Looks like the focus groups behind this government are beating the drums against the teacher unions. First Rodney Hide’s dog whistle article against the unions in the HOS, then the Herald running a poll to find out what people think about the unions.
It’s encouraging at least to read the comments below Rodney’s rant.
The right really hate unions that protect their workers, don’t they?
Interesting obsservation Paul, one that strikes a chord. There looks to be a small management clique at the Herald who don’t think much of journalistic impartiality, some of the pro-National editorials from one Herald staffer in particular are quite outrageous in their condescending bias and Goebbels style propaganda.
Hide can say what he pleases, he’s a guest commentator, but it is curious how the Herald have a poll inside his article on the same subject he’s criticising. A cynic might suggest the results of the poll may not be exacty accurate either.
The Herald often run a ‘dog-whistle’story then ask for ‘people’s’ opinions.
It’s an attempt either to test the water for new (suspected unpopular) policy or a attempt by the Herald to sway opinion…as your comment inferred.
A quick look at the Herald’s headlines over the past 6 months show a generally negative perspective on teachers.
The owners of the Herald have spoken to the editor, clearly.
I’d lean towards Pauls view. In the last few years the Herald has written a few editorials of their own criticising the teachers union and I don’t recall ever seeing them praising the union at any time. Further to that the Herald wasn’t exactly union friendly during the ports dispute either.
There’s a definite anti-union bias at some levels in the Herald. They’re also pro-charter schools, again they’ve written a number of editorials in favour of it and I don’t recall any that were against it.
(note I’m taliking about editorials written by Herald staff and not guest commentaries)
A cynic might suggest the results of the poll may not be exacty accurate either.
Don’t need to be a cynic, just a skeptic. Everybody should realise that the polls on the NZHerald aren’t scientifically accurate and especially when those polls are posted on an opinion piece which will probably be read mostly by the people who actually agree with who wrote the opinion.
Three out of four of Hide’s recent columns have consisted of attacks on teachers. These attacks are clearly linked to the dismal charter schools policy. Remember, charter schools are 100% the product of this half-wit and his half-witted party. neo-liberalism is a fanatic religion; the neo-liberals consider the successful resistance by education experts to their crack pot ideological ideas as a religious affront; And they accordingly approach the issue with an obsessive fanaticism.
And the sooner that people realise that the neo-liberal theory that we’ve had dumped on us by governments over the last 30 years is a religion the better.
Conservatives hate two things. Change and instability. Yet we have had conservatism in the ascendancy for the last thirty years, a revolutionary conservatism that made change (growth, profits, etc) the new stability, the new normal. With the end of cheap oil revolutionary conservatism, the bashing unions given any opportunity, is not sustainable, in fact its highly destabilizing. Who in their right mind bashes the unions, whose members have huge buying power in a time of global depression? Well a unreconstructed revolutionary conservative (Key bashing unions quite unnecessarily over the Hobbit movie).
Its like this. Societies need to redistribute wealth or they implode in civil disorder, in cheap oil times the means to redistribute was through the private banking system leveraging the printing of money. But all that has changed, we need to redistribute, that needs workers to demand higher salaries (take the foot off the pedal of high finance that took their marginal pay cuts and turned it into a bubble bonanza), and so all the natural inclinations of the lousy right to bash and screw over, that was once so recently in vogue and necessary to profits and eating up cheap energy, is no longer.
The problem with the Herald and many talking heads in NZ is that they just don’t know they are wrong, or just have invested too much in being tough unflinching types that they don’t get the joke they are becoming.
Editorial: Revamp tax system to help out home buyershttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10865948
Rental housing is a business providing a service that people would prefer to provide for themselves if they could afford to. When competition from the business is making it harder for them to afford it, the business should not have a tax advantage.
If the removal of interest deductions discouraged residential property investment, lowered prices for first-home seekers and forced established home-owners to look for more productive uses of their savings, the country could be better off socially and economically.
Well the NZ Herald Editorial’s argument would be an improvement on the current situation, but it is still tinkering with the system rather than aiming to change it.
It assumes everyone wants to buy their own home.
Rental housing is a business providing a service that people would prefer to provide for themselves if they could afford to. When competition from the business is making it harder for them to afford it, the business should not have a tax advantage.
If the removal of interest deductions discouraged residential property investment, lowered prices for first-home seekers and forced established home-owners to look for more productive uses of their savings, the country could be better off socially and economically.
This is a self-fulfilling prophesy, rather than aiming for a system where their is a choice between renting and owning your home. I am a life-time renter by choice. I think the focus on everyone owning their own home is set up in the interests of the banks and wealthy classes. It adds extra unnecessary pressures to workers on lower pay.
Increasing the amount of affordable state housing, and community housing plus some fair (to both landlords and renters) restrictions on private renting needs to be done as part of a comprehensive policy of change.
The problem being there that for the working poor,those who earn below $45,000 annually a State house is really only a dream as that cohort in the economy number anywhere from 250-300,000, and are now in places like Auckland and Christchurch paying 50%+ of their income in rent,
Successive Governments have aided and abetted the growth of this situation and who knows if this has been a deliberate measure,but, the number of State rental properties has remained static as the New Zealand population has grown from 3.3 million to 4.4 million in a relatively short period of time considering how long that population growth took to reach 3.3 million,
Globalization has allowed the banking cartels to be the sole producer of the money supply and those cartels have been only too happy to ‘produce’ monies to help along the price inflation from the ‘failure’ of the building industry to meet either the actual demand of the numbers of houses required and produce enough lower cost housing to constrain inflation in that sector,
Unfortunately the solutions for those in the rental market in the bigger cities are as radical as the house price inflation that has already occurred,
Government could simply Legislate that all rent for those households with an income of $45,000 or less a year pay no more than 25% of that total household income as rent,
A change to the housing law would be required to remove the ability of a landlord to remove a tenant for any reason after giving 90 days notice leaving only failure to pay rent, damage to property, and, disturbing the quiet enjoyment of neighbors to enjoy their property as the only means of removing a tenant from a rental property,
The $1.2 Billion dollar Accommodation supplement would need be cancelled and a ‘new’ WINZ benefit would need be established as a hardship grant landlords could apply to WINZ for to gain, after the production of suitable proof of hardship, a WINZ grant to enable the payment of mortgages,
Obviously as the banking cartels simply ‘produce’ the mortgages at the center of the failure of the property market they should be returned the same ‘produce’ in return and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand would have to be tasked to provide to WINZ the funds to pay such hardship grants to landlords using the same means of production as the banking cartels…
Back when the AS was introduced (under Shipley?) community organisations such as the Sallies predicted this situation with rising rental prices would occur. How to undo the damage of the AS without causing social harm is a difficult thing.
Until then I have to buy the odd lotto ticket. How pathetic.
The Accommodation Supplement tho was simply the addition of more fuel to the fire, in reality nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy for those investing in rental properties who in all reality have become the ticket clippers for the banking cartels to suck a large proportion of the profits of production,(the workers share), out of the New Zealand economy,
Norm Kirk’s Labour Government were building 30,000 State houses a year at it’s peak, this is the only other means i can at present think of besides what i have outlined in my previous comment of addressing this ‘issue’ particularly in cities like Auckland and Christchurch,
Both Labour and the Green Party have housing policy that addresses specific income groups effected by this house price, (and therefore rental), inflation,unfortunately even with a ‘peak build’ of 30,000 houses annually it would take 10 years for this inflation to be brought under control,
The point of my advocacy of a maximum 25% of household income for those with a household income of $45,000 a year or less would be the immediacy of it’s effect on both rental accommodation in the major cities and, (perhaps), on actual demand from investors for properties…
Or we could get real and build something like this and rent the lot out at 25% of household income,
Apparently the Chinese can knock one of these together in 3 years and have done so all over China and in places in Africa, shops, schools, sports-fields, everything, one of these tho would need a comprehensive public transport link to the rest of Auckland,
You claim that the Kirk Government was building 30,000 state houses/year at its peak.
That is wildly wrong. The peak construction of the 72-75 Labour Government was the 4,000 state houses built in the 75-76 year.
Brilliant CV, abso-lutely f**king brilliant, that also should be included in the school curriculum,
i have been arguing this very argument for years, the building of the houses justifies the printing of the debt, once you have the built houses you have the asset which nullifies the debt so there is no point keeping the debt on the books,
The same could be achieved by ‘selling’ the houses to the tenants, as the payments are made on a minimal basis the debt held by which-ever Government department would simply disappear,
It’s funny how very few people can ‘see’ this,and, i would dare say that such a production of money could not be used to fund everything, and, such a build off of the basis of such money would need to take the Reserve Banks inflationary targets into the time span of the build, but rocket science it aint,
Lolz the last paragraph says it all, threats from the slave masters in London of economic sanctions if Labour continued to print it’s own coin,
Should imagine that such threats would still be forthcoming in these modern times, probably from the banking cartels, bit hard tho to issue such threats when the US Government is printing $40 billion a month to spend upon ‘infrastructure’…
Ok. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Labour_Government_of_New_Zealand
It’s in section 1.5 “Social Policy” in the bit with the heading “Major initiatives in Housing”. I’m afraid I can’t aim you directly at the words.
The person I am replying to is confusing total house construction in the year with state house construction.
You are in essence correct, i got the figure of 30,000 State houses built at the peak of the Kirk Labour Government’s term in office from a discussion with someone else and it is obviously my mistake to think that these 30,000 homes were all built ‘as State houses’,
The Kirk Government though in it’s generous treatment of low income people ’caused’ the great bulk of those houses to be built by direct intervention in the financing of loans to those reliant upon low incomes,
While happily admitting my mistake vis a vis the 30,000 homes built that year along with the 27,000 the year befor, and, the 24,000 the year befor that not being all State houses i cannot point to how this in any material way has any effect on the discussion here this morning, if it does, please point this out,
Lolz i recommend EVERYONE read that link, (it should be part of the school curriculum), can anyone imagine the skinflint miserly Governments that came after Kirk’s 3rd Labour Government paying beneficiaries an extra benefit payment as a ‘Christmas bonus’,
Kirk’s was a Government on a serious mission to improve the lives of every body, even going so far as to provide the Hippies of the time land via the ‘Ohu scheme’ where they could explore alternative lifestyles,
That Government should be the template by which all Labour Governments of the future Govern….
PS, and if i hear anyone in the Parliamentary Labour team attempt to compare David Shearer to Norman Kirk again i swear i am going to f**king vomit,
I suggest that Labour strategists wanting to make that comparison read the link kindly provided by ‘Alwyn’ above and when David Shearer comes out proposing the same treatment for beneficiaries as the Kirk Government DELIVERED then and only then may you have the temerity to attempt such a comparison…
I’m sorry about the bit that says “The person I am replying to”.
I got confused by the various comments here and didn’t register that it was you who both made the comment AND asked for the reference.
There was one thing the Kirk Government did about their housing policy that I strongly disapproved of though. I built a house in 1974 and the Government brought in a rule that the total area of a house was limited to 1500 sq ft (about 139 sq m). It meant I had to cut out one bedroom from the house which was a pain in the butt. God knows why they decided that that was a limit regardless of the size of your family.
No need to offer any apology, the comments in a post or open mike can be hard to follow, i usually read them all and don’t miss much,
Yes i can imagine people would have been a little up-set over having the size of their build restricted by Government,
i can well imagine why, to keep the allocation of Government resources reasonably even as they were allocated,
i should imagine the next Labour/Green Government will have for the cities a specific build size in mind for their specific housing policies,
Part of the failure of the current housing market is that it is being lead in no small part by the developers building the largest house possible on any given parcel of land to recoup the largest profit off that investment, that’s capitalism for you,
Given tho that in the past 30 years the average size family has shrunk down to Ma and Pa with 1.2 kids while the average house size has risen from 100m to 200m it starts to seem like one hell of a waste of space,
Do we really in a world of shrinking resources, shrinking capital and shrinking earnings for many actually need a fully lined garage for 3 vehicles along with a couple of ensuites attached to the bedrooms of our housing stock,
It all seems way too effete for me, but then i am a peasant who prefers to jump in a river or the sea or even under a hose than get in the shower…
On the awful looking suburbs built by developers in South Auckland that I have seen, I compare with the situation which prevailed in the 1960s and 70s. Then the developer divided up the property, applied for titles and prepared the sections and had a book of plans that had been costed to choose from.
Any changes would add to the price, and you got a nice house that was fitted to your needs. Since when have developers got the right to decide on our living environment? It’s like living in military housing or in an upper class open jail.
Government could simply Legislate that all rent for those households with an income of $45,000 or less a year pay no more than 25% of that total household income as rent,
Set mortgage’s as a fixed value but that it cannot go above 25% of income. The weekly payment would be the lesser of the two. Also make them a fixed term so that extra payments can’t be added to the mortgage to make up any loss when the payments drop below the fixed value.
And then make mortgages available to home owners with 0% interest.
Why mess around with mortgages, it is the people trapped paying rent with a household income of $45,000 or less that i am addressing here, a lot of the time particularly in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington at 50+% of income,
Making mortgages cheaper will simply lead to an increased demand for property and while that demand exists rents will remain as they are, far too high for those forced to rent…
Yes you limited the payments made on a mortgage to 25% of i presume household income,
This would simply have far more people seeking a house as would supplying those people with 0% interest home loans,
That would simply inflate the price of houses further leaving people with limited incomes with mortgages that could never in their lifetime be paid,
The ‘problem’ is tri-fold in that the population through immigration has been artificially increased over a short period by a million while housing construction lags behind by 8 years and the banking cartels have ‘produced’ easy credit for some to allow them to take advantage of the demand,
At the heart it is simply a supply/demand ‘problem’, if as a country we had of built the housing first and then invited in the immigrants to match what would have been an oversupply of housing we would not be faced with the ‘problem’…
That would simply inflate the price of houses further leaving people with limited incomes with mortgages that could never in their lifetime be paid,
How can such a system inflate house prices when the value of the house is limited to pay back of 25% of income, the government is busily building and renting out accommodation at 10% of income as well as supplying mortgages at 0% interest?
You seem to be suggesting that you would set the value of houses by legislation well below their current ‘market value’???,
The particular comment of yours we are debating might make sense in your mind, but, perhaps you need rephrase it as it doesn’t explain anything in the manner it is written,
If you are limiting the maximum amount anyone would pay on a mortgage on any property to 25% of household income while offering loans at 0% interest the end result is that EVERYONE could have a home with an affordable mortgage,
The reality tho, if i may drag you back to Earth, is that demand for housing to purchase currently out-strips supply by 8 years so allowing EVERYONE the opportunity to buy on low cost mortgage only serves to increase demand which the building industry cannot fill…
Not everybody could afford a mortgage or, to be more precise, not everybody could afford a house simply because the real cost of building one would be beyond their capability of repaying. There would be time limits that apply as well. Just because the mortgage is set at no more than 25% of income doesn’t mean that someone on minimum wage would be able to go out and buy a house.
And I’m sure you’ll find that the construction industry is quite capable of building the necessary housing. It may be challenged initially but that could be seen to over time.
Really Draco, so exactly who are you trying to help here, if those who are trapped in the low income brackets cannot afford to buy a house under the auspices of what you propose then just who would be able to???,
Where then does this leave those on the lowest incomes trapped paying rent to the middle classes of 50%+ of their limited income???…
Really Draco, so exactly who are you trying to help here, if those who are trapped in the low income brackets cannot afford to buy a house under the auspices of what you propose then just who would be able to???,
Geoff
To me, one of the biggest problems for renters is that houses get revalued according to current market prices, which are usually up. So the renter is always paying more for the same house or flat, so the return for the owner goes up, often with little maintenance or improvement carried out to maintain the amenity.
Yup agreed, but house prices need to be corrected down significantly. I’m sure there are a number of other factors, rent prices like house prices are sticky upward.
Rent prices tied to house prices??? by what??? rent prices are as far as i can see tied to nothing much in particular and are just as likely to be set by the landlord looking on TradeMe to see what other landlords are charging for ‘like’ properties…
Tied by mortgages. Landlords have to cover the cost of their loans but yes there are other factors, probably none of which favour the renter.
I’m sympathetic with karol’s perspective but I believe there are far more people who would like to own but are forced to rent than there are people who are just happy to rent. In any case there must be solutions that cater to both interests, the trouble being that it certainly won’t be in the interests of the landlords who are quite happy with the way things are.
Another good reason to tax businesses at a gross rate. Remove the perverse incentive to have a continuous flow of interest via buying more properties to reduce your tax bill here and elsewhere by offsetting the losses.
Look forward to the righties today moaning about Lydia Ko bludging off the state. Clearly has the means and ability to support herself but prefers to still live off money from high performance sport funding.
Shit forgot it’s only bludging when you have no job and you aren’t travelling all over the world, you have to go to Winz for food cause you’ve got no money to buy any and you have applied for 50 jobs and got 1 interview if you are lucky, have to live off porridge or weetbix, can’t afford to go to the doctor, and so on.
That writer doesn’t have it right either. I don’t know why but most people seem to have trouble doing averages & percentages in their head.
To understand investors it helps to start with the basic principle of investing; that the investment must provide a market return.
To explain; assume that a property investor wants the same return as bank deposits and that rent makes up the return (they actually want more than bank deposits but run with this for now)
At 10% bank interest rates a $250k property will be returning $25k.
Now interest rates fall to 5%, which is what happened
The property will still be returning 10%, because rents didn’t fall with interest rates. Now it’s returning twice as much as bank deposits.
Investors move from bank deposits to property, because the return is higher.
Price of property goes up until it reaches $500,000 because the $25k return from the property is 5% of $500k and 5% is what the bank is paying.
And if interest rates go back up… well rents go up because the return is then too low. In economic theory the property value should go down but in real life it doesn’t.
That’s actually what happens in commercial property, it’s a kind of rachet which means prices constantly go up but can never come down as long as there’s renters to fill the properties. Interest rates go up & down but rents never go down so changes in interest rates lead directly to higher property prices.
You’re ignoring the fact that many people invested in property for the capital gain.
You could argue that they are not “investors” but I can find you people who would have to charge far more than would be possible to meet their interest bill. They meet this from their good salary and not doing any maintenance.
The only sums they did was if I sell it in 1 or 2 years time how much can I sell it for?
Yeah but that’s the Govt’s fault. To qualify as an investor, and not pay tax on capital gains, you have to be in property for the rental returns only. Can find the IRD ruling here;
“If you’re an investor you buy a property to use it to generate ongoing rental income and not with any firm intent of resale. The property is a capital asset and any later profit or loss from selling the property is capital and isn’t taxable (apart from clawing back any depreciation, which is now recoverable). ”
Now we all know that rents alone don’t provide a market return on most properties and that residential ‘investors’ are in it for the capital gain but they can’t admit that because they’d be disqualified from being classed as an investor if they did. They say they’re in it for the rental return only but the numbers say emphatically that they’re not.
Those people aren’t investors. They’re speculators. Investors underpin market values, speculators ride on the back of the activities of investors.
It doesn’t matter to an investor if the return is from rents or capital gain. All that matters is the return on the investment is commensurate with market rates and those rates are linked directly to bank deposit rates.
To understand investors it helps to start with the basic principle of investing; that the investment must provide a market return.
No it doesn’t, it can lose the whole lot invested. Just because investors look for a return doesn’t mean that they’re going to get one. It’s part of that risk that goes with investing.
When you loan out or invest money, you’re taking a risk that you’re not going to get it back.
Mate the market sets the return according to risk. The market starts at what’s known as a risk free rate of return and every other investment type has to return more than that, by how much is commensurate with the perceived risk. Govt bonds are usually treated as the risk free rate but not always and retail investors tend to rely on term deposits for the guide to investment returns.
Where novice investors often lose out is in high risk investments that pay correspondingly high rates of return. A large part of the return above the risk free rate is supposed to be capital; risk insurance that you invest elsewhere. But they take it as income & spend it all. When the investment goes titsup they’re out of pocket.
Risk is poorly formulated, say in the risk models of Banks.The inverse problem is that the short term games of say bankers and investors is primarily on the rate of return and future expectations of the rate of return Risk comes later (which it did recently) where we have both the markets trying to explain how they lost a few trillion to investors and the remarkable supernatural powers of regulators such as Bollard who discussed the over exposure of Banks to Rural lending to the banks only.
Risk is poorly formulated, say in the risk models of Banks.
One reason being the math underlying things like portfolio management theory / Value At Risk analysis was based on absolutely faulty assumptions. AIG had a team of 20-30 PhDs doing risk modelling for it, just before it got driven into the ground with the financial weapons of mass destruction they were selling.
Nassem Taleb has spoken at length on the subject.
Executives happy not to ask questions and to collect their quarterly bonuses while their scam was running good. When times inevitably turned bad, they got the tax payer to bail them out – and kept all their bonuses anyway.
A very few people did figure it out ahead of the GFC, but the Friedmanite/Greenspan dogma meant that most others put their money where their faith was – in the “Great Moderation”.
However, I think that many at the top knew that it was a rotten ship…NINJA mortgages and other frauds etc.
That’s only partially true. A lot of risk asessment requires insider knowledge and few people have that information available to them. But basic risk profiles such as the risk weightings given to govt bonds, bank deposits and even property are pretty accurate judgements.
I’d also point out that the people responsible for the GFC made obscene wealth from it prior and didn’t lose anything personally from the GFC so their own risk evaluations were pretty accurate weren’t they.
I’d also point out that the people responsible for the GFC made obscene wealth from it prior and didn’t lose anything personally from the GFC so their own risk evaluations were pretty accurate weren’t they.
Too cynical.
A lot of those people were trusted with fiduciary responsibilities, and they should be in jail right now.
But basic risk profiles such as the risk weightings given to govt bonds, bank deposits and even property are pretty accurate judgements.
This is a somewhat absurd, over-trusting statement, even in NZ.
But more so internationally, where the collusion between ratings agencies and their clients are now very well known.
But basic risk profiles such as the risk weightings given to govt bonds, bank deposits and even property are pretty accurate judgements.
Not really. Governments can default, bank deposits (in reality, a loan to the bank) can be lost and property values can go down (usually after a bubble or other financial crash).
I’d also point out that the people responsible for the GFC made obscene wealth from it prior and didn’t lose anything personally from the GFC so their own risk evaluations were pretty accurate weren’t they.
Well, there is that, yes. IMO, that would be a sign of corruption.
Aye, good question. I guess one has to first ask what is it people actually want?
But as far as property investment is concerned there really is a requirement that people understand how investment works. Know it and you can then figure out how to use it against itself. Property has a risk profile and the return from property as a percentage against other forms of investment will never change unless you change that risk profile. That can’t really be done, so what do you do….
If we accept that the return on property will follow basic investment rules then it must follow that if you reduce the return the price must fall to maintain the percentage return to new investors that the risk profile says it must.
You can’t reduce the return by changing tax rules because they’ll just put rents up to recover the lost income. So you do both. You bring rents down by creating an oversupply of rental properties and you tax the capital gain. Investors will be left with no options for restoring the lost revenue so the price of property must fall until it again returns the percentage that the risk profile dictates it must.
Good to see ACC only employs the best of the best (refers to last few lines of the article) and good news for the client … they apologise! Again!! Well now THAT makes it all better.
And, no of course we sensitive claimants wouldn’t expect you to fire anyone.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 5
So you are a greater thinker than all the financial brains of the US, Japan,and,England to name a few who are ‘just printing money’, are you,
While your here can you tell us the actual difference in the private banks producing money from thin air and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand doing exactly the same thing…
Actually many of the *events* globally have money at the core, be it getting countries in debt, stealing resorces to stop those same nations you stole from being self sufficient…Not too hard to understand is it, given that its the foot on the throat of the planet!
It does make for depressing reading when you consider this doesn’t appear to be a rougue poll in light of the fact most those supporting National also want Hekia gone. To me that shows they are not just blind National lovers.
They are middle of the road kiwis who can see how destructive and useless Hekia is, but when they look over and see Shearer, well they see no hope.
How long can we go on like this. National voters are showing in polls they don’t support National’s initiatives (asset sales/eduacation) yet they would rather have those policies then have Mumblefuck in charge.
The answer is quite simple isn’t it. Shearer must must must go.
It means people are looking at the big picture.
Most aren’t particularly keen on partial asset sales but they’ll accept it because they prefer national to the labour/greens/mana collective.
Even if labour is saying some good stuff, they’re rather handicapped by their coalition partners, people think “if I vote labour we’ll end up with those green nut bars and Hone the angry racist mofo”.
So tell us again what the actual difference is between the private banking industry producing the money supply and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand doing the same thing???…
No they aren’t. If they were there’s no way that National would ever be in power as National only ever looks to the short term gain of the rich and that only ever comes at everyone else’s expense.
BM you are bang on. I would never consider a vote for Labour with Shearer as leader. However, what is more frightening to me are the potential coalition partners. The Greens and Mana would demand too much that I don’t think a lot of people could stomach, and the potential for chaos is huge. Shearer is not capable IMHO of keeping them under control and he would have to give away too much to bring them on board.
Honestly you people! I give an opinion bad12 and fenderviper and you stoop to that level. How about some intelligent discourse without throwing mud. I feel this says much more about you than it does about me.
If you support Shearer then great. Many don’t and interviews like the one on BFM today certainly do not help.
Chaos as opposed to the well planned and orderly changes brought about by NAct? Our housing policy is run by Australian banks, education is run by Banks, and justice is run by Garth McVicar and that redneck from the Police Association, not to mention the economy being run by a currency speculator and social assistance being handled by an underachieving women who has dominatrix fantasies with everyone except Key, for whom she switches.
I’m not sure the Prozac is strong enough.
Psst, they are only Australian Banks in name only, it’s public relations and advertising which leads us to think of them as Australian Banks when they are actually owned by the global banking cartels,
Just another clever piece of marketing from the Banking Cartels…
yep, it’s a bit bigger than the 5 sisters in the oil cartel, but a banking cartel it is, and, when you look at the connections across the Western world in particular the same players are all there,
i have had debates befor where i have said that all the current 300 million a week Slippery is keeping His government afloat with is simply magic money from Wall Street,
Of course the reply is usually a ”no it’s borrowed from the Banks of Europe”,which is a giggle as they are all inter-connected and the only reason why the digital magic money is sent via Europe is to try and fool us all that it aint Wall Street’s magic money,
The bigger giggle is that it does fool a lot of people, which at the same time is pretty damn tragic…
A lot of the bigger members of the cartel are shy and it would be hard to find, but, sometimes when you dig you find where a biggy like Goldman Saches,(sacks of goldman), have their interest in a particular bank tucked away out of sight in one or more of the nominee companies,(saves the locals getting all antsy about the yanks buying up their banks lol)…
First confuse the people, create credit out of nothing, set up your own competition so there is apparent choice, next thing we’ll all be believing in scientology
Nah we chose neo-liberalism instead, level playing fields, free markets, everyone having personal responsibility, there is no alternative, the phraseology surrounding the Ism are endless, and just as meaningless but the stuff is so glib and the endless flow of it just serves to switch off most of us,
You know tho that ‘they’ have just about run out of steam when they all start uttering that pearl of wisdom ‘at the end of the day’,
Every low level street con-artist was using that phrase years ago…
It’s not Shearer putting them off, it’s the obsession with “identity politics” and the harping of the teacher unions (as shown in the latest survey) that is putting people off Labour. It would be worse without Shearer.
The most depressing thing i see in all that is your belief in this particular poll, the Roy Morgan out barely a week earlier told an entirely different story, what makes you have such faith in the TV1 poll which has since i can remember always polled National at 3% higher than it’s actual election night result…
Exactly, Bad. Not only does the Morgan poll have better methodology, hence more accuracy, they poll fortnightly so they are a more useful tool for monitoring the trend. Which is down for National and their poodles.
I suppose if anything useful can be taken from the CB/TV1 snapshot it is that Shearer appears to have small but solid support in the preferred PM poll. That’s heartening, because Goff never managed to gain traction there and he still came close to winning.
Lolz i take the TV1 and TV3 polls as messin with our heads, even Roy is a bit suspect at times,
i commented about the Morgan poll 1 back from the last 1 as reading National from the high side of the margin of error and Labour from the low side of that error margin,
The latest Morgan reverses that and i believe the TV1 poll does exactly what i suggested the Morgan poll is wont to do…
Oh the f**ked up reason(s) why the Slippery National Government is still strongly supported is simply the ‘tax switch’ which puts 100,s of dollars a week into the pockets of the 40+% of the population that support that Government,
This gives them the ability to fully access the other ‘vote buy’ offered by Slippery the Prime Minister of ‘asset sales’
Across the world the left/right paradigm has closed to just that among committed voters, a few % points either way, this of course is aided by the large cohort who do not vote, even the last election was one of a couple of % points in favor of the right,(with the aberration of the Maori Party thrown in),
So, considering the ‘goodies’ on offer from Slippery’s National Government the ‘left’ aint doing to bad at all,
(take the Maori Party out of the equation and you have a National Government with a knife edge majority)…
part of the difference is that National is the only significant party to cover right to far right policies. I doubt they’ll drop below 35% in the next 6 years, even if labour win in 2014. A bunch of the top 20% will always vote tory, and a smaller chunk of futilely “aspirational” poor people will do so too.
Lab/greens are always going to share the leftish side of the vote.
Matthew Hooton on the radio just now was highly dismissive of this poll being correct. He could not see that nats were polling higher than they were at the election time.Something to do with CB inflating the percentage for nats which is historical.. Inflating was my word as I don’t know how else to put it.
* 972,700 households with annual incomes $20,000+ do not have income protection
* Each year the primary income earner in 14,980 of those households will fall seriously ill and be unable to earn for six months or more
* Those households plunge into The Great Financial Vulnerability Gap at the rate of 288 per week
* With sickness benefits means tested on total household income, thousands of families immediately face serious financial and emotion hardship
Something else that needs to be thought about. People should not be dropping into deprivation through no fault of their own.
My only problem with that case is that it’s going through the courts, rather than medical council for malpractice.
Not to say that the doctor is necessarily at fault, given that medical knowledge does change so maybe banding or whatever wasn’t viewed as an appropriate treatment in those days. Just that I don’t think the courts are appropriate places for highly specialised issues like medicine – similarly I don’t think the cops should be charging pilots and so on without a specific referral from specialist investigation boards. Or even the boards themselves should prosecute, not involve the police at all.
The NZ government fearing that Australia would stop kiwis working in OZ decided that those kiwis who did should not get access to welfare that their earnings are providing Australians.
I’m sorry, but that makes Kiwis second class citizens. That’s just wrong, why should Kiwis pay taxes yet not get the benefits of that taxation all so the NZ government can keep sending them there.
Finally exactly why does everyone think Australia is doing so badly out of the relationship. The business, the banks owned, the work kiwis in OZ pay, the whole relationship is not one
sided. In fact in the free trade speak the sum is greater than the parts.
So why does the media in NZ still demand that NZ just can’t match Australia that kiwis must suffer for the low estimation of what the NZ economy does for Australia. There was never a good reason
for Australia to deny Kiwis access to benefits, since when the sums are done I bet its better together than two seperated economies. Hey, and whats all this business about matching our economies, how exactly is it fait too do that in all areas but welfare?
surely the reason kiwis flock to Oz is that the tax regime here, the lack of a CGT, the leky homes, the astonishing poor retail sector, the lack of even basic consumer checks on food, etc….
they aren’t moving over there because Australia is so great, its because NZ is so poorly run and naff at competing. I have never heard so much bull about how companies need government to ease off, how we need more foriegn investment, etc, all because the hollowed out economy is pumping profits to foreigners (many living in AUSTRALIA).
Kiwis working in Aus should receive a tax cut to allow them to save money for a time when the Aus Govt leave them without a safety net. How they can be taxed at the same rate yet not be given the same protection is just immoral.
You say that “That makes Kiwis second class citizens”. Well no, because they aren’t citizens at all.
Anyone from a country other than New Zealand has to get a work visa before going to Australia. New Zealanders don’t have to and many of them who do go there would not qualify for Citizenship under the Australian rules.
You also say “so the New Zealand Government can keep sending them there”. Also no. Transportation to Australia ended in 1853, which is rather a long time ago. The New Zealanders who go there choose to go, they aren’t sent.
The Australian economy was, until very recently doing better than the New Zealand one. That was mostly in Western Australia and Queensland. Do you think it may be because they allow mining and Oil development or is that just a coincidence?
The main reason that there is foreign investment in New Zealand rather than investment by New Zealanders is because we simply don’t save enough, and there is no incentive to do so. Anyone who saves and invests here is classed, by people like “Sir” Michael Cullen as being merely a “rich prick” and a “scumbag” who deserves to be plucked. On the other hand let us not go down the path of the Government choosing who the tax-payer’s money should be given to. Politicians are terrible at that and are, in particular, never willing to admit when they get something wrong. They much prefer to simply double-up on the bets.
I know its hard to fathom because of all the bull around but the fact that any ‘group’ of people pay taxes and don’t get access to the full range of services that other enjoy, nothing about being a citizen or not, is wrong.
Second, the citizenship argument, there are many people who are not Australians living in OZ who get welfare, its just they come through a process that acknowledges them. Unlike kiwis who just turn up.
Third, you did not address the point, that together our economies do better, the flexibility of allowing Australia to engage more well educated people means their economy can grow faster.
Fourth, everyone pretty much says kiwis should get access to welfare eventually, but do not.
Fifth, when did it become a privilege, Kiwis are guests, when do you treat people worse because they are guest, best mates rates, etc.
If Australia does want to them, send them home, we could do with the economic boost, call their bluff, the economic, social, business, etc relationships all suggest we should be fair, yet this disgrace still exists.
I’ll comment on the paragraphs as they appear. Note these are only my views or the facts of the matter as I understand them to be.
One. I agree, it isn’t really fair but surely a country has the right to set their own rules, not just to submit to what another country demands?
Two. Sure we treat them differently but that is something we chose to do. Again just because we do something doesn’t give us the right to make another country do it.
Three. Perhaps our economies would do better if they were more closely meshed. Observing the EU is making me a little less sure though. Perhaps we could fully mesh the economies. There is a clause in the Australian Constitution that enables New Zealand to become a state. Should we take advantage of that and all become Ockers? At least that would give us a good cricket team and them a good rugby team.
Four. It will probably happen. There is talk of eight years residence.
Five It was in 2001 or 2002. I forget which exactly. It was agreed by Phil Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs incidentally, something he is desparately having amnesia about these days.
Six. I can’t really believe you are asking that Australia should deport every New Zealand born, non Australian citizen, from Australia?
There are some things Australia does that I think we should emulate. They do not allow non-citizens to vote in Federal or State elections. I heartlily approve.
Another is that Federal MPs (and Senators) must only hold Australian citizenship. There is a slight exception to this, relating mainly to Greek-born politicians but it is there only because Greece refuses to allow people with Greek citizenship to surrender it. I think we should bring in a similar rule. If you want the right to make the laws for this country you should be exclusively loyal to this country. If you want to be an MP here you should be required to relinquish any foreign citizenship.
Countries still need to act reasonably, use commonsense, not be two faced, like invite someone for reasons of closeness and them treat them worse than the most despised. Even criminals get welfare. Sure there maybe an argument that two years without access before welfare kicks in, that people should not just jump the ditch because their NZ PM has told them how great Australia is and how crap NZ compares implicitly when Key says stuff like they made the decision, we have to bend over and accept it NZ is a small useless backwater
we do nothing for the OZ economy. Australia choose to let us in for good economic reasons, is Key saying on the one hand they are so good and on the other were being stupid in a open border policy. Please. As for they choose to when individuals accept the welcome, well no! Howard chose to alter the rules to the extreme end of the spectrum, and its not the first time Australia has done that, removed rights of pacific peoples. Apartheid appeared in OZ before it got to South Africa. Perhaps people who argue for free trade, that the sum of the parts is bigger than the parts alone should not argue that its a burden for Australia, but Key is a hypocrite, there’s certainly no law against PMs being openly ironic, but I don’t have to swallow whole the assumptions implicit in the policy.
As a Australian citizen I find it offense for fence sitters, who want Kiwis in OZ yet don’t treat them fairly, but I suppose if NZ PMs and the community see workers as merely expendable its not a surprise they would flock to OZ and have their leaders vindicitively agree to have taxes taken off them to pay for beneficiaries in OZ but not get the same access
EVER without having to give up their citizenship. I mean they turned their backs on NZ
so why woudl you care that Australia sends them all packing, they after all don’t want to be Australians, and Australia is entitled to make its own laws, and we obviously all believe they can be treated in a second rate way, they are after all our best mates, so why not! Send the all back to NZ, see how long Key lasts when they want some of the economic wealth they saw in OZ and start introducing the means to get it, like a CGT, like no tax
for the first 5,000, like a upper chamber to keep politicians more honest….
Oh, wait a moment you don’t care about the issue, you want second class kiwis in OZ.
“Anyone who saves and invests here is classed, by people like “Sir” Michael Cullen as being merely a “rich prick” and a “scumbag” who deserves to be plucked”
not true – it was a comment directed squarely at john key – who is worth 50 odd million and is quite a prickish scumbag
its not cullens fault that a bunch of pundits then falsely extrapolated that to be cullens opinion of people who earn over 60k pa
please stop repeating such blatant rewriting of history
Of course that remark was made about John Key. Michael Cullen had form in this regard however.
In his maiden speech in 1982 he said
“I’m proud of the fact that my secondary education was not paid for by the taxpayer of New Zealand but by the farmers of Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay. I ripped them off for five years then and I shall get them again in the next few years”.
That is referring to the scholarship he had to go to Christs’ College in Christchurch.
Certainly not very civil was he? He always did seem to have a rather large chip on his shoulder about people who were better of than he was.
Presumably you don’t believe that Cullen said that in his maiden speech.
He did and you can see it in Hansard.
Sorry but if you are trying to pretend that he didn’t say it it is you who are trying to rewrite history.
Give up and start seeing things as they really are.
Don’t get me started aero! Sometimes I wonder whether or not it isn’t Key’s agenda to force a position where (second-class) statehood in an Australian federation, or confederation is his orgasmic fantasy – even better if it could be achieved with the US of A.
The only thing that convinces me that isn’t so is that we all know he isn’t clever enough to have thunk it through.
Meantime though, he’s having a great time sucking up to the celeb politicians in the meed-ya, selling and giving away what’s left of our sovereignty (albeit with the occasional hiccup contested in courts).
It’ll come out one day JUST how hard JK pushed for the plight of NZers in OZ at the little Queenstown dalliance (not very) – in exchange for the NZ undertaking (BAD deal whichever way you look at it – even as far as international reputation is concerned).
When it does of course, he’ll probably be tucked up elsewhere.
Matthew Hooton says that he is sorry for Prosser the Tosser. NZ First is xenophobic and he quoted Winston making ‘colourful’ statements. None of the above have much integrity.
Hootin’ on the minimum wage. Scorn about a ‘number plucked out of the air’ – typical grasshopper approach – pick on a detail and demolish that; ergo the idea is a failed one.
Hootin’ also says that the places that have tried charter schools, (including Labour’s fave Sweden) also are keen on National Standards. I don’t think that is correct, certainly not for all those countries.
Kathryn Ryan says Prosser continues a tradition in NZ of making an absolute goat of yourself. Of course he could try passing pointed remarks about himself, a very funny and fruitful subject.
Yes, I listened to that. But Hootin’ was talking about the living wage, as I recall, not the minimum wage.
An interesting aside was the reference to Williams of the pre-radio broadcast chat between him and Hooton. So they agree on what they are going to talk about and/or signal their positions in advance?
Pretty normal on any talk radio show for the producer to organise what topics are to be discussed in advance and for the panellists to chat before they hit the airwaves, Karol.
It’s also funny geoff and in my mind its beginning to jeopardise the credibility of the likes of rinny ryan. From the LEFT [insert pagani or williams], and from the right [insert “the fair and balance Maaaaaaaaaaaaaathew Hoooooooooten”]. There’s been times when even rinny ryan has had to try and reign him in out of embarrasment, but its probably false advertising at best.
Then we get an hour’s reprieve before the next ultra-nice person takes to the air as part of that horrible band of bloody lefty public service broadcasters [not], including some painful mission to Mars and bestest best song ever written. (Jim hasn’t learned from Monday morning with rinny, that Maaaathew Hoooooten is the best song ever written).
RadioNZ has some isssss-yooos doesn’t it1 Primarily down to the regular gal in the weekday morn, and the exceptional every-person’s frend in the weekday afternoon. Both stale at best
Unfortunately they’re both better than the TINA alternatives. They’ll both probably get ONZs.
Mornings are always better when rinny takes what seems to be an endless availability of annual leave or afternoons have a locum
Hah yeah although I dislike Jim Mora much more than Kathryn. I remember when he was doing the voiceover for a show about cops raiding dope growers homes. Most were maori families probably trying to put food on the table, quite sickening how NZ media types are happy to lower themselves to that level.
I have stopped listening to that tripe on National Radio, the ‘i agree show’ with Hooten and Williams is simply 5 minutes of Hooten exercising his ego and Williams kissing His arse or vice versa,
I caught the pathetic ”why not $25 dollars a hour blah blah blah” from the evil baby look-a-like and immediately switched off my brain as that one obviously did so as to enable Him to comment on that National Radio show,
The only thing Mr Ego got right was His contention that the TV1 poll always gets National’s share of the vote wrong, on the high side of being that wrong as well,
Hooten’s nappies were obviously showing signs of being badly soiled today when He discussed the next election in terms of NZFirst not appearing in the next Parliament because of the overt racism exhibited by NZFirst MP Richard Tosser,
Hooten then resorted to mythology by saying that National after 2104 will be able to rely on the Maori Party for support to form the next Government,
Sorry Hooties, Maori have already got there ahead of you, with one hell of a dose of luck at the 2014 election the Maori Party might get one MP back into the Parliament,
Wonder how long it will take for Hooten to click onto that little fact and try whipping up support for the Conservatives,(snigger)…
bad12
I am shocked to find this sort of thing happening on radio. Thank goodness it’s not tv – we don’t have to view it. But should I complain to the Broadcasting Standards about such goings- on? Please advise.
You could,but, i fear it would be a waste of your energy and time, if you have plenty of both tho you could always take a swipe at such a pathetic display by Hooten and Williams,
The only grounds tho that i can see is on the basis of Williams in the views He continually expresses cannot be said to ‘be from the left’
False advertising perhaps???, of course it would be very difficult to ‘prove’ that Williams is not ‘from the left’ as the left is considered by many (most) to include the Labour Party which Williams was the Prez of…
Hootin’ also says that the places that have tried charter schools, (including Labour’s fave Sweden) also are keen on National Standards. I don’t think that is correct, certainly not for all those countries.
Well, the countries that have tried charter schools usually also have their version of National Standards. Both systems in those countries are failing miserably as is to be expected of ideologically driven policy.
I listened to a fascinating, albeit concerning episode of BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme yesterday called Food on a Pension.
Sheila Dillon investigates the food lives of people surviving on the basic state pension. To fully understand the experience of living on a small income and feeling the limitations of older age, food writer Andrew Webb volunteered to spend a week living as his 80 year old self. With an ageing population, an increase in food prices and cuts to local council services, The Food Programme investigates what our food future might look, feel and taste like.
It definitely raised in me some concerns about the future of elder care in New Zealand too, especially after the Southern District Health Board has decided to dump Presbyterian Support Otago from its home support contracts in favour of an Australian provider.
So, I applied for a job last week at MBIE (yes, the new super-ministry). I just got a reply from http://www.hrx.com.au/ Yep, the government even employs Australians to find employees for them in NZ.
And they still wonder why unemployment in NZ is growing.
Too many head-desk moments to cite, but probably the worst is his reply to a simple question:
“Is there room for homophobes in Labour?”
Answer: yes, no, maybe, not a majority, something, whatever …
Basically he’s asked to explain the difference betwen a party position and a conscience vote. That’s not a trick question. You could answer it in two sentences. Shearer can’t.
Hey, gobsmacked, actually he handles that question (and the others) perfectly well. His answer is that he doesn’t think there are homophobes in the party, but he was aware some members don’t accept marriage equality. No surprise there.
“Basically he’s asked to explain the difference betwen a party position and a conscience vote. That’s not a trick question. You could answer it in two sentences. Shearer can’t.”
He answers that question perfectly well in, er, two sentences. Have a listen to the recording. Ok, it might be 3 sentences if what I take to be a comma at one point is actually a full stop, but you seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill, gs.
According to many on here this … :”His answer is that he doesn’t think there are homophobes in the party, but he was aware some members don’t accept marriage equality” … is not possible.
Not accepting marriage equality equals homophobia. So there you go – the labour party is full of homophobes. Just ask one tane huna.
Um, thanks for the idea. I thought I already had, and then posted the link for others.
I heard a desperately inarticulate ramble, unable to make clear points, with the same old start-stop-restart habit that “media training” was supposed to cure.
But people can make up their own minds. The voters will.
I agree. He was shocking. We get students just starting to learn English who can get their ideas across better than Shearer.
When asked about Prosser, he could have just said that anyone holding those sort of views would not get selected as a Labour candidate. But then they’ve just invited the back pussy guy back in, so he doesn’t even have the moral high ground there.
So there is room within Labour for homophobes but anyone coming out with homophobic comments comparable to the Prosser shit would be stood down. Hmm. So rank hypocracy is fine. Good to know. And straight from the horse’s mouth, which is to say, the mouth of (possibly) the most painfully equivocal political leader that has ever been foisted on the NZ public.
Further eg. of confused equivocation; Living Wage – no policy until next year BUT I (Shearer) made a speech on it last year and other orgs are getting behind the idea (But it can’t be a Labour Party policy idea until next year…yet Labour are leading the way?)
Seriously, I can’t hold up my hand with any honesty and say that I know what the fuck he was on about in that interview. All I can say is that I can’t fathom what he is/is not presenting. Two word summation: Absolutely disastrous.
The reason Shearer can’t say what policy is right now, is that you and the other members haven’t decided what it is yet. It’s your choice, Bill, you get to tell Shearer what he campaigns on.
You miss the point that on the one hand he says Labour has no policy while similtaneously claiming credit for the Living Wage campaign. Meanwhile, if labour has no policy until next year, then what was that housing policy? Not a policy? And what was all the harking back here on ts to 2011 policies as ‘proof’ of where Labour stands?
And – this shouldn’t need repeating… but even with no policy or no final policies, a party or a leader that either cleaved to core values or understood them, would be able to give unequivocal answers to questions based on those values. And that ain’t happening.
This Wednesday between 1-2, with Willie and JT, the John Ansell will be discussing why all Maori, should be hung and dried, oops I meant, reasons nothing he says is racist, he just wants the best for everyone (but please can Maori practise being cultural in their own homes behind closed doors). Should be a giggle.
Ansell never says all Maori, just the “griever Treaty Maori” should be hung, drawn, and quartered, along with any Pakeha who think the Treaty has any place in our society. He’s quite happy to accept support from the odd (maybe very odd) Maori who agrees with him, accepts that the genuine text of the Treaty was found under a wheelbarrow in Taranaki, and that Celts and Egyptians had a flourishing civilisation in these islands before primitive cannibals turned up and ate them all.
Maybe, given Shearer’s openness to homophobes, he could be invited into the Labour Party?
Pride only breeds quarrels yet wisdom is forced on those who take advice-13:10
We are currently within the sixth mass extinction event experienced by the earth, this one caused by humans; 1% of species disappear every six years.
From “Sciencia: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy for all.” (no religion, well actually…)
an Excellent little book. Walker and Company. NewYork. 2011. a Wooden Book (Wooden Jesus where are you from, Korea or Canada or maybe Taiwan…)
In times of recession and unemployment people’s allegiances and motives get scrambled. I was just reading a Manawatu Standard piece of Rolf Panny’s book Between Hitler and a Hard Place.
We should think about this as we face up to our next election. What will voters make of it all and why? This is a quote from the article.
“There were four children in our family. My father was lucky enough to be offered a job in a bank. It came with the condition that he joined the Nazi Party,” Mr Panny said. “Join the party, have a job, and eat. Don’t join, and watch your children slowly starve … what choice is no choice?”
Hitler’s tactic in the 1930s of re-employing Germans, with the party membership string attached, was based on deficit spending. Broken and beaten by World War I, backed into a debt of impossible reparation payments to the rest of Europe by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was like a punch-drunk boxer, starving on the ropes with nowhere to go, Mr Panny said.
And Europe after World War I was pincered by two political extremes – communism after the Russian revolution, and fascism. “The political middle got squeezed out.”
Hey lovely Standard readers – can you share this/support this campaign. This sector is almost completely ununionised and the You Tube sets out what it is like working in Forestry. Listen to Kens family talk. We want to promote this clip by way of a billboard in Auckland – see the link to find our how you can help. Thanks in advance!
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Things seem to be at a pretty low ebb in and around the Reserve Bank. There was, in particular, the mysterious, sudden, and as-yet unexplained resignation of the Governor (we’ve had four Governors since the Bank was given its operational autonomy 35 years ago, and only two have completed their ...
Long story short:PMChristopher Luxon said in January his Government was ‘going for growth’ and he wanted New Zealanders to develop a ‘culture of yes.’ Yet his own Government is constantly saying no, or not yet, to anchor investments that would unleash real private business investment and GDP growth. ...
Long story short:PMChristopher Luxon said in January his Government was ‘going for growth’ and he wanted New Zealanders to develop a ‘culture of yes.’ Yet his own Government is constantly saying no, or not yet, to anchor investments that would unleash real private business investment and GDP growth. ...
For decades, Britain and Australia had much the same process for regulating media handling of defence secrets. It was the D-notice system, under which media would be asked not to publish. The two countries diverged ...
For decades, Britain and Australia had much the same process for regulating media handling of defence secrets. It was the D-notice system, under which media would be asked not to publish. The two countries diverged ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission.In this article, I make a not-entirely-serious case for ripping out Spaghetti Junction in Auckland, replacing it with a motorway tunnel, and redeveloping new city streets and neighbourhoods above it instead. What’s ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission.In this article, I make a not-entirely-serious case for ripping out Spaghetti Junction in Auckland, replacing it with a motorway tunnel, and redeveloping new city streets and neighbourhoods above it instead. What’s ...
In short this morning in our political economy:The Nelson Hospital crisis revealed by 1News’Jessica Roden dominates the political agenda today. Yet again, population growth wasn’t planned for, or funded.Kāinga Ora is planning up to 900 house sales, including new ones, Jonathan Milne reports for Newsroom.One of New Zealand’s biggest ...
In short this morning in our political economy:The Nelson Hospital crisis revealed by 1News’Jessica Roden dominates the political agenda today. Yet again, population growth wasn’t planned for, or funded.Kāinga Ora is planning up to 900 house sales, including new ones, Jonathan Milne reports for Newsroom.One of New Zealand’s biggest ...
The war between Russia and Ukraine continues unabated. Neither side is in a position to achieve its stated objectives through military force. But now there is significant diplomatic activity as well. Ukraine has agreed to ...
One of the first aims of the United States’ new Department of Government Efficiency was shutting down USAID. By 6 February, the agency was functionally dissolved, its seal missing from its Washington headquarters. Amid the ...
If our strategic position was already challenging, it just got worse. Reliability of the US as an ally is in question, amid such actions by the Trump administration as calling for annexation of Canada, threating ...
Small businesses will be exempt from complying with some of the requirements of health and safety legislation under new reforms proposed by the Government. The living wage will be increased to $28.95 per hour from September, a $1.15 increase from the current $27.80. A poll has shown large opposition to ...
Summary A group of senior doctors in Nelson have spoken up, specifically stating that hospitals have never been as bad as in the last year.Patients are waiting up to 50 hours and 1 death is directly attributable to the situation: "I've never seen that number of patients waiting to be ...
Although semiconductor chips are ubiquitous nowadays, their production is concentrated in just a few countries, and this has left the US economy and military highly vulnerable at a time of rising geopolitical tensions. While the ...
Health and Safety changes driven by ACT party ideology, not evidence said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi President Richard Wagstaff. Changes to health and safety legislation proposed by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden today comply with ACT party ideology, ignores the evidence, and will compound New ...
In short in our political economy this morning:Fletcher Building is closing its pre-fabricated house-building factory in Auckland due to a lack of demand, particularly from the Government.Health NZ is sending a crisis management team to Nelson Hospital after a 1News investigation exposed doctors’ fears that nearly 500 patients are overdue ...
Exactly 10 years ago, the then minister for defence, Kevin Andrews, released the First Principles Review: Creating One Defence (FPR). With increasing talk about the rising possibility of major power-conflict, calls for Defence funding to ...
In events eerily similar to what happened in the USA last week, Greater Auckland was recently accidentally added to a group chat between government ministers on the topic of transport.We have no idea how it happened, but luckily we managed to transcribe most of what transpired. We share it ...
Hi,When I look back at my history with Dylan Reeve, it’s pretty unusual. We first met in the pool at Kim Dotcom’s mansion, as helicopters buzzed overhead and secret service agents flung themselves off the side of his house, abseiling to the ground with guns drawn.Kim Dotcom was a German ...
Come around for teaDance me round and round the kitchenBy the light of my T.VOn the night of the electionAncient stars will fall into the seaAnd the ocean floor sings her sympathySongwriter: Bic Runga.The Prime Minister stared into the camera, hot and flustered despite the predawn chill. He looked sadly ...
Has Winston Peters got a ferries deal for you! (Buyer caution advised.) Unfortunately, the vision that Peters has been busily peddling for the past 24 hours – of several shipyards bidding down the price of us getting smaller, narrower, rail-enabled ferries – looks more like a science fiction fantasy. One ...
Completed reads for March: The Heart of the Antarctic [1907-1909], by Ernest Shackleton South [1914-1917], by Ernest Shackleton Aurora Australis (collection), edited by Ernest Shackleton The Book of Urizen (poem), by William Blake The Book of Ahania (poem), by William Blake The Book of Los (poem), by William Blake ...
First - A ReminderBenjamin Doyle Doesn’t Deserve ThisI’ve been following posts regarding Green MP Benjamin Doyle over the last few days, but didn’t want to amplify the abject nonsense.This morning, Winston Peters, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister, answered the alt-right’s prayers - guaranteeing amplification of the topic, by going on ...
US President Donald Trump has shown a callous disregard for the checks and balances that have long protected American democracy. As the self-described ‘king’ makes a momentous power grab, much of the world watches anxiously, ...
They can be the very same words. And yet their meaning can vary very much.You can say I'll kill him about your colleague who accidentally deleted your presentation the day before a big meeting.You can say I'll kill him to — or, for that matter, about — Tony Soprano.They’re the ...
Back in 2020, the then-Labour government signed contracted for the construction and purchase of two new rail-enabled Cook Strait ferries, to be operational from 2026. But when National took power in 2023, they cancelled them in a desperate effort to make the books look good for a year. And now ...
The fragmentation of cyber regulation in the Indo-Pacific is not just inconvenient; it is a strategic vulnerability. In recent years, governments across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, have moved to reform their regulatory frameworks for cyber ...
Welcome to the March 2025 Economic Bulletin. The feature article examines what public private partnerships (PPPs) are. PPPs have been a hot topic recently, with the coalition government signalling it wants to use them to deliver infrastructure. However, experience with PPPs, both here and overseas, indicates we should be wary. ...
Willis announces more plans of plans for supermarketsYesterday’s much touted supermarket competition announcement by Nicola Willis amounted to her telling us she was issuing a 6 week RFI1 that will solicit advice from supermarket players.In short, it was an announcement of a plan - but better than her Kiwirail Interislander ...
This was the post I was planning to write this morning to mark Orr’s final day. That said, if the underlying events – deliberate attempts to mislead Parliament – were Orr’s doing, the post is more about the apparent uselessness of Parliament (specifically the Finance and Expenditure Committee) in holding ...
Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC’s plan to build a plant in the United States looks like a move made at the behest of local officials to solidify US support for Taiwan. However, it may eventually lessen ...
This is a Guest Post by Transport Planner Bevan Woodward from the charitable trust Movement, which has lodged an application for a judicial review of the Governments Setting of Speed Limits Rule 2024 Auckland is at grave risk of having its safer speed limits on approx. 1,500 local streets ...
We're just talkin' 'bout the futureForget about the pastIt'll always be with usIt's never gonna die, never gonna dieSongwriters: Brian Johnson / Angus Young / Malcolm YoungMorena, all you lovely people, it’s good to be back, and I have news from the heartland. Now brace yourself for this: depending on ...
Today is the last day in office for the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Adrian Orr. Of course, he hasn’t been in the office since 5 March when, on the eve of his major international conference, his resignation was announced and he stormed off with no (effective) notice and no ...
Treasury and Cabinet have finally agreed to a Crown guarantee for a non-Government lending agency for Community Housing Providers (CHPs), which could unlock billions worth of loans and investments by pension funds and banks to build thousands of more affordable social homes. Photo: Lynn GrievesonMōrena. Long stories shortest:Chris Bishop ...
Australia has plenty of room to spend more on defence. History shows that 2.9 percent of GDP is no great burden in ordinary times, so pushing spending to 3.0 percent in dangerous times is very ...
In short this morning in our political economy:Winston Peters will announce later today whether two new ferries are rail ‘compatible’, requiring time-consuming container shuffling, or the more efficient and expensive rail ‘enabled,’ where wagons can roll straight on and off.Nicola Willisthreatened yesterday to break up the supermarket duopoly with ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 23, 2025 thru Sat, March 29, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a ...
For prospective writers out there, Inspired Quill, the publisher of my novel(s) is putting together a short story anthology (pieces up to 10,000 words). The open submission window is 29th March to 29th April. https://www.inspired-quill.com/anthology-submissions/ The theme?This anthology will bring together diverse voices exploring themes of hope, resistance, and human ...
Prime minister Kevin Rudd released the 2009 defence white paper in May of that year. It is today remembered mostly for what it said about the strategic implications of China’s rise; its plan to double ...
In short this morning in our political economy:Voters want the Government to retain the living wage for cleaners, a poll shows.The Government’s move to provide a Crown guarantee to banks and the private sector for social housing is described a watershed moment and welcomed by Community Housing Providers.Nicola Willis is ...
The recent attacks in the Congo by Rwandan backed militias has led to worldwide condemnation of the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame. Following up on the recent Fabian Zoom with Mikela Wrong and Maria Amoudian, Dr Rudaswinga will give a complete picture of Kagame’s regime and discuss the potential ...
New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors.Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological.PPPs come in ...
How Australia funds development and defence was front of mind before Tuesday’s federal budget. US President Donald Trump’s demands for a dramatic lift in allied military spending and brutal cuts to US foreign assistance meant ...
Questions 1. Where and what is this protest?a. Hamilton, angry crowd yelling What kind of food do you call this Seymour?b.Dunedin, angry crowd yelling Still waiting, Simeon, still waitingc. Wellington, angry crowd yelling You’re trashing everything you idiotsd. Istanbul, angry crowd yelling Give us our democracy back, give it ...
Two blueprints that could redefine the Northern Territory’s economic future were launched last week. The first was a government-led economic strategy and the other an industry-driven economic roadmap. Both highlight that supporting the Northern Territory ...
Today, the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill has passed its third and final reading, but there is one more stage before it becomes law. The Governor-General must give their ‘Royal assent’ for any bill to become legally enforceable. This means that, even if a bill gets voted ...
Abortion care at Whakatāne Hospital has been quietly shelved, with patients told they will likely have to travel more than an hour to Tauranga to get the treatment they need. ...
Thousands of New Zealanders’ submissions are missing from the official parliamentary record because the National-dominated Justice Select Committee has rushed work on the Treaty Principles Bill. ...
Today’s announcement of 10 percent tariffs for New Zealand goods entering the United States is disappointing for exporters and consumers alike, with the long-lasting impact on prices and inflation still unknown. ...
The National Government’s choices have contributed to a slow-down in the building sector, as thousands of people have lost their jobs in construction. ...
Willie Apiata’s decision to hand over his Victoria Cross to the Minister for Veterans is a powerful and selfless act, made on behalf of all those who have served our country. ...
The Privileges Committee has denied fundamental rights to Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, breaching their own standing orders, breaching principles of natural justice, and highlighting systemic prejudice and discrimination within our parliamentary processes. The three MPs were summoned to the privileges committee following their performance of a haka ...
April 1 used to be a day when workers could count on a pay rise with stronger support for those doing it tough, but that’s not the case under this Government. ...
Winston Peters is shopping for smaller ferries after Nicola Willis torpedoed the original deal, which would have delivered new rail enabled ferries next year. ...
The Government should work with other countries to press the Myanmar military regime to stop its bombing campaign especially while the country recovers from the devastating earthquake. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Government to scrap proposed changes to Early Childhood Care, after attending a petition calling for the Government to ‘Put tamariki at the heart of decisions about ECE’. ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill today that will remove the power of MPs conscience votes and ensure mandatory national referendums are held before any conscience issues are passed into law. “We are giving democracy and power back to the people”, says New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters. ...
Welcome to members of the diplomatic corp, fellow members of parliament, the fourth estate, foreign affairs experts, trade tragics, ladies and gentlemen. ...
In recent weeks, disturbing instances of state-sanctioned violence against Māori have shed light on the systemic racism permeating our institutions. An 11-year-old autistic Māori child was forcibly medicated at the Henry Bennett Centre, a 15-year-old had his jaw broken by police in Napier, kaumātua Dean Wickliffe went on a hunger ...
Confidence in the job market has continued to drop to its lowest level in five years as more New Zealanders feel uncertain about finding work, keeping their jobs, and getting decent pay, according to the latest Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index. ...
The Greens are calling on the Government to follow through on their vague promises of environmental protection in their Resource Management Act (RMA) reform. ...
“Make New Zealand First Again” Ladies and gentlemen, First of all, thank you for being here today. We know your lives are busy and you are working harder and longer than you ever have, and there are many calls on your time, so thank you for the chance to speak ...
Hundreds more Palestinians have died in recent days as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues and humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, is blocked. ...
National is looking to cut hundreds of jobs at New Zealand’s Defence Force, while at the same time it talks up plans to increase focus and spending in Defence. ...
It’s been revealed that the Government is secretly trying to bring back a ‘one-size fits all’ standardised test – a decision that has shocked school principals. ...
The Green Party is calling for the compassionate release of Dean Wickliffe, a 77-year-old kaumātua on hunger strike at the Spring Hill Corrections Facility, after visiting him at the prison. ...
The Green Party is calling on Government MPs to support Chlöe Swarbrick’s Member’s Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence and illegal actions in Palestine, following another day of appalling violence against civilians in Gaza. ...
The Green Party stands in support of volunteer firefighters petitioning the Government to step up and change legislation to provide volunteers the same ACC coverage and benefits as their paid counterparts. ...
At 2.30am local time, Israel launched a treacherous attack on Gaza killing more than 300 defenceless civilians while they slept. Many of them were children. This followed a more than 2 week-long blockade by Israel on the entry of all goods and aid into Gaza. Israel deliberately targeted densely populated ...
Living Strong, Aging Well There is much discussion around the health of our older New Zealanders and how we can age well. In reality, the delivery of health services accounts for only a relatively small percentage of health outcomes as we age. Significantly, dry warm housing, nutrition, exercise, social connection, ...
Shane Jones’ display on Q&A showed how out of touch he and this Government are with our communities and how in sync they are with companies with little concern for people and planet. ...
The Government’s new planning legislation to replace the Resource Management Act will make it easier to get things done while protecting the environment, say Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop and Under-Secretary Simon Court. “The RMA is broken and everyone knows it. It makes it too hard to build ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay has today launched a public consultation on New Zealand and India’s negotiations of a formal comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. “Negotiations are getting underway, and the Public’s views will better inform us in the early parts of this important negotiation,” Mr McClay says. We are ...
More than 900 thousand superannuitants and almost five thousand veterans are among the New Zealanders set to receive a significant financial boost from next week, an uplift Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says will help support them through cost-of-living challenges. “I am pleased to confirm that from 1 ...
Progressing a holistic strategy to unlock the potential of New Zealand’s geothermal resources, possibly in applications beyond energy generation, is at the centre of discussions with mana whenua at a hui in Rotorua today, Resources and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is in the early stages ...
New annual data has exposed the staggering cost of delays previously hidden in the building consent system, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I directed Building Consent Authorities to begin providing quarterly data last year to improve transparency, following repeated complaints from tradespeople waiting far longer than the statutory ...
Increases in water charges for Auckland consumers this year will be halved under the Watercare Charter which has now been passed into law, Local Government Minister Simon Watts and Auckland Minister Simeon Brown say. The charter is part of the financial arrangement for Watercare developed last year by Auckland Council ...
There is wide public support for the Government’s work to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity protections, says Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard. “The Ministry for Primary Industries recently completed public consultation on proposed amendments to the Biosecurity Act and the submissions show that people understand the importance of having a strong biosecurity ...
A new independent review function will enable individuals and organisations to seek an expert independent review of specified civil aviation regulatory decisions made by, or on behalf of, the Director of Civil Aviation, Acting Transport Minister James Meager has announced today. “Today we are making it easier and more affordable ...
The Government will invest in an enhanced overnight urgent care service for the Napier community as part of our focus on ensuring access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown has today confirmed. “I am delighted that a solution has been found to ensure Napier residents will continue to ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown and Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey attended a sod turning today to officially mark the start of construction on a new mental health facility at Hillmorton Campus. “This represents a significant step in modernising mental health services in Canterbury,” Mr Brown says. “Improving health infrastructure is ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has welcomed confirmation the economy has turned the corner. Stats NZ reported today that gross domestic product grew 0.7 per cent in the three months to December following falls in the June and September quarters. “We know many families and businesses are still suffering the after-effects ...
The sealing of a 12-kilometre stretch of State Highway 43 (SH43) through the Tangarakau Gorge – one of the last remaining sections of unsealed state highway in the country – has been completed this week as part of a wider programme of work aimed at improving the safety and resilience ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters says relations between New Zealand and the United States are on a strong footing, as he concludes a week-long visit to New York and Washington DC today. “We came to the United States to ask the new Administration what it wants from ...
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee has welcomed changes to international anti-money laundering standards which closely align with the Government’s reforms. “The Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) last month adopted revised standards for tackling money laundering and the financing of terrorism to allow for simplified regulatory measures for businesses, organisations and sectors ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour says he welcomes Medsafe’s decision to approve an electronic controlled drug register for use in New Zealand pharmacies, allowing pharmacies to replace their physical paper-based register. “The register, developed by Kiwi brand Toniq Limited, is the first of its kind to be approved in New ...
The Coalition Government’s drive for regional economic growth through the $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund is on track with more than $550 million in funding so far committed to key infrastructure projects, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. “To date, the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) has received more than 250 ...
[Comments following the bilateral meeting with United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; United States State Department, Washington D.C.] * We’re very pleased with our meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this afternoon. * We came here to listen to the new Administration and to be clear about what ...
The intersection of State Highway 2 (SH2) and Wainui Road in the Eastern Bay of Plenty will be made safer and more efficient for vehicles and freight with the construction of a new and long-awaited roundabout, says Transport Minister Chris Bishop. “The current intersection of SH2 and Wainui Road is ...
The Ocean Race will return to the City of Sails in 2027 following the Government’s decision to invest up to $4 million from the Major Events Fund into the international event, Auckland Minister Simeon Brown says. “New Zealand is a proud sailing nation, and Auckland is well-known internationally as the ...
Improving access to mental health and addiction support took a significant step forward today with Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey announcing that the University of Canterbury have been the first to be selected to develop the Government’s new associate psychologist training programme. “I am thrilled that the University of Canterbury ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown has today officially opened the new East Building expansion at Manukau Health Park. “This is a significant milestone and the first stage of the Grow Manukau programme, which will double the footprint of the Manukau Health Park to around 30,000m2 once complete,” Mr Brown says. “Home ...
The Government will boost anti-crime measures across central Auckland with $1.3 million of funding as a result of the Proceeds of Crime Fund, Auckland Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee say. “In recent years there has been increased antisocial and criminal behaviour in our CBD. The Government ...
The Government is moving to strengthen rules for feeding food waste to pigs to protect New Zealand from exotic animal diseases like foot and mouth disease (FMD), says Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard. ‘Feeding untreated meat waste, often known as "swill", to pigs could introduce serious animal diseases like FMD and ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held productive talks in New Delhi today. Fresh off announcing that New Zealand and India would commence negotiations towards a Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, the two Prime Ministers released a joint statement detailing plans for further cooperation between the two countries across ...
Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay signed a new Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) today during the Prime Minister’s Indian Trade Mission, reinforcing New Zealand’s commitment to enhancing collaboration with India in the forestry sector. “Our relationship with India is a key priority for New Zealand, and this agreement reflects our ...
Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay signed a new Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) today during the Prime Minister’s Indian Trade Mission, reinforcing New Zealand’s commitment to enhancing collaboration with India in the horticulture sector. “Our relationship with India is a key priority for New Zealand, and this agreement reflects our ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of two new Family Court Judges. The new Judges will take up their roles in April and May and fill Family Court vacancies at the Auckland and Manukau courts. Annette Gray Ms Gray completed her law degree at Victoria University before joining Phillips ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown has today officially opened Wellington Regional Hospital’s first High Dependency Unit (HDU). “This unit will boost critical care services in the lower North Island, providing extra capacity and relieving pressure on the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and emergency department. “Wellington Regional Hospital has previously relied ...
Namaskar, Sat Sri Akal, kia ora and good afternoon everyone. What an honour it is to stand on this stage - to inaugurate this august Dialogue - with none other than the Honourable Narendra Modi. My good friend, thank you for so generously welcoming me to India and for our ...
By Harlyne Joku and BenarNews staff Residents of an informal Port Moresby settlement that was razed following the gang rape and murder of a woman by 20 men say they are being unfairly punished by Papua New Guinea authorities over alleged links to the crime. Human rights advocates and the ...
Nearly 25 years after the "corngate" saga, the debate on genetic modification is back thanks to the Gene Technology Bill currently in select committee. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Brodie, Research Scientist in Marine Ecology, CSIRO jittawit21, Shutterstock Picture this: you’re lounging on a beautiful beach, soaking up the sun and listening to the soothing sound of the waves. You run your hands through the warm sand, only to ...
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist Although New Zealand and Australia seem to have escaped the worst of Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, some Pacific Islands stand to be hit hard — including a few that aren’t even “countries”. The US will impose a base tariff of 10 percent on all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton both agree Australia should react to US President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff regime by continuing to seek a special deal. They just disagree about which of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher, Digital Literacy and Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University UK Prime Minster Keir Starmer met with Adolescence writer Jack Thorne to discuss adolescent safety at Downing Street on Monday. Jack Taylor/ GettyImages Netflix’s Adolescence has ignited global debate. ...
By Anneke Smith,RNZ News political reporter A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament. Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rakesh Gupta, Associate Professor of Accounting & Finance, Charles Darwin University US President Donald Trump’s new trade war will not only send shockwaves through the global economy – it also upsets efforts to tackle the urgent issue of climate change. Trump has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Toohey, Professor of Law, UNSW Sydney It had the hallmarks of a reality TV cliffhanger. Until recently, many people had never even heard of tariffs. Now, there’s been rolling live international coverage of so-called “Liberation Day”, as US President Donald Trump ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Fuller, Clinical Trials Director, Department of Endocrinology, RPA Hospital, University of Sydney mavo/Shutterstock In the ever-changing wellness industry, one diet obsession has captured and held TikTok’s attention: protein. Whether it’s sharing snaps of protein-packed meals or giving tutorials to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Maslow, Associate Professor, International Relations, University of Tokyo Two months into US President Donald Trump’s second term, the liberal international order is on life support. Alliances and multilateral institutions are now seen by the United States as burdens. Europe and ...
Starving public services of resources, gutting the workforce and then proposing private market solutions has been a key strategy of this government, says Vanessa Cole, spokesperson for Public Housing Futures. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Geyle, Ecologist, Charles Darwin University Sarah Maclagan/Author provided The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is one of Australia’s most iconic yet at-risk animals — and the last surviving bilby species. Once found across 70% of Australia, its range has contracted by ...
The government’s own Regulatory Impact Statement acknowledges that organic producers will bear the financial burden of adapting to the risks posed by GMO expansion. ...
The committee has "rammed it through with outrageous haste", with a report now expected tomorrow, but excluding thousands of submissions, Duncan Webb says. ...
The US president’s sweeping programme of global tariffs will hit every country abroad, including New Zealand, and dramatically raise prices at home. This is an excerpt from The World Bulletin, our weekly global current affairs newsletter exclusively for Spinoff Members. Sign up here.In a dramatic, flag-draped address from the White ...
Alex Casey talks to Bariz Shah and Saba Afrasyabi, the couple who launched a project to change 51 lives in honour of those lost in the Christchurch mosque attacks. When Bariz Shah and Saba Afrasyabi walked into Naeem’s house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, they knew immediately that he needed their help. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law, Taxation and Climate Change, Queensland University of Technology US President Donald Trump has imposed a range of tariffs on all products entering the US market, with Australian exports set to face a 10% tariff, effective April ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Geyle, Ecologist, Charles Darwin University Sarah Maclagan/Author provided The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is one of Australia’s most iconic yet at-risk animals — and the last surviving bilby species. Once found across 70% of Australia, its range has contracted by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Shutterstock Recent media coverage in the Nine newspapers highlights a surge in non-medical ultrasound providers offering “reassurance ultrasounds” to expectant parents. The service has resulted in serious harms, such as misdiagnosed ectopic pregnancies and ...
The three MPs whose rule-breaking haka caught the world’s attention didn’t attend their scheduled hearing yesterday. Constitutional law expert Andrew Geddis has the rundown of what happened, why, and what’s likely to come next. I see Te Pāti Māori and the privileges committee are in some sort of stand-off – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Turner, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates in Thingvellir National Park, Iceland.Nido Huebl/Shutterstock Earth is the only known planet which has plate tectonics today. The constant movement of these giant slabs of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Meta has stolen millions of books to train its AI, including books by kaituhi Māori. What does that mean for mātauranga and its status as taonga? New Zealand authors are among the millions whose books have been pirated and scraped by Meta to train its AI. The New Zealand Society of ...
Some hoped the open of the New Zealand markets would open with a bounce as certain tariffs fell short of the worst-case scenario, but investors were met with a deflated thud.The New Zealand market fell immediately as stock market darling Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s shares were punished, with no update ...
Healthcare dominated the debate in an unusually sober and serious question time. “Hey David!” a group of high school students in the public gallery called out as Act leader David Seymour entered the debating chamber. Standing in the middle of the floor, before any other MPs had arrived, he happily ...
Looks like the focus groups behind this government are beating the drums against the teacher unions. First Rodney Hide’s dog whistle article against the unions in the HOS, then the Herald running a poll to find out what people think about the unions.
It’s encouraging at least to read the comments below Rodney’s rant.
The right really hate unions that protect their workers, don’t they?
Interesting obsservation Paul, one that strikes a chord. There looks to be a small management clique at the Herald who don’t think much of journalistic impartiality, some of the pro-National editorials from one Herald staffer in particular are quite outrageous in their condescending bias and Goebbels style propaganda.
Hide can say what he pleases, he’s a guest commentator, but it is curious how the Herald have a poll inside his article on the same subject he’s criticising. A cynic might suggest the results of the poll may not be exacty accurate either.
The Herald often run a ‘dog-whistle’story then ask for ‘people’s’ opinions.
It’s an attempt either to test the water for new (suspected unpopular) policy or a attempt by the Herald to sway opinion…as your comment inferred.
A quick look at the Herald’s headlines over the past 6 months show a generally negative perspective on teachers.
The owners of the Herald have spoken to the editor, clearly.
I agree they are having a go but I don’t think it is focus group driven, I think it is because of a pathological hatred of the collective.
Time for the opposition to stand up and say this is wrong.
“Time for the opposition to stand up and say this is wrong.”
Probably too busy this morning trying to figure out another ‘rogue’ poll.
I’d lean towards Pauls view. In the last few years the Herald has written a few editorials of their own criticising the teachers union and I don’t recall ever seeing them praising the union at any time. Further to that the Herald wasn’t exactly union friendly during the ports dispute either.
There’s a definite anti-union bias at some levels in the Herald. They’re also pro-charter schools, again they’ve written a number of editorials in favour of it and I don’t recall any that were against it.
(note I’m taliking about editorials written by Herald staff and not guest commentaries)
Don’t need to be a cynic, just a skeptic. Everybody should realise that the polls on the NZHerald aren’t scientifically accurate and especially when those polls are posted on an opinion piece which will probably be read mostly by the people who actually agree with who wrote the opinion.
Three out of four of Hide’s recent columns have consisted of attacks on teachers. These attacks are clearly linked to the dismal charter schools policy. Remember, charter schools are 100% the product of this half-wit and his half-witted party. neo-liberalism is a fanatic religion; the neo-liberals consider the successful resistance by education experts to their crack pot ideological ideas as a religious affront; And they accordingly approach the issue with an obsessive fanaticism.
+1
And the sooner that people realise that the neo-liberal theory that we’ve had dumped on us by governments over the last 30 years is a religion the better.
more Doom…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-17/saxo-bank-ceo-says-euro-doomed-as-single-currency-woes-resurface.html
What, the Eurozone crisis isn’t over yet, even after billions in bank bailouts and soul crushing austerity for the peasants? That’s such a surprise
Conservatives hate two things. Change and instability. Yet we have had conservatism in the ascendancy for the last thirty years, a revolutionary conservatism that made change (growth, profits, etc) the new stability, the new normal. With the end of cheap oil revolutionary conservatism, the bashing unions given any opportunity, is not sustainable, in fact its highly destabilizing. Who in their right mind bashes the unions, whose members have huge buying power in a time of global depression? Well a unreconstructed revolutionary conservative (Key bashing unions quite unnecessarily over the Hobbit movie).
Its like this. Societies need to redistribute wealth or they implode in civil disorder, in cheap oil times the means to redistribute was through the private banking system leveraging the printing of money. But all that has changed, we need to redistribute, that needs workers to demand higher salaries (take the foot off the pedal of high finance that took their marginal pay cuts and turned it into a bubble bonanza), and so all the natural inclinations of the lousy right to bash and screw over, that was once so recently in vogue and necessary to profits and eating up cheap energy, is no longer.
The problem with the Herald and many talking heads in NZ is that they just don’t know they are wrong, or just have invested too much in being tough unflinching types that they don’t get the joke they are becoming.
If, as Hide claims, unions are too strong, why couldn’t they stop Hide’s Super City fiasco? Because we live in a parliamentary dictatorship.
No one has power except the government of the day. They do what they want and the public (including the unions) be damned.
This mornings Herald editorial
Editorial: Revamp tax system to help out home buyershttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10865948
Rental housing is a business providing a service that people would prefer to provide for themselves if they could afford to. When competition from the business is making it harder for them to afford it, the business should not have a tax advantage.
If the removal of interest deductions discouraged residential property investment, lowered prices for first-home seekers and forced established home-owners to look for more productive uses of their savings, the country could be better off socially and economically.
Well the NZ Herald Editorial’s argument would be an improvement on the current situation, but it is still tinkering with the system rather than aiming to change it.
It assumes everyone wants to buy their own home.
This is a self-fulfilling prophesy, rather than aiming for a system where their is a choice between renting and owning your home. I am a life-time renter by choice. I think the focus on everyone owning their own home is set up in the interests of the banks and wealthy classes. It adds extra unnecessary pressures to workers on lower pay.
Increasing the amount of affordable state housing, and community housing plus some fair (to both landlords and renters) restrictions on private renting needs to be done as part of a comprehensive policy of change.
More state housing to take the poor out of the market would be a big help.
The problem being there that for the working poor,those who earn below $45,000 annually a State house is really only a dream as that cohort in the economy number anywhere from 250-300,000, and are now in places like Auckland and Christchurch paying 50%+ of their income in rent,
Successive Governments have aided and abetted the growth of this situation and who knows if this has been a deliberate measure,but, the number of State rental properties has remained static as the New Zealand population has grown from 3.3 million to 4.4 million in a relatively short period of time considering how long that population growth took to reach 3.3 million,
Globalization has allowed the banking cartels to be the sole producer of the money supply and those cartels have been only too happy to ‘produce’ monies to help along the price inflation from the ‘failure’ of the building industry to meet either the actual demand of the numbers of houses required and produce enough lower cost housing to constrain inflation in that sector,
Unfortunately the solutions for those in the rental market in the bigger cities are as radical as the house price inflation that has already occurred,
Government could simply Legislate that all rent for those households with an income of $45,000 or less a year pay no more than 25% of that total household income as rent,
A change to the housing law would be required to remove the ability of a landlord to remove a tenant for any reason after giving 90 days notice leaving only failure to pay rent, damage to property, and, disturbing the quiet enjoyment of neighbors to enjoy their property as the only means of removing a tenant from a rental property,
The $1.2 Billion dollar Accommodation supplement would need be cancelled and a ‘new’ WINZ benefit would need be established as a hardship grant landlords could apply to WINZ for to gain, after the production of suitable proof of hardship, a WINZ grant to enable the payment of mortgages,
Obviously as the banking cartels simply ‘produce’ the mortgages at the center of the failure of the property market they should be returned the same ‘produce’ in return and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand would have to be tasked to provide to WINZ the funds to pay such hardship grants to landlords using the same means of production as the banking cartels…
Back when the AS was introduced (under Shipley?) community organisations such as the Sallies predicted this situation with rising rental prices would occur. How to undo the damage of the AS without causing social harm is a difficult thing.
Until then I have to buy the odd lotto ticket. How pathetic.
The Accommodation Supplement tho was simply the addition of more fuel to the fire, in reality nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy for those investing in rental properties who in all reality have become the ticket clippers for the banking cartels to suck a large proportion of the profits of production,(the workers share), out of the New Zealand economy,
Norm Kirk’s Labour Government were building 30,000 State houses a year at it’s peak, this is the only other means i can at present think of besides what i have outlined in my previous comment of addressing this ‘issue’ particularly in cities like Auckland and Christchurch,
Both Labour and the Green Party have housing policy that addresses specific income groups effected by this house price, (and therefore rental), inflation,unfortunately even with a ‘peak build’ of 30,000 houses annually it would take 10 years for this inflation to be brought under control,
The point of my advocacy of a maximum 25% of household income for those with a household income of $45,000 a year or less would be the immediacy of it’s effect on both rental accommodation in the major cities and, (perhaps), on actual demand from investors for properties…
Or we could get real and build something like this and rent the lot out at 25% of household income,
Apparently the Chinese can knock one of these together in 3 years and have done so all over China and in places in Africa, shops, schools, sports-fields, everything, one of these tho would need a comprehensive public transport link to the rest of Auckland,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243
You claim that the Kirk Government was building 30,000 state houses/year at its peak.
That is wildly wrong. The peak construction of the 72-75 Labour Government was the 4,000 state houses built in the 75-76 year.
State housing built with low interest rate Reserve Bank credit.
http://digitalwarfare.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49:michael-joseph-savage-explains-how-public-credit-was-used-to-build-33766-state-houses&catid=37:articles-nz&Itemid=56
Brilliant CV, abso-lutely f**king brilliant, that also should be included in the school curriculum,
i have been arguing this very argument for years, the building of the houses justifies the printing of the debt, once you have the built houses you have the asset which nullifies the debt so there is no point keeping the debt on the books,
The same could be achieved by ‘selling’ the houses to the tenants, as the payments are made on a minimal basis the debt held by which-ever Government department would simply disappear,
It’s funny how very few people can ‘see’ this,and, i would dare say that such a production of money could not be used to fund everything, and, such a build off of the basis of such money would need to take the Reserve Banks inflationary targets into the time span of the build, but rocket science it aint,
Lolz the last paragraph says it all, threats from the slave masters in London of economic sanctions if Labour continued to print it’s own coin,
Should imagine that such threats would still be forthcoming in these modern times, probably from the banking cartels, bit hard tho to issue such threats when the US Government is printing $40 billion a month to spend upon ‘infrastructure’…
Lovely link there CV.
Everyone; read and compare to current Labour policy.
Hi CT, if you like that one, this one will make you think that the current set of political parties are reliving a time warp…and not in a good way!
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/housing-and-government/page-2
Provide a link to prove what you are saying is correct,thank you…
Ok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Labour_Government_of_New_Zealand
It’s in section 1.5 “Social Policy” in the bit with the heading “Major initiatives in Housing”. I’m afraid I can’t aim you directly at the words.
The person I am replying to is confusing total house construction in the year with state house construction.
You are in essence correct, i got the figure of 30,000 State houses built at the peak of the Kirk Labour Government’s term in office from a discussion with someone else and it is obviously my mistake to think that these 30,000 homes were all built ‘as State houses’,
The Kirk Government though in it’s generous treatment of low income people ’caused’ the great bulk of those houses to be built by direct intervention in the financing of loans to those reliant upon low incomes,
While happily admitting my mistake vis a vis the 30,000 homes built that year along with the 27,000 the year befor, and, the 24,000 the year befor that not being all State houses i cannot point to how this in any material way has any effect on the discussion here this morning, if it does, please point this out,
Lolz i recommend EVERYONE read that link, (it should be part of the school curriculum), can anyone imagine the skinflint miserly Governments that came after Kirk’s 3rd Labour Government paying beneficiaries an extra benefit payment as a ‘Christmas bonus’,
Kirk’s was a Government on a serious mission to improve the lives of every body, even going so far as to provide the Hippies of the time land via the ‘Ohu scheme’ where they could explore alternative lifestyles,
That Government should be the template by which all Labour Governments of the future Govern….
PS, and if i hear anyone in the Parliamentary Labour team attempt to compare David Shearer to Norman Kirk again i swear i am going to f**king vomit,
I suggest that Labour strategists wanting to make that comparison read the link kindly provided by ‘Alwyn’ above and when David Shearer comes out proposing the same treatment for beneficiaries as the Kirk Government DELIVERED then and only then may you have the temerity to attempt such a comparison…
I’m sorry about the bit that says “The person I am replying to”.
I got confused by the various comments here and didn’t register that it was you who both made the comment AND asked for the reference.
There was one thing the Kirk Government did about their housing policy that I strongly disapproved of though. I built a house in 1974 and the Government brought in a rule that the total area of a house was limited to 1500 sq ft (about 139 sq m). It meant I had to cut out one bedroom from the house which was a pain in the butt. God knows why they decided that that was a limit regardless of the size of your family.
No need to offer any apology, the comments in a post or open mike can be hard to follow, i usually read them all and don’t miss much,
Yes i can imagine people would have been a little up-set over having the size of their build restricted by Government,
i can well imagine why, to keep the allocation of Government resources reasonably even as they were allocated,
i should imagine the next Labour/Green Government will have for the cities a specific build size in mind for their specific housing policies,
Part of the failure of the current housing market is that it is being lead in no small part by the developers building the largest house possible on any given parcel of land to recoup the largest profit off that investment, that’s capitalism for you,
Given tho that in the past 30 years the average size family has shrunk down to Ma and Pa with 1.2 kids while the average house size has risen from 100m to 200m it starts to seem like one hell of a waste of space,
Do we really in a world of shrinking resources, shrinking capital and shrinking earnings for many actually need a fully lined garage for 3 vehicles along with a couple of ensuites attached to the bedrooms of our housing stock,
It all seems way too effete for me, but then i am a peasant who prefers to jump in a river or the sea or even under a hose than get in the shower…
On the awful looking suburbs built by developers in South Auckland that I have seen, I compare with the situation which prevailed in the 1960s and 70s. Then the developer divided up the property, applied for titles and prepared the sections and had a book of plans that had been costed to choose from.
Any changes would add to the price, and you got a nice house that was fitted to your needs. Since when have developers got the right to decide on our living environment? It’s like living in military housing or in an upper class open jail.
Set mortgage’s as a fixed value but that it cannot go above 25% of income. The weekly payment would be the lesser of the two. Also make them a fixed term so that extra payments can’t be added to the mortgage to make up any loss when the payments drop below the fixed value.
And then make mortgages available to home owners with 0% interest.
and this.
Why mess around with mortgages, it is the people trapped paying rent with a household income of $45,000 or less that i am addressing here, a lot of the time particularly in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington at 50+% of income,
Making mortgages cheaper will simply lead to an increased demand for property and while that demand exists rents will remain as they are, far too high for those forced to rent…
I didn’t make them cheaper, I limited them.
Oh, and made it so that people won’t lose their house if they suddenly find themselves out of a job.
Yes you limited the payments made on a mortgage to 25% of i presume household income,
This would simply have far more people seeking a house as would supplying those people with 0% interest home loans,
That would simply inflate the price of houses further leaving people with limited incomes with mortgages that could never in their lifetime be paid,
The ‘problem’ is tri-fold in that the population through immigration has been artificially increased over a short period by a million while housing construction lags behind by 8 years and the banking cartels have ‘produced’ easy credit for some to allow them to take advantage of the demand,
At the heart it is simply a supply/demand ‘problem’, if as a country we had of built the housing first and then invited in the immigrants to match what would have been an oversupply of housing we would not be faced with the ‘problem’…
How can such a system inflate house prices when the value of the house is limited to pay back of 25% of income, the government is busily building and renting out accommodation at 10% of income as well as supplying mortgages at 0% interest?
You seem to be suggesting that you would set the value of houses by legislation well below their current ‘market value’???,
The particular comment of yours we are debating might make sense in your mind, but, perhaps you need rephrase it as it doesn’t explain anything in the manner it is written,
If you are limiting the maximum amount anyone would pay on a mortgage on any property to 25% of household income while offering loans at 0% interest the end result is that EVERYONE could have a home with an affordable mortgage,
The reality tho, if i may drag you back to Earth, is that demand for housing to purchase currently out-strips supply by 8 years so allowing EVERYONE the opportunity to buy on low cost mortgage only serves to increase demand which the building industry cannot fill…
Not everybody could afford a mortgage or, to be more precise, not everybody could afford a house simply because the real cost of building one would be beyond their capability of repaying. There would be time limits that apply as well. Just because the mortgage is set at no more than 25% of income doesn’t mean that someone on minimum wage would be able to go out and buy a house.
And I’m sure you’ll find that the construction industry is quite capable of building the necessary housing. It may be challenged initially but that could be seen to over time.
By 1939 the 1st Labour Government was completing 57 state houses per week.
Pretty sure we could double or triple that figure without too much hassle if we set our mind to it.
Really Draco, so exactly who are you trying to help here, if those who are trapped in the low income brackets cannot afford to buy a house under the auspices of what you propose then just who would be able to???,
Where then does this leave those on the lowest incomes trapped paying rent to the middle classes of 50%+ of their limited income???…
Paying 10% of income in rent.
But karol, aren’t rent prices tied to house prices? So theoretically, if house prices dropped then you’d also be helping our people renting?
Geoff
To me, one of the biggest problems for renters is that houses get revalued according to current market prices, which are usually up. So the renter is always paying more for the same house or flat, so the return for the owner goes up, often with little maintenance or improvement carried out to maintain the amenity.
Yup agreed, but house prices need to be corrected down significantly. I’m sure there are a number of other factors, rent prices like house prices are sticky upward.
Rent prices tied to house prices??? by what??? rent prices are as far as i can see tied to nothing much in particular and are just as likely to be set by the landlord looking on TradeMe to see what other landlords are charging for ‘like’ properties…
Tied by mortgages. Landlords have to cover the cost of their loans but yes there are other factors, probably none of which favour the renter.
I’m sympathetic with karol’s perspective but I believe there are far more people who would like to own but are forced to rent than there are people who are just happy to rent. In any case there must be solutions that cater to both interests, the trouble being that it certainly won’t be in the interests of the landlords who are quite happy with the way things are.
Another good reason to tax businesses at a gross rate. Remove the perverse incentive to have a continuous flow of interest via buying more properties to reduce your tax bill here and elsewhere by offsetting the losses.
Look forward to the righties today moaning about Lydia Ko bludging off the state. Clearly has the means and ability to support herself but prefers to still live off money from high performance sport funding.
Shit forgot it’s only bludging when you have no job and you aren’t travelling all over the world, you have to go to Winz for food cause you’ve got no money to buy any and you have applied for 50 jobs and got 1 interview if you are lucky, have to live off porridge or weetbix, can’t afford to go to the doctor, and so on.
year to January; fruit and veg prices rose 5.9% (3.5% just in January compared to Dec) it’s Summer! Hallo?
That writer doesn’t have it right either. I don’t know why but most people seem to have trouble doing averages & percentages in their head.
To understand investors it helps to start with the basic principle of investing; that the investment must provide a market return.
To explain; assume that a property investor wants the same return as bank deposits and that rent makes up the return (they actually want more than bank deposits but run with this for now)
At 10% bank interest rates a $250k property will be returning $25k.
Now interest rates fall to 5%, which is what happened
The property will still be returning 10%, because rents didn’t fall with interest rates. Now it’s returning twice as much as bank deposits.
Investors move from bank deposits to property, because the return is higher.
Price of property goes up until it reaches $500,000 because the $25k return from the property is 5% of $500k and 5% is what the bank is paying.
And if interest rates go back up… well rents go up because the return is then too low. In economic theory the property value should go down but in real life it doesn’t.
That’s actually what happens in commercial property, it’s a kind of rachet which means prices constantly go up but can never come down as long as there’s renters to fill the properties. Interest rates go up & down but rents never go down so changes in interest rates lead directly to higher property prices.
You’re ignoring the fact that many people invested in property for the capital gain.
You could argue that they are not “investors” but I can find you people who would have to charge far more than would be possible to meet their interest bill. They meet this from their good salary and not doing any maintenance.
The only sums they did was if I sell it in 1 or 2 years time how much can I sell it for?
There’s lots of these people.
Short term speculators who have suddenly found themselves turned into long term investors.
Yeah but that’s the Govt’s fault. To qualify as an investor, and not pay tax on capital gains, you have to be in property for the rental returns only. Can find the IRD ruling here;
http://www.ird.govt.nz/property/property-common-mistakes/mistake-dealing-with-investment/#facts
“If you’re an investor you buy a property to use it to generate ongoing rental income and not with any firm intent of resale. The property is a capital asset and any later profit or loss from selling the property is capital and isn’t taxable (apart from clawing back any depreciation, which is now recoverable). ”
Now we all know that rents alone don’t provide a market return on most properties and that residential ‘investors’ are in it for the capital gain but they can’t admit that because they’d be disqualified from being classed as an investor if they did. They say they’re in it for the rental return only but the numbers say emphatically that they’re not.
Those people aren’t investors. They’re speculators. Investors underpin market values, speculators ride on the back of the activities of investors.
It doesn’t matter to an investor if the return is from rents or capital gain. All that matters is the return on the investment is commensurate with market rates and those rates are linked directly to bank deposit rates.
No it doesn’t, it can lose the whole lot invested. Just because investors look for a return doesn’t mean that they’re going to get one. It’s part of that risk that goes with investing.
When you loan out or invest money, you’re taking a risk that you’re not going to get it back.
Mate the market sets the return according to risk. The market starts at what’s known as a risk free rate of return and every other investment type has to return more than that, by how much is commensurate with the perceived risk. Govt bonds are usually treated as the risk free rate but not always and retail investors tend to rely on term deposits for the guide to investment returns.
Where novice investors often lose out is in high risk investments that pay correspondingly high rates of return. A large part of the return above the risk free rate is supposed to be capital; risk insurance that you invest elsewhere. But they take it as income & spend it all. When the investment goes titsup they’re out of pocket.
Except that nobody can make an accurate judgement of the risk and “the market” certainly can’t as the GFC just proved.
Risk is poorly formulated, say in the risk models of Banks.The inverse problem is that the short term games of say bankers and investors is primarily on the rate of return and future expectations of the rate of return Risk comes later (which it did recently) where we have both the markets trying to explain how they lost a few trillion to investors and the remarkable supernatural powers of regulators such as Bollard who discussed the over exposure of Banks to Rural lending to the banks only.
One reason being the math underlying things like portfolio management theory / Value At Risk analysis was based on absolutely faulty assumptions. AIG had a team of 20-30 PhDs doing risk modelling for it, just before it got driven into the ground with the financial weapons of mass destruction they were selling.
Nassem Taleb has spoken at length on the subject.
Executives happy not to ask questions and to collect their quarterly bonuses while their scam was running good. When times inevitably turned bad, they got the tax payer to bail them out – and kept all their bonuses anyway.
A very few people did figure it out ahead of the GFC, but the Friedmanite/Greenspan dogma meant that most others put their money where their faith was – in the “Great Moderation”.
However, I think that many at the top knew that it was a rotten ship…NINJA mortgages and other frauds etc.
That’s only partially true. A lot of risk asessment requires insider knowledge and few people have that information available to them. But basic risk profiles such as the risk weightings given to govt bonds, bank deposits and even property are pretty accurate judgements.
I’d also point out that the people responsible for the GFC made obscene wealth from it prior and didn’t lose anything personally from the GFC so their own risk evaluations were pretty accurate weren’t they.
Too cynical.
A lot of those people were trusted with fiduciary responsibilities, and they should be in jail right now.
This is a somewhat absurd, over-trusting statement, even in NZ.
But more so internationally, where the collusion between ratings agencies and their clients are now very well known.
Not really. Governments can default, bank deposits (in reality, a loan to the bank) can be lost and property values can go down (usually after a bubble or other financial crash).
Well, there is that, yes. IMO, that would be a sign of corruption.
So what’s the solution?
Aye, good question. I guess one has to first ask what is it people actually want?
But as far as property investment is concerned there really is a requirement that people understand how investment works. Know it and you can then figure out how to use it against itself. Property has a risk profile and the return from property as a percentage against other forms of investment will never change unless you change that risk profile. That can’t really be done, so what do you do….
If we accept that the return on property will follow basic investment rules then it must follow that if you reduce the return the price must fall to maintain the percentage return to new investors that the risk profile says it must.
You can’t reduce the return by changing tax rules because they’ll just put rents up to recover the lost income. So you do both. You bring rents down by creating an oversupply of rental properties and you tax the capital gain. Investors will be left with no options for restoring the lost revenue so the price of property must fall until it again returns the percentage that the risk profile dictates it must.
Simple really.
Yes, agreed.
No Right Turn turned 10 on Saturday. Happy decade anniversary Idiot/Savant.
Said it before, but I/S is a national taonga.
Thank you I/S and happy birthday.
Woot woot! 10 years of intelligent comments. Happy Birthday I/S.
– – –
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8315842/ACC-apologises-for-blaming-client
Good to see ACC only employs the best of the best (refers to last few lines of the article) and good news for the client … they apologise! Again!! Well now THAT makes it all better.
And, no of course we sensitive claimants wouldn’t expect you to fire anyone.
National up 5% in latest Colmar Brunton Poll. Labour and Greens down 2% each.
http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/national-bounces-up-in-poll-5343671
I know people are waking up. That’s a given. Also, this is probably a rogue poll. That happens a lot. Also, something about landlines.
Lolz, Gormless by nature, fool in reality, hope you kept a copy of that to hold onto in bed at night,
C’mon give us a National Governing alone scenario,(snigger)…
You are right. I should be more grateful. Thank you, David Shearer, for giving us a National Governing alone scenario, (snigger).
Don’t forget a thanks for Russell Norman.
His “lets print money” and “I’m going to be finance minister” comments was sterling stuff.
So you are a greater thinker than all the financial brains of the US, Japan,and,England to name a few who are ‘just printing money’, are you,
While your here can you tell us the actual difference in the private banks producing money from thin air and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand doing exactly the same thing…
Read about how Keynes fucked up the Spanish economy prior to WWII……….
Link please or your just talking s**t, perhaps you are suggesting that the current problems the Spanish economy faces are all Keynes fault,(snigger)…
Because Keynes is clearly what caused all the ‘Prior to WWII’ shit in Spain. what else could it be? *laughs*
lolz
Well, really it’s about how to destabilise a country by manipulating it’s currency….
What is?
WTF are you talking about Grumpy?
I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t actually know.
Actually many of the *events* globally have money at the core, be it getting countries in debt, stealing resorces to stop those same nations you stole from being self sufficient…Not too hard to understand is it, given that its the foot on the throat of the planet!
Where can we read about this? Are you actually sure you have the right country, the right war, or the right planet?
BM:
http://t.co/xahZ5Chw <—- Known socialist rag 'The Economist'.
Times are changing mate, keep up.
I know you were trying to be sarcastic but “the Economist” is widely acknowledged as having a bit of a leftist bent.
By morons maybe.
But go on, give us some citations of people calling the Economist ‘leftist’. Could use a laugh.
I’ll bet they are to do with the fact they they haven’t enodorsed republicans in the last few US elections. In which case; *laughs*.
I hear all of Rupert Murdochs publications, even the WSJ, is going to the Left.
yeah right
well, in the internet tory vernacular “leftist” means “acknowledges reality even once”.
Hahahahahahahaha
According to Kongy boy anything that does not think that Hitler was on solid ground has a leftist twist.
Is a ‘leftist twist’ the current vernacular for how you hold David C’s privates whilst gobbling on them ?
tuckfard.
Is that DC’s pet name for you ?
I can see this exchange ending up well, HS. It’s a hot day, don’t imbibe too fast as it all goes to the brain in a hurry.
is that why Joyce reads it?
Yes of course, next time you get conversing with LPrent you should be more clear in conveying your gratitude for the bestowal of such a name upon you…
You really think you’re on fire, don’t you, bad12?
Zing me another zinger.
You have failed to provide any humor, back in your bucket swamp amoeba…
Zing!
Fool indeed…
you’re it (Tag Heuer)
It does make for depressing reading when you consider this doesn’t appear to be a rougue poll in light of the fact most those supporting National also want Hekia gone. To me that shows they are not just blind National lovers.
They are middle of the road kiwis who can see how destructive and useless Hekia is, but when they look over and see Shearer, well they see no hope.
How long can we go on like this. National voters are showing in polls they don’t support National’s initiatives (asset sales/eduacation) yet they would rather have those policies then have Mumblefuck in charge.
The answer is quite simple isn’t it. Shearer must must must go.
It means people are looking at the big picture.
Most aren’t particularly keen on partial asset sales but they’ll accept it because they prefer national to the labour/greens/mana collective.
Even if labour is saying some good stuff, they’re rather handicapped by their coalition partners, people think “if I vote labour we’ll end up with those green nut bars and Hone the angry racist mofo”.
Fuck that,I’II vote national.
So tell us again what the actual difference is between the private banking industry producing the money supply and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand doing the same thing???…
It’s pretty much this.
No they aren’t. If they were there’s no way that National would ever be in power as National only ever looks to the short term gain of the rich and that only ever comes at everyone else’s expense.
BM you are bang on. I would never consider a vote for Labour with Shearer as leader. However, what is more frightening to me are the potential coalition partners. The Greens and Mana would demand too much that I don’t think a lot of people could stomach, and the potential for chaos is huge. Shearer is not capable IMHO of keeping them under control and he would have to give away too much to bring them on board.
Oooooh scary stuff inside your mind, hasn’t the Prozac dose kicked in this morning…
Please keep away from my teenage son unp(rotected)c(opulating)nzcougar.
Shearer couldn’t do any worse than Key in either control or performance.
Honestly you people! I give an opinion bad12 and fenderviper and you stoop to that level. How about some intelligent discourse without throwing mud. I feel this says much more about you than it does about me.
If you support Shearer then great. Many don’t and interviews like the one on BFM today certainly do not help.
Aw was we meanies to you, we sowwy really, i can stoop lower, really low if you want…
Chaos as opposed to the well planned and orderly changes brought about by NAct? Our housing policy is run by Australian banks, education is run by Banks, and justice is run by Garth McVicar and that redneck from the Police Association, not to mention the economy being run by a currency speculator and social assistance being handled by an underachieving women who has dominatrix fantasies with everyone except Key, for whom she switches.
I’m not sure the Prozac is strong enough.
Psst, they are only Australian Banks in name only, it’s public relations and advertising which leads us to think of them as Australian Banks when they are actually owned by the global banking cartels,
Just another clever piece of marketing from the Banking Cartels…
Damn, you’re on to it.
http://www.spankyourbank.com.au/wbc-top-twenty-shareholders
yep, it’s a bit bigger than the 5 sisters in the oil cartel, but a banking cartel it is, and, when you look at the connections across the Western world in particular the same players are all there,
i have had debates befor where i have said that all the current 300 million a week Slippery is keeping His government afloat with is simply magic money from Wall Street,
Of course the reply is usually a ”no it’s borrowed from the Banks of Europe”,which is a giggle as they are all inter-connected and the only reason why the digital magic money is sent via Europe is to try and fool us all that it aint Wall Street’s magic money,
The bigger giggle is that it does fool a lot of people, which at the same time is pretty damn tragic…
A lot of the bigger members of the cartel are shy and it would be hard to find, but, sometimes when you dig you find where a biggy like Goldman Saches,(sacks of goldman), have their interest in a particular bank tucked away out of sight in one or more of the nominee companies,(saves the locals getting all antsy about the yanks buying up their banks lol)…
First confuse the people, create credit out of nothing, set up your own competition so there is apparent choice, next thing we’ll all be believing in scientology
If it’s good enough for Tom Cruise…?
Nah we chose neo-liberalism instead, level playing fields, free markets, everyone having personal responsibility, there is no alternative, the phraseology surrounding the Ism are endless, and just as meaningless but the stuff is so glib and the endless flow of it just serves to switch off most of us,
You know tho that ‘they’ have just about run out of steam when they all start uttering that pearl of wisdom ‘at the end of the day’,
Every low level street con-artist was using that phrase years ago…
It’s not Shearer putting them off, it’s the obsession with “identity politics” and the harping of the teacher unions (as shown in the latest survey) that is putting people off Labour. It would be worse without Shearer.
The most depressing thing i see in all that is your belief in this particular poll, the Roy Morgan out barely a week earlier told an entirely different story, what makes you have such faith in the TV1 poll which has since i can remember always polled National at 3% higher than it’s actual election night result…
Exactly, Bad. Not only does the Morgan poll have better methodology, hence more accuracy, they poll fortnightly so they are a more useful tool for monitoring the trend. Which is down for National and their poodles.
I suppose if anything useful can be taken from the CB/TV1 snapshot it is that Shearer appears to have small but solid support in the preferred PM poll. That’s heartening, because Goff never managed to gain traction there and he still came close to winning.
Lolz i take the TV1 and TV3 polls as messin with our heads, even Roy is a bit suspect at times,
i commented about the Morgan poll 1 back from the last 1 as reading National from the high side of the margin of error and Labour from the low side of that error margin,
The latest Morgan reverses that and i believe the TV1 poll does exactly what i suggested the Morgan poll is wont to do…
The Roy Morgan did not paint an entirley different story.
It was more fabourable to the left, yes, but for some fucked up reason National still has unbelievable support in any poll you look at.
We have been trying to read trends favourably for years but if an election was held today it would be a very close call.
Oh the f**ked up reason(s) why the Slippery National Government is still strongly supported is simply the ‘tax switch’ which puts 100,s of dollars a week into the pockets of the 40+% of the population that support that Government,
This gives them the ability to fully access the other ‘vote buy’ offered by Slippery the Prime Minister of ‘asset sales’
Across the world the left/right paradigm has closed to just that among committed voters, a few % points either way, this of course is aided by the large cohort who do not vote, even the last election was one of a couple of % points in favor of the right,(with the aberration of the Maori Party thrown in),
So, considering the ‘goodies’ on offer from Slippery’s National Government the ‘left’ aint doing to bad at all,
(take the Maori Party out of the equation and you have a National Government with a knife edge majority)…
PS, the last Roy Morgan had Labour+Green+Mana with the numbers to Govern, the TV1 poll has National in the position to virtually Govern alone,
If that aint ‘an entirely different story’ then i suggest you get your eyes checked…
part of the difference is that National is the only significant party to cover right to far right policies. I doubt they’ll drop below 35% in the next 6 years, even if labour win in 2014. A bunch of the top 20% will always vote tory, and a smaller chunk of futilely “aspirational” poor people will do so too.
Lab/greens are always going to share the leftish side of the vote.
Matthew Hooton on the radio just now was highly dismissive of this poll being correct. He could not see that nats were polling higher than they were at the election time.Something to do with CB inflating the percentage for nats which is historical.. Inflating was my word as I don’t know how else to put it.
Serious illness equals serious financial trouble
Something else that needs to be thought about. People should not be dropping into deprivation through no fault of their own.
As long as it’s through no fault of their own I would agree, as long as we don’t go down this route.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/obese-man-awarded-350000-from-gp-20130207-2e1gs.html
My only problem with that case is that it’s going through the courts, rather than medical council for malpractice.
Not to say that the doctor is necessarily at fault, given that medical knowledge does change so maybe banding or whatever wasn’t viewed as an appropriate treatment in those days. Just that I don’t think the courts are appropriate places for highly specialised issues like medicine – similarly I don’t think the cops should be charging pilots and so on without a specific referral from specialist investigation boards. Or even the boards themselves should prosecute, not involve the police at all.
The majority of fault lies with the patient who is a fat git.
fear-mongering Financial Services Council Propaganda
The NZ government fearing that Australia would stop kiwis working in OZ decided that those kiwis who did should not get access to welfare that their earnings are providing Australians.
I’m sorry, but that makes Kiwis second class citizens. That’s just wrong, why should Kiwis pay taxes yet not get the benefits of that taxation all so the NZ government can keep sending them there.
Finally exactly why does everyone think Australia is doing so badly out of the relationship. The business, the banks owned, the work kiwis in OZ pay, the whole relationship is not one
sided. In fact in the free trade speak the sum is greater than the parts.
So why does the media in NZ still demand that NZ just can’t match Australia that kiwis must suffer for the low estimation of what the NZ economy does for Australia. There was never a good reason
for Australia to deny Kiwis access to benefits, since when the sums are done I bet its better together than two seperated economies. Hey, and whats all this business about matching our economies, how exactly is it fait too do that in all areas but welfare?
surely the reason kiwis flock to Oz is that the tax regime here, the lack of a CGT, the leky homes, the astonishing poor retail sector, the lack of even basic consumer checks on food, etc….
they aren’t moving over there because Australia is so great, its because NZ is so poorly run and naff at competing. I have never heard so much bull about how companies need government to ease off, how we need more foriegn investment, etc, all because the hollowed out economy is pumping profits to foreigners (many living in AUSTRALIA).
+1
Kiwis working in Aus should receive a tax cut to allow them to save money for a time when the Aus Govt leave them without a safety net. How they can be taxed at the same rate yet not be given the same protection is just immoral.
You say that “That makes Kiwis second class citizens”. Well no, because they aren’t citizens at all.
Anyone from a country other than New Zealand has to get a work visa before going to Australia. New Zealanders don’t have to and many of them who do go there would not qualify for Citizenship under the Australian rules.
You also say “so the New Zealand Government can keep sending them there”. Also no. Transportation to Australia ended in 1853, which is rather a long time ago. The New Zealanders who go there choose to go, they aren’t sent.
The Australian economy was, until very recently doing better than the New Zealand one. That was mostly in Western Australia and Queensland. Do you think it may be because they allow mining and Oil development or is that just a coincidence?
The main reason that there is foreign investment in New Zealand rather than investment by New Zealanders is because we simply don’t save enough, and there is no incentive to do so. Anyone who saves and invests here is classed, by people like “Sir” Michael Cullen as being merely a “rich prick” and a “scumbag” who deserves to be plucked. On the other hand let us not go down the path of the Government choosing who the tax-payer’s money should be given to. Politicians are terrible at that and are, in particular, never willing to admit when they get something wrong. They much prefer to simply double-up on the bets.
I know its hard to fathom because of all the bull around but the fact that any ‘group’ of people pay taxes and don’t get access to the full range of services that other enjoy, nothing about being a citizen or not, is wrong.
Second, the citizenship argument, there are many people who are not Australians living in OZ who get welfare, its just they come through a process that acknowledges them. Unlike kiwis who just turn up.
Third, you did not address the point, that together our economies do better, the flexibility of allowing Australia to engage more well educated people means their economy can grow faster.
Fourth, everyone pretty much says kiwis should get access to welfare eventually, but do not.
Fifth, when did it become a privilege, Kiwis are guests, when do you treat people worse because they are guest, best mates rates, etc.
If Australia does want to them, send them home, we could do with the economic boost, call their bluff, the economic, social, business, etc relationships all suggest we should be fair, yet this disgrace still exists.
I’ll comment on the paragraphs as they appear. Note these are only my views or the facts of the matter as I understand them to be.
One. I agree, it isn’t really fair but surely a country has the right to set their own rules, not just to submit to what another country demands?
Two. Sure we treat them differently but that is something we chose to do. Again just because we do something doesn’t give us the right to make another country do it.
Three. Perhaps our economies would do better if they were more closely meshed. Observing the EU is making me a little less sure though. Perhaps we could fully mesh the economies. There is a clause in the Australian Constitution that enables New Zealand to become a state. Should we take advantage of that and all become Ockers? At least that would give us a good cricket team and them a good rugby team.
Four. It will probably happen. There is talk of eight years residence.
Five It was in 2001 or 2002. I forget which exactly. It was agreed by Phil Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs incidentally, something he is desparately having amnesia about these days.
Six. I can’t really believe you are asking that Australia should deport every New Zealand born, non Australian citizen, from Australia?
There are some things Australia does that I think we should emulate. They do not allow non-citizens to vote in Federal or State elections. I heartlily approve.
Another is that Federal MPs (and Senators) must only hold Australian citizenship. There is a slight exception to this, relating mainly to Greek-born politicians but it is there only because Greece refuses to allow people with Greek citizenship to surrender it. I think we should bring in a similar rule. If you want the right to make the laws for this country you should be exclusively loyal to this country. If you want to be an MP here you should be required to relinquish any foreign citizenship.
Countries still need to act reasonably, use commonsense, not be two faced, like invite someone for reasons of closeness and them treat them worse than the most despised. Even criminals get welfare. Sure there maybe an argument that two years without access before welfare kicks in, that people should not just jump the ditch because their NZ PM has told them how great Australia is and how crap NZ compares implicitly when Key says stuff like they made the decision, we have to bend over and accept it NZ is a small useless backwater
we do nothing for the OZ economy. Australia choose to let us in for good economic reasons, is Key saying on the one hand they are so good and on the other were being stupid in a open border policy. Please. As for they choose to when individuals accept the welcome, well no! Howard chose to alter the rules to the extreme end of the spectrum, and its not the first time Australia has done that, removed rights of pacific peoples. Apartheid appeared in OZ before it got to South Africa. Perhaps people who argue for free trade, that the sum of the parts is bigger than the parts alone should not argue that its a burden for Australia, but Key is a hypocrite, there’s certainly no law against PMs being openly ironic, but I don’t have to swallow whole the assumptions implicit in the policy.
As a Australian citizen I find it offense for fence sitters, who want Kiwis in OZ yet don’t treat them fairly, but I suppose if NZ PMs and the community see workers as merely expendable its not a surprise they would flock to OZ and have their leaders vindicitively agree to have taxes taken off them to pay for beneficiaries in OZ but not get the same access
EVER without having to give up their citizenship. I mean they turned their backs on NZ
so why woudl you care that Australia sends them all packing, they after all don’t want to be Australians, and Australia is entitled to make its own laws, and we obviously all believe they can be treated in a second rate way, they are after all our best mates, so why not! Send the all back to NZ, see how long Key lasts when they want some of the economic wealth they saw in OZ and start introducing the means to get it, like a CGT, like no tax
for the first 5,000, like a upper chamber to keep politicians more honest….
Oh, wait a moment you don’t care about the issue, you want second class kiwis in OZ.
“Anyone who saves and invests here is classed, by people like “Sir” Michael Cullen as being merely a “rich prick” and a “scumbag” who deserves to be plucked”
not true – it was a comment directed squarely at john key – who is worth 50 odd million and is quite a prickish scumbag
its not cullens fault that a bunch of pundits then falsely extrapolated that to be cullens opinion of people who earn over 60k pa
please stop repeating such blatant rewriting of history
Of course that remark was made about John Key. Michael Cullen had form in this regard however.
In his maiden speech in 1982 he said
“I’m proud of the fact that my secondary education was not paid for by the taxpayer of New Zealand but by the farmers of Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay. I ripped them off for five years then and I shall get them again in the next few years”.
That is referring to the scholarship he had to go to Christs’ College in Christchurch.
Certainly not very civil was he? He always did seem to have a rather large chip on his shoulder about people who were better of than he was.
lol come on man, stop rewriting history in your own image.
Presumably you don’t believe that Cullen said that in his maiden speech.
He did and you can see it in Hansard.
Sorry but if you are trying to pretend that he didn’t say it it is you who are trying to rewrite history.
Give up and start seeing things as they really are.
“Certainly not very civil was he?”
whoopdee frickin doo – none of that makes your claim any more truthy.
cullen calling key a rich prick still doesnt mean everyone over 60k is also a rich prick
its a fabrication driven by those on the right and their useful idiots – you’ve obviously fallen for it hook line and sinker
The reason why we tax rich pricks is so we can have things like hospitals.
And you may want to dig up the Southern Alps but I dont.
Don’t get me started aero! Sometimes I wonder whether or not it isn’t Key’s agenda to force a position where (second-class) statehood in an Australian federation, or confederation is his orgasmic fantasy – even better if it could be achieved with the US of A.
The only thing that convinces me that isn’t so is that we all know he isn’t clever enough to have thunk it through.
Meantime though, he’s having a great time sucking up to the celeb politicians in the meed-ya, selling and giving away what’s left of our sovereignty (albeit with the occasional hiccup contested in courts).
It’ll come out one day JUST how hard JK pushed for the plight of NZers in OZ at the little Queenstown dalliance (not very) – in exchange for the NZ undertaking (BAD deal whichever way you look at it – even as far as international reputation is concerned).
When it does of course, he’ll probably be tucked up elsewhere.
Matthew Hooton says that he is sorry for Prosser the Tosser. NZ First is xenophobic and he quoted Winston making ‘colourful’ statements. None of the above have much integrity.
Hootin’ on the minimum wage. Scorn about a ‘number plucked out of the air’ – typical grasshopper approach – pick on a detail and demolish that; ergo the idea is a failed one.
Hootin’ also says that the places that have tried charter schools, (including Labour’s fave Sweden) also are keen on National Standards. I don’t think that is correct, certainly not for all those countries.
Kathryn Ryan says Prosser continues a tradition in NZ of making an absolute goat of yourself. Of course he could try passing pointed remarks about himself, a very funny and fruitful subject.
Yes, I listened to that. But Hootin’ was talking about the living wage, as I recall, not the minimum wage.
An interesting aside was the reference to Williams of the pre-radio broadcast chat between him and Hooton. So they agree on what they are going to talk about and/or signal their positions in advance?
Pretty normal on any talk radio show for the producer to organise what topics are to be discussed in advance and for the panellists to chat before they hit the airwaves, Karol.
karol probably raised this because of the big love-in we get to witness every week between Matthew Hooton and Mike Williams. It’s depressing.
It’s also funny geoff and in my mind its beginning to jeopardise the credibility of the likes of rinny ryan. From the LEFT [insert pagani or williams], and from the right [insert “the fair and balance Maaaaaaaaaaaaaathew Hoooooooooten”]. There’s been times when even rinny ryan has had to try and reign him in out of embarrasment, but its probably false advertising at best.
Then we get an hour’s reprieve before the next ultra-nice person takes to the air as part of that horrible band of bloody lefty public service broadcasters [not], including some painful mission to Mars and bestest best song ever written. (Jim hasn’t learned from Monday morning with rinny, that Maaaathew Hoooooten is the best song ever written).
RadioNZ has some isssss-yooos doesn’t it1 Primarily down to the regular gal in the weekday morn, and the exceptional every-person’s frend in the weekday afternoon. Both stale at best
Unfortunately they’re both better than the TINA alternatives. They’ll both probably get ONZs.
Mornings are always better when rinny takes what seems to be an endless availability of annual leave or afternoons have a locum
Hah yeah although I dislike Jim Mora much more than Kathryn. I remember when he was doing the voiceover for a show about cops raiding dope growers homes. Most were maori families probably trying to put food on the table, quite sickening how NZ media types are happy to lower themselves to that level.
At least we’ve still got Kim on Saturday mornings
I have stopped listening to that tripe on National Radio, the ‘i agree show’ with Hooten and Williams is simply 5 minutes of Hooten exercising his ego and Williams kissing His arse or vice versa,
I caught the pathetic ”why not $25 dollars a hour blah blah blah” from the evil baby look-a-like and immediately switched off my brain as that one obviously did so as to enable Him to comment on that National Radio show,
The only thing Mr Ego got right was His contention that the TV1 poll always gets National’s share of the vote wrong, on the high side of being that wrong as well,
Hooten’s nappies were obviously showing signs of being badly soiled today when He discussed the next election in terms of NZFirst not appearing in the next Parliament because of the overt racism exhibited by NZFirst MP Richard Tosser,
Hooten then resorted to mythology by saying that National after 2104 will be able to rely on the Maori Party for support to form the next Government,
Sorry Hooties, Maori have already got there ahead of you, with one hell of a dose of luck at the 2014 election the Maori Party might get one MP back into the Parliament,
Wonder how long it will take for Hooten to click onto that little fact and try whipping up support for the Conservatives,(snigger)…
bad12
I am shocked to find this sort of thing happening on radio. Thank goodness it’s not tv – we don’t have to view it. But should I complain to the Broadcasting Standards about such goings- on? Please advise.
You could,but, i fear it would be a waste of your energy and time, if you have plenty of both tho you could always take a swipe at such a pathetic display by Hooten and Williams,
The only grounds tho that i can see is on the basis of Williams in the views He continually expresses cannot be said to ‘be from the left’
False advertising perhaps???, of course it would be very difficult to ‘prove’ that Williams is not ‘from the left’ as the left is considered by many (most) to include the Labour Party which Williams was the Prez of…
bad12
I think Williams principles have worn bare with age.
Well, the countries that have tried charter schools usually also have their version of National Standards. Both systems in those countries are failing miserably as is to be expected of ideologically driven policy.
I listened to a fascinating, albeit concerning episode of BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme yesterday called Food on a Pension.
It definitely raised in me some concerns about the future of elder care in New Zealand too, especially after the Southern District Health Board has decided to dump Presbyterian Support Otago from its home support contracts in favour of an Australian provider.
Worth the half hour to listen to it.
Looks like the title dropped off when I did the HTML. The episode is called “Food on a Pension”.
year to January-fruit and vege prices rose 5.9% (3.5% just from Dec to Jan this year) It’s Summer! Hallo?
So, I applied for a job last week at MBIE (yes, the new super-ministry). I just got a reply from http://www.hrx.com.au/ Yep, the government even employs Australians to find employees for them in NZ.
And they still wonder why unemployment in NZ is growing.
we’re a perverse stupid hollowed out country. And it’s a trend long led by the top.
You can tell it’s Australian….”we wouldn’t be us without you”
Who ownes these Australian companies/banks people keep referring to?
CV – Yes, thats what NZ is, terrible!
penitence? or Penance?, or Penzance
That’s Corny.
Congratulations to Idiot/Savant on 10 years of No Right Turn.
David Shearer interviewed on bFM this morning …
http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,209942,labour-party-leader-david-shearer.sm
Too many head-desk moments to cite, but probably the worst is his reply to a simple question:
“Is there room for homophobes in Labour?”
Answer: yes, no, maybe, not a majority, something, whatever …
Basically he’s asked to explain the difference betwen a party position and a conscience vote. That’s not a trick question. You could answer it in two sentences. Shearer can’t.
Hey, gobsmacked, actually he handles that question (and the others) perfectly well. His answer is that he doesn’t think there are homophobes in the party, but he was aware some members don’t accept marriage equality. No surprise there.
“Basically he’s asked to explain the difference betwen a party position and a conscience vote. That’s not a trick question. You could answer it in two sentences. Shearer can’t.”
He answers that question perfectly well in, er, two sentences. Have a listen to the recording. Ok, it might be 3 sentences if what I take to be a comma at one point is actually a full stop, but you seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill, gs.
According to many on here this … :”His answer is that he doesn’t think there are homophobes in the party, but he was aware some members don’t accept marriage equality” … is not possible.
Not accepting marriage equality equals homophobia. So there you go – the labour party is full of homophobes. Just ask one tane huna.
Have a listen to the recording.
Um, thanks for the idea. I thought I already had, and then posted the link for others.
I heard a desperately inarticulate ramble, unable to make clear points, with the same old start-stop-restart habit that “media training” was supposed to cure.
But people can make up their own minds. The voters will.
Well, there is a difference between listening and hearing gs. You might have heard it, but you clearly weren’t listening.
One of you must be correct, but which one?
I agree. He was shocking. We get students just starting to learn English who can get their ideas across better than Shearer.
When asked about Prosser, he could have just said that anyone holding those sort of views would not get selected as a Labour candidate. But then they’ve just invited the back pussy guy back in, so he doesn’t even have the moral high ground there.
So there is room within Labour for homophobes but anyone coming out with homophobic comments comparable to the Prosser shit would be stood down. Hmm. So rank hypocracy is fine. Good to know. And straight from the horse’s mouth, which is to say, the mouth of (possibly) the most painfully equivocal political leader that has ever been foisted on the NZ public.
Further eg. of confused equivocation; Living Wage – no policy until next year BUT I (Shearer) made a speech on it last year and other orgs are getting behind the idea (But it can’t be a Labour Party policy idea until next year…yet Labour are leading the way?)
Seriously, I can’t hold up my hand with any honesty and say that I know what the fuck he was on about in that interview. All I can say is that I can’t fathom what he is/is not presenting. Two word summation: Absolutely disastrous.
The reason Shearer can’t say what policy is right now, is that you and the other members haven’t decided what it is yet. It’s your choice, Bill, you get to tell Shearer what he campaigns on.
You miss the point that on the one hand he says Labour has no policy while similtaneously claiming credit for the Living Wage campaign. Meanwhile, if labour has no policy until next year, then what was that housing policy? Not a policy? And what was all the harking back here on ts to 2011 policies as ‘proof’ of where Labour stands?
And – this shouldn’t need repeating… but even with no policy or no final policies, a party or a leader that either cleaved to core values or understood them, would be able to give unequivocal answers to questions based on those values. And that ain’t happening.
“And that ain’t happening”
Except on the BFM interview, obviously.
And claiming credit for the Living Wage campaign? Gotta cite for that?
Ahhhh, Shearer’s inability to articulate clear policy is the fault of an indecisive membership. I should have realised earlier that was the problem.
Did you not get the email, CV? We get to decide policy; that’s far more important than choosing the leader, as I have oh so consistently said.
That’s fine then, no probs as once we finalise all that policy detail over the next 12 months, David Shearer will become much more articulate.
Oh yeah how are you going to stop caucus from voting down or ignoring Policy Council decisions in future, like they have in the past?
Constitutional change. We’re taking back our party, CV.
Oh, very clever.
A great piece by Will Hutton. It’s about horsemeat in the UK…but the points and lessons to be learned apply here in so many ways.
Good quote “Capitalism does not organise itself to deliver best outcomes”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/17/horsemeat-scandal-is-tory-party-crisis
A recommended read.
And a great quote from one of the comments under the article:
“what right wing politics is – paying the most stupid gullible fools to act as mouthpieces for calculating and pernicious Corporate interests.”
Quoting article:
hah, is such a thing even possible?
This Wednesday between 1-2, with Willie and JT, the John Ansell will be discussing why all Maori, should be hung and dried, oops I meant, reasons nothing he says is racist, he just wants the best for everyone (but please can Maori practise being cultural in their own homes behind closed doors). Should be a giggle.
Ansell never says all Maori, just the “griever Treaty Maori” should be hung, drawn, and quartered, along with any Pakeha who think the Treaty has any place in our society. He’s quite happy to accept support from the odd (maybe very odd) Maori who agrees with him, accepts that the genuine text of the Treaty was found under a wheelbarrow in Taranaki, and that Celts and Egyptians had a flourishing civilisation in these islands before primitive cannibals turned up and ate them all.
Maybe, given Shearer’s openness to homophobes, he could be invited into the Labour Party?
Oh Dear, How Sad, Nevermind (far-right march in Bulgaria now)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-17/saxo-bank-ceo-says-euro-doomed-as-single-currency-woes-resurface.html
Pride only breeds quarrels yet wisdom is forced on those who take advice-13:10
We are currently within the sixth mass extinction event experienced by the earth, this one caused by humans; 1% of species disappear every six years.
From “Sciencia: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy for all.” (no religion, well actually…)
an Excellent little book. Walker and Company. NewYork. 2011. a Wooden Book (Wooden Jesus where are you from, Korea or Canada or maybe Taiwan…)
In times of recession and unemployment people’s allegiances and motives get scrambled. I was just reading a Manawatu Standard piece of Rolf Panny’s book Between Hitler and a Hard Place.
We should think about this as we face up to our next election. What will voters make of it all and why? This is a quote from the article.
Yep (Glad i’m not a Kennedy, imagine being a Kennedy)
Lolz old Jack tho would have been pretty pleased to have the family outta bootlegging and into a more genteel confidence profession…
Hey lovely Standard readers – can you share this/support this campaign. This sector is almost completely ununionised and the You Tube sets out what it is like working in Forestry. Listen to Kens family talk. We want to promote this clip by way of a billboard in Auckland – see the link to find our how you can help. Thanks in advance!
http://onebigvoice.com/media-fundraiser/what-killed-ken-callow-billboard
Helen – you can email us any time for requests or to send us guest posts! We might miss a comment like this. I’ll put it up now…
thanks Rob – will do –
Good on ya, Helen, a digital tenner’s just gone in from me. Not that it’s a contest, eh, standardistas.
Thanks! This is such an important video. A hidden industry with a dirty secret.
nice to see you around!
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Monday, February 18, 2013
Announcement 9am Tuesday
I am announcing my new media project 9am tomorrow here on Tumeke
FACEBOOK TWITTER
posted by Bomber @ 5:49 pm 0 comments
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