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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you serious? This coulda been shoulda been tripe is from one alleged 'expert', is quoted in the article as telling Newsable "it’s very difficult to investigate or know how prominent it is in New Zealand" and “It’s impossible because it’s trying to measure what you just don’t know,” she says on this morning’s episode."
In other words, 'I havn't a f'ing clue, but print my name anyway'.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
" 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
….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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 "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.
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.
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.
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Illustration credit: Jonathan McHugh (New Statesman)The other day, a subscriber said they were unsubscribing because they needed “some good news”.I empathised. Don’t we all.I skimmed a NZME article about the impacts of tariffs this morning with analysis from Kiwibank’s Jarrod Kerr. Kerr, their Chief Economist, suggested another recession is the ...
Let’s assume, as prudence demands we assume, that the United States will not at any predictable time go back to being its old, reliable self. This means its allies must be prepared indefinitely to lean ...
Over the last three rather tumultuous US trade policy weeks, I’ve read these four books. I started with Irwin (whose book had sat on my pile for years, consulted from time to time but not read) in a week of lots of flights and hanging around airports/hotels, and then one ...
Indonesia could do without an increase in military spending that the Ministry of Defence is proposing. The country has more pressing issues, including public welfare and human rights. Moreover, the transparency and accountability to justify ...
Former Hutt City councillor Chris Milne has slithered back into the spotlight, not as a principled dissenter, but as a vindictive puppeteer of digital venom. The revelations from a recent court case paint a damning portrait of a man whose departure from Hutt City Council in 2022 was merely the ...
That's the conclusion of a report into security risks against Green MP Benjamin Doyle, in the wake of Winston Peters' waging a homophobic hate-campaign against them: GRC’s report said a “hostility network” of politicians, commentators, conspiracy theorists, alternative media outlets and those opposed to the rainbow community had produced ...
That's the conclusion of a report into security risks against Green MP Benjamin Doyle, in the wake of Winston Peters' waging a homophobic hate-campaign against them: GRC’s report said a “hostility network” of politicians, commentators, conspiracy theorists, alternative media outlets and those opposed to the rainbow community had produced ...
National Party MP Hamish Campbell’s ties to the secretive Two By Twos "church" raises serious questions that are not being answered. This shadowy group, currently being investigated by the FBI for numerous cases of child abuse, hides behind a facade of faith while Campbell dodges scrutiny, claiming it’s a “private ...
National Party MP Hamish Campbell’s ties to the secretive Two By Twos "church" raises serious questions that are not being answered. This shadowy group, currently being investigated by the FBI for numerous cases of child abuse, hides behind a facade of faith while Campbell dodges scrutiny, claiming it’s a “private ...
The economy is not doing what it was supposed to when PM Christopher Luxon said in January it was ‘going for growth.’ Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short from our political economy on Tuesday, April 15:New Zealand’s economic recovery is stalling, according to business surveys, retail spending and ...
This is a guest post by Lewis Creed, managing editor of the University of Auckland student publication Craccum, which is currently running a campaign for a safer Symonds Street in the wake of a horrific recent crash.The post has two parts: 1) Craccum’s original call for safety (6 ...
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff has published an opinion piece which makes the case for a different approach to economic development, as proposed in the CTU’s Aotearoa Reimagined programme. The number of people studying to become teachers has jumped after several years of low enrolment. The coalition has directed Health New ...
The growth of China’s AI industry gives it great influence over emerging technologies. That creates security risks for countries using those technologies. So, Australia must foster its own domestic AI industry to protect its interests. ...
Unfortunately we have another National Party government in power at the moment, and as a consequence, another economic dumpster fire taking hold. Inflation’s hurting Kiwis, and instead of providing relief, National is fiddling while wallets burn.Prime Minister Chris Luxon's response is a tired remix of tax cuts for the rich ...
Girls who are boys who like boys to be girlsWho do boys like they're girls, who do girls like they're boysAlways should be someone you really loveSongwriters: Damon Albarn / Graham Leslie Coxon / Alexander Rowntree David / Alexander James Steven.Last month, I wrote about the Birds and Bees being ...
Australia needs to reevaluate its security priorities and establish a more dynamic regulatory framework for cybersecurity. To advance in this area, it can learn from Britain’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which presents a compelling ...
Deputy PM Winston Peters likes nothing more than to portray himself as the only wise old head while everyone else is losing theirs. Yet this time, his “old master” routine isn’t working. What global trade is experiencing is more than the usual swings and roundabouts of market sentiment. President Donald ...
President Trump’s hopes of ending the war in Ukraine seemed more driven by ego than realistic analysis. Professor Vladimir Brovkin’s latest video above highlights the internal conflicts within the USA, Russia, Europe, and Ukraine, which are currently hindering peace talks and clarity. Brovkin pointed out major contradictions within ...
In the cesspool that is often New Zealand’s online political discourse, few figures wield their influence as destructively as Ani O’Brien. Masquerading as a champion of free speech and women’s rights, O’Brien’s campaigns are a masterclass in bad faith, built on a foundation of lies, selective outrage, and a knack ...
The international challenge confronting Australia today is unparalleled, at least since the 1940s. It requires what the late Brendan Sargeant, a defence analyst, called strategic imagination. We need more than shrewd economic manoeuvring and a ...
This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from April 27 to May 2. This year, I'll join the event on site in Vienna for the full week and I've already picked several sessions I plan ...
Here’s a book that looks not in at China but out from China. David Daokui Li’s China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict is a refreshing offering in that Li is very much ...
The New Zealand National Party has long mastered the art of crafting messaging that resonates with a large number of desperate, often white middle-class, voters. From their 2023 campaign mantra of “getting our country back on track” to promises of economic revival, safer streets, and better education, their rhetoric paints ...
A global contest of ideas is underway, and democracy as an ideal is at stake. Democracies must respond by lifting support for public service media with an international footprint. With the recent decision by the ...
It is almost six weeks since the shock announcement early on the afternoon of Wednesday 5 March that the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Adrian Orr, was resigning effective 31 March, and that in fact he had already left and an acting Governor was already in place. Orr had been ...
The PSA surveyed more than 900 of its members, with 55 percent of respondents saying AI is used at their place of work, despite most workers not being in trained in how to use the technology safely. Figures to be released on Thursday are expected to show inflation has risen ...
Be on guard for AI-powered messaging and disinformation in the campaign for Australia’s 3 May election. And be aware that parties can use AI to sharpen their campaigning, zeroing in on issues that the technology ...
Strap yourselves in, folks, it’s time for another round of Arsehole of the Week, and this week’s golden derrière trophy goes to—drumroll, please—David Seymour, the ACT Party’s resident genius who thought, “You know what we need? A shiny new Treaty Principles Bill to "fix" all that pesky Māori-Crown partnership nonsense ...
Apple Store, Shanghai. Trump wants all iPhones to be made in the USM but experts say that is impossible. Photo: Getty ImagesLong stories shortist from our political economy on Monday, April 14:Donald Trump’s exemption on tariffs on phones and computers is temporary, and he wants all iPhones made in the ...
Kia ora, readers. It’s time to pull back the curtain on some uncomfortable truths about New Zealand’s political landscape. The National Party, often cloaked in the guise of "sensible centrism," has, at times, veered into territory that smells suspiciously like fascism.Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter about hyperbole, ...
Australia’s east coast is facing a gas crisis, as the country exports most of the gas it produces. Although it’s a major producer, Australia faces a risk of domestic liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply shortfalls ...
Overnight, Donald J. Trump, America’s 47th President, and only the second President since 1893 to win non-consecutive terms, rolled back more of his“no exemptions, no negotiations”&“no big deal” tariffs.Smartphones, computers, and other electronics1are now exempt from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China; they retain ...
After stonewalling requests for information on boot camps, the Government has now offered up a blog post right before Easter weekend rather than provide clarity on the pilot. ...
More people could be harmed if Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey does not guarantee to protect patients and workers as the Police withdraw from supporting mental health call outs. ...
The Green Party recognises the extension of visa allowances for our Pacific whānau as a step in the right direction but continues to call for a Pacific Visa Waiver. ...
The Government yesterday released its annual child poverty statistics, and by its own admission, more tamariki across Aotearoa are now living in material hardship. ...
Today, Te Pāti Māori join the motu in celebration as the Treaty Principles Bill is voted down at its second reading. “From the beginning, this Bill was never welcome in this House,” said Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader, Rawiri Waititi. “Our response to the first reading was one of protest: protesting ...
The Green Party is proud to have voted down the Coalition Government’s Treaty Principles Bill, an archaic piece of legislation that sought to attack the nation’s founding agreement. ...
A Member’s Bill in the name of Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter which aims to stop coal mining, the Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill, has been pulled from Parliament’s ‘biscuit tin’ today. ...
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty’s Members Bill to make the law simpler and fairer for businesses operating on Easter, Anzac and Christmas Days has passed its first reading after a conscience vote in Parliament. ...
Nicola Willis continues to sit on her hands amid a global economic crisis, leaving the Reserve Bank to act for New Zealanders who are worried about their jobs, mortgages, and KiwiSaver. ...
Today, the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill has passed its third and final reading, but there is one more stage before it becomes law. The Governor-General must give their ‘Royal assent’ for any bill to become legally enforceable. This means that, even if a bill gets voted ...
Abortion care at Whakatāne Hospital has been quietly shelved, with patients told they will likely have to travel more than an hour to Tauranga to get the treatment they need. ...
Thousands of New Zealanders’ submissions are missing from the official parliamentary record because the National-dominated Justice Select Committee has rushed work on the Treaty Principles Bill. ...
Today’s announcement of 10 percent tariffs for New Zealand goods entering the United States is disappointing for exporters and consumers alike, with the long-lasting impact on prices and inflation still unknown. ...
The National Government’s choices have contributed to a slow-down in the building sector, as thousands of people have lost their jobs in construction. ...
Willie Apiata’s decision to hand over his Victoria Cross to the Minister for Veterans is a powerful and selfless act, made on behalf of all those who have served our country. ...
The Privileges Committee has denied fundamental rights to Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, breaching their own standing orders, breaching principles of natural justice, and highlighting systemic prejudice and discrimination within our parliamentary processes. The three MPs were summoned to the privileges committee following their performance of a haka ...
April 1 used to be a day when workers could count on a pay rise with stronger support for those doing it tough, but that’s not the case under this Government. ...
Winston Peters is shopping for smaller ferries after Nicola Willis torpedoed the original deal, which would have delivered new rail enabled ferries next year. ...
The Government should work with other countries to press the Myanmar military regime to stop its bombing campaign especially while the country recovers from the devastating earthquake. ...
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 18, 2025. Labor’s poll surge continues in YouGov, but they’re barely ahead in FreshwaterSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) Haymitch’s Hunger Games. 2 Careless People: A ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Labor increased their lead again in a YouGov poll, but Freshwater put them ahead by just 50.3–49.7. This article also covers the ...
A new poem by Tusiata Avia. How to make a terrorist First make a whistling sound which is the sound of a bomb just before it lands on a house. Then make an exploding sound which is the sound of the bomb which kills a father, decapitates a mother, roasts ...
The top-rated Scrabble players in the country go head-to-head this Easter weekend. Watch games live from 9.30am on the stream below.How does it all work?The Masters is different to most Scrabble tournaments in that it’s invitational, open only to the top-rated players in the country. The ...
Books editor Claire Mabey appraises all the Austen-adapted films from 1990 onwards to separate the delightful from the duds.For the purists, read our ranking of Jane Austen’s novels here.It is a truth universally acknowledged that not everything is created equal. Since 1990 there have been 12 attempts to ...
To arrive through the heavy red door of Margot in Newtown is to be invited to the best dinner party in town, hosted by the best friends you haven’t yet made. Table Service is a column about food and hospitality in Wellington, written by Nick Iles.Hospitality is a term ...
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NONFICTION1 No Words for This by Ali Mau (HarperCollins, $39.99)A free copy of the author’s new memoir was up for grabs in last week’s giveaway contest. Readers were asked to share their feelings about Mau, a former broadcaster and one of the most powerful figures in the New Zealand #metoo ...
Analysis: The announcement last week that Colossal Biosciences in the USA had “de-extincted” the dire wolf, which was last seen 13,000 years ago, was reported worldwide.The three wolf pups generated equal parts fascination and widespread scientific criticism. But is this actually de-extinction, and what are the implications for the potential ...
We recommend the best – and longest – television series to watch this holiday weekend. As the Easter holiday weekend descends and the weather turns a little grim, many of us will turn to the trusty old television for comfort and entertainment. If you’re lucky, you’ll have some time over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gode Bola, Lecturer in Hydrology, University of Kinshasa The April 2025 flooding disaster in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wasn’t just about intense rainfall. It was a symptom of recent land use change which has occurred rapidly in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Peter Dutton, now seriously on the back foot, has made an extraordinarily big “aspirational” commitment at the back end of this campaign. He says he wants to see a move to indexing personal income ...
Essay by Keith Rankin. Operation Gomorrah may have been the most cynical event of World War Two (WW2). Not only did the name fully convey the intent of the war crimes about to be committed, it, also represented the single biggest 24-hour murder toll for the European war that I ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Tietz, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design, UNSW Sydney A New South Wales Senate inquiry into public toilets is underway, looking into the provision, design and maintenance of public toilets across the state. Whenever I mention this inquiry, however, everyone nervously ...
Shrinking budgets and job insecurity means there are fewer opportunities for young journalists, and that’s bad news, especially in regional Australia, reports 360infoANALYSIS:By Jee Young Lee of the University of Canberra Australia risks losing a generation of young journalists, particularly in the regions where they face the closure ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tessa Charles, Accelerator Physicist, Monash University An artist’s impression of the tunnel of the proposed Future Circular Collider.CERN The Large Hadron Collider has been responsible for astounding advances in physics: the discovery of the elusive, long-sought Higgs boson as well as ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer McKay, Professor in Business Law, University of South Australia Parkova/Shutterstock Could someone take you to court over an agreement you made – or at least appeared to make – by sending a “👍”? Emojis can have more legal weight ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trang Nguyen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Global Food and Resources, University of Adelaide Stokkete, Shutterstock Australians waste around 7.68 million tonnes of food a year. This costs the economy an estimated A$36.6 billion and households up to $2,500 annually. ...
Pushing people off income support doesn’t make the job market fairer or more accessible. It just assumes success is possible while unemployment rises and support systems become harder to navigate. ...
A year since the inquest into the death of Gore three-year-old Lachlan Jones began and the Coroner has completed his provisional findings. Interested parties have been provided with a copy of Coroner Ho’s provisional findings and have until May 16 to respond.The Coroner has indicated the final decision will be delivered on June 3 in Invercargill, citing high ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ken Nosaka, Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Edith Cowan University Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock Do you ever feel like you can’t stop moving after you’ve pushed yourself exercising? Maybe you find yourself walking around in circles when you come off the pitch, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland After decades of Hollywood showcasing white-picket-fence celebrity smiles, the world has fallen for White Lotus actor Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachelle Martin, Senior Lecturer in Rehabilitation & Disability, University of Otago Getty Images Disabled people encounter all kinds of barriers to accessing healthcare – and not simply because some face significant mobility challenges. Others will see their symptoms not investigated properly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia Despite the challenges faced by local democratic activists, Thailand has often been an oasis of relative liberalism compared with neighbouring countries such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Westerners, in particular, have been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Yue Zhang, Associate Professor, Technology and Innovation, University of Technology Sydney China has placed curbs on exports of rare germanium and gallium which are critical in manufacturing.Shutterstock In the escalating trade war between the United States and China, one notable ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vivien Holmes, Emerita Professor, Australian National University Momentum studio/Shutterstock No one goes into the legal profession thinking it is going to be easy. Long working hours are fairly standard, work is often completed to tight external deadlines, and 24/7 availability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Prime The Narrow Road to the Deep North stands as some of the most visceral and moving television produced in Australia in recent memory. Marking a new accessibility and confidence to ...
The forecast for Easter weekend in much of the country is pretty shitty. Here are some ideas for having a nice time indoors.Ex-tropical cyclone Tam might have been downgraded to a subtropical low, but it has already unleashed heavy rain, high winds and power outages on the upper North ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cécile L’Hermitte, Senior Lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management, University of Waikato In the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle, the driving time between Napier and Wairoa stretched from 90 minutes to over six hours, causing major supply chain delays. Retail prices rose ...
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.
I thought it was telling that Bell got an 'abusive' email one week after being elected.
[typo fixed in e-mail address – Incognito]
Mod note
Oops sorry,\
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
The reality in 2023.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2023/05/struggling-families-stuck-using-buy-now-pay-later-for-essentials.html
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2023/05/call-for-more-credit-checks-as-rising-cost-of-living-forces-families-to-use-buy-now-pay-later-schemes-for-essentials.html
We needed a rent freeze last year, but better now than never.
Are you serious? This coulda been shoulda been tripe is from one alleged 'expert', is quoted in the article as telling Newsable "it’s very difficult to investigate or know how prominent it is in New Zealand" and “It’s impossible because it’s trying to measure what you just don’t know,” she says on this morning’s episode."
In other words, 'I havn't a f'ing clue, but print my name anyway'.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
“”””We need more multimillionaires”
The way inflation is going we might get there soon. !
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.
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.
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.
Labelling just evades the debate.
We have a weak, dumb, narrow economy that doesn't generate rich people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, I agree with all of this
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.
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.
Mediocre is the word you are looking for. We are not getting shit done.
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.
Here it is, archived
https://archive.ph/xvgV2
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.
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.
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..!)
You should have moved on from the 70's by now …
I love how you hate on the poor.
Karpman Drama Triangle explained.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
" 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.
Magnitude: – A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
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.
Given the number of people with no savings and who go to lenders and get into more difficulty … that's totally out of touch.
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.
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.
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.
it should be a larger amount given to those that really need it ie poor people.
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.
"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.
Well said, sir. May I quote you?
….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.
$340/365 days is 90 cents a day or $6.30 a week.
Call it a mocca.
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!
"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.
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
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
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.
More like $1400 each,or $7000 a family but aggregated over a city for services its a shitload of money.
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
"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.
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.
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.
We need tax cuts?
Mind you, if tax evaders coughed up their due amount, there might be an argument…….
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.
After fronting the Covid response anything must seem easy for Hipkins.
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. 🙁