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Open mike 20/01/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, January 20th, 2025 - 31 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

31 comments on “Open mike 20/01/2025 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    20 January 2025 at 7:51 am

    Top heavy….as in unstable ?

    PM's portfolio reshuffle leaves Cabinet top heavy

    Certainly seems that the loading could lead to possible capsize of the ship of fools…

    Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown, Judith Collins, and Mark Mitchell are certainly doing the heavy lifting in Cabinet and could be left wondering why Matt Doocey continues to hold his position at the top table when his only responsibility is that of minister for mental health.

    To me, Willis, Brown, and Mitchell are particular targets for our Political Oppositions scrutiny. Hard questioning and pressure will highlight their weakness….

    Oh and there was this ! The Captain….he doesnt know bow from stern : )

    When asked by RNZ whether it was fair on other busy ministers to have a colleague holding just one job, Luxon initially seemed to forget he had created that dynamic, responding, "Sorry what are you referencing?".

    Having gathered his thoughts he reiterated the "ruthless focus" his government was putting on health this year and said he was giving both Brown and Doocey the time they needed to focus their efforts.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/539389/pm-s-portfolio-reshuffle-leaves-cabinet-top-heavy

    Cmon Opposition. Into 'em !

    • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.1
      20 January 2025 at 8:14 am

      Amongst the ch ch changes, there was also this…

      The National Party 2023 election commitment to open a new medical school at Waikato University could well be one for the chopping block early on.

      It is understood that the project has been dogged with problems and is increasingly seen as an unnecessary, costly, and bad idea.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/539389/pm-s-portfolio-reshuffle-leaves-cabinet-top-heavy

      All that hype, push and Steven Joyce ! Would be laughable ?

      Former National MP joins push for University of Waikato's third medical school.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/537096/former-national-mp-joins-push-for-university-of-waikato-s-third-medical-school

      Auditor-General criticises way University of Waikato contracted Steven Joyce

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/515880/auditor-general-criticises-way-university-of-waikato-contracted-steven-joyce

      • Belladonna 1.1.1
        20 January 2025 at 2:20 pm

        I'm on record as thinking that the proposed Waikato medical school is a very bad idea indeed (for the short to medium term).

        Upping the intake of medical students at the current med schools at Auckland and Otago – is a much quicker and lower cost solution, than implementing an entirely new medical school.

        And could be achieved by a simple directive to the two universities to raise their intake by 25% this year. They'll be able to fill that total easily from the current list of applicants who have been rejected.

        The argument about the capacity of the hospitals for clinical placements is a red herring. None of this intake for this year (or the next 3 years, for that matter) need clinical placements yet. So they have 4 years to work out the solution.

        • AB 1.1.1.1
          20 January 2025 at 3:39 pm

          That would make sense if universities collectively had the national interest in mind. But they are now profit-seeking enterprises, so of course Waikato wants a med school to drag students away from Otago and Auckland and (maybe) lift their world ranking to improve their student recruitment.

          • Incognito 1.1.1.1.1
            20 January 2025 at 5:04 pm

            Not quite. All tertiary institutions in NZ are required by TEC to run an operating surplus of 3-5% (typically 3%), I believe, no less, but also no more. TEC deems this ‘low risk’ and financially sustainable. This requirement was dropped in 2020, IIRC, because of the pandemic. A such, universities are not-for-profit organisations, but they are increasingly run the same as traditional business corporations with VCs being rather like CEOs. They’re shitting themselves under the current Coalition for fear of funding cuts, mergers (aka ‘consolidations’), and other major changes, and bending over backwards with self-imposed austerity to stave off government interference – the Gluckman reports are long overdue, and this has created an atmosphere of much angst and speculation.

            This neo-authoritarian Coalition won’t respect the independence of universities. For example, https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/strengthening-free-speech-universities [NB, Penny Simmonds is out of the picture but she’s was just a puppet in this, IMO]

          • Belladonna 1.1.1.1.2
            21 January 2025 at 11:09 am

            The student level at the med schools is capped by the willingness of the government to pay. Medical training is heavily subsidized, rather than being user-pays. And the government limits the numbers that it will fund.

            https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/08/01/auckland-otago-med-schools-could-train-300-more-doctors.html

            I don't see any evidence that the medical schools are dragging their feet on this issue (more students = more funding as far as they are concerned).

            The current medical schools are evidently not very keen for a new one to be established – potentially cutting into their business. But, for both cost and timeliness reasons, I'm inclined to agree with them on this issue.

    • Tiger Mountain 1.2
      20 January 2025 at 8:57 am

      Anyone that wants to control women’s reproductive rights, as Pee Wee Brown does, should not be Health Minister.

      • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.2.1
        20 January 2025 at 9:06 am

        Luxon was questioned pretty hard about that pre election ( you prob remember) so appointing this socially and religious conservative Brown to Health Minister ? Thanks headsup DMK.

        https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-19-01-2025/#comment-2021647

        Needs watching….and hard questions from our Opposition.

        • weka 1.2.1.1
          20 January 2025 at 12:40 pm

          even National aren't stupid enough to try and remove legal rights to reproductive healthcare (they would lose the next election). But more likely is changes in policy direction that we don't necessarily see, changing public service culture, setting the stage for later.

    • Obtrectator 1.3
      20 January 2025 at 10:49 am

      Cmon Opposition. Into 'em !

      By all means …. but they've got to have a coherent message/vision of their own to offer, not just negative criticism. Have they got one yet?

  2. Ad 2
    20 January 2025 at 8:37 am

    Does everyone agree that New Zealand has reached an economic turning point?

    This is the Treasury commentary from 17 December last year.

    https://budget.govt.nz/budget/2025/bps/economic-outlook.htm

    "A turning point has been reached. Annual Inflation is back in the target band, and close to the 2 per cent midpoint. The Reserve Bank has begun reducing interest rates, with the Official Cash Rate down 125 basis points since August. As interest rates fall, household spending and business activity is expected to lift. The HYEFU forecasts show an economic recovery, with growth strengthening over the next year and beyond, and unemployment declining from mid-2025.

    The Treasury's forecasts have long anticipated this recovery. However, the outlook – while remaining positive – has typically become weaker with each new set of forecasts. Figure 5 shows recent changes in real GDP forecasts."

    I sure don't believe unemployment has peaked, or that the Wellington region or Auckland+Northland region is recovering.

    • Tiger Mountain 2.1
      20 January 2025 at 9:03 am

      Trumpy’s cadre of billionaires are going to give the bag a shake for sure…so look out when the tariffs impact.

    • Kay 2.2
      20 January 2025 at 9:09 am

      I'd like to make an intelligent, informed response, but to be perfectly honest and try as I might, this 'economy' thing is beyond me, as is why it seems to be a total obsession. I can't get my head around how the rate of inflation HAS to correlate with a certain degree of unemployment

      As an individual at the bottom of the heap, all I'm concerned with is benefit rates, hoping not to end up homeless because of lack of housing, and being able to access the ongoing health care I need. I'm sure I speak for many others.

      These things all require a larger tax intake, not tax cuts, but that never seems to get a mention when going on about said 'economy.' Does it mean that the tax intake will increase if we get more exporting income (the trickle down effect?) Which is immediately cancelled out by tax cuts.

      Happy to have this explained in simple terms, an Economy for dummies if you will.

      • Craig H 2.2.1
        20 January 2025 at 10:19 am

        Here's the grossly oversimplified version:

        • Inflation is measured by reference to price increases across a selected range of goods and services (this is the Consumer Price Index/CPI).
        • The target range of inflation is 2% per year i.e. average price increases should be 2% across all goods and services in the CPI.
        • One of the components of prices is labour costs. If labour costs increase, prices increase.
        • One way labour costs can increase is by increases in wages.
        • As wages are not 100% of revenue and there may be other savings elsewhere in a business, wage increases can be higher than 2% without automatically causing price increases of more than 2% (the target inflation rate as above), but there is a limit to wage increases that can be absorbed before prices increase by more than 2%.
        • Therefore, one way to keep CPI/price increases within the target range is to ensure wage increases aren't too high – too high here is high enough to cause prices to go up by more than 2%.
        • One way to keep wage increases within the acceptable limit is to have a pool of unemployed people ready to take up jobs.
        • An employee who requests too high an increase can be refused, will find it difficult to find the same job but higher-paying (because nobody else is paying more), and if they leave for more wages elsewhere (like Australia), replaced quickly. If there is a shortage of unemployed people, that falls over.

        To sustain this, the technical definition of unemployment includes not receiving any income from work in the last 4 weeks, actively looking for work (including applying for jobs), and being able to take up new jobs immediately.

        How big the pool of unemployed people should be is debated, but there will always be some unemployment caused by businesses closing ("frictional unemployment" is the technical term for that and tends to be around 1-2%), so unemployment would never be 0. The Reserve Bank term is Maximum Sustainable Employment ("Maximum sustainable employment is the highest use of labour resources that can be sustained over time without creating a sustained acceleration in inflation") – this is why they want more than frictional unemployment, but tend to struggle to put a figure on it. 4% is a common figure, but it can go up and down depending on economic circumstances.

        This is also why beneficiaries are pushed back into work even if there is a pool of other unemployed workers – got to feed the machine.

        On the tax side of exports, higher exports should increase total net revenue of the country (this requires imports not to increase at the same rate) which should have a side effect of an increase in the total tax take without needing to put rates up. That could be distributed as tax cuts, or higher spending, or a mix of both.

        • Kay 2.2.1.1
          20 January 2025 at 10:40 am

          Many thanks, Craig. Oversimplified versions are all my poor brain can cope with some days, and that's helped me understand some things. Much appreciated smiley

      • Nic the NZer 2.2.2
        20 January 2025 at 9:27 pm

        Much as I think, what Craig said is a reasonable description of the main stream belief that inflation and unemployment are directly related, the validity of the main-stream belief is vastly over-stated. I suspect Craig would agree actually. Another way to state what Craig said is that there is claimed to be a Non Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) which is typically estimated to be about 5% for NZ (when it's estimates are officially documented). This is supposedly the unemployment rate at which inflation stops accelerating and starts decelerating. You will observe this is well above 2%, a rate of unemployment not reached in at least 20 years in NZ. Also note, if you want to take the NAIRU very seriously inflation is decelerating as we speak, and this argues for economic expansion get unemployment down immediately.

        The biggest problem with these estimates is according to the best statistical techniques they are good to about 3%, so the actual NAIRU rate could be anything from 2% to 8% unemployment when its stated as 5%. This is almost useless as suggesting a target rate for unemployment. The more sophisticated critiques also point out that running an economy with excessive unemployment probably increases the NAIRU rate, and running it at higher employment decreases the NAIRU going forward (the NAIRU is not in any sense a static property of the economy).

        Long story short, you don't see any clear relation between inflation and employment. Certainly, if you just correlated them together it's very not obvious there is a relationship either for any economy. These relationships only appear when you severely torture the data under strong assumptions, making the relations derived highly suspicious. In summary, basically that intuitive understanding is correct.

        • Craig H 2.2.2.1
          20 January 2025 at 11:25 pm

          I considered including NAIRU, but RBNZ uses MSU instead, so I stuck with that.

          That aside, agree with your general points – any time spent reading through a few RBNZ's Monetary Policy Statements shows that RBNZ don't really know what the MSU/NAIRU is.

          Market capitalism should be reducing at least some prices over time (the term for that is "technological deflation" – just look at TV prices over the past 50 years), which runs counter to general inflation.

      • Hunter Thompson II 2.2.3
        21 January 2025 at 11:41 am

        Brian Easton comments about economic matters on the Pundit website (https://www.pundit.co.nz/). He writes in a way most people can understand, so it's worth a look.

        I don't understand the economic issues either, but I see the broad situation like this – the current government wants to sacrifice the environment to keep economic growth going. Growth is seen as the only thing of any worth.

        It's what governments of all stripes have done for decades; they rely on a system that eats up our natural capital. (The expansion of the dairy industry, with the accompanying water pollution, is an example). That means the quality of life for all NZers will be destroyed.

  3. dv 3
    20 January 2025 at 9:41 am

    Then, yesterday, he told the nation that a change to Simeon Brown would result in lower waiting times in A&E, to see a doctor, or to receive surgery.

    Today Brown announced that he would achieve that by reducing the speed that ambulances we allowed to travel to hospital.

  4. tWig 4
    20 January 2025 at 10:23 am

    According to this Guardian article, 'A 2022 study calculated that from 1990 to 2015, wealthier nations “drained” the poor world of $242tn (in 2010 prices), worth roughly a quarter of global-north income', via debt servicing.

    And 'Colonial patterns of extraction plainly did not disappear with the withdrawal of troops, flags and bureaucrats.'

  5. adam 5
    20 January 2025 at 2:32 pm

    This is why cancel culture sucks, some will find it hard to get over – That this is a great piece of art by Dave Chappelle.

  6. Ffloyd 6
    20 January 2025 at 6:10 pm

    Too true Muttonbird. …… Need all the satire we can to get us through this turbulent time of flying pigs generated by current interlopers (Currently known as Coalition of Next to Nothing).