishonesty.
http://www.curmudgeon-alley.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ywc-logo-design.png
Just quoted not dishonest thanks
So if its a “quote” its not dishonest. That sums up how the media deliberatly lies and misleads. Its bullshit.
Nice, still being classy too…
You quoted it without mentioning your reservations about its extreme bias. That’s tantamount to endorsing its propaganda.
Says you. Hint – don’t tell me what I think – your brain or thoughts aren’t big enough.
So why did you quote it without mentioning its crude political bias?
thank god you were there to save us, morrissey /sarc
Always happy to help, McFlock. (No sarcasm.)
and one day you might provide that help.
One day.
I thought people could work it all out themselces. Pity you let the side down.
A near perfect summation – from an Australian, in a British newspaper – of John Key and John Key’s New Zealand.
“…Key was like a Tony Blair of the South Seas: a certain level of personal charisma and a socially inclusive façade allowed both Key and Blair to sell the nasty side of neoliberalism…”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/07/john-key-was-known-as-the-smiling-assassin-and-people-still-liked-him?CMP=share_btn_fb
You’d never get NZ political journalists with insight like this. As their reactions of shock indicate, most of them were firmly besotted by John Key’s cham right to the moment he basically told them to all fuck off.
Spot on Sanctuary!
So what was the nasty side of neo-liberalism he was selling?
High growth rate (3.4%)
Low unemployment (less than 5%)
Budget surpluses
NZers returning home
Infrastructure spending
Majority of NZers saying the country is going in right direction
So long as the Left are obsessed by the term “neo-liberalism,” they will loose. It shows a disconnect with the mood of the public.
If you want to win focus on the pragmatic, the things that actually influence voters, not ideological labels.
Have you ever been for a drive through our less affluent suburbs?
You would expect more informed comment from someone who sat on the government benches.
Would you? Nah droppings are always droppings.
You really do talk tosh. You need to pay a lot more attention to world events Wayne.
The supporters of the neoliberal establishment have been in trouble all this year.
Heard of Brexit?
Heard of Trump?
Heard of the Italian referendum?
It is clearly the supporters of the neo-liberal establishment who have been shown in 2016 to have a disconnect with the mood of the public.
Here is some reading for you…on the assumption you are actually uninformed as opposed to willfully spinning on behalf of your masters.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/alfredo-saad-filho/end-of-road-global-crisis-and-disintegration-of-neoliberalism
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/15/trumpism-solution-crisis-neoliberalism-robert-skidelsky
https://boingboing.net/2016/12/06/italys-referendum-a-vote-ag.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/10/end-of-neoliberalism-left-theresa-may-migrants-labour
https://www.opendemocracy.net/john-boland/trumping-brexit-growing-failure-of-neoliberal-consensus
Did you read the piece that Sanctuary linked? It not only critiques John Key’s leadership, it also briefly explores the prevailing narrative that fed his popularity, …they kept voting Key in because they believed in the equation that “good with money” equals “morally upstanding” and further suggested that the left will only gain traction when they are able to successfully counter this idea. According to the author, …this money story not only has currency, it is the currency of the reigning monetarist fiscal discourse.
One alternative story is to return “the broader public good’ to the position that “the monetarist fiscal discourse” now occupies. Your list suggests that the public good is being served within the current framework, but that is only true if you draw the line firmly behind the heels of the comfortable middle class, and accept that hardship and insecurity for those outside of the fold is “worth it.” And since you tend to dismiss those who privilege the public good as “hard left” you can hardly complain if they dismiss your lot as “neoliberal.”
Of course we are turning a blind eye to the fake students, earthquakes and other scams that are making the governments figures look better…
So what was the nasty side of neo-liberalism he was selling?
High growth rate (3.4%) – due to earthquakes, record immigration, badly designed student visa programme and the problem invisible to National Party members of inflated housing costs and the overseas investments that it attracts.
Low unemployment (less than 5%) – In other words, if you don’t get the numbers then change the system so you don’t count.
Budget surpluses – Tom Waits… along with the rest of us
NZers returning home – To do with the fact that the global economy is failing perhaps, or maybe they are returning home on student visas.
Infrastructure spending – Is it effective infrastructure spending, or appropriate? Doesn’t seem to be the case.
Majority of NZers saying the country is going in right direction
I don’t understand how often this is used as justification. If, as a teenager I hid the underage drinking and jumping out the window from my parents, and then listened to them praise me, then I wouldn’t use that as approval of my behaviour – just blissful ignorance.
The lack of transparency and information sharing (not withstanding Dirty Politics and journalist shaming) by this government has resulted in the same.
Nothing to be proud of, and definitely not something to to try pass off as informed support.
The nasty side of neo-liberalism is apparent to all who value humans over economic growth, and community and environment over short-term profit and long-term consequences.
Look again Wayne.
The real story can no longer be swept under the carpet
http://www.noted.co.nz/currently/social-issues/a-year-of-living-shamefully-new-zealands-dirty-secrets/#
Growth driven by excessive immigration, housing price rises, and earthquakes. The real measure, per capita, is negative.
Unemployment is only low, because National counts one hour a week as employment.
Budget fudges. With current account and social deficits increased to cover it.
Infrastructure spending. I wish. Roads of significance to the trucking industry is similar to spending on buggy whip factories.
“Country going in right direction”. I have to congratulate National on the effectiveness of their propaganda. Even the Neo-liberal cheer leaders in treasury think National is heading for disaster.
Lastly. Key has headed for the lifeboats before the ship sinks.
Good work The Green Party – potential candidates stepping forward early – this is good – get them sorted and then onward to victory!!!
Matt would be a good candidate I think
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/87298578/nelson-city-councillor-matt-lawrey-seeks-green-party-candidacy
Where are the Headlines? Surely there should be ones like:
National Party Leadership Battle splits Caucus!
Angry MPs Dispute Leadership Plans.
Leadership Battles Rips Caucus Apart.
Will be Years Before National Party Revives Credibility After Bitter Infighting.
Probably because its going to be over rather quickly, which is smart thinking on Nationals part. How can you really have those type of headlines when the result is going to be known on Monday/
Sure the ructions after will prove to be more then interesting but theres simply not enough time for those type of headlines to be used.
Love Granny propaganda (sarc) – even when the Leader resigned it’s all good press for Natz candidates. Not a peep about Collins and all her transgressions and Double dipper English!!
“Bennett said her relationship with English was “fantastic” and described him as “awe-inspiring”. The two work together on finance and social housing, and they are part of the top tier of ministers, called the “Kitchen Cabinet”. But English has also worked closely with Bridges on Auckland’s transport problems.
In a sign of a potentially tense contest, Bridges said he would make a better deputy than Bennett because he marked a complete generational change. Bridges came into Parliament three years later than Bennett, in 2008.”
In spite of this they still have to run spiteful anti Labour articles such as Claire Trevett’s
“100 not out: Labour party battles for its political future”
It starts on Monday.
fence
post
Yes true, I’m assuming it will be sorted by Monday, like its a fait accompli kind of thing especially since the next budget surplus is supposed to be a whopper
It might not of course, however if I was a betting man I’d bet it’ll be over on Monday…the puckish side of me would like to see it continue on for a while though 🙂
Bill at the helm of a leaking, bloated tanker heading for the reefs. His crew! Oh dear! And First Mate! A cargo of rancid fat and snake oil. Oh dear, oh dear!
Fortunately (unfortunately) there’s just enough momentum for the good ship National to make it to the port of the 2017 election win, thanks to a budget surplus and the assistance of the tugboat of NZFirst and the tugboat of another bye-election Labour can’t afford
After that there may be some slight cause for concern 🙂
It’s as though the All Blacks were facing their most critical test match and were reliant on their one star player upon whom success depended, let’s call him, “John Richie”, when an hour before kick off, John declares that he is not going to play, he’s talking his ball and going home, because his girlfriend want to spend quality time with him.
The crowd goes wild.
Yeah imagine what would happen to the All Blacks if Richie, Dan, Kevin, Tony, Ma’a and Conrad left all at the same time taking over 700 caps and all that experience with them 🙂
what you are eluding to might be true , if it wasn’t for the fact that the rugby equivalents of parmjeet ,misa fia and tobbacy todd wouldn’t make the taumarunui eels team let alone the the all blacks up incomers
They’d lose to Ireland?
Well I was linking the tier 1 test record to a record fourth term for National but please tell me you aren’t suggesting Labour is like the Irish rugby team
Well, the Irish team currently has a 50% win record against the All Blacks in its past two encounters (aren’t stats wonderful- a bit like Treasury and Budget figures).
The Irish team has charm, wit and size.
It embraces the whole of Irish society, north and south, inclusively.
Like the Left in general the Irish have got the best songs.
And lastly, they especially despise the English!
So, Puckish Rogue, in the best sense of fun, some great parallels between the NZ Labour Party and the Irish Rugby team of very recent history! 😉
Disclaimer: though my moniker is Mac1 there is no blarney or bias in this summation, at all at all at all.
No need for headlines, 2 days of discussions and it’s sorted, lessons to be learnt by other parties maybe?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11763085
Who knew that motels were going to be a fundamental part of the “wrap around” service that the Ministry of Social Development were going to provide?
Used to house (and indebt) our ever increasing homeless, they are also a depository for our vulnerable children. ( Unless there is a free gang associate house available that is).
I was speaking to a CYFS worker just yesterday, and those in her office are spending much of their time coming up to the holidays looking for motels to place children. When I asked who was there to provide caregiving, she shrugged her shoulders and said “Who?”.
Molly it’s all about physical assets, such as motels and the buying and selling of them. The actual social part of it, does not appear in the neoliberal manuals so just sort of falls off the radar. People are not considered assets under neoliberalism they are just vehicles of loss .
Similar to the conference centres (to create jobs but the job bit is the fudge, in fact rather than create jobs for locals you just import workers in because they are cheaper, then you have a housing crisis to solve to house all the new people etc), the homeless crisis, (rezone land and then let the market do ‘it’s thing’, the immediate housing is irrelevant), etc etc.
Would agree with you there, saveNZ.
How and why to turn a turtle on its back,
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-standard-is-offering-to-the-national-party-leadership-contenders-guest-post-slots/#comment-1271775
Did anyone else see the awful add in the herald yesterday.
The solid energy add, Mansplaining at it’s worse. So condescending it was sickening.
For a so called open letter – noticed no signature. How cowardly can you get.
Funny anyone with half a brain realised it was out and out propaganda. Well I suppose solid energy will do anything for their political masters.
This government is such a bunch of wankers, hiding behind a so call private company to lie and spin to New Zealand public.
New low.
And published in the Herald where Westcoasters are sure to read it. Ha 🙁
More grievous ignorance of sports history in the media.
Morning Report, RNZ National, Thursday 8 December 2016, 8:25 a.m.
This morning featured a report from Indira Stewart of the Pacific Radio Network, stating that Joseph Parker and David Tua are the “only two New Zealanders to have ever fought for the World Heavyweight title.”
That is nonsense, of course. On Thursday 26 July 1928 Gisborne’s own Tom Heeney fought Gene Tunney for the title at Yankee Stadium. The fight was stopped in the 11th round.
Neither Susie Ferguson nor Guyon Espiner seemed to notice, and simply carried on with the next item.
For those who, unlike Indira Stewart, care to know something about boxing history, here’s a tape of the fight…
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fitzsimmons
We can sort of claim him 🙂
Thanks Puckish Rogue. What an inattentive fool I am! In my haste to excoriate RNZ National, I merely show up myself.
Assuming you don’t have access to the same resources RNZ have its an easy error to make, unless you come from Timaru of course in which case there’s no excuse 🙂
Fitzsimmons having a fight reffed b ywyatt earp,and the famed fight on the sandbar in the rio grande organized by judge roy bean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzsimmons-Maher_Prizefight#/media/File:BeanSign_small.JPG
Well that wins the internet for coolest thing I’ve read all year 🙂
I also think jimmy Peau thought for some non descript world title in Queensland a few years back
Yes I remember something along those lines. Whatever happened to Jimmy Peau?
I don’t know anything about him lately but 5 years ago he was pretty down on his luck
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/3481691/Thunder-Jimmy-Peau-on-the-canvas
Theres this from 2014:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/10524793/Jailbird-Peau-likely-to-be-deported-Down-Under
Thanks for that Alwyn.
MEET THE CANDIDATES
No. 3: Judith “Crusher” Collins
Possibly the nastiest and most immature political candidate in New Zealand’s history—though not the stupidest.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/87288904/nicky-hager-takes-on-aspirant-pm-judith-collins
“She has the integrity.”—Don Brash.
Ok then we’ll just turn a blind eye to the frauds then because somebody is making a short term buck and it will expose the governments underfunding of education, so they are doing nothing and leaving the short term housing issues and longer term problem of all our fraudster residents to another government … from Granny
“Yet it seems no one can really tackle the student visa rort because we now depend on it.
The country makes $4.28 billion a year from international students, our fourth biggest industry behind dairy, tourism and meat. Put aside legitimate questions over how much of that money stays in New Zealand and circulates in the wider economy, as opposed to the immigrants themselves. If we turned off the tap tomorrow – the Government’s nightmare scenario after the sudden collapse of the Chinese market in 2003 – many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town. Even reputable education providers would go broke and most polytechnics and universities could not make ends meet with domestic students alone. Economic activity would also take a hit, as international students are doing the difficult, low-paid jobs that most New Zealanders avoid – at least until the students get their residence visa.
In short, fundamental changes are unlikely to come from the top because too many powerful interests are benefiting from the current system, despite its obvious flaws. The only hope is for more honest people within the student visa scam to stand up and be counted.”
If we turned off the tap tomorrow … many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town. Even reputable education providers would go broke and most polytechnics and universities could not make ends meet with domestic students alone.
Gosh, that would be a disaster! Good job there’s no proposal on the table to ban international education outright then, eh? Cleaning up the industry would make it worth less, but would still leave universities, polytechs and schools teaching a lot of international students.
The actual reason the government won’t do anything about the scam is in this bit:
…international students are doing the difficult, low-paid jobs that most New Zealanders avoid – at least until the students get their residence visa.
That is, the success of this scam to bypass our immigration standards and ensure a supply of cheap, easily-exploited labour for National’s constituents, with downstream effects on local pay and conditions, is the government’s main reason for not cleaning up the international education “industry.”
“many office buildings would be half empty and central Queen St would become a ghost town.”
What happened to the cherished Number 8 approach to solving problems with innovation? Empty office buildings in Queen Street + homeless in Auckland should = conversion to family apartments and a community revitalisation of Auckland central.
As for the other, fund education to sustainable levels.
Couldn’t all the empty buildings be given to solve the housing crisis????
All solved. move on.
Gareth Morgan tells Paul Henry the truth.
And Paul Henry hates being shown up for being the selfish git he is.
Morgan to Henry…
“You’re telling me that you don’t give a toss about New Zealand being fair. ‘Pull up the ladder, Jack, and the rest of you can get stuffed’. What sort of New Zealand values do you have, man?”
“You’re just a tax loophole cowboy, that’s all you are,”
“I’m about making New Zealand fair. You’re self-centred and you don’t give a toss about being fair in New Zealand.”
“Don’t tell an economist what a reverse mortgage is mate.”
“In media soundbytes are important, that’s why your sort of media is dying mate.”
And Henry’s retort, with his expensive house, European car and entitled lifestyle threatened.
Morgan is a communist.
Watch it. It’s great to see the tosser Henry being dealt to.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/tax-policy-bust-up-gareth-morgan-trades-insults-with-paul-henry-2016120808
Morgan needs to become less defensive when he’s discussing his party’s policies.
I certainly support his Comprehensive Capital Tax. If you have an asset that returns some benefit then it should be taxed at the commensurate income of that benefit.
I agree Morgan did not help his case, loosing his cool, playing the man not the ball, never a good look unless your of a Paul persuasion and just want to see Henery abused
zzzzzzzzzzzzz
I do not totally agree with Morgan, but at least he has us discussing these things, and his heart is in the right place.
I don’t see what a CCT can do, that conventional inheritance, income and CGT combined, along with getting rid of private trusts immunity from claims, cannot.
Only someone as truely ignorant as Henry, can have such confidence.
I don’t blame Morgan for getting annoyed with the bumptious twit.
1. Gets rid of land banking. The land will have to produce an income year to year else it’s just going to cost too much. A CGT may get the tax once the land is sold but it doesn’t prevent it.
2. Encourages people living in large, expensive houses to shift into smaller houses with smaller land thus freeing up more land for housing thus encouraging density increases.
Neither do I but he shouldn’t have shown it. His sitting back, hands tightly crossed before him shows that he’s on the defensive and is exactly the reaction that Henry was going for.
He needs to be able to sit there, calm, arms open, answer the questions and, yes, call Henry a bumbling, selfish idiot.
3. It could allow marginal land to remain as wilderness.
It does sow why trying to debate with the “Haves” is so difficult. Why would a “Have” like Henry be in the least concerned about the “Havenots”?
If he can’t handle Henry how is going to handle the rest of the pressure that’ll come, its all well and good to say what you think should happen and get nice media fluff pieces but hes thrown his hat in the ring and now what he says is going to be picked over with a fine tooth comb and he’d better be ready with some answers
Morgan wants retired people to get a reverse mortgage on their house so they can pay property taxes, he a communist arsehole.
No he doesn’t. and he’s most definitely not a communist. He’s very much a capitalist – he’s just one that sees many of the limitations that the way capitalism operates and how it doesn’t pay it’s full costs and puts those costs on the poor instead.
I’d have thought he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to include the family home in this, I can’t imagine any political party thinking that’s an idea the voters will go for, not even the Greens
Yes I’ve seen first hand how paranoid and touchy the entitled property class is about their inflating asset values.
They expect to sit on their million dollar+ houses and bank capital gains of 80K per year for ever. If anyone suggests this model is neither sustainable nor fair then they are shouted out of the room.
This unreasonable, greedy behaiour is sowing the seds of class war. I suppose this is the ugly side of Pakeha culture. They stole Aotearoa in the first place and now (like some kind of landed gentry), they expect the serfs to slave away paying high levels of tax and rent. Wealthy boomers have come to expect a well paid retirement with no means testing or CGT.
What a pack of spoiled brats
Well the average house price is $600 000.00 but please go ahead and suggest to the voters that taxing the family home, the house the retired have worked for entire lives to own (while paying taxes) is a really good idea
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/309978/average-nz-house-price-tops-$600k
Why should some people (who have also worked their whole lives) have to keep paying high rents for ever, while others who managed to climb into property ownership get free accommodation and tax breaks and full super without any form of means test?
Not sustainable, not fair, and kinda gross in the middle of a housing crisis
I actually support means testing by the way but the family needs to be exempt
Why not except a family home up to a certain value.
Exempting the family home is a loophole the wealthy will drive a bus through.
+100
what about Maori land Ropata… how many Maori (or Pakeha for that matter) have the income to pay yearly taxes on their capital?
All that will happen is what is already happening, Kiwis can’t afford to live in their own country with all the taxes and the low wages and foreigners will buy us up cheap.
That’s where Morgan’s ideas falls down.
I’m more into the Sanders and Corbyn approaches on Robin hood taxes on banks and transaction style taxes.
Don’t expect an answer, ropata jumped in with the chance to score a “hit” on a rightie and didn’t think through his reasoning
I am not a policy analyst nor am I a spokesperson for Morgans TOP vehicle. I just think he talks a lot of sense and in principle I agree with his fair minded ideas.
Morgan’s tax is aimed at the top few% of wealthy property holders who are banking tax free capital gains. He reckons his LVT will be either neutral or advantageous for most people because he will also drop income taxes.
Anyway I think this party is just a way for him to get the ideas of his Foundation into mainstream media. In the current volatile economic climate his is a vital counter narrative to the standard capitalist dogma we swim in.
Remember this is in the context of an unprecedented housing crisis, Morgan’s ideas are not cooked up in a vacuum.
I understand this is heresy against the national NZ religion of a quarter acre pavlova paradise.
Gareth Morgan has my full support for sticking it to that twit Henry. Watching that video clip made my day. I thought Morgan eviscerated the prick.
I think he got frustrated that Henry kept coming up with stupid examples, but there was no need for Morgan to stoop to Henry’s level of childish insults.
Henry is very gifted at twisting things according to his warped view of the world and dominated the interview in a very rude and hostile manner. For some reason he was much nicer to Ann Pettifor and allowed her a lot of time to express her position.
http://www.debtonation.org/2016/10/ann-pettifor-in-new-zealand-on-the-financialised-economy/
promising signs from gareth, perhaps he can come up with a public broadcasting policy as no one else seems to to sort that issue out.
Wow! a strange thing happened, somehow, somewhere, someone came to the conclusion that for true comparison of two different systems, they need to be measured with the same criteria.
But our favorite hologram disagrees, seems if there’s money involved, and a contract to enforce well…………. it’s just a bit confusing for the average Joe/Jane and at that point we should bow out and leave it to him and the other “experts”.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/319865/charter-school-ncea-reporting-to-be-brought-into-line
I was going to put up a link to the interview on Natard this morning with Paula Bennett and how she will make a truly awesome Dep Leader of the Natzional Party but the website appears to be having access problems….but never mind, I’ll do a Morrissey and give y’all a transcript.
Ms. Bennett….what qualities do you believe you have for the Deputy Leaders role?
hahahahahahahahahahahah….pause for gurgling breathhahahahahahahahahahah
gigglegigglegigglegigglegigglegigglegiggle
and so on, ad nauseum.
Here….http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201826881/bennett-or-bridges-for-national's-new-deputy
This is a fascinating article about how a gunman attacked a pizza parlour in Washington after conspiracy theorists claimed Hilary Clinton was running a child sex operation out of it. It argues that mis-information is being used as a political tool.
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/06/disinformation-not-fake-news-got-trump-elected/
InfoWars video in 5… 4… 3….
/
No country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy
George Monbiot
Since the 1980s we’ve let the corporations rule and it’s become obvious that it’s detrimental to us as a community.
So true, the NZ government was seduced and subverted in 1984 and now it’s become a schizoid institution that purports to represent the people of New Zealand, but is instead complicit in their exploitation.
It’s not exactly secret, all this has been well documented (see cafca.org.nz), but since it has been a slow and ongoing process the sale of NZ piece by piece to foreign interests doesn’t make the news cycle.
Just read the whole thing — how depressing. Maybe democracy was just a temporary aberration and the natural state of the human race is feudalism and internecine tribal conflict.
When the USA was founded corporations were deliberately outlawed because the founders had seen what they did to Europe. Sadly that didn’t last long
Democracy does seem to be more of an aberration with dictatorships and oligarchies ruling most of the time. Of course, the oligarchies and dictatorships always collapse due to the hubris and greed of the rich. And when they do we go back to being a democracy which then builds up society which the rich then take over and destroy.
It seems to be an iterative process as we learn more our democracy gets better but, unfortunately, we haven’t learned to prevent people from getting rich yet.
“Representative Democracy” was bound to fail.
Putting that degree of power in the hands of a few people, is always going to be subverted.
Democracy, however!
Finally Assange is permitted to answer the slander against him on record.
It has taken six years for this to occur. An outrageous abuse of legal power and process!
https://justice4assange.com/IMG/html/assange-statement-2016.html
Thanks for that, xanthe. Don’t expect anything on this to appear on our television news this evening. (Time constraints due to extended banter between the autocue readers and the sports guy and the weather guy.)
Thanks xanthe. Pretty awful in this day and age. What next?
Some conservative Kiwis are very unhappy that the ugly side of their country’s Pacific history is being exposed: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/12/counting-victims.html
+1 fascinating and tragic tale. Absolutely should not be covered up. Love your work RTM and it deserves to be published widely.
What does brought in to line mean?
Are the Charter schools just lying about there pass rates?
Charter school pass rates plummet when brought in line with state schools
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11762756
“Brought into line” means there’s been a corrupt system working and now it’s been outed.
Hekia Pariah and the Epsom Idiot have been spinning crap about it today to try to make people with ordinary intelligence believe it is something it wasn’t. I didn’t need to go to a charter school to recognise bullshit when I see it.
A leaked memo from the Beehive 😉
Ok so Little was safe until the next election because, lets all be honest now, Little was going to lose to Key but that was keeping him safe because anyone else would have to lost to Key as well
Now Keys gone and English is in charge, English who has lost before, English who isn’t exactly Mr Charisma, English who is beatable…Little might win and that’ll mean six years and then National will be back in so that’s a long time to wait if you’re an MP
But Little hasn’t improved Labours numbers, in fact it’d be fair to say Labours numbers, being positive, stagnating and if National don’t drop below 40% and NZFirst stay above 10% then that’s another term for National
So in light of the new developments is there someone in Labour that will answer the call to arms?
On a completely unrelated matter, what are the chances Robertson is going to be firing up the ol’ BBQ over Summer? 🙂
That’s not what Key himself thought. He said said he didn’t like losing which is why he jumped ship.
Key is a coward and I believe he will be remembered for that.
If there’s one thing to be learned from the Trump, Key, Cameron phenomena it is that policy is totally irrelevant and in fact it switches people off. What people vote for is a smiley wavey confident snake oil sales person. Even Obama and Trudeau benefited from this mindless herd behaviour. (Scott Adams made some excellent observations of Trump’s persuasion techniques and NLP type shit)
Maybe Labour needs to put up All Blacks and TV personalities instead of serious candidates.
I kind of agree with this but you’d be hard pressed to find a Labour supporting All Black although Chris Laidlaw is probably still hanging around if you want to use him
Labour is appearing more solid by the day, all the dead wood is being pruned game on pucky , the planet key lotus eaters will awake from their stupor in time for the right man to be the next PM.
i think they are addicted to the property price inflation koolaid and will keep drinking it until NZ sinks into the sea. or some other unthinkable disaster happens like “interest rates”
Robertson has been sorting out things in the background and doesn’t have to
CV will be delighted to learn Trump’s rumored pick for FDA director reckons big pharma should release new drugs, whether they work or not.
/
O’Neill also could push the agency in new directions. In a 2014 speech, he said he supported reforming FDA approval rules so that drugs could hit the market after they’ve been proven safe, but without any proof that they worked, something he called “progressive approval.”
“We should reform FDA so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety — and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety,” O’Neill said in a speech at an August 2014 conference called Rejuvenation Biotechnology. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-12-07/trump-team-is-said-to-consider-thiel-associate-o-neill-for-fda
Who are you going to drool over now till the next election Puckerman? now that your beloved idol has spit the dummy.
I’m more curious whose leg the Hosk is going to hump now. It just won’t be the same if it’s English’s leg he latches onto.
@ Andre brilliant + 100
Hosking’s done his “Best PM Ever” shit now he’s checking out the Blinglish (invented word) ‘rectalia’. He’s a bit shameless with his rat-up-drainpipe styles is Hosk’.
FFS…….dork Max Snr. Couldn’t resist could he? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11763286
I don’t mean the ‘doing’…….the “lonely backbencher” line weren’t half bad akshully (well done CT!)…….no, it’s more the studied ‘telling’.
No class. Aux Old Money must be immensely glad about The Leaving.