I watched "Sunday" last night about the Gore council dramas. I think a TV soap could be made around that for goodness sake. Perhaps a NZ version of "The Office" lol.
The thing for me was, that there was nothing in the documentary that gave any justification for the councillors to be so pissed off with Bell. But, it did seem to reinforce that there is a culture of bullying in the organisation.
I felt quite sorry for Bell, although, that is probably what the TV producers intended me to feel.
The fact that he missed a voice message 10 minutes after being declared as the mayor, and being highlighted by that CEO chap 8 months later as evidence of Bell's "failure," is indicative of a twisted toxic culture but not of Bell.
Yeah, that was what I took away as well. The sort of stuff the whiners were complaining about seemed to be absolutely trivial.
If that is compared to how Wayne Brown responded at the outset of the flooding several months back for instance, then it is absolutely absurd and inconsequential.
You need to go back to the 1996 movie 'Rats in the Ranks'
It's an Australian one that goes through very similar dynamics: weenie council with tonnes of microdynamics and group attacks with plastic butter knives.
So gloriously vain and nasty, over such tiny territory.
Everyone knows Nigel (the president of the local pigeon fancier's society) has to rule with a Putinesque like iron rod and a web of informers that would draw an admiring nod from the STASI, lest the combinations and scheming from amongst the factions built around the Mabel (the Treasurer) and Owen (the keeper of the raffle tickets) usurp his power at the next AGM.
Are you serious? This coulda been shoulda been tripe is from one alleged 'expert', is quoted in the article as telling Newsable "it’s very difficult to investigate or know how prominent it is in New Zealand" and “It’s impossible because it’s trying to measure what you just don’t know,” she says on this morning’s episode."
In other words, 'I havn't a f'ing clue, but print my name anyway'.
Excellent summary of N Z ,s shipping industry on youtube. MV Shiling Loses Power and Towed to an Anchorage off New Zealand. What is Going On with Shipping
May be if some of that money locked up in the hands of the wealthy had passed through the hands of ordinary people to buy stuff, it might have helped create that larger economy? And that effect would have been happening for nearly 40 years – since the time we stopped taxing wealth adequately in the mid-80's.
Sadly, that money didn't pass through the real economy in such a way – instead quite a bit of it has gone into asset speculation by the wealthy, because they already had more than enough to live comfortably. Luxon's multiple houses being a case in point.
It's not the redistribution or what you describe as it 'passing through': it's the total volume of wealth.
Imagine if we didn't invest in multiple houses and say we were limited to one each: there's nowhere else to put savings other than in farming and its services. So in the absence of real estate investment, even less investment occurs.
New Zealand is way too path-dependent on those agricultural commodities to make enough multimillionaires to enable us to pay our way without continuing massive reliance to foreign private debt.
This is exactly the conversation I'm having on another thread right now – only you have expressed it far more incisively. The old – growing the pie, vs cutting it up problem.
New Zealand has a bit of both problems, we're not making our pie big enough and we're surely not dividing it up reasonably either.
I think the tax rate was about 60% when I was growing up.
Everything worked. Electricity was cheap. Education was free and real. Public services served.
Nothing government has done since has been an improvement – and we are circling the plughole. Governments need to stop pandering to corporates and tax delinquents and prioritize the welfare of citizens. And yes – that's not migrants.
There's certainly a legitimate discussion to be had about the size of the state and whether we pursue the Scandinavian model of higher and more progressive taxes along with universal services and transfers (e.g. working for families), or continue down our current model of flatter taxes and targeted services and transfers.
Yup – and after following the neo-liberal prescription to the letter.
Who'd've thunk it?
It's almost as is trickle down economics wasn't good for economies after all.
But like the Soviet elite, the Rogergnomes cannot admit their failures. They'll stagger on until the wheels fall off, and then whine we should've cut taxes even further.
Neo-liberalism is what you get when you think that just because some problems are well served by markets – that all problems must be equally amenable to the same solution. And that because modelling humans as rational economic actors is useful when building models – that people really are just atomised consumers and nothing more.
That is of course the sort of nonsense you get whenever you take a good idea and go too far with it.
But Ad is no neo-liberal extremist. We are both engineers, we live by the real world outcomes we deliver. Reality in our world is very close to the surface – and tolerates very little lying to ourselves.
Making everyone equal by making everyone dirt poor is a trivial achievement. It's how we lived most of our history and too many places in the world still do. Delivering a thriving, cohesive and healthy society that is prosperous in the broadest sense of the word is fucking near miraculous.
I think in many cases, the market is the harsh taskmaster that punishes our stupid decisions.
So, for instance, plummeting fish stocks will eventually cause major shortages, meaning the consequence is that the prices become incredibly expensive, and few will be rich enough to afford fish. A consequence of that will likely be starvation of many populations depending on fish.
The market will eventually sort the fish problem out in that it will become uneconomical to send boats out to fish. Hence, the amount of fishing will reduce, and so, fish stocks will eventually recover.
But, it is far better and less painful for the world to get its shit together and manage fish stocks more responsibly.
Interesting notion. You believe humans will stop exploitation of the environment, plants, animals and even humans, before extinction occurs?
The moa, dodo and trawling for orange roughy as well as hypoxic lakes and carbon at 412ppm (and a multitude of other environmental sins tell a different story.
But yes, it would be great if the world got its shit together to reduce human impact on fish stocks – and the rest of the planet – before we make it uninhabitable for fish and other living organisms.
I think that eventually we have no option. And that the price to pay is likely mass extinction until the population and resource available are in balance.
As things become less and less liveable, the price for living in habitable areas will get progressively more expensive. Those who can't afford to move there will likely become victims of situation. Thus, the population will eventually match the resources available.
That is what I mean about the market eventually solving the problem. But, not in the way we would like. It is much better to start making good decisions now.
Two thoughts – the tragedy of the commons, the over-exploitation of resources has been a common thread for at least the past 10,000 years. The environmental sins you point to are real and in some cases urgent.
Yet the lesson to be learned from history is not just that we periodically bump up against these limits, sometimes real hard, we have always adapted. 10,000 years later we're still here, and doing better than ever.
But there is something different this time. For all of our history the idea of 'more' and 'better' were two birds sitting in a tree right next to each other. If you got the more bird, you always got the better bird.
We may well have passed this phase – the desirable goal now is quality rather than quantity. That we need to start measuring 'growth' in a more nuanced and multidimensional manner.
That we need to start measuring 'growth' in a more nuanced and multidimensional manner.
I see the first aim in this measuring should be to account for environmental and social costs – so-called 'externalities' at the time of resource extraction/production of goods. This would also be one of tsmithfield's 'good decisions'.
It seems to me that measuring/good decisions is incompatible with the current economic ideology.
I have a feeling that people that rub up against policy-makers don't realize how outrageously they understate the damage caused by substituting short term commercial interests for the public interest.
That entry-level worker that gets cheated out of their job or low-balled out of it by illegal migrants never becomes the master of their profession that they might in a less fundamentally corrupt system. The local monopsonies in the fishing industry became billionaires alright – by decimating their stocks and impoverishing the catching sector – ie the guys that had the knowledge to innovate towards more sustainable practice. The investor class won't be doing that.
Our government don't deserve to be in power. They knew Gnasher was corrupt and had sold out the public interest in fisheries. But they didn't care. They didn't want a sustainable, much less a thriving fishery. They didn't want career paths for recent entrants, or improved export receipts. All they wanted from Nash was that he keep his mouth shut. And it was when he couldn't manage that they turfed him out. Their focus doesn't even get out of the building.
So it's no accident NZ is poor – our politicians are fucking pitiful.
Bruce Cotterill wrote a piece (behind a paywall unfortunately) in the herald over the weekend in which he said something about how NZ used to be the little country who could. A country which punched above its weight and innovated. And now? We are in a rut of our own making, with political leaders (and in my opinion the current co-hort more than any previously) hell bent on holding us back, and on creating divisions within our society that serve them politically. Mediocre is a very good way of describing this country in 2023.
"We were once the little country that could. We beat the odds. Shouted above the noise. But, we seem to have slipped into a spiral of lowering expectations, accepting whatever we get."
and
"Yes, it’s time to abandon the costly experiments. The social engineering and the centralisation strategies. The light rail that we can’t afford. The wonky education syllabus and the gobbledegook health authority. It’s time to stop wasting money. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the abandoned and the unlikely. A cycle bridge, light rail, a media merger and the now abandoned Income Insurance Scheme."
The legacy of this government is one of failure. Failure to inspire, failure to deliver. It could have been so different.
Having just moved from Brissy to Perth this year – Brissy is even better.
Not saying perfect – they have a housing crisis as bad as NZ. Plenty of fuckwits and plonkers in politics here too. But they believe in themselves in a way New Zealand has lost.
We're getting better with what we have for sure, but nowhere near fast enough.
A good measure of progress is how much more capital it takes to fix an orchard after a storm than drystock beef or sheep: the recovery as investment density indicator.
Capital is never better than a crude approximation of productivity.
The Detroit ideal of a factory is heavily capitalized – mechanized to the point there are no workers, but the Asian ideal is as empty as possible – with machines only for the tasks they do better than people.
It pretty much describes the inadequacy of your model – the Asian factory uses less capital – and it has been eating Detroit's lunch for thirty years.
We are not getting better. Numerous significant industries are in long term decline, with no plausible efforts to rebuild them or replace them. Wool. Fisheries. Textiles. Shipping. All the manufacturing things that return better than starvation wages and afford skill growth have been hollowed out.
Thanks neoliberal economists – you useless lying pieces of shit.
Yep look at the size of our economy compared to similar sized nations like Ireland yes there are part of the Eu but that is not the only reason they have a gdp nearly double ours and an average wage of around $100 k.
Nz is a low imagination economy that for four decades has been encouraged by consecutive govts to invest in non-productive industries like housing which makes cost of living and housing skyrocket, rather than wealth and job creating industries and our governments are too afraid to seriously challenge this low imagination.
Also heaven forbid our housing market collapses, if most of our wealth is in housing a dangerous amount of our wealth will end up in the hands of aussie banks.
All good points and I especially agree on the lack of alternative investment pathways. Kiwis of my generation did property because anything else was a a high risk path to bankruptcy.
Personally I would have loved to have had a super scheme like Australia, or an ASX which performed – or even just a govt bond scheme that was inflation protected. But the reality is most ordinary people are not high risk investors, and nor should they. Yet we all face the inevitable problem of potential decades of life past retirement funded by an NZSuper scheme that will prevent absolute poverty but is scarcely an attractive prospect for most.
Frankly when I contemplate your comment I think you have made a good case for NZ to get over itself and formally join the Australian Federation.
You say rich people, when I say wealth is the answer, not rich people.
That said we have an economy which has let a few cream it off the top. At the cost of many.
Labels, give a clarity to a debate, otherwise people can push any old shit and call themselves good, wholesome and right. When in reality they are pushing the same evil shit they always been pushing.
" a small flat white. " $7 billion would buy 1.4 billion small flat whites. 1.4 billion compostable paper cups, all produced locally. 5 coffees each a week. Latté heaven. Plus the dairy industry would milk it for what its worth.
$7 billion annually, as Adrian points out below, is $1400 per annum for every Kiwi.
$7 billion over 27 years would give the money required to completely repair our water infrastructure- all done and paid for by 2050.
$7 billion would build 10,000 houses costed at $700,000 each….. annually.
What a boon to the economy and to our social structure.
$7 billion ain't chickenfeed. The fat roosters high on their perches are too busy saying their prosperity prayers to hear the chickens sneezing below in the dust.
1. tenants and homeowners having savings (beyond KiwiSaver) to be more resilient.
2. investors focusing on new build for rent (and have mortgage deductability) and leaving existing homes for first home buyers
3. sufficient social housing/income related rent
4. a plan for dealing with future housing and care needs of the aged (just as important as the Cullen Fund).
5. maintaining infrastructure and ensuring skills development – apprenticeships
6. a tax on banks to resource lower cost business loans (so we move away from home mortgages to finance business loans and enable business size growth).
7. encouraging productivity investment (more than just R and D but reducing dependency on available labour esp in farming/harvesting)
8. national economy resilence – Tasman shipping and coastal shipping capability (to cope with loss of regional roads and any decline in international shipping logistics). Food going to waste because the Cook Strait has become a barrier to movement is risible.
To be spent on essentials like housing and infrastructure?
The Labour government in the Thirties kickstarted the economy post-Depression with its state housing programme.
$1400 per person is significant- another's warm, safe, dry home; or, it's potable water, swimmable rivers, lessened flood risk etc.
Huge wealth in the hands of a few could mean health and comfort for the many.
I know what I'd prefer. Especially since we are talking about evasion, and not avoidance. You know, stealing, purloining, fiddling, nicking, back end of a lorry stuff. That kind of crime. Theft. Go to jail. Bear the shame of being an anti-social prick.
Nothing to do with envy, Nicola, but to do with justice, fairness, social cohesion.
Wealth is created by the application of human mental and physical labour to the worlds natural, intellectual, technological and scientific resources.
If all the world’s CEOs and squillionaires stayed home for a week, few would notice. If the worlds working class–paid and unpaid–did the same, the place would come to a grinding halt. No breakfast, no internet, no retail, no buses, no school, no caring, no food production, no nothing…
Calling for more capitalist and finance capitalist bludgers and exploiters goes against the reality of capitalism anyway. Monopolisation and concentration of capital mean an increasingly smaller pool of elite filth own more wealth than half the world’s population already.
"human mental and physical labour" applied to dirt, fish and chainsaws is what we have here. … and precisely not applied to the world's natural, technological and scientific resources.
There's plenty from the Productivity Commission on this.
Pretty much an open field from any political party we have to build the path to sustainable wealth.
….er no. Not sure where you buy your small flat whites.
If we taxed only the 311 super-wealthy families identified in the recent IRD report just 2% of their assets per year, that would be $1.7b per annum, about $340 per NZ citizen. To give perspective, this is three times the amount needed to provide complete free dental care to all New Zealanders
And I would say 2% is a low amount. There are also non-financial motives, it would start to reduce the corrosive impact of extreme wealth on democracy and public discourse.
All evidence is that a "larger economy" tends to almost all accumulate to the already-rich. The tired old "rising tide lifts all boats" is just rot – it tends to lift the yachts, while drowning the dinghys.
I would say that that is in fact a very high rate. It is very difficult to get a return on an investment portfolio of 5% on even quite a high risk portfolio once you allow for inflation. Thus your 2% would be an effective tax rate of 40% on the investment income over and above the existing tax rate on things like dividends and interest. 40% is of course higher then the maximum tax bracket rate in New Zealand. If you tried to bring such a rate in you are going to discover what the French did when they tried a wealth tax. The tax had a maximum rate of 1.5% but the net result was probably a loss in tax received. A number of really wealthy people changed their domicile to places like Belgium or Switzerland. They changed it to a property only tax on property in France which would be harder to avoid.
Though the government has recently invested in coastal shipping with an immediate positive effect on the recently isolated east coast region. It is worth considering that there was once a NZ owned and operated shipping company with services to Europe Asia and the USA
I'm listening in on a twitter Space, there's a Scottish woman talking about how when she was in prison, two trans identified males were housed in the same women's prison. One was a gay male in for murdering another man on a date. The other is a man in for sexual offences against women. Neither male had transitioned in any meaningful way.
No protections were put in place for the women prisoner. The males showered in the same spaces at the same time as the women. They were all in general spaces together.
The woman speaking chose to get an IUD fitted because there was no other way to protect from pregnancy if she got raped. Rape was expected.
This is just fucked. And the only way that progressives can say TW and TIMs should be in women's prisons is if they accept that women are collateral damage and some will be raped/sexually assaulted, many will live in fear, and sexual assault survivors having to cope with PTSD and being triggered by these men don't matter.
It's doubly fucked because the only reason to house males in women's prison is gender identity ideology. We could instead create dedicated spaces for trans identified males that protect them, just not at the expense of women.
This why why gender critical feminists and other women consider gender identity ideology to be misogynistic at core. Gender identity and the need for validation trumps women’s needs and safety.
Another hilarious examination of politics in a thimble was the the NZ film Pecking Order 2017. The description on IMDb is:
”Pecking Order looks at the rivalries and obsessions of a group of New Zealand chicken breeders from Christchurch on the months leading up to the National Poultry Show. Like many similar documentaries its focus is a very unusual activity and the eccentrics who partake in it.”
Like others using an iPad I can’t reply directly to comments so dropping this one here.
Yes Adrian, many crumbs to make the "community loaf".
And this amount of help with cost of living was "Too much!!" so we were told.
As tax, this amount "Is not enough!!" to make a difference, we are told.
Bollocks!! That 9% is "The missing link" R&D, Public Transport, Public Service Regenerative Farming, Resilience etc.
Here we are, asking only for 2%!!!! It is bloody 9%!!! LIE 1
Those saying we have not grown the cake… first you need the bloody ingredients! Investment and Tax.!! Less Tax = Less Services.
Attacks on Labour for supposed "Tax and spend" pushing for low tax & distribution so services fall over or get stripped, then unemployment surges and the cashed up rich go to the garage sale of public assets and houses all over again, that's National's agenda. imo
I am sick of "National and Labour are the same, may as well vote National"
LIE 2. National will give each taxpayer a receipt!! LOL!!!!!! I want one for your bloody 200m limo ride Luxy. Liar Liar your baggy pants are on fire!!! Clown imo.
There is zero chance under a Labour-Green-Maori Party government that there will be any tax cuts. They will be rebuilding the East Coast, Northland and Auckland pretty much in perpetuity.
Leaving aside climate change, he’s dealt with all kinds of hyperbole quite well. He’s communicated clearly, briefly and with authority.
He’s managed to get himself a lot of soft coverage around pies and sausage rolls, which is an easy topic of agreement and pleasure in much of New Zealand.
He’s managed in most cases to put himself above the fray and even showed patience, though mixed with some shock, at the Auckland local leadership during the first flooding event.
He’s stuck to his core message about cost of living, based around unprecedented events overseas.
He’s been able to announce long sought justice in Australia for New Zealanders.
He’s got a lot more in terms of tests coming up, but to borrow a phrase he seems fairly relaxed about things and not at all overawed.
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The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
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I watched "Sunday" last night about the Gore council dramas. I think a TV soap could be made around that for goodness sake. Perhaps a NZ version of "The Office" lol.
The thing for me was, that there was nothing in the documentary that gave any justification for the councillors to be so pissed off with Bell. But, it did seem to reinforce that there is a culture of bullying in the organisation.
I felt quite sorry for Bell, although, that is probably what the TV producers intended me to feel.
I thought it was telling that Bell got an 'abusive' email one week after being elected.
[typo fixed in e-mail address – Incognito]
Mod note
Oops sorry,\
The fact that he missed a voice message 10 minutes after being declared as the mayor, and being highlighted by that CEO chap 8 months later as evidence of Bell's "failure," is indicative of a twisted toxic culture but not of Bell.
Yeah, that was what I took away as well. The sort of stuff the whiners were complaining about seemed to be absolutely trivial.
If that is compared to how Wayne Brown responded at the outset of the flooding several months back for instance, then it is absolutely absurd and inconsequential.
You need to go back to the 1996 movie 'Rats in the Ranks'
It's an Australian one that goes through very similar dynamics: weenie council with tonnes of microdynamics and group attacks with plastic butter knives.
So gloriously vain and nasty, over such tiny territory.
Everyone knows Nigel (the president of the local pigeon fancier's society) has to rule with a Putinesque like iron rod and a web of informers that would draw an admiring nod from the STASI, lest the combinations and scheming from amongst the factions built around the Mabel (the Treasurer) and Owen (the keeper of the raffle tickets) usurp his power at the next AGM.
I could name a certain provincial tramping club – with the exact real-life names and personas to match.
Easy enough to take the piss out of them, yet it's these people who've faithfully kept it all going for decades.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300878382/newsable-billions-likely-lost-to-tax-evasion-as-white-collar-crime-investigators-go-underfunded
Tax evasion is possibly $7billion!!!
We don't need a wealth tax we just need to make the barstards pay what's owed!!
The reality in 2023.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2023/05/struggling-families-stuck-using-buy-now-pay-later-for-essentials.html
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2023/05/call-for-more-credit-checks-as-rising-cost-of-living-forces-families-to-use-buy-now-pay-later-schemes-for-essentials.html
We needed a rent freeze last year, but better now than never.
Are you serious? This coulda been shoulda been tripe is from one alleged 'expert', is quoted in the article as telling Newsable "it’s very difficult to investigate or know how prominent it is in New Zealand" and “It’s impossible because it’s trying to measure what you just don’t know,” she says on this morning’s episode."
In other words, 'I havn't a f'ing clue, but print my name anyway'.
Excellent summary of N Z ,s shipping industry on youtube. MV Shiling Loses Power and Towed to an Anchorage off New Zealand. What is Going On with Shipping
If we taxed the billionaires a big chunk and redistributed it next year, everyone would get a small flat white. Useless.
We need a larger economy with far more multimillionaires.
Not more tax.
May be if some of that money locked up in the hands of the wealthy had passed through the hands of ordinary people to buy stuff, it might have helped create that larger economy? And that effect would have been happening for nearly 40 years – since the time we stopped taxing wealth adequately in the mid-80's.
Sadly, that money didn't pass through the real economy in such a way – instead quite a bit of it has gone into asset speculation by the wealthy, because they already had more than enough to live comfortably. Luxon's multiple houses being a case in point.
It's not the redistribution or what you describe as it 'passing through': it's the total volume of wealth.
Imagine if we didn't invest in multiple houses and say we were limited to one each: there's nowhere else to put savings other than in farming and its services. So in the absence of real estate investment, even less investment occurs.
New Zealand is way too path-dependent on those agricultural commodities to make enough multimillionaires to enable us to pay our way without continuing massive reliance to foreign private debt.
New Zealand needs more multimillionaires.
Encouraging people to do so by buying multiple propeorties is economic nonsense.
We do not even invest in the agricultural sectors development? Who invested in Silver Fern and Synlait again?
This is exactly the conversation I'm having on another thread right now – only you have expressed it far more incisively. The old – growing the pie, vs cutting it up problem.
New Zealand has a bit of both problems, we're not making our pie big enough and we're surely not dividing it up reasonably either.
“”””We need more multimillionaires”
The way inflation is going we might get there soon. !
I think the tax rate was about 60% when I was growing up.
Everything worked. Electricity was cheap. Education was free and real. Public services served.
Nothing government has done since has been an improvement – and we are circling the plughole. Governments need to stop pandering to corporates and tax delinquents and prioritize the welfare of citizens. And yes – that's not migrants.
There's certainly a legitimate discussion to be had about the size of the state and whether we pursue the Scandinavian model of higher and more progressive taxes along with universal services and transfers (e.g. working for families), or continue down our current model of flatter taxes and targeted services and transfers.
Third way politics from you Ad.
It's a bit of failed ideology at this point. If for no other reason, it keeps producing such piss poor results.
Labelling just evades the debate.
We have a weak, dumb, narrow economy that doesn't generate rich people.
Yup – and after following the neo-liberal prescription to the letter.
Who'd've thunk it?
It's almost as is trickle down economics wasn't good for economies after all.
But like the Soviet elite, the Rogergnomes cannot admit their failures. They'll stagger on until the wheels fall off, and then whine we should've cut taxes even further.
Neo-liberalism is what you get when you think that just because some problems are well served by markets – that all problems must be equally amenable to the same solution. And that because modelling humans as rational economic actors is useful when building models – that people really are just atomised consumers and nothing more.
That is of course the sort of nonsense you get whenever you take a good idea and go too far with it.
But Ad is no neo-liberal extremist. We are both engineers, we live by the real world outcomes we deliver. Reality in our world is very close to the surface – and tolerates very little lying to ourselves.
Making everyone equal by making everyone dirt poor is a trivial achievement. It's how we lived most of our history and too many places in the world still do. Delivering a thriving, cohesive and healthy society that is prosperous in the broadest sense of the word is fucking near miraculous.
I think in many cases, the market is the harsh taskmaster that punishes our stupid decisions.
So, for instance, plummeting fish stocks will eventually cause major shortages, meaning the consequence is that the prices become incredibly expensive, and few will be rich enough to afford fish. A consequence of that will likely be starvation of many populations depending on fish.
The market will eventually sort the fish problem out in that it will become uneconomical to send boats out to fish. Hence, the amount of fishing will reduce, and so, fish stocks will eventually recover.
But, it is far better and less painful for the world to get its shit together and manage fish stocks more responsibly.
Interesting notion. You believe humans will stop exploitation of the environment, plants, animals and even humans, before extinction occurs?
The moa, dodo and trawling for orange roughy as well as hypoxic lakes and carbon at 412ppm (and a multitude of other environmental sins tell a different story.
But yes, it would be great if the world got its shit together to reduce human impact on fish stocks – and the rest of the planet – before we make it uninhabitable for fish and other living organisms.
I think that eventually we have no option. And that the price to pay is likely mass extinction until the population and resource available are in balance.
As things become less and less liveable, the price for living in habitable areas will get progressively more expensive. Those who can't afford to move there will likely become victims of situation. Thus, the population will eventually match the resources available.
That is what I mean about the market eventually solving the problem. But, not in the way we would like. It is much better to start making good decisions now.
Two thoughts – the tragedy of the commons, the over-exploitation of resources has been a common thread for at least the past 10,000 years. The environmental sins you point to are real and in some cases urgent.
Yet the lesson to be learned from history is not just that we periodically bump up against these limits, sometimes real hard, we have always adapted. 10,000 years later we're still here, and doing better than ever.
But there is something different this time. For all of our history the idea of 'more' and 'better' were two birds sitting in a tree right next to each other. If you got the more bird, you always got the better bird.
We may well have passed this phase – the desirable goal now is quality rather than quantity. That we need to start measuring 'growth' in a more nuanced and multidimensional manner.
Yes, I agree with all of this
I see the first aim in this measuring should be to account for environmental and social costs – so-called 'externalities' at the time of resource extraction/production of goods. This would also be one of tsmithfield's 'good decisions'.
It seems to me that measuring/good decisions is incompatible with the current economic ideology.
I have a feeling that people that rub up against policy-makers don't realize how outrageously they understate the damage caused by substituting short term commercial interests for the public interest.
That entry-level worker that gets cheated out of their job or low-balled out of it by illegal migrants never becomes the master of their profession that they might in a less fundamentally corrupt system. The local monopsonies in the fishing industry became billionaires alright – by decimating their stocks and impoverishing the catching sector – ie the guys that had the knowledge to innovate towards more sustainable practice. The investor class won't be doing that.
Our government don't deserve to be in power. They knew Gnasher was corrupt and had sold out the public interest in fisheries. But they didn't care. They didn't want a sustainable, much less a thriving fishery. They didn't want career paths for recent entrants, or improved export receipts. All they wanted from Nash was that he keep his mouth shut. And it was when he couldn't manage that they turfed him out. Their focus doesn't even get out of the building.
So it's no accident NZ is poor – our politicians are fucking pitiful.
Mediocre is the word you are looking for. We are not getting shit done.
Bruce Cotterill wrote a piece (behind a paywall unfortunately) in the herald over the weekend in which he said something about how NZ used to be the little country who could. A country which punched above its weight and innovated. And now? We are in a rut of our own making, with political leaders (and in my opinion the current co-hort more than any previously) hell bent on holding us back, and on creating divisions within our society that serve them politically. Mediocre is a very good way of describing this country in 2023.
Here it is, archived
https://archive.ph/xvgV2
Thanks Belladonna.
Two quotes resonate:
"We were once the little country that could. We beat the odds. Shouted above the noise. But, we seem to have slipped into a spiral of lowering expectations, accepting whatever we get."
and
"Yes, it’s time to abandon the costly experiments. The social engineering and the centralisation strategies. The light rail that we can’t afford. The wonky education syllabus and the gobbledegook health authority. It’s time to stop wasting money. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the abandoned and the unlikely. A cycle bridge, light rail, a media merger and the now abandoned Income Insurance Scheme."
The legacy of this government is one of failure. Failure to inspire, failure to deliver. It could have been so different.
Having just moved from Brissy to Perth this year – Brissy is even better.
Not saying perfect – they have a housing crisis as bad as NZ. Plenty of fuckwits and plonkers in politics here too. But they believe in themselves in a way New Zealand has lost.
You are tina-preaching…
Whereas we can look to those countries that have higher/fairer taxes…and much better infrastructure/citizen support…
That's where the alternatives lie..
We don't have to have a low wage/high cost/crumbled infrastructure/citizen support country..
That was imposed upon us by the neoliberal revolution wrought by douglas and his band of right-wing bandits..
And since then successive neoliberal-incrementalist governments have not undone what douglas did..
And this has brought us to where we are now..
Homelessness/poverty/environmental degradation/infrastructure crumbling..
It doesn't have to be this way..
In fact the urgency to change how we currently do things couldn't be clearer to see..
So that Tina stuff being peddled by the engineer- contingent here just shows a lack of imagination/inability to see past the end of one's nose..
(But if I could just sneer across across the uni quad..?.. They are engineers..after all…heh..!)
You should have moved on from the 70's by now …
I love how you hate on the poor.
Karpman Drama Triangle explained.
No it started in the 1820s and kept going.
We're getting better with what we have for sure, but nowhere near fast enough.
A good measure of progress is how much more capital it takes to fix an orchard after a storm than drystock beef or sheep: the recovery as investment density indicator.
Capital is never better than a crude approximation of productivity.
The Detroit ideal of a factory is heavily capitalized – mechanized to the point there are no workers, but the Asian ideal is as empty as possible – with machines only for the tasks they do better than people.
It pretty much describes the inadequacy of your model – the Asian factory uses less capital – and it has been eating Detroit's lunch for thirty years.
We are not getting better. Numerous significant industries are in long term decline, with no plausible efforts to rebuild them or replace them. Wool. Fisheries. Textiles. Shipping. All the manufacturing things that return better than starvation wages and afford skill growth have been hollowed out.
Thanks neoliberal economists – you useless lying pieces of shit.
Yep look at the size of our economy compared to similar sized nations like Ireland yes there are part of the Eu but that is not the only reason they have a gdp nearly double ours and an average wage of around $100 k.
Nz is a low imagination economy that for four decades has been encouraged by consecutive govts to invest in non-productive industries like housing which makes cost of living and housing skyrocket, rather than wealth and job creating industries and our governments are too afraid to seriously challenge this low imagination.
Also heaven forbid our housing market collapses, if most of our wealth is in housing a dangerous amount of our wealth will end up in the hands of aussie banks.
All good points and I especially agree on the lack of alternative investment pathways. Kiwis of my generation did property because anything else was a a high risk path to bankruptcy.
Personally I would have loved to have had a super scheme like Australia, or an ASX which performed – or even just a govt bond scheme that was inflation protected. But the reality is most ordinary people are not high risk investors, and nor should they. Yet we all face the inevitable problem of potential decades of life past retirement funded by an NZSuper scheme that will prevent absolute poverty but is scarcely an attractive prospect for most.
Frankly when I contemplate your comment I think you have made a good case for NZ to get over itself and formally join the Australian Federation.
You say rich people, when I say wealth is the answer, not rich people.
That said we have an economy which has let a few cream it off the top. At the cost of many.
Labels, give a clarity to a debate, otherwise people can push any old shit and call themselves good, wholesome and right. When in reality they are pushing the same evil shit they always been pushing.
" a small flat white. " $7 billion would buy 1.4 billion small flat whites. 1.4 billion compostable paper cups, all produced locally. 5 coffees each a week. Latté heaven. Plus the dairy industry would milk it for what its worth.
$7 billion annually, as Adrian points out below, is $1400 per annum for every Kiwi.
$7 billion over 27 years would give the money required to completely repair our water infrastructure- all done and paid for by 2050.
$7 billion would build 10,000 houses costed at $700,000 each….. annually.
What a boon to the economy and to our social structure.
$7 billion ain't chickenfeed. The fat roosters high on their perches are too busy saying their prosperity prayers to hear the chickens sneezing below in the dust.
Magnitude: – A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
If you think $1400 pa is going to solve your problems … Ad is correct it wouldn’t even buy you a $5 flat white each day for a year.
Given the number of people with no savings and who go to lenders and get into more difficulty … that's totally out of touch.
I get it – $1400 pa or $7000 pa for a family household is not nothing. Few people would leave that much cash lying on the table.
But I want a New Zealand that does way better than this.
I'd settle for our past standards
1. tenants and homeowners having savings (beyond KiwiSaver) to be more resilient.
2. investors focusing on new build for rent (and have mortgage deductability) and leaving existing homes for first home buyers
3. sufficient social housing/income related rent
4. a plan for dealing with future housing and care needs of the aged (just as important as the Cullen Fund).
5. maintaining infrastructure and ensuring skills development – apprenticeships
6. a tax on banks to resource lower cost business loans (so we move away from home mortgages to finance business loans and enable business size growth).
7. encouraging productivity investment (more than just R and D but reducing dependency on available labour esp in farming/harvesting)
8. national economy resilence – Tasman shipping and coastal shipping capability (to cope with loss of regional roads and any decline in international shipping logistics). Food going to waste because the Cook Strait has become a barrier to movement is risible.
86.
An extra $1400 per kiwi into the economy?
To be spent on essentials like housing and infrastructure?
The Labour government in the Thirties kickstarted the economy post-Depression with its state housing programme.
$1400 per person is significant- another's warm, safe, dry home; or, it's potable water, swimmable rivers, lessened flood risk etc.
Huge wealth in the hands of a few could mean health and comfort for the many.
I know what I'd prefer. Especially since we are talking about evasion, and not avoidance. You know, stealing, purloining, fiddling, nicking, back end of a lorry stuff. That kind of crime. Theft. Go to jail. Bear the shame of being an anti-social prick.
Nothing to do with envy, Nicola, but to do with justice, fairness, social cohesion.
it should be a larger amount given to those that really need it ie poor people.
Wealth is created by the application of human mental and physical labour to the worlds natural, intellectual, technological and scientific resources.
If all the world’s CEOs and squillionaires stayed home for a week, few would notice. If the worlds working class–paid and unpaid–did the same, the place would come to a grinding halt. No breakfast, no internet, no retail, no buses, no school, no caring, no food production, no nothing…
Calling for more capitalist and finance capitalist bludgers and exploiters goes against the reality of capitalism anyway. Monopolisation and concentration of capital mean an increasingly smaller pool of elite filth own more wealth than half the world’s population already.
Trickledown does not happen.
"human mental and physical labour" applied to dirt, fish and chainsaws is what we have here. … and precisely not applied to the world's natural, technological and scientific resources.
There's plenty from the Productivity Commission on this.
Pretty much an open field from any political party we have to build the path to sustainable wealth.
Well said, sir. May I quote you?
….er no. Not sure where you buy your small flat whites.
If we taxed only the 311 super-wealthy families identified in the recent IRD report just 2% of their assets per year, that would be $1.7b per annum, about $340 per NZ citizen. To give perspective, this is three times the amount needed to provide complete free dental care to all New Zealanders
And I would say 2% is a low amount. There are also non-financial motives, it would start to reduce the corrosive impact of extreme wealth on democracy and public discourse.
All evidence is that a "larger economy" tends to almost all accumulate to the already-rich. The tired old "rising tide lifts all boats" is just rot – it tends to lift the yachts, while drowning the dinghys.
$340/365 days is 90 cents a day or $6.30 a week.
Call it a mocca.
Ad, times 1.7 by 4.5 to get to that 7.65 billion, is half what is required to clean up the flood and cyclone damage. 2 years and it would be done.
What we are saying , telling us we are not innovative enough, not productive enough, not pushy enough is so much claptrap.
New Zealanders deserve all to pay their tax due, and those saying we have dropped the ball "get a life".
New Zealanders continue to excel, and Aussies continue to claim our successes!
"And I would say 2% is a low amount".
I would say that that is in fact a very high rate. It is very difficult to get a return on an investment portfolio of 5% on even quite a high risk portfolio once you allow for inflation. Thus your 2% would be an effective tax rate of 40% on the investment income over and above the existing tax rate on things like dividends and interest. 40% is of course higher then the maximum tax bracket rate in New Zealand. If you tried to bring such a rate in you are going to discover what the French did when they tried a wealth tax. The tax had a maximum rate of 1.5% but the net result was probably a loss in tax received. A number of really wealthy people changed their domicile to places like Belgium or Switzerland. They changed it to a property only tax on property in France which would be harder to avoid.
Though the government has recently invested in coastal shipping with an immediate positive effect on the recently isolated east coast region. It is worth considering that there was once a NZ owned and operated shipping company with services to Europe Asia and the USA
I'm listening in on a twitter Space, there's a Scottish woman talking about how when she was in prison, two trans identified males were housed in the same women's prison. One was a gay male in for murdering another man on a date. The other is a man in for sexual offences against women. Neither male had transitioned in any meaningful way.
No protections were put in place for the women prisoner. The males showered in the same spaces at the same time as the women. They were all in general spaces together.
The woman speaking chose to get an IUD fitted because there was no other way to protect from pregnancy if she got raped. Rape was expected.
This is just fucked. And the only way that progressives can say TW and TIMs should be in women's prisons is if they accept that women are collateral damage and some will be raped/sexually assaulted, many will live in fear, and sexual assault survivors having to cope with PTSD and being triggered by these men don't matter.
It's doubly fucked because the only reason to house males in women's prison is gender identity ideology. We could instead create dedicated spaces for trans identified males that protect them, just not at the expense of women.
This why why gender critical feminists and other women consider gender identity ideology to be misogynistic at core. Gender identity and the need for validation trumps women’s needs and safety.
This is the woman who was speaking,
https://twitter.com/LockedUpWithMen/with_replies
She has posted articles about sexual violence by males who self ID as a woman.
https://twitter.com/LockedUpWithMen/status/1657838776922636292
In reply to Ad @1.2
Another hilarious examination of politics in a thimble was the the NZ film Pecking Order 2017. The description on IMDb is:
”Pecking Order looks at the rivalries and obsessions of a group of New Zealand chicken breeders from Christchurch on the months leading up to the National Poultry Show. Like many similar documentaries its focus is a very unusual activity and the eccentrics who partake in it.”
Like others using an iPad I can’t reply directly to comments so dropping this one here.
More like $1400 each,or $7000 a family but aggregated over a city for services its a shitload of money.
Yes Adrian, many crumbs to make the "community loaf".
And this amount of help with cost of living was "Too much!!" so we were told.
As tax, this amount "Is not enough!!" to make a difference, we are told.
Bollocks!! That 9% is "The missing link" R&D, Public Transport, Public Service Regenerative Farming, Resilience etc.
Here we are, asking only for 2%!!!! It is bloody 9%!!! LIE 1
Those saying we have not grown the cake… first you need the bloody ingredients! Investment and Tax.!! Less Tax = Less Services.
Attacks on Labour for supposed "Tax and spend" pushing for low tax & distribution so services fall over or get stripped, then unemployment surges and the cashed up rich go to the garage sale of public assets and houses all over again, that's National's agenda. imo
I am sick of "National and Labour are the same, may as well vote National"
LIE 2. National will give each taxpayer a receipt!! LOL!!!!!! I want one for your bloody 200m limo ride Luxy. Liar Liar your baggy pants are on fire!!! Clown imo.
Anyone can go online and look at the amount of tax they pay each year.
And look at a pie chart of government spending with each budget to identify where the money was allocated.
Why would anyone but the state get this largesse?
There is zero chance under a Labour-Green-Maori Party government that there will be any tax cuts. They will be rebuilding the East Coast, Northland and Auckland pretty much in perpetuity.
We need tax cuts?
Mind you, if tax evaders coughed up their due amount, there might be an argument…….
Hipkins seems to be doing quite a good job, yeh?
Leaving aside climate change, he’s dealt with all kinds of hyperbole quite well. He’s communicated clearly, briefly and with authority.
He’s managed to get himself a lot of soft coverage around pies and sausage rolls, which is an easy topic of agreement and pleasure in much of New Zealand.
He’s managed in most cases to put himself above the fray and even showed patience, though mixed with some shock, at the Auckland local leadership during the first flooding event.
He’s stuck to his core message about cost of living, based around unprecedented events overseas.
He’s been able to announce long sought justice in Australia for New Zealanders.
He’s got a lot more in terms of tests coming up, but to borrow a phrase he seems fairly relaxed about things and not at all overawed.
After fronting the Covid response anything must seem easy for Hipkins.
Nice newsense and Bearded Git
There's a hell of a lot of people out in voter land and apparently on this site who seem to have a memory span of less than 72 hours. 🙁