Open mike 15/05/2023

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 15th, 2023 - 71 comments
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71 comments on “Open mike 15/05/2023 ”

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  1. tsmithfield 1
    15 May 2023 at 6:29 am

    I watched "Sunday" last night about the Gore council dramas. I think a TV soap could be made around that for goodness sake. Perhaps a NZ version of "The Office" lol.

    The thing for me was, that there was nothing in the documentary that gave any justification for the councillors to be so pissed off with Bell. But, it did seem to reinforce that there is a culture of bullying in the organisation.

    I felt quite sorry for Bell, although, that is probably what the TV producers intended me to feel.

    • dvt 1.1
      15 May 2023 at 8:29 am

      I thought it was telling that Bell got an 'abusive' email one week after being elected.

      [typo fixed in e-mail address – Incognito]

      • Incognito 1.1.1
        15 May 2023 at 8:55 am

        Mod note

      • ianmac 1.1.2
        15 May 2023 at 10:23 am

        The fact that he missed a voice message 10 minutes after being declared as the mayor, and being highlighted by that CEO chap 8 months later as evidence of Bell's "failure," is indicative of a twisted toxic culture but not of Bell.

        • tsmithfield 1.1.2.1
          15 May 2023 at 10:39 am

          Yeah, that was what I took away as well. The sort of stuff the whiners were complaining about seemed to be absolutely trivial.

          If that is compared to how Wayne Brown responded at the outset of the flooding several months back for instance, then it is absolutely absurd and inconsequential.

    • Ad 1.2
      15 May 2023 at 10:20 am

      You need to go back to the 1996 movie 'Rats in the Ranks'

      It's an Australian one that goes through very similar dynamics: weenie council with tonnes of microdynamics and group attacks with plastic butter knives.

      So gloriously vain and nasty, over such tiny territory.

      • Sanctuary 1.2.1
        15 May 2023 at 11:19 am

        Everyone knows Nigel (the president of the local pigeon fancier's society) has to rule with a Putinesque like iron rod and a web of informers that would draw an admiring nod from the STASI, lest the combinations and scheming from amongst the factions built around the Mabel (the Treasurer) and Owen (the keeper of the raffle tickets) usurp his power at the next AGM.

        • RedLogix 1.2.1.1
          15 May 2023 at 1:20 pm

          I could name a certain provincial tramping club – with the exact real-life names and personas to match.

          Easy enough to take the piss out of them, yet it's these people who've faithfully kept it all going for decades.

  2. bwaghorn 2
    15 May 2023 at 6:41 am

    https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300878382/newsable-billions-likely-lost-to-tax-evasion-as-white-collar-crime-investigators-go-underfunded

    Tax evasion is possibly $7billion!!!

    We don't need a wealth tax we just need to make the barstards pay what's owed!!

  3. kejo 3
    15 May 2023 at 8:48 am

    Excellent summary of N Z ,s shipping industry on youtube. MV Shiling Loses Power and Towed to an Anchorage off New Zealand. What is Going On with Shipping

    • Ad 3.1
      15 May 2023 at 10:22 am

      If we taxed the billionaires a big chunk and redistributed it next year, everyone would get a small flat white. Useless.

      We need a larger economy with far more multimillionaires.

      Not more tax.

      • AB 3.1.1
        15 May 2023 at 10:53 am

        May be if some of that money locked up in the hands of the wealthy had passed through the hands of ordinary people to buy stuff, it might have helped create that larger economy? And that effect would have been happening for nearly 40 years – since the time we stopped taxing wealth adequately in the mid-80's.

        Sadly, that money didn't pass through the real economy in such a way – instead quite a bit of it has gone into asset speculation by the wealthy, because they already had more than enough to live comfortably. Luxon's multiple houses being a case in point.

        • Ad 3.1.1.1
          15 May 2023 at 11:19 am

          It's not the redistribution or what you describe as it 'passing through': it's the total volume of wealth.

          Imagine if we didn't invest in multiple houses and say we were limited to one each: there's nowhere else to put savings other than in farming and its services. So in the absence of real estate investment, even less investment occurs.

          New Zealand is way too path-dependent on those agricultural commodities to make enough multimillionaires to enable us to pay our way without continuing massive reliance to foreign private debt.

          New Zealand needs more multimillionaires.

          • SPC 3.1.1.1.1
            15 May 2023 at 12:24 pm

            Encouraging people to do so by buying multiple propeorties is economic nonsense.

            We do not even invest in the agricultural sectors development? Who invested in Silver Fern and Synlait again?

          • RedLogix 3.1.1.1.2
            15 May 2023 at 1:14 pm

            This is exactly the conversation I'm having on another thread right now – only you have expressed it far more incisively. The old – growing the pie, vs cutting it up problem.

            New Zealand has a bit of both problems, we're not making our pie big enough and we're surely not dividing it up reasonably either.

          • bwaghorn 3.1.1.1.3
            15 May 2023 at 1:19 pm

            “”””We need more multimillionaires”

            The way inflation is going we might get there soon. !

      • Stuart Munro 3.1.2
        15 May 2023 at 11:28 am

        I think the tax rate was about 60% when I was growing up.

        Everything worked. Electricity was cheap. Education was free and real. Public services served.

        Nothing government has done since has been an improvement – and we are circling the plughole. Governments need to stop pandering to corporates and tax delinquents and prioritize the welfare of citizens. And yes – that's not migrants.

        • Craig H 3.1.2.1
          15 May 2023 at 11:32 am

          There's certainly a legitimate discussion to be had about the size of the state and whether we pursue the Scandinavian model of higher and more progressive taxes along with universal services and transfers (e.g. working for families), or continue down our current model of flatter taxes and targeted services and transfers.

      • adam 3.1.3
        15 May 2023 at 11:37 am

        Third way politics from you Ad.

        It's a bit of failed ideology at this point. If for no other reason, it keeps producing such piss poor results.

        • Ad 3.1.3.1
          15 May 2023 at 1:58 pm

          Labelling just evades the debate.

          We have a weak, dumb, narrow economy that doesn't generate rich people.

          • Stuart Munro 3.1.3.1.1
            15 May 2023 at 2:09 pm

            Yup – and after following the neo-liberal prescription to the letter.

            Who'd've thunk it?

            It's almost as is trickle down economics wasn't good for economies after all.

            But like the Soviet elite, the Rogergnomes cannot admit their failures. They'll stagger on until the wheels fall off, and then whine we should've cut taxes even further.

            • RedLogix 3.1.3.1.1.1
              15 May 2023 at 2:25 pm

              Neo-liberalism is what you get when you think that just because some problems are well served by markets – that all problems must be equally amenable to the same solution. And that because modelling humans as rational economic actors is useful when building models – that people really are just atomised consumers and nothing more.

              That is of course the sort of nonsense you get whenever you take a good idea and go too far with it.

              But Ad is no neo-liberal extremist. We are both engineers, we live by the real world outcomes we deliver. Reality in our world is very close to the surface – and tolerates very little lying to ourselves.

              Making everyone equal by making everyone dirt poor is a trivial achievement. It's how we lived most of our history and too many places in the world still do. Delivering a thriving, cohesive and healthy society that is prosperous in the broadest sense of the word is fucking near miraculous.

              • tsmithfield …
                15 May 2023 at 2:44 pm

                I think in many cases, the market is the harsh taskmaster that punishes our stupid decisions.

                So, for instance, plummeting fish stocks will eventually cause major shortages, meaning the consequence is that the prices become incredibly expensive, and few will be rich enough to afford fish. A consequence of that will likely be starvation of many populations depending on fish.

                The market will eventually sort the fish problem out in that it will become uneconomical to send boats out to fish. Hence, the amount of fishing will reduce, and so, fish stocks will eventually recover.

                But, it is far better and less painful for the world to get its shit together and manage fish stocks more responsibly.

                • miravox …
                  15 May 2023 at 4:50 pm

                  Interesting notion. You believe humans will stop exploitation of the environment, plants, animals and even humans, before extinction occurs?

                  The moa, dodo and trawling for orange roughy as well as hypoxic lakes and carbon at 412ppm (and a multitude of other environmental sins tell a different story.

                  But yes, it would be great if the world got its shit together to reduce human impact on fish stocks – and the rest of the planet – before we make it uninhabitable for fish and other living organisms.

                  • tsmithfield …
                    15 May 2023 at 6:26 pm

                    I think that eventually we have no option. And that the price to pay is likely mass extinction until the population and resource available are in balance.

                    As things become less and less liveable, the price for living in habitable areas will get progressively more expensive. Those who can't afford to move there will likely become victims of situation. Thus, the population will eventually match the resources available.

                    That is what I mean about the market eventually solving the problem. But, not in the way we would like. It is much better to start making good decisions now.

                  • RedLogix …
                    15 May 2023 at 6:33 pm

                    Two thoughts – the tragedy of the commons, the over-exploitation of resources has been a common thread for at least the past 10,000 years. The environmental sins you point to are real and in some cases urgent.

                    Yet the lesson to be learned from history is not just that we periodically bump up against these limits, sometimes real hard, we have always adapted. 10,000 years later we're still here, and doing better than ever.

                    But there is something different this time. For all of our history the idea of 'more' and 'better' were two birds sitting in a tree right next to each other. If you got the more bird, you always got the better bird.

                    We may well have passed this phase – the desirable goal now is quality rather than quantity. That we need to start measuring 'growth' in a more nuanced and multidimensional manner.

                    • miravox …
                      15 May 2023 at 7:44 pm

                      Yes, I agree with all of this

                      That we need to start measuring 'growth' in a more nuanced and multidimensional manner.

                      I see the first aim in this measuring should be to account for environmental and social costs – so-called 'externalities' at the time of resource extraction/production of goods. This would also be one of tsmithfield's 'good decisions'.

                      It seems to me that measuring/good decisions is incompatible with the current economic ideology.

              • Stuart Munro …
                15 May 2023 at 3:03 pm

                I have a feeling that people that rub up against policy-makers don't realize how outrageously they understate the damage caused by substituting short term commercial interests for the public interest.

                That entry-level worker that gets cheated out of their job or low-balled out of it by illegal migrants never becomes the master of their profession that they might in a less fundamentally corrupt system. The local monopsonies in the fishing industry became billionaires alright – by decimating their stocks and impoverishing the catching sector – ie the guys that had the knowledge to innovate towards more sustainable practice. The investor class won't be doing that.

                Our government don't deserve to be in power. They knew Gnasher was corrupt and had sold out the public interest in fisheries. But they didn't care. They didn't want a sustainable, much less a thriving fishery. They didn't want career paths for recent entrants, or improved export receipts. All they wanted from Nash was that he keep his mouth shut. And it was when he couldn't manage that they turfed him out. Their focus doesn't even get out of the building.

                So it's no accident NZ is poor – our politicians are fucking pitiful.

                • RedLogix …
                  15 May 2023 at 3:11 pm

                  Mediocre is the word you are looking for. We are not getting shit done.

                  • Liberty Belle …
                    15 May 2023 at 4:32 pm

                    Bruce Cotterill wrote a piece (behind a paywall unfortunately) in the herald over the weekend in which he said something about how NZ used to be the little country who could. A country which punched above its weight and innovated. And now? We are in a rut of our own making, with political leaders (and in my opinion the current co-hort more than any previously) hell bent on holding us back, and on creating divisions within our society that serve them politically. Mediocre is a very good way of describing this country in 2023.

                    • Belladonna …
                      15 May 2023 at 4:58 pm

                      Here it is, archived

                      https://archive.ph/xvgV2

                    • Liberty Belle …
                      15 May 2023 at 5:08 pm

                      Thanks Belladonna.

                      Two quotes resonate:

                      "We were once the little country that could. We beat the odds. Shouted above the noise. But, we seem to have slipped into a spiral of lowering expectations, accepting whatever we get."

                      and

                      "Yes, it’s time to abandon the costly experiments. The social engineering and the centralisation strategies. The light rail that we can’t afford. The wonky education syllabus and the gobbledegook health authority. It’s time to stop wasting money. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the abandoned and the unlikely. A cycle bridge, light rail, a media merger and the now abandoned Income Insurance Scheme."

                      The legacy of this government is one of failure. Failure to inspire, failure to deliver. It could have been so different.

                    • RedLogix …
                      15 May 2023 at 5:10 pm

                      Having just moved from Brissy to Perth this year – Brissy is even better.

                      Not saying perfect – they have a housing crisis as bad as NZ. Plenty of fuckwits and plonkers in politics here too. But they believe in themselves in a way New Zealand has lost.

              • Phillip ure …
                15 May 2023 at 7:02 pm

                You are tina-preaching…

                Whereas we can look to those countries that have higher/fairer taxes…and much better infrastructure/citizen support…

                That's where the alternatives lie..

                We don't have to have a low wage/high cost/crumbled infrastructure/citizen support country..

                That was imposed upon us by the neoliberal revolution wrought by douglas and his band of right-wing bandits..

                And since then successive neoliberal-incrementalist governments have not undone what douglas did..

                And this has brought us to where we are now..

                Homelessness/poverty/environmental degradation/infrastructure crumbling..

                It doesn't have to be this way..

                In fact the urgency to change how we currently do things couldn't be clearer to see..

                So that Tina stuff being peddled by the engineer- contingent here just shows a lack of imagination/inability to see past the end of one's nose..

                (But if I could just sneer across across the uni quad..?.. They are engineers..after all…heh..!)

            • Ad 3.1.3.1.1.2
              15 May 2023 at 4:35 pm

              No it started in the 1820s and kept going.

              We're getting better with what we have for sure, but nowhere near fast enough.

              A good measure of progress is how much more capital it takes to fix an orchard after a storm than drystock beef or sheep: the recovery as investment density indicator.

              • Stuart Munro …
                15 May 2023 at 6:03 pm

                Capital is never better than a crude approximation of productivity.

                The Detroit ideal of a factory is heavily capitalized – mechanized to the point there are no workers, but the Asian ideal is as empty as possible – with machines only for the tasks they do better than people.

                It pretty much describes the inadequacy of your model – the Asian factory uses less capital – and it has been eating Detroit's lunch for thirty years.

                We are not getting better. Numerous significant industries are in long term decline, with no plausible efforts to rebuild them or replace them. Wool. Fisheries. Textiles. Shipping. All the manufacturing things that return better than starvation wages and afford skill growth have been hollowed out.

                Thanks neoliberal economists – you useless lying pieces of shit.

          • Corey 3.1.3.1.2
            15 May 2023 at 3:56 pm

            Yep look at the size of our economy compared to similar sized nations like Ireland yes there are part of the Eu but that is not the only reason they have a gdp nearly double ours and an average wage of around $100 k.

            Nz is a low imagination economy that for four decades has been encouraged by consecutive govts to invest in non-productive industries like housing which makes cost of living and housing skyrocket, rather than wealth and job creating industries and our governments are too afraid to seriously challenge this low imagination.

            Also heaven forbid our housing market collapses, if most of our wealth is in housing a dangerous amount of our wealth will end up in the hands of aussie banks.

            • RedLogix 3.1.3.1.2.1
              15 May 2023 at 4:07 pm

              All good points and I especially agree on the lack of alternative investment pathways. Kiwis of my generation did property because anything else was a a high risk path to bankruptcy.

              Personally I would have loved to have had a super scheme like Australia, or an ASX which performed – or even just a govt bond scheme that was inflation protected. But the reality is most ordinary people are not high risk investors, and nor should they. Yet we all face the inevitable problem of potential decades of life past retirement funded by an NZSuper scheme that will prevent absolute poverty but is scarcely an attractive prospect for most.

              Frankly when I contemplate your comment I think you have made a good case for NZ to get over itself and formally join the Australian Federation.

          • adam 3.1.3.1.3
            15 May 2023 at 9:03 pm

            You say rich people, when I say wealth is the answer, not rich people.

            That said we have an economy which has let a few cream it off the top. At the cost of many.

            Labels, give a clarity to a debate, otherwise people can push any old shit and call themselves good, wholesome and right. When in reality they are pushing the same evil shit they always been pushing.

      • Mac1 3.1.4
        15 May 2023 at 11:47 am

        " a small flat white. " $7 billion would buy 1.4 billion small flat whites. 1.4 billion compostable paper cups, all produced locally. 5 coffees each a week. Latté heaven. Plus the dairy industry would milk it for what its worth.

        $7 billion annually, as Adrian points out below, is $1400 per annum for every Kiwi.

        $7 billion over 27 years would give the money required to completely repair our water infrastructure- all done and paid for by 2050.

        $7 billion would build 10,000 houses costed at $700,000 each….. annually.

        What a boon to the economy and to our social structure.

        $7 billion ain't chickenfeed. The fat roosters high on their perches are too busy saying their prosperity prayers to hear the chickens sneezing below in the dust.

        • aj 3.1.4.1
          15 May 2023 at 1:03 pm

          Magnitude: – A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

        • RedLogix 3.1.4.2
          15 May 2023 at 1:42 pm

          If you think $1400 pa is going to solve your problems … Ad is correct it wouldn’t even buy you a $5 flat white each day for a year.

          • SPC 3.1.4.2.1
            15 May 2023 at 1:49 pm

            Given the number of people with no savings and who go to lenders and get into more difficulty … that's totally out of touch.

            • RedLogix 3.1.4.2.1.1
              15 May 2023 at 2:30 pm

              I get it – $1400 pa or $7000 pa for a family household is not nothing. Few people would leave that much cash lying on the table.

              But I want a New Zealand that does way better than this.

              • SPC …
                15 May 2023 at 3:10 pm

                I'd settle for our past standards

                1. tenants and homeowners having savings (beyond KiwiSaver) to be more resilient.

                2. investors focusing on new build for rent (and have mortgage deductability) and leaving existing homes for first home buyers

                3. sufficient social housing/income related rent

                4. a plan for dealing with future housing and care needs of the aged (just as important as the Cullen Fund).

                5. maintaining infrastructure and ensuring skills development – apprenticeships

                6. a tax on banks to resource lower cost business loans (so we move away from home mortgages to finance business loans and enable business size growth).

                7. encouraging productivity investment (more than just R and D but reducing dependency on available labour esp in farming/harvesting)

                8. national economy resilence – Tasman shipping and coastal shipping capability (to cope with loss of regional roads and any decline in international shipping logistics). Food going to waste because the Cook Strait has become a barrier to movement is risible.

                86.

          • Mac1 3.1.4.2.2
            15 May 2023 at 2:37 pm

            An extra $1400 per kiwi into the economy?

            To be spent on essentials like housing and infrastructure?

            The Labour government in the Thirties kickstarted the economy post-Depression with its state housing programme.

            $1400 per person is significant- another's warm, safe, dry home; or, it's potable water, swimmable rivers, lessened flood risk etc.

            Huge wealth in the hands of a few could mean health and comfort for the many.

            I know what I'd prefer. Especially since we are talking about evasion, and not avoidance. You know, stealing, purloining, fiddling, nicking, back end of a lorry stuff. That kind of crime. Theft. Go to jail. Bear the shame of being an anti-social prick.

            Nothing to do with envy, Nicola, but to do with justice, fairness, social cohesion.

          • weka 3.1.4.2.3
            15 May 2023 at 3:11 pm

            If you think $1400 pa is going to solve your problems.

            it should be a larger amount given to those that really need it ie poor people.

      • Tiger Mountain 3.1.5
        15 May 2023 at 1:49 pm

        Wealth is created by the application of human mental and physical labour to the worlds natural, intellectual, technological and scientific resources.

        If all the world’s CEOs and squillionaires stayed home for a week, few would notice. If the worlds working class–paid and unpaid–did the same, the place would come to a grinding halt. No breakfast, no internet, no retail, no buses, no school, no caring, no food production, no nothing…

        Calling for more capitalist and finance capitalist bludgers and exploiters goes against the reality of capitalism anyway. Monopolisation and concentration of capital mean an increasingly smaller pool of elite filth own more wealth than half the world’s population already.

        Trickledown does not happen.

        • Ad 3.1.5.1
          15 May 2023 at 2:02 pm

          "human mental and physical labour" applied to dirt, fish and chainsaws is what we have here. … and precisely not applied to the world's natural, technological and scientific resources.

          There's plenty from the Productivity Commission on this.

          Pretty much an open field from any political party we have to build the path to sustainable wealth.

        • Jane 3.1.5.2
          15 May 2023 at 7:54 pm

          Well said, sir. May I quote you?

      • UncookedSelachimorpha 3.1.6
        15 May 2023 at 1:54 pm

        ….er no. Not sure where you buy your small flat whites.

        If we taxed only the 311 super-wealthy families identified in the recent IRD report just 2% of their assets per year, that would be $1.7b per annum, about $340 per NZ citizen. To give perspective, this is three times the amount needed to provide complete free dental care to all New Zealanders

        And I would say 2% is a low amount. There are also non-financial motives, it would start to reduce the corrosive impact of extreme wealth on democracy and public discourse.

        All evidence is that a "larger economy" tends to almost all accumulate to the already-rich. The tired old "rising tide lifts all boats" is just rot – it tends to lift the yachts, while drowning the dinghys.

        • Ad 3.1.6.1
          15 May 2023 at 2:04 pm

          $340/365 days is 90 cents a day or $6.30 a week.

          Call it a mocca.

          • Patricia Bremner 3.1.6.1.1
            15 May 2023 at 8:02 pm

            Ad, times 1.7 by 4.5 to get to that 7.65 billion, is half what is required to clean up the flood and cyclone damage. 2 years and it would be done.

            What we are saying , telling us we are not innovative enough, not productive enough, not pushy enough is so much claptrap.

            New Zealanders deserve all to pay their tax due, and those saying we have dropped the ball "get a life".

            New Zealanders continue to excel, and Aussies continue to claim our successes!devil

        • alwyn 3.1.6.2
          15 May 2023 at 2:53 pm

          "And I would say 2% is a low amount".

          I would say that that is in fact a very high rate. It is very difficult to get a return on an investment portfolio of 5% on even quite a high risk portfolio once you allow for inflation. Thus your 2% would be an effective tax rate of 40% on the investment income over and above the existing tax rate on things like dividends and interest. 40% is of course higher then the maximum tax bracket rate in New Zealand. If you tried to bring such a rate in you are going to discover what the French did when they tried a wealth tax. The tax had a maximum rate of 1.5% but the net result was probably a loss in tax received. A number of really wealthy people changed their domicile to places like Belgium or Switzerland. They changed it to a property only tax on property in France which would be harder to avoid.

  4. kejo 4
    15 May 2023 at 9:03 am

    Though the government has recently invested in coastal shipping with an immediate positive effect on the recently isolated east coast region. It is worth considering that there was once a NZ owned and operated shipping company with services to Europe Asia and the USA

  5. weka 5
    15 May 2023 at 9:29 am

    I'm listening in on a twitter Space, there's a Scottish woman talking about how when she was in prison, two trans identified males were housed in the same women's prison. One was a gay male in for murdering another man on a date. The other is a man in for sexual offences against women. Neither male had transitioned in any meaningful way.

    No protections were put in place for the women prisoner. The males showered in the same spaces at the same time as the women. They were all in general spaces together.

    The woman speaking chose to get an IUD fitted because there was no other way to protect from pregnancy if she got raped. Rape was expected.

    This is just fucked. And the only way that progressives can say TW and TIMs should be in women's prisons is if they accept that women are collateral damage and some will be raped/sexually assaulted, many will live in fear, and sexual assault survivors having to cope with PTSD and being triggered by these men don't matter.

    It's doubly fucked because the only reason to house males in women's prison is gender identity ideology. We could instead create dedicated spaces for trans identified males that protect them, just not at the expense of women.

    This why why gender critical feminists and other women consider gender identity ideology to be misogynistic at core. Gender identity and the need for validation trumps women’s needs and safety.

    This is the woman who was speaking,

    https://twitter.com/LockedUpWithMen/with_replies

    She has posted articles about sexual violence by males who self ID as a woman.

    https://twitter.com/LockedUpWithMen/status/1657838776922636292

  6. Grant 6
    15 May 2023 at 10:41 am

    In reply to Ad @1.2

    Another hilarious examination of politics in a thimble was the the NZ film Pecking Order 2017. The description on IMDb is:

    ”Pecking Order looks at the rivalries and obsessions of a group of New Zealand chicken breeders from Christchurch on the months leading up to the National Poultry Show. Like many similar documentaries its focus is a very unusual activity and the eccentrics who partake in it.”

    Like others using an iPad I can’t reply directly to comments so dropping this one here.

  7. Adrian 7
    15 May 2023 at 11:37 am

    More like $1400 each,or $7000 a family but aggregated over a city for services its a shitload of money.

    • Patricia Bremner 7.1
      15 May 2023 at 3:39 pm

      Yes Adrian, many crumbs to make the "community loaf".

      And this amount of help with cost of living was "Too much!!" so we were told.

      As tax, this amount "Is not enough!!" to make a difference, we are told.

      Bollocks!! That 9% is "The missing link" R&D, Public Transport, Public Service Regenerative Farming, Resilience etc.

      Here we are, asking only for 2%!!!! It is bloody 9%!!! LIE 1

      Those saying we have not grown the cake… first you need the bloody ingredients! Investment and Tax.!! Less Tax = Less Services.

      Attacks on Labour for supposed "Tax and spend" pushing for low tax & distribution so services fall over or get stripped, then unemployment surges and the cashed up rich go to the garage sale of public assets and houses all over again, that's National's agenda. imo

      I am sick of angry "National and Labour are the same, may as well vote National"

      LIE 2. National will give each taxpayer a receipt!! LOL!!!!!! I want one for your bloody 200m limo ride Luxy. Liar Liar your baggy pants are on fire!!! Clown imo.

      • SPC 7.1.1
        15 May 2023 at 3:55 pm

        Anyone can go online and look at the amount of tax they pay each year.

        And look at a pie chart of government spending with each budget to identify where the money was allocated.

    • Ad 7.2
      15 May 2023 at 4:47 pm

      Why would anyone but the state get this largesse?

      There is zero chance under a Labour-Green-Maori Party government that there will be any tax cuts. They will be rebuilding the East Coast, Northland and Auckland pretty much in perpetuity.

      • Mac1 7.2.1
        15 May 2023 at 6:36 pm

        We need tax cuts?

        Mind you, if tax evaders coughed up their due amount, there might be an argument…….

  8. newsense 8
    15 May 2023 at 5:04 pm

    Hipkins seems to be doing quite a good job, yeh?

    Leaving aside climate change, he’s dealt with all kinds of hyperbole quite well. He’s communicated clearly, briefly and with authority.

    He’s managed to get himself a lot of soft coverage around pies and sausage rolls, which is an easy topic of agreement and pleasure in much of New Zealand.

    He’s managed in most cases to put himself above the fray and even showed patience, though mixed with some shock, at the Auckland local leadership during the first flooding event.

    He’s stuck to his core message about cost of living, based around unprecedented events overseas.

    He’s been able to announce long sought justice in Australia for New Zealanders.

    He’s got a lot more in terms of tests coming up, but to borrow a phrase he seems fairly relaxed about things and not at all overawed.

    • Bearded Git 8.1
      15 May 2023 at 5:46 pm

      After fronting the Covid response anything must seem easy for Hipkins.

    • Anne 8.2
      15 May 2023 at 11:31 pm

      Nice newsense and Bearded Git

      There's a hell of a lot of people out in voter land and apparently on this site who seem to have a memory span of less than 72 hours. 🙁