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.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
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!![devil devil](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/devil_smile.png?x42494)
"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. 🙁