They getting ready to roll her soon or just reminding her she is just a seat warmer?
Looks like most are in favor of the Government proposal of making Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield responsible for fluoride in water instead of letting each region decide themself and have decided to break with the current policy of National of being for everything that is the exact opposite of what the Government is proposing even if it was formally something National was for.
I think the government will need to bring in more rent controls. Currently rent can only be increased once a year, but with the tax changes now, I think they will need to put on either a rent freeze, or limit any rent increases to CPI.
Jimmy, spend 10 minutes reading about what has happened when rent freezes have been imposed by governments, it has been hell for renters, basically they end up with no where to live.
That's a thought. Why not run Government like a business and charge pollies rent on their offices, reassessed annually, lease their furniture and perks, and pay them a base salary (because under the smiles and sweet nothings they are so base) and emoluments for successful projects. By George, I think I've got it!
Then the tories whinge because the union owns the office and leases it out to the MP at below-market rates, saving the party money whereas now it just saves the taxpayer money.
That is likely to be an unintended consequence of this policy. It may not be a good time to be a landlord, but I would rather be a landlord than a tenant.
I think Labour putting on a rent freeze is inevitable and probably to the CPI as you say, given their current, put the blindfold on and fire randomly at the moving target method of policy develop.
David The policy on the hoof announcements are likely to go back to 1984, and possibly you weren't even born then. It's been a long and winding road since then, hard to follow and understand.
Yes, I was born in 1984 and very politically aware. Now that IS a Labour government I would vote for. Yes, it was copied from Tory England 5 years earlier but it moved NZ from a political backwater. That’s why I’m so concern Adern wants to take use back to pre 1984. Where do I get my careless day sticker from?
edited
Oh how sweet David you live in the Now and go on your Careless way without thought for what is really happening to people around you now under the present system. And because you understand how it affects you, you think that is All You Need To Know. Ignorance is bliss they say, have a Bliss Ball and relax.
To David: Your failure, David, is to be totally ignorant of the favourable features of the kind of society NZ had before those disastrous 1980s. I suspect you will have read Richard Prebble's biased ravings and taken them as gospel… Blinkered thinking by the looks of it.
Carless days? You pretty well had them during lockdown, but you would not see that as another attempt to solve a problem through communal action, I guess.
I did not like Muldoon, David, but at least I was there and know about all aspects, unlike you. In 1977 I went to England, and for the first time saw queues of unemployed with despair in their eyes. I was proud to think we did not have that problem in NZ.
Well, the 1980s and 90s changed all that. If you see it as an era of progress, I think you have a lot to learn.
You know jack about me in vino. For the record, I was in England the winter of 73 and 74. It was a god awful place bought to its knees by an over unionised workforce, every second worker on strike, dole queues around the block and abject poverty. A beautiful picture of the pre 1979 England / pre 1984 NZ you seem so keen to reminisce on.
Oh for goodness sake in vino. Read the string of posts!! Greywar shark was saying I probably wasn’t even born in 1984. I was saying I was and quite some time before that.
Follow the conversation more diligently!!! you still haven’t explained why you reminisce so much for the 70s…rather just go off on some tangent of deflection.
"Read the string of posts?" "Follow the conversation more diligently?"
Your so-called string starts at 2.3, and is very short. I had read it. You stuffed up.
Linguistic diligence is an art you still have to learn about, rather than projecting your wishful thinking about how others have reminiscences and fantasies that differ from your own.
You mean policy on the hoof like lockdown David which saved many lifes, our health system and turned out to be better for the economy as well . I don't think you can say this housing policy is on th he hoof. People were calling for a response as soon it became clear that the impact of covid had the opposite effect on housing than what was expected i.e. prices rising. The same thing is currently happening in Australia.
If you are going to make statements such as policy on the hoof, its better to state. what you explicitly mean. Otherwise you may be written off as someone who is here to find any angle to did at Labour. Barking dog meet car
Actually, I think you can call it policy on the hoof when Treasury advice is ignored, the IRD is just starting consultation on a policy they’ve just been looped into and Minister Woods tells the opposition to go read the detailed report which doesn’t exist.
It's time the government insisted that landlords paid their mortgages out of their own pockets. Their house – their mortgage. Building mortgage payments into the rent that they charge should be a cause for protest on the part of tenants.
Therefore using that logic, a business owner that borrows $500k from the bank to fund stock for his business should also pay the loan personally, rather than building it into the price he sells product for?
Not necessarily. Purchasing inventory would indicate that the business was a productive one. I think I would distinguish it from rental industry borrowing which produces nothing. That industry merely shuffles assets around.
In any case the question is not who pays the loan, but whether the interest should be tax deductible in first case mentioned. The government always has the right to ignore the logic and declare the borrowing deductible if it, for example, wishes to encourage productive investment.
I disagree that the rental industry produces nothing. In fact I refute that!
It provides a home for a family.
The tax deductibility was never a "loophole". Robertson uses that terminology to justify to people that do not understand tax deductions and business. They have now actually created an odd situation as rental income is the only business that cannot deduct interest as an expense.
It doesn't actually provide a home. The family is merely being given permission to use a house belonging to the landlord. They will never own that house. The benefit the family gets from the arrangement is an intangible one: a sort of 'right to use'.
So, residential property is the only kind of business where the owner is not allowed to make a profit at all and only recoup real/actual costs and not even that, now the interest on the investment loan won’t be deductible any longer? What an odd view!!
Whoever thought being a landlord was a business????
Landlords have been creaming it with untaxed capital gains and profits from renting, so if their wings are clipped mightly, really I don't care. If you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen.
Odd response. Setting up a company (LTC), employing an accountant, employing a professional property manager, and following the rules & regulations by Government and IRD and then arguing it is not a business because you don’t like it!? Whether you care is not an argument that gets us anywhere either. Some people don’t like Brussels sprouts, which is neither here nor there.
Like so many lefties who've been schooled in resentment, you've picked the wrong target.
Landlords provide an essential social service for a very small (if any) cash flow gain. Almost all of your rent is consumed by various cash outgoings – especially if there is a mortgage.
The real problem here is not landlords in themselves (although I realise the hard left will always hate on us). If you want to fix the problem (rather than just vent) then you need to understand what it's root causes are.
And the simple answer is that for several generations now the only reliable investment in this country has been property. That factor alone is responsible for a very large fraction of the speculative bubble we are seeing – and until we have a political consensus around providing some decent alternatives, nothing much will change.
And I might not be a big fan seeing the smearing of all landlords so evident here. But that's beside the point, I'm a big boy now and I’m used to it.
But broadly it's a problem when the left reacts to events based on simplistic memes that obscure the reality of issues, and prevents us from competently discovering the solutions which stand a chance of working.
I probably haven't been crystal clear on this, the property speculation boom of the past decade formed no part of my rental business, and I've gained nothing from it to date. Personally I dislike it intensely, because of all the social problems it's clearly causing, and especially the kind of overcrowding in low standard accommodation that we're seeing. The motel boom is shameful.
The fact that I heavily invested in building brand new quality units 20 years ago to give people good homes is enough evidence of my intent, and why I'm dismayed at seeing so many people see their first home slip out of their reach. I still recall two of our early tenants whom we threw a small party for on the day they moved out into their first new home – we were so pleased for them.
Well all that's gone now. Because NZ has been unable to provide an alternative investment vehicle for retirement income, speculators have piled into the property market. It's notable that here in Australia with their much more generous super scheme, and a wider range of stable, relatively low risk investment options, that there is somewhat less heat in the property market here. Sure there are periods and locations that get speculated on heavily, but where NZ is seeing 20% rises, here in Brisbane for instance it's around 2%.
After a decade or so of exposure to people always willing to find someone else to blame for their problems – and never themselves – it's hard not to be at least a bit changed by this.
Then there this reality – the Pareto Law. It means that most of the inequality that we find so challenging is in fact baked into the system.
In fact it's worse than this. If the top 20% tend to control 80% of the outcomes, then in that top 20% the Pareto Law will apply again, meaning that the top 4% (20% of 20%) will control 64% (80% of 80%) of the outcomes.
And if we go round a third time it leads directly to the top 0.8% (20% of 4%) controlling 48% (80% of 64%) of the outcomes – leading directly to the commonly observed fact that roughly the top 1% control around 50% of the economy. Just by applying the Pareto power law three times.
Given the remarkably universal applicability of this law, maybe we should be more cautious before attributing inequality just to 'greed' or 'capitalism'. Clearly these might not help, but it may be true that in any purely physical system which embodies a hierarchy of values will always generate a very predictable degree of inequality.
It's also true that as a system gets larger (eg 7.5b humans) the absolute gap between say Jeff Bezos and the rest of us will become very large as well – again fundamental mathematics at work.
Once we frame the problem of inequality like this, and it is a real problem, it opens up a wholly different perspective on how we might want to deal with it effectively. (And if there is anything the 20th century should have taught us is that solutions which propose tearing 'rich people' down in order to reduce everyone to the same level of poverty work very poorly indeed.)
After a decade or so of exposure to people always willing to find someone else to blame for their problems – and never themselves – it's hard not to be at least a bit changed by this.
RL, I'm sure you wouldn't blame the NZ Government for problems your business and your tenants are facing, and neither would I.
I reckon it's fundamental human behaviour (rather than "fundamental mathematics") at work – the mathematics is just one way of describing inequality, but it doesn't address the root causes aka human ego and greed, which are clearly driving the behaviour of some. Why else would a multi-billionaire strive too accumulate more wealth – it's simply not rational behaviour. Financial wealth seems like empty calories to me, but each to their own.
And, depite "the remarkably universal applicability of this [Pareto's] law [principle]", it can be wrongly applied.
However, this principle has proven false in practice, as over 90% of citizens victimized by stop and frisk policies were found not to have committed any crime. The principle was erroneously applied, and instead residents were targeted by race, having little impact on crime. Improved economies overall have had a far greater correlation with lowering crime rates.
the mathematics is just one way of describing inequality, but it doesn't address the root causes aka human ego and greed, which are clearly driving the behaviour of some.
I've just noticed that my comment above is more fully described in the "Mathematical Notes" at the end of the wiki reference:
It follows that one also has 80% of that top 80% of effects coming from 20% of that top 20% of causes, and so on. Eighty percent of 80% is 64%; 20% of 20% is 4%, so this implies a "64/4" law; and similarly implies a "51.2/0.8" law. Similarly for the bottom 80% of causes and bottom 20% of effects, the bottom 80% of the bottom 80% only cause 20% of the remaining 20%. This is broadly in line with the world population/wealth table above, where the bottom 60% of the people own 5.5% of the wealth, approximating to a 64/4 connection.
Yet as the whole article demonstrates, the Pareto law holds true across a large range of situations where 'human ego and greed' clearly play no role. Which strongly suggests that these are not the fundamental causes you're suggesting. It's entirely possible for instance that an economic system that generated rewards based purely on competency and 'value of contribution' would have very similar outcomes.
Unless we're willing to examine the root causes of inequality dispassionately, we're unlikely to devise responses that are effective.
However, this principle has proven false in practice, as over 90% of citizens victimized by stop and frisk policies were found not to have committed any crime.
Which strikes me as exactly what you would expect. And what it doesn't mention is that 10% of people stopped were indeed criminals.
One of they key principles of industrial safety management is that minor incidents are an early and visible symptom of a deeper hidden problem of poor behaviour and a lax culture that will likely result in the occasional disaster. We saw this at Pike River where there were any number of precursor incidents (the 80%) that clearly signaled the probability of a major (20%) one.
Unless we're willing to examine the root causes of inequality dispassionately, we're unlikely to devise responses that are effective.
RL, I'm glad we agree that it's important to examine the root causes of financial inequality and hardship. It would be so sad to be saddled with the belief that it's pointless to even try to (urgently) address the scourge of (extreme) inequality in our world, don't you think?
The problem, economists realised, is that you cannot objectively measure someone else’s happiness, nor their capacity for it. So economists switched approach, all but abandoning the idea of measurable “cardinal” utility and turning instead to observable preferences or “ordinal utility”: the order in which things are preferred. Abandoning the idea of aggregate happiness, economists have ever since held up Pareto efficiency as the ideal. An economy is Pareto-efficient when no one can obtain a more preferred outcome without causing someone else to obtain a less preferred outcome.
The problem is that we keep talking as if economics could say something about actual cardinal utility or happiness, when all it can talk about is the order in which people prefer things. We have the habit of thinking that markets are efficient at meeting our needs, when all we can really say is that they might be Pareto-efficient. And by proceeding as if market outcomes are efficient at creating happiness, we tacitly side with eugenicists like Edgeworth; we tacitly declare that, yes, for the sake of maximising happiness overall, some people really do need a billion euros more than a billion people need a euro.
But what if the truth is closer to the assertions of the classical liberals and utilitarians? What if we are born equal, with equal capacities to contribute to society and to enjoy its fruits? Then the inequality we see could be a massive waste of resources and a vast lost opportunity to meet need.
Relations of power and political authority impact directly on the individual’s independence and their capacity to combat inequality. Equally obviously, the ugly reality remains in most social settings that the multifaceted gap between the wealthy and the rest within and among countries bespeak a degree of indifference—or vested interests—that pervert the profoundly human in our societies. Sadly, one hundred years after Pareto’s comparative analysis of the uneven distribution of income, the 80/20 rule of what has become known as the Pareto Principle still applies today. According to the UN Development Programme, the richest 20% of the world’s population continues to control 80% of the world’s income (UNDP 1992). More recently, Stiglitz (2014) has pointed out how extreme concentration of wealth and high-end income may reduce economic stability and also hinder growth. It may also generate ‘high-end’ inequality, which may in turn lead to a ‘plutocratic capture’ of the political system by the super-rich. As it is shown by several ethnographies in this volume, a high-end inequality may produce not only loss of financial capital but also loss of social capital, thus inducing a sense of social insecurity and humiliation. Money and access to money (Atalay, Spyridakis and Feronas, Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong, Pardo in this book) are only part of the problem.
As Prato has observed, ‘States are not abstract entities. The efficiency of the regulatory power of a state is measured through the actions of its government’. Meeting her analysis of post-Communist Albania, democratic governments across the world seem to be ‘failing in “pooling” resources and “redistributing” them on the basis of equality of opportunities and citizens rights’ (Prato 2011). Furthermore, while ‘redistribution’ remains a fundamental aspect of modern economy—or, as Polanyi (1944) would say, one of the ways in which economy is integrated in society—the relationship between democratic government and citizens should be conceived as one of ‘reciprocity, in the sense that citizens’ loyalty and respect of the rules cannot be separated from the belief that the state will protect their rights and efficiently respond to their needs’ (Prato 2011). Instead, governments appear to be failing precisely the most vulnerable.
Facilitated by biased political ideology, geopolitical interests—either impalpable or overtly pursued—have driven urbanization without (or with weak) growth, thus enhancing urban inequalities. Growing informal work, homelessness, intolerance, conflict, suicide, crime and the indignities brought about by the treatment of people as second-class citizens are, we shall see, disastrous consequences of the mismanagement of urban policy (Pardo, Aly, Spyridakis and Feronas, Çınar, Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong). We study the progressive spatial segregation of the privileged from the ordinary rest (Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong, Abraham, Shokeid), finding that it is the (more than economically) unprivileged who have the lowest life expectancy (Varelaki), the least comfortable homes, and so on, whereas their wealthier, well-connected fellow urbanites live longer lives in much better homes (Aly, Çınar, Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong). And it is the children of the former who have the least access to resources and options for self-improvement (Armstrong and Bell in this book), while being the most exposed to street crime and disease. We see how residents experience bureaucratic red tape, inefficiency, below-standard education, poor infrastructure, public services and disruptive tears in the urban fabric (Pardo, Atalay, Prato, Nugent and Suhail, Abraham).
You made a lot of wrong assumptions here about me. I was a landlord once. I didn’t set it up as a business or as an investment property. I moved city and thought it was highly likely I may want to move back and I didn’t fancy trying to get back into the Auckland market. This was many years ago. So it suited me to rent out my home. Yes I got an accountant, a property manager and it all got set up. I paid off some of my mortgage. I was told when I came to sell my house I was told I could have been charging $100 more in rent. I told them I was happy with the rent I got as I did well out of it.
being a landlord is the bloodiest easiest job I have ever done. It was absolute money for jam. It was more like a hobby than a business. But sure it fits the criteria as a business, yes it does
Your story is pretty typical of the 80% of landlords who own just the one property, usually their previous home. In that scenario, especially when you start out with a reasonable equity in the old home, it's not too hard. But then again it's not so easy, that most will ever go past that one unit.
And now with increased costs and the deductibility of interest costs gone, I'm almost certain you'd not do the same today.
Why, they're practically saints, at least as saintly as our entrepreneurial wealthcreators. Why aren’t those wretched ingrates just signing over their paycheques to these paragons?
[Please contribute in a constructive manner or stay out of it, thanks – Incognito]
I was half-joking above, but I am also tired of these right-wing assertions of ‘leftie’ resentment etc. etc. I thought Gabby’s contribution added some humour (which is often sadly absent around these parts), while also interrogating the reasoning behind such broadbrush opinions.
Thanks. I appreciate your comments and contributions to the debates here. OTOH, Gabby’s contributions leave something to desire – I take a ‘holistic’ view when/before I moderate. A joke and some humour are indeed welcome, but there’s a time & place for these, not in the middle of a serious convo. Gabby can take the hints or not; my patience is shorter than a piece of string …
BTW, please be careful yourself with labels such as “right-wing”, as they tend to polarise and seed division and sometimes (!) they’re misplaced …
There's nothing 'right wing' about noting the repeated acting out of 'anti-landlord' sentiments here – it's simply an observable fact.
Yet almost all people at some stage of their lives are going to rent privately, and for many blue collar working people earning less than a median income it's likely to be all their lives. You'd actually want them to have a choice of good stable homes, to a decent standard at sensible prices – and that implies landlords willing and able to supply.
There are of course crappy landlords and tenants on both sides of the deal, but overall it's an essential and legitimate social service. Yes we have some serious price problems in the NZ market, but the root cause of this is not the residential rental business – it lies in the structural narrowness of the NZ economy and it's relative lack of productivity.
Put bluntly NZ is in many ways a highly desirable place to live with a constrained supply of housing, which means ordinary kiwis, maybe up to 40% on low incomes, simply cannot afford a home here unless the govt subsidises them in some way. There are many reasonable ways we might want to approach that problem, but a new tax on landlords doesn't seem to me one of the most obvious.
Incog. Interesting you caution against the use of the descriptor right-wing but allow Redlogix to freely use woke-left, etc.
Is it because he's a fellow moderator?
Redlogix. Three successive governments have identified investors and investor behaviour as a problem and a great risk to New Zealand. First National introduced the bright line test and ring fenced something or other. Labour/NZF extended the bright line test, and now Labour have extended it further and disincentivised maxed-out leveraging by removing massive mortgage interest deductions.
It’s not about lefties’ resentment and envy. It’s about investors greed, a the market they broke.
[Interesting that you think that my comment was for and to Arkie only. Maybe because it suits your narrative and gives you another opportunity to rail against RL and the ‘special treatment’ he’s receiving here?
FWIW, RL was half-correct that there’s an awful lot of resentment on display in the commentary on this site. At the same time, resentment is universal, as one brief visit to KB will show you. Labelling RL’s comment as “woke-left” displays the thinking & talking of a 5-year old again; it lacks any decent analysis and argument.
On that note, your reoccurring nagging as self-appointed ‘critic and conscience’ on and of this site is starting to wear a little thin. Six days ago, you were at it again too and in a déjà vu all over again you proudly proclaimed “This is a hill I’ll happily die on with respect to that author/commenter. I believe he’s a wrong ‘un”.
You wouldn’t be the first mountaineer to die here on a self-erected molehill in a blaze of glory of imaginary martyrdom deluding yourself that you made a personal sacrifice for the greater good.
Criticism is valuable if it is constructive and comes with useful suggestions on how to improve this site. But that’s not the nature of your nagging, which is often personal, biased, and manipulative. If you keep up this nasty habit of nagging, you will indeed receive your martyrdom status – Incognito]
There’s nothing ‘right wing’ about noting the repeated acting out of ‘anti-landlord’ sentiments here – it’s simply an observable fact.
Yet almost all people at some stage of their lives are going to rent privately, a [etc]
lol
Most people will also be employees at some stage of their lives, that doesn't mean people shouldn't point out that the basic employer/employee relationship is practised in a dramatic inequality of power that is routinely abused by employers.
The term is "class warfare". The haves using what they have to extract even more from the have nots.
The term is "class warfare". The haves using what they have to extract even more from the have nots.
And in the usual highly predictable neo-marxist fashion everything gets reduced to a power struggle.
The great folly of course is that you imagine that if and when the oppressed rise up and defeat the 'haves', their innate moral purity will magically usher in a utopian era of peace, love and eternal happiness. In reality of course it would be 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.
My argument to DMK touches on this same theme, that unless we're willing to examine the root causes of inequality dispassionately and accurately, any 'cure' we're likely to come up with (eg marxism) is likely to be much worse than the disease.
I'm not making a call about revolution or whatever.
But of course things like rent and employment are power struggles. It's the basic core of the capitalist relationship. The person with the more scarce resource is the person with more power in the "negotiation".
Sure, #notAllCapitalists, present company excluded, all of that ointment to salve the bruised egos of the haves who might be reading. Whatever lets you sleep at night.
tl,dr: The root cause of inequality is the nature of relationships people are required to build under capitalism.
If you recycle marxist tropes like 'power struggle' and 'class warfare' you don't get to credibly deny 'call to revolution'. But that's old and sour ground we've trod over before.
What if the root cause of inequality was simply baked into our innate desire for progress? As I outlined to DMK at 6:30pm above, the observed wealth inequality seen in the world, can be modelled very simply by applying the Pareto power law three times. This is a simple mathematical rule that has nothing to do with 'greed' or 'class warfare' as it's frequently applicable in situations where these things don't apply – such as engineering quality control.
If for the sake of argument, we accept that all economic systems will produce a predictable degree of inequality, then the next questions that come to mind are, do some systems tend to amplify it, or dampen it out?
And we might ask why is a huge power inequality acceptable in some instances, but not others? For instance a parent has a massive power imbalance over their children – yet it would be entirely weird to call this a 'power struggle' or 'family warfare'. (That some people do in fact behave like this is evidence only of their dysfunction.)
We know that once inequality exceeds a certain gradient it generates all manner of social problems – and much of this is probably linked to the innate human sensitivity to social status. We also know that with wealth and status comes power, which can be wielded for both good and evil. As you correctly state – the person controlling the scarce resource has the power in a negotiation, but that does not necessarily mean that power will always be used to harm those lacking it. I'd argue that in most instances it's not – but these constitute 'good news' and are thus ignored.
Essentially we've created an economic system that's capable of eradicating absolute poverty – most humans are radically better off than their ancestors 200 years ago. Yet the same system by the very nature of it's purpose has paradoxically expanded inequality. The challenge here is how to address the latter problem without killing the goose that's solved the former. It may turn out to be a much more subtle problem than 'class warfare'. And have a much more satisfying solution I'd wager.
Family relationships are not created by economic systems, and the individual power dynamics are guaranteed to change over time.
Capitalism is about maximising personal wealth. The same impulse to innovate for economic advantage is the impulse to export food rather than feeding the people who produced it.
the person controlling the scarce resource has the power in a negotiation, but that does not necessarily mean that power will always be used to harm those lacking it.
The requirement for employment, safety, construction, and every other damned regulation says #notAllCapitalists is trumped by #moreThanEnoughofThemAreBastardsThough.
Family relationships are not created by economic systems,
So what, power relationships are created in all manner of contexts, it's an inescapable fact of human hierarchy. The point is that power is not innately harmful, and there is no reason to assume this in an economic context either.
The same impulse to innovate for economic advantage is the impulse to export food rather than feeding the people who produced it.
And now after 200 years of capitalism and technology we produce enough food to reliably feed most of humanity. Indeed obesity is a more common problem than famine.
As usual all you have is power struggle … it's dull beyond belief.
The family unit (not sure if you've ever experienced one) is described by caregivers and dependent children. For it to be successful, love and parental empathy are required.
It is perverse, or plain stupid, to try to analogise this family unit to the landlord/tenant relationship.
Is obesity a problem because we grow so much good food, or because of things like coke being half the price of milk in the supermarket?
Because that's captalism, too.
Are wages not keeping up with productivity because workers are so damned generous, or because employers have the power to increase their profits?
Does the government introduce workplace safety legislation for fun, or because employers are more focused on maintaining their profit margins than keeping their workers alive?
For it to be successful, love and parental empathy are required.
Now what if that was the key to successful economic relationships too? What if instead of 'power relationships' we were more invested in 'service relationships' instead?
I find that a more interesting prospect than 'smash capitalism'.
Does the government introduce workplace safety legislation for fun, or because employers are more focused on maintaining their profit margins than keeping their workers alive?
H&S legislation didn't spring from govt policy alone – it was a response to changing attitudes across the whole of society, including many employers.
In the 80's, well before NZ's own H&S legislation, every morning for seven years I attended a morning production meeting where the first question was always "are there any safety issues?", and nothing else would happen until we'd dealt with them. Employers are not ogres who like seeing the people who work for them hurt.
But it took everyone many decades to slowly develop the concepts and tools needed to turn mere sentiment into an effective legislative framework that could work. Even now it's still very much a work in progress as we learn more about the often complex sequences of events and misunderstandings that result in accidents. And it's lazy to just blame employers – often as not it was workers themselves who were most resistant to new rules and procedures intended to protect them.
We've reached the point where 'safety' processes and technology are considered an essential element of all projects. Not just for legislative reasons, but because of a virtually universal realisation from the board level down that accidents are way more expensive than mitigation. In many cases it’s now understood that a safety culture that works is potentially a competitive advantage.
Getting from the horrors of Victorian era industrial hazards, to the kind of tech I linked to above has been a complex story of changing attitudes, and growing insights on how to treat an inherently statistical challenge with many levels of complexity with a universally applicable formalism.
As usual your 'power struggle' narrative renders everything down to a dull and narrow view of the world, stripped of all interest and nuance.
Workplace safety started with people (including Marx) documenting the willingness of employers to (amongst many other things) crush children in looms.
In the 1980s, tobacco companies were still lying about cancer to make a profit. BHP was still exposing workers to asbestos. But you discussed safety at meetings, so capitalism is fine.
RL, your love for capitalism is like loving a tiger at a zoo – sure, only a few people might get et in rare circumstances, so tigers are lovely and majestic. But in the wild, they're another thing entirely, especially if they're hungry.
One of the best-documented times capitalism was "in the wild" was the 1800s. And capitalism is always hungry.
How do you think child labour or even fucking slavery were abolished – their conditions in actual practise were documented by dozens, hundreds of people (including Marx and Engels). That stopped people ignoring it, and they pressured decision-makers or legislators. It wasn't that employers suddenly decided to be nice people.
But we don't need to go as far as the 1800s. As I said, even when you were being all safety conscious in the 1980s, many workplaces were knowingly endangering their customers or workers simply to turn a profit. Good luck turning the system that incentivises that into mutual "service relationships".
Landlords provide an essential social service for a very small (if any) cash flow gain. Almost all of your rent is consumed by various cash outgoings – especially if there is a mortgage.
They can be useful if they do things right. ie if they are not reliant on subsidies like interest deductibility or accommodation supplements.
And the simple answer is that for several generations now the only reliable investment in this country has been property. That factor alone is responsible for a very large fraction of the speculative bubble we are seeing – and until we have a political consensus around providing some decent alternatives, nothing much will change.
Yes. But it is a pity that not many know how to invest sensibly in the property market. Too many take on large mortgages and then wonder why they can't make any profit. So they rely on capital gains.
I have owned my rental property since the late 1980's. It was not purchased for the capital gain, it was purchased to hopefully provide an income stream once I retired and had paid off the mortgage, as I thought by the time I retire there may be no super. I'm sure it has increased significantly in value but its irrelevant to me as I'm not planning on selling it. The same tenant has been living in it for the last 15 years or so as the rent is about $120 per week under market value.
Good on you Jimmy. Seriously. If you read what I have written above you will see I was in a similar situation. We are likely amongst the few who are smart enough to avoid charging excessive rents and still do ok out of being landlords.
The thing is if you have bought an investment property and have to borrow so much, that there is no leaway for rates going up or tax right off changing then maybe you haven't thought through your business so well.
There is nothing to stop a landlord making a profit, though of course the interest should never have been deductible in the first place. In any case, isn't the house, that he will eventually own freehold, profit?
The interest is a loss and always has been. For all businesses that take out a business loan in order to set up business or expand (AKA renovate). The owner foregoes the enjoyment of use of their property and in return receives rent to cover costs and to make a business profit on which they must pay income tax. Whether it’ll be mortgage free or not after the tenant(s) has moved out is irrelevant but FWIW, most tenants don’t stay for the whole duration of a mortgage. I have no idea how many ex-rentals are sold with zero mortgage, but it is irrelevant, as I said, and a separate issue.
You seem to be saying that the property owner should carry the interest costs as well as not charge the tenant for the principal component of the mortgage because it is “personal”. In other words, property owners should provide a social good to tenants, like State Housing, and only charge part but not all of the costs they incur!? Where is the profit in that??
I’ve given the example of a car rental and no company could operate successfully under such conditions. The rent of the car covers all operating costs + a profit to the company. These operating costs include interest on any business loan as well as salaries of company employees. A property owner usually cannot and does not receive a salary from the rent, but any professionals (e.g. accountant or property manager) contracted do because that’s their business.
Well the more a business borrows, the more it will need to pay back, thus they will end up putting the rent up. And then complain because they are not making enough money.
As I have said earlier on this thread, being a landlord was the easiest "job" I have ever done in my life. Money for jam. More like a hobby.
It seems some "businessmen/women aka landlords haven't factored in cost increases such as interest rates going up or tax changes and now are upset about this. I am sorry if this is stressful for you.
You seem to be saying that the property owner should carry the interest costs as well as not charge the tenant for the principal component of the mortgage because it is “personal”. In other words, property owners should provide a social good to tenants, like State Housing, and only charge part but not all of the costs they incur!? Where is the profit in that??
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you have to increase the rent in order to cover the mortgage, or at least break even, then your business is not resting on a sound footing. You should be prepared to run at a loss rather than increase the rent, otherwise you are being unfair on your tenants. I'm assuming your tenants are already paying the 'going rate'.
You should be prepared to run at a loss rather than increase the rent
Sighs – what you don't seem to understand is that is exactly what we did for almost 18 years, in order to cover the cash flow loss I put in many hundreds of thousands in shareholder funds earned in my day job to keep the business solvent, with interest rates close to 9% it was almost inevitable. Read that carefully – this is exactly what is meant by 'negative gearing'.
Previous governments recognised that due to the peculiar capital intensity of residential rentals that it would often take a decade or two before the business could be expected to become 'profitable' in the normal sense of the word.
It's precisely why the LAQC scheme was introduced, to allow the shareholder to claim the tax loss off their PAYE income in the year it was incurred, rather than store it up in the business to be claimed against future profits decades into the future. But that's long gone too.
Your arguing is starting to sound more and more disingenuous and now you’re appealing to the fairness principle. You have previously argued in several comments about the “personal” aspect of owning and borrowing for a rental property and that all associated costs are therefore (!) “personal”. I can’t be bothered digging up all the links to your comments where you said/argued these things, unless I (have to) moderate.
I can’t be bothered with commenters who display a lack of integrity.
The government cannot rely on a landlord to not hike the rent. There will need to be assistance as far too many people are becoming stressed out over rent increases or worse homeless.
Just to set people up in a rental is beyond many people and getting into debt increases stress.
This is what we get when government starts splitting itself off from its jobs and contracting them out to some stand-alone agency, eg the Transport Authority – Te Waka Kotahi.
Two truckers in recent days had told him they could not risk going in for a Certificate of Fitness inspection – equivalent to a Warrant of Fitness for a car – because the chance of expensive delays was too great, the mechanic – who RNZ agreed not to name – said."It's not [safe]," he said.
"They've gotten that frustrated with the inspection process and systems, with how rigidly they're currently being enforced and how poorly outlined they [standards] are, they'd rather pay a fine than go through the process of doing major repairs on things that are highly unlikely to have any safety risk to them at all.
"Yeah, it's just gotten to a point of madness."
In the USA they call agency directors Czars because they gather so many powers. (J. Edgar Hoover was one, in the job from 1924 to 1972! The USA Government couldn't get rid of him – what a pathetic system. Do we want one like that, or with similar obvious failings?) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi
J. Edgar Hoover joined the Justice Department in 1917 and was named director of the Department’s Bureau of Investigation in 1924. When the Bureau reorganized as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, Hoover instituted strenuous agent-recruiting and advanced intelligence-gathering techniques. During his tenure he confronted gangsters, Nazis and Communists.
Later, Hoover ordered illegal surveillance against suspected enemies of the state and political opponents. Despite receiving harsh criticism from the public, Hoover remained director of the FBI until his death on May 2, 1972. https://www.biography.com/law-figure/j-edgar-hoover
It's a bad look when expecting effective and efficient working together for the transport industry and controlling agencies. We cannot have a country that operates so erratically must be the conclusion about this. situation. Past weak regulation and probably also weak implementation, cannot change on a spin of a coin so a better practice should be planned and implemented, and truckers helped now to get up to standard without ruining them. I thought that the idea of the 'less government' method was to co-operate with business in setting and enforcing appropriate regulations.
Business has tended to have contractors instead of employees, and I'm guessing those contractors are running expensive machines that need to be paid for by getting and doing the work and of course, getting paid for it promptly. The government agency needs to be cognisant of this and assisting them to bring their vehicles to compliance in a way that gets them back on the road in an ok condition in a timely manner.
In the future the agency should help them keep up with their requirements so punitive and immediate sanctions don't have to be suddenly applied. The government agency could set up check points on their truck routes for instance, if it hasn't at present, so that they don't need to take time off for a big detour to the checking station. Perhaps inspectors can go to them. At present it looks very unprofessional – are these generic managers in the agency, who have no experience in this field, or just a weekend educational workshop to get oriented? One never knows in these crazy theoretical days.
I know this industry and this regulator very well.
You may recall three years ago there were a series of RNZ stories demonstrating WOF failures, then the Chief Executive of NZTA Fergus Gammie was roasted in Select Committee for regulatory failure and then shortly 'resigned', then the Chair was fired and a hard-man brought in to kick ass, then there was a Ministerial report demonstrating multiple failings, then there were multiple restructurings and firings in the NZTA regulatory teams. It went on internally for the next 2.5 years – at one point there was a 40% staff turnover across the whole of NZTA in a year.
The Tier 1 contractors own their own fleets because they run really big Network Operating Contracts (NOCs) from NZTA and local councils and need very close accountability for them. Tier 1 freight delivery companies are the same – though some of the smaller ones still owner-operate their rigs.
They both have a vested interest in a very well regulated heavy fleet.
If you want to see cowboys in action you can still see them in the super-crappy-budget end of the taxi industry .
NZTA have better regulatory staff than they've had – and the Head of Regulatory is pretty good. NZTA Regulatory Legal are very specialised and focused on what they do. That hasn't always been the case.
That's very interesting Ad. Those people that take over a dysfunctional entity and settle in to get it steaming nicely deserve a medal. Take Sir Roger's off him and give it to someone cleaning up the messes that he was very forward in enabling.
But what can be done to help the people found with big faults? They can't be blamed entirely, the whole system encourages cost cutting – it has been the most prominent exercise the country has been engaged in. Get rid of the fat etc. It was inevitable that she'll-be-right would find her way in.
The skyscraper-sized ship has been blocking as many as 50 ships a day from getting through their main route between Europe and Asia, and has more than 300 ships waiting in traffic either side of it.
Note that this shipping system is operating in an efficient and effective manner for its owners, to the point where it is a restraint on others' trade and has failed in its task of transporting goods from buyer to seller. Business must have restraints or it grows to be a near-monopoly or part of a narrow cartel excluding others. Ultimately it is so big, that if it fails, too many others get hurt, so it ends up being propped up – the opposite of business dogma.
Can we get behind limiting our buying from overseas? Supply chain weakness would not then be so concerning, and country-wide incomes would start to rise if we self-limited foreign purchases where good stuff made by us sold to us, was available here. Good for us, good for the planet.
We would have to build up our personal barriers to blandishments from well-heeled people making their money from selling us stuff, encouraging constant change and fashion. We could go all NZ funky and end up like fascinating Hobbits with our own style – the wonder of the world – in that odd little country down there living so happily while the rest of the wealthy world jumps to every new sensation that someone wants to sell them, and anti-stress devices are the latest gimmick.
"Compared to February last year the decline in consents was particularly severe for apartments -36.7% and retirement village units -31.4%, while consents for stand alone houses were down very slightly at -2.5% and consents for townhouses and units were up 6.4% (see the second interactive table below for the trends in building consents by type of dwelling).
However, on an annual basis, consents for new dwellings are still running higher, with 39,725 new dwelling consents issued in the 12 months to the end of February, up 4.9% compared to the previous 12 months."
With the borders closed and almost 40,000 consents issued in the past 12 months thats a big boost in dwellings that will flow into the property market over the coming months….and its worth noting the change of mix with a big reduction in apartments.
With the expectation that international travel will be significantly curtailed for the next couple of years there is a good opportunity to make big inroads into housing issues, especially when placed alongside the latest changes in the housing package.
Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink? Wellington's burst pipes shoot water into the air, and has damaged buildings from the blast and constant onslaught.
Now – another example of what we all know, too many new people into an area, too little preparation, repair and maintenance and renewal with too much new stuff going in.
They sometimes call that a flood – bit of word-play there!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/439453/wellington-councils-warned-over-risks-around-spending-big-on-water-infrastructure When Campbell Barry became mayor of Lower Hutt in 2019, he quickly realised the city's water pipes had a trifecta of problems. "An underinvestment over a number of decades; ageing infrastructure coming home to roost; and also the growth that we're seeing in the city as well," Barry said. "Those three issues are really colliding together to make a situation where we need to act now with our investment and our focus."
It's something their neighbours in Wellington have been well accustomed to – sewage pipes frequently bursting and geysers occasionally erupting…
Wellington City is looking to invest $2.7 billion in water over the next 10 years and its capital expenditure programme is a third more expensive than previously budgeted for. Elsewhere, Porirua is budgeting to spend $1.1bn over the decade. And 32 cents for every dollar spent by Upper Hutt City Council will be going towards Three Waters.
What's the problem with what they're doing about the problem? But there is a big question underlying all of these big money commitments: is the local contractor sector actually capable of doing the work?
One way to get some notice taken about this sort of stuff is to coarsely curse – we have gone arse-over-tit under our continuing neolib-freemarket experiment.
How can we change now? Could The Standard get a selection of leftish, Keynesian-commenting, Riccardo-ruminating, Smith-surmising economists to think up a Ted talk-type discussion, and then put it on youtube for all to see easily at any time. Perhaps Yannis Varoufakis would come on screen and clear some sediment or lees here where we need to learn to dance at the bottom of the world.
Wellington's burst pipes shoot water into the air, and has damaged buildings from the blast and constant onslaught.
The water in the main supply pipes is under considerable pressure (otherwise it would never get to where it's needed). The height of the geyser from a broken pipe is pretty much a measure of this pressure. This is not anyone’s fault, it’s innate to any water supply system, especially one operating in hilly terrain.
I think I've mentioned this before, but Wellington Water operate the assets of four separate cities, Wellington itself, Porirua, Lower and Upper Hutt. An astute observer will notice that the vast majority of the problems are occurring in just one of these cities.
Yes Red Logix – about the fountain. That is a fact and water is wasted and it can do some damage because of its pressure. Please don't go off in your engineering mind and not look at the main point.
You allude to the number of cities being administered. Why do you think that Wellington is the one to show up as particularly troublesome? Do you think it is merely because it is the oldest? Of course it may be the earthquake/s there. Is there something that engineers can do to pipes to obviate that? Perhaps it is too big an area for one controller and Wellington should become a separate entity with enough problems to fill any engineer's day and year.
There are three root causes I know of; the obvious one is that Wellington does have the oldest pipe network. It's also the one with the most challenging topology – water doesn't get to the high suburbs by itself, it requires big pumps and control systems to carefully control the flows and high pressures involved.
Secondly since the 2013 earthquake there has been a real increase in failures just from all the ground movement stressing old and relatively brittle pipes.
The third is that prior to the Wellington Water amalgamation, the city of Wellington's water supply department was in my view, clearly the underperformer for many decades. The reasons for this lie with successive councils more interested in grandstanding than spending money on core services.
And finally I'd want to convey just how big a job it is to fix. WW have been around since 2014 and if their mandate (and funding) doesn't change, it could take at least another decade to get on top of – and that's a wild-arsed guess.
The good news is that as old pipelines are replaced with modern fusion welded HDPE pipes both the leak rate and their vulnerability to bursting should dramatically improve. They really are a huge improvement.
edit
Thanks for that Red Logix. It does sound as if it needs a specialised team for Wellington who have a cunning plan, keep their eye on the ball, are using that system that checks for leaks and people draining or not, wastewater, stormwater etc in the wrong place, and have a continual working team ready to cap blowouts and with the road up for the new which will have to be ordered well in advance what with this disordered world, or maybe overhead pipes, so that the water people are onto it.
I see Chch is going to have a Great Big Stadium said to cost over $400 mill. They are going to need more water fairly soon. And they aren't well over the 2011 earthquake yet, and the next one might come along in another decade. I think a sports arena is a sort of Paradise winking in the sunlight for these big noters.
If only they could get a clear plan for after upheavals. First attend to emergencies, second get hospital tents up, three house people in emergency sleeping and cooking quarters, four restore roads and some sort of public transport, five get everyone working on preparing ground for the new sports arena (hint, we will feed you and give you a place to sleep) and be ready with eager contractors and designs based on somewhere in the world that sounds sophisticated.
Crown approves Christchurch stadium funding | Stuff.co.nz https://www.stuff.co.nz › sport › crown-approves-christch…
2/03/2020 — Cabinet has signed off in its promised $220 million share of the $473m stadium cost after considering the city council's business case for the
You shouldn't lose all hope here, there is a good team of competent people in WW – but their budgets are both constrained and carefully accounted for. It took over a hundred years to build the current system, and it's no trivial task to replace.
are using that system that checks for leaks
On the bulk water side (from the treatment plants to the reservoirs) there has long been a system in place to balance out all the inflows and outflows on a daily basis. It's possible for the office person doing this work to spot even quite small leaks within a day or so of them developing – well before anyone reports it on the ground.
But the domestic reticulation side (from the reservoirs to the consumers) is a different story – way more complex and difficult to monitor. Having said that there are numerous techniques that have been developed that go a long way toward picking up the worst of them.
But as for the big pipeline breaks – that's literally shit happening. There is no easy solution for this other than the long, unglamorous slog of digging them all up and replacing them at considerable expense. They'll start with the lines they believe are the oldest or most vulnerable – but sods law will still apply. Wellington is actually a tough landscape for a water supply system but with a big bucket of extra funding, the challenge can be met.
How sickening it is to see, the little yankee puppy dogs, Canada and Australia spew out sanction drivel on Russia over a Crimean bridge build, it looks like the death throes of the American empire got stuck in their puppy dog throats. Has NZ yet to spew out the same crap on behalf of Uncle Sam I wonder.
Yeah – they attacked Ukraine, so their utilities got cut off. Still a long way to go before normal service is restored. It would be so much cheaper to roll into Ukraine and take it all by force, but absent Trump that might not go so well.
I notice no mention that 95% of Crimeans voted in a legitimate referendum to break away from the Ukrainian coup Government sponsored by American interference.
I assume that this is the low level bridge that cuts off sea access to Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.
Here is an article about it. It would be like building a bridge across the Wellington heads where the span was only a couple of meters above the water.
Poorly designed, crammed-in homes in new developments west of the city are reaching hazardous temperatures, Sebastian Pfautsch says. Pfautsch is an associate professor of urban studies at Western Sydney University and says the urban sprawl to suburbs in the city's outer west could be a ticking time bomb for the health of hundreds of thousands of people, with some new suburbs experiencing heat 15 degrees hotter than other parts of the city.
He took six readings in the Western Suburbs last summer that recorded more than 50 degrees celcius. “Which is half way to boiling point. In some places of the world, particularly Scandinavia, you may use that as a sauna temperature.”
But people have to roast in these temperatures for hours, he says. The prediction is for longer lasting heatwaves in this part of the Sydney basin, he says, only making the problem worse where there could consecutive days of extreme heat.
More important still are the night time temperatures, he says. “This is where our body would normally recover from the extreme stress during the day but if night time temperatures are 30 degrees and more your body can not recover.”
Does anyone look with sorrow at the rabbit hutches new in NZ with all the same look and dark roofs and no privacy or play space crammed in together. And the dream of owning one of these? Let's Go Back to the Future and make those changes that would have been so important for keeping us to the right path instead of jumping the rails. An exciting ride for some, but what a devastation of a culture wreck.
What smarts can we bring to bear now? Let's open up to all citizens who can find some appropriate land to take something forward that is modest, and preferably allows room for two dwellings, with proper permissions and designs etc.
Laurie Forestry managing director Allan Laurie said trade issues between Australia and China meant Australia was not sending logs there at present, and exports of spruce out of Europe were also lower.
Here is an opportunity to buy from Australia. We can help them out with their surplus logs yes indeedy, at the right price and then use them here! Not do one of those smartarse deals if there is money in it to import them here and then sell them ourselves to China. We won't do that will we, will we!!
lol – that would be ironic. In 2003 I spent four months helping to commission a fantastic new saw mill at Tumbarumba in NSW – that imported crappy twisted logs from NZ and processed them into top grade lumber. One of the machines was an earlier version of this, each log is scanned and according to it's shape the multiblade arbor follows the grain almost exactly. Hellish noisy and impressive to watch.
As much as it would be delightful to see logs sent back across the Tasman for once, unfortunately I don't think NZ has got the milling capacity to take advantage of this situation. For decades we refused to invest in productive capacity to add value to one of our best resources – and it bloody shows.
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Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund — When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and ...
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...
Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...
Chris Trotter writes – MELISSA LEE should be deprived of her ministerial warrant. Her handling – or non-handling – of the crisis engulfing the New Zealand news media has been woeful. The fate of New Zealand’s two linear television networks, a question which the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications ...
TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...
Policymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...
TL;DR: The global economy will be one fifth smaller than it would have otherwise been in 2050 as a result of climate damage, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the journal Nature. (See more detail and analysis below, and ...
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
Life throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...
Gone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...
Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor in Honiara Solomon Islands’ incumbent prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has been re-elected in the East Choiseul constituency. It is the opening move in the political chess match to form the country’s next government. Returning officer Christopher Makoni made the declaration late last night after ...
Headline: The moment of friction. – 36th Parallel Assessments In strategic studies “friction” is a term that it is used to describe the moment when military action encounters adversary resistance. “Friction” is one of four (along with an unofficial fifth) “F’s” in military strategy, which includes force (kinetic mass), ...
The Fast-track Bill, if passed, would allow three Ministers, unchallenged and unchecked, to approve the immediate extraction and exhaustion of one-off resources. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne iamharin/Shutterstock For many people, the term “bulk billed” refers to a GP visit they don’t have to pay ...
Emmas Hislop, Sidnam and Wehipeihana discuss what’s in a name. Emma Sidnam: Hello Emmas! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. My first question for you is related to what’s been on my mind for a while. It’s very important. You see we’ve recently had some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Sievers, Research Fellow, Global Wetlands Project, Australia Rivers Institute, Griffith University Chris Brown Humans love the coast. But we love it to death, so much so we’ve destroyed valuable coastal habitat – in the case of some types of habitat, ...
Josh Thomson on the 80s milk ad jingle he can’t stop singing, the beauty of The Simpsons, why Jersey Shore is as good as Shakespeare and more. For someone who spends a lot of time on our screens, popping up in everything from 7 Days to Taskmaster, Educators to Good ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
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Colins now actively getting stabbed while they look her in the eye instead of sneaking a knife in her back?
They getting ready to roll her soon or just reminding her she is just a seat warmer?
Looks like most are in favor of the Government proposal of making Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield responsible for fluoride in water instead of letting each region decide themself and have decided to break with the current policy of National of being for everything that is the exact opposite of what the Government is proposing even if it was formally something National was for.
I think the government will need to bring in more rent controls. Currently rent can only be increased once a year, but with the tax changes now, I think they will need to put on either a rent freeze, or limit any rent increases to CPI.
Jimmy, spend 10 minutes reading about what has happened when rent freezes have been imposed by governments, it has been hell for renters, basically they end up with no where to live.
Well it's going to get tougher for the renters as I believe rents are on the rise.
Government is telling us to run rental housing like a business and with every cost internalised, so guess what? We are.
if they can't afford the rents anymore they also have no where to live.
That's a thought. Why not run Government like a business and charge pollies rent on their offices, reassessed annually, lease their furniture and perks, and pay them a base salary (because under the smiles and sweet nothings they are so base) and emoluments for successful projects. By George, I think I've got it!
Then the tories whinge because the union owns the office and leases it out to the MP at below-market rates, saving the party money whereas now it just saves the taxpayer money.
No it's because labour pockets the extra money clever way to get additional funding
Labour were making "extra" money out of PS leasing offices at below-market rates?
That's even more clever than claiming out-of-town accommodation allowances when your family lives and works in Wellington.
That is likely to be an unintended consequence of this policy. It may not be a good time to be a landlord, but I would rather be a landlord than a tenant.
A lucky few can choose to be neither; being a tenant by choice would be OK too.
I think Labour putting on a rent freeze is inevitable and probably to the CPI as you say, given their current, put the blindfold on and fire randomly at the moving target method of policy develop.
The government having to continue their game of wack-a-mole to deal with the unintended consequences of previous policy on the hoof announcements
David The policy on the hoof announcements are likely to go back to 1984, and possibly you weren't even born then. It's been a long and winding road since then, hard to follow and understand.
As bad as inflation was in 1984 buying a first home was not out of reach.
Is buying a first home so tough now due to the ratio of income to the cost of the dwelling and the deposit required?
For some years now people cannot get a return on their savings like in 1984.
I don't recall there being a shortage of houses in 1984.
You make a good point.
Yes, I was born in 1984 and very politically aware. Now that IS a Labour government I would vote for. Yes, it was copied from Tory England 5 years earlier but it moved NZ from a political backwater. That’s why I’m so concern Adern wants to take use back to pre 1984. Where do I get my careless day sticker from?
Was the carless day sticker used to keep the cost of oil down for the government?
Today it would be used to reduce carbon emissions and to encourage exercise.
edited
Oh how sweet David you live in the Now and go on your Careless way without thought for what is really happening to people around you now under the present system. And because you understand how it affects you, you think that is All You Need To Know. Ignorance is bliss they say, have a Bliss Ball and relax.
Huh? What’s your point exactly?
To David: Your failure, David, is to be totally ignorant of the favourable features of the kind of society NZ had before those disastrous 1980s. I suspect you will have read Richard Prebble's biased ravings and taken them as gospel… Blinkered thinking by the looks of it.
Carless days? You pretty well had them during lockdown, but you would not see that as another attempt to solve a problem through communal action, I guess.
Haha. That’s actually quite funny in vino. Someone reminiscing on how wonderful the times of Rob Muldoon were.
Maybe we need to bring back the slogan “rob muldoon before he robs you” perhaps updated to “rob robbers and Jax before they rob you”
I did not like Muldoon, David, but at least I was there and know about all aspects, unlike you. In 1977 I went to England, and for the first time saw queues of unemployed with despair in their eyes. I was proud to think we did not have that problem in NZ.
Well, the 1980s and 90s changed all that. If you see it as an era of progress, I think you have a lot to learn.
Unlike me
You know jack about me in vino. For the record, I was in England the winter of 73 and 74. It was a god awful place bought to its knees by an over unionised workforce, every second worker on strike, dole queues around the block and abject poverty. A beautiful picture of the pre 1979 England / pre 1984 NZ you seem so keen to reminisce on.
Are you bad at English or something? Your comment at 2.3.1.2 states: "Yes, I was born in 1984 and very politically aware."
Now you tell me you were in England in 73 and 74. Well done. No wonder I know jack-all about you – you tell fibs.
That "English Disease" of rampant class warfare you lament was imported here in the 80s and 90s. Again, well done.
Oh for goodness sake in vino. Read the string of posts!! Greywar shark was saying I probably wasn’t even born in 1984. I was saying I was and quite some time before that.
Express yourself more clearly. I was born in 1984 means that is your DoB. You stuffed up.
Follow the conversation more diligently!!! you still haven’t explained why you reminisce so much for the 70s…rather just go off on some tangent of deflection.
"Read the string of posts?" "Follow the conversation more diligently?"
Your so-called string starts at 2.3, and is very short. I had read it. You stuffed up.
Linguistic diligence is an art you still have to learn about, rather than projecting your wishful thinking about how others have reminiscences and fantasies that differ from your own.
Yes, I was born in 1984 and very politically aware.
Oh, really?
You mean policy on the hoof like lockdown David which saved many lifes, our health system and turned out to be better for the economy as well . I don't think you can say this housing policy is on th he hoof. People were calling for a response as soon it became clear that the impact of covid had the opposite effect on housing than what was expected i.e. prices rising. The same thing is currently happening in Australia.
If you are going to make statements such as policy on the hoof, its better to state. what you explicitly mean. Otherwise you may be written off as someone who is here to find any angle to did at Labour. Barking dog meet car
"policy on the hood" just today's "talking point" which will be hammered on and on, til the next cliche.
Agreed. Clichés is all some commenters have got to offer here, it seems 🙁
Actually, I think you can call it policy on the hoof when Treasury advice is ignored, the IRD is just starting consultation on a policy they’ve just been looped into and Minister Woods tells the opposition to go read the detailed report which doesn’t exist.
It's time the government insisted that landlords paid their mortgages out of their own pockets. Their house – their mortgage. Building mortgage payments into the rent that they charge should be a cause for protest on the part of tenants.
Therefore using that logic, a business owner that borrows $500k from the bank to fund stock for his business should also pay the loan personally, rather than building it into the price he sells product for?
Not necessarily. Purchasing inventory would indicate that the business was a productive one. I think I would distinguish it from rental industry borrowing which produces nothing. That industry merely shuffles assets around.
In any case the question is not who pays the loan, but whether the interest should be tax deductible in first case mentioned. The government always has the right to ignore the logic and declare the borrowing deductible if it, for example, wishes to encourage productive investment.
I disagree that the rental industry produces nothing. In fact I refute that!
It provides a home for a family.
The tax deductibility was never a "loophole". Robertson uses that terminology to justify to people that do not understand tax deductions and business. They have now actually created an odd situation as rental income is the only business that cannot deduct interest as an expense.
It provides a home for a family.
It doesn't actually provide a home. The family is merely being given permission to use a house belonging to the landlord. They will never own that house. The benefit the family gets from the arrangement is an intangible one: a sort of 'right to use'.
Building mortgage payments into the rent that they charge should be a cause for protest on the part of tenants.
I'm too old and too tall for this.
So much Sparkle Pony going on here it must be a virus.
Does your landlord give you a fully itemized rent bill?
What? Don't the rents go into their pockets?
So, residential property is the only kind of business where the owner is not allowed to make a profit at all and only recoup real/actual costs and not even that, now the interest on the investment loan won’t be deductible any longer? What an odd view!!
Whoever thought being a landlord was a business????
Landlords have been creaming it with untaxed capital gains and profits from renting, so if their wings are clipped mightly, really I don't care. If you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen.
Odd response. Setting up a company (LTC), employing an accountant, employing a professional property manager, and following the rules & regulations by Government and IRD and then arguing it is not a business because you don’t like it!? Whether you care is not an argument that gets us anywhere either. Some people don’t like Brussels sprouts, which is neither here nor there.
Like so many lefties who've been schooled in resentment, you've picked the wrong target.
Landlords provide an essential social service for a very small (if any) cash flow gain. Almost all of your rent is consumed by various cash outgoings – especially if there is a mortgage.
The real problem here is not landlords in themselves (although I realise the hard left will always hate on us). If you want to fix the problem (rather than just vent) then you need to understand what it's root causes are.
And the simple answer is that for several generations now the only reliable investment in this country has been property. That factor alone is responsible for a very large fraction of the speculative bubble we are seeing – and until we have a political consensus around providing some decent alternatives, nothing much will change.
Like so many lefties who've been schooled in resentment
I resent this broadbrush smearing of 'lefties'
And I might not be a big fan seeing the smearing of all landlords so evident here. But that's beside the point, I'm a big boy now and I’m used to it.
But broadly it's a problem when the left reacts to events based on simplistic memes that obscure the reality of issues, and prevents us from competently discovering the solutions which stand a chance of working.
I probably haven't been crystal clear on this, the property speculation boom of the past decade formed no part of my rental business, and I've gained nothing from it to date. Personally I dislike it intensely, because of all the social problems it's clearly causing, and especially the kind of overcrowding in low standard accommodation that we're seeing. The motel boom is shameful.
The fact that I heavily invested in building brand new quality units 20 years ago to give people good homes is enough evidence of my intent, and why I'm dismayed at seeing so many people see their first home slip out of their reach. I still recall two of our early tenants whom we threw a small party for on the day they moved out into their first new home – we were so pleased for them.
Well all that's gone now. Because NZ has been unable to provide an alternative investment vehicle for retirement income, speculators have piled into the property market. It's notable that here in Australia with their much more generous super scheme, and a wider range of stable, relatively low risk investment options, that there is somewhat less heat in the property market here. Sure there are periods and locations that get speculated on heavily, but where NZ is seeing 20% rises, here in Brisbane for instance it's around 2%.
Issa joke m8
RL is making an effort to tone down his anti-left rhetoric, imho – 'lefty resentment' is moderate, considering his remarkable transformation.
After a decade or so of exposure to people always willing to find someone else to blame for their problems – and never themselves – it's hard not to be at least a bit changed by this.
Then there this reality – the Pareto Law. It means that most of the inequality that we find so challenging is in fact baked into the system.
In fact it's worse than this. If the top 20% tend to control 80% of the outcomes, then in that top 20% the Pareto Law will apply again, meaning that the top 4% (20% of 20%) will control 64% (80% of 80%) of the outcomes.
And if we go round a third time it leads directly to the top 0.8% (20% of 4%) controlling 48% (80% of 64%) of the outcomes – leading directly to the commonly observed fact that roughly the top 1% control around 50% of the economy. Just by applying the Pareto power law three times.
Given the remarkably universal applicability of this law, maybe we should be more cautious before attributing inequality just to 'greed' or 'capitalism'. Clearly these might not help, but it may be true that in any purely physical system which embodies a hierarchy of values will always generate a very predictable degree of inequality.
It's also true that as a system gets larger (eg 7.5b humans) the absolute gap between say Jeff Bezos and the rest of us will become very large as well – again fundamental mathematics at work.
Once we frame the problem of inequality like this, and it is a real problem, it opens up a wholly different perspective on how we might want to deal with it effectively. (And if there is anything the 20th century should have taught us is that solutions which propose tearing 'rich people' down in order to reduce everyone to the same level of poverty work very poorly indeed.)
RL, I'm sure you wouldn't blame the NZ Government for problems your business and your tenants are facing, and neither would I.
I reckon it's fundamental human behaviour (rather than "fundamental mathematics") at work – the mathematics is just one way of describing inequality, but it doesn't address the root causes aka human ego and greed, which are clearly driving the behaviour of some. Why else would a multi-billionaire strive too accumulate more wealth – it's simply not rational behaviour. Financial wealth seems like empty calories to me, but each to their own.
And, depite "the remarkably universal applicability of this [Pareto's] law [principle]", it can be wrongly applied.
the mathematics is just one way of describing inequality, but it doesn't address the root causes aka human ego and greed, which are clearly driving the behaviour of some.
I've just noticed that my comment above is more fully described in the "Mathematical Notes" at the end of the wiki reference:
Yet as the whole article demonstrates, the Pareto law holds true across a large range of situations where 'human ego and greed' clearly play no role. Which strongly suggests that these are not the fundamental causes you're suggesting. It's entirely possible for instance that an economic system that generated rewards based purely on competency and 'value of contribution' would have very similar outcomes.
Unless we're willing to examine the root causes of inequality dispassionately, we're unlikely to devise responses that are effective.
However, this principle has proven false in practice, as over 90% of citizens victimized by stop and frisk policies were found not to have committed any crime.
Which strikes me as exactly what you would expect. And what it doesn't mention is that 10% of people stopped were indeed criminals.
One of they key principles of industrial safety management is that minor incidents are an early and visible symptom of a deeper hidden problem of poor behaviour and a lax culture that will likely result in the occasional disaster. We saw this at Pike River where there were any number of precursor incidents (the 80%) that clearly signaled the probability of a major (20%) one.
RL, I'm glad we agree that it's important to examine the root causes of financial inequality and hardship. It would be so sad to be saddled with the belief that it's pointless to even try to (urgently) address the scourge of (extreme) inequality in our world, don't you think?
Your story is pretty typical of the 80% of landlords who own just the one property, usually their previous home. In that scenario, especially when you start out with a reasonable equity in the old home, it's not too hard. But then again it's not so easy, that most will ever go past that one unit.
And now with increased costs and the deductibility of interest costs gone, I'm almost certain you'd not do the same today.
Why, they're practically saints, at least as saintly as our entrepreneurial wealthcreators. Why aren’t those wretched ingrates just signing over their paycheques to these paragons?
[Please contribute in a constructive manner or stay out of it, thanks – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 4:17 pm.
Are you speaking on behalf of the 'so many lefties who've been schooled in resentment', or joining in the kicking? It's hard to tell.
Is that a constructive contribution?
[Nope. Do you want some time off? It’s hard to tell – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 5:02 pm.
I was half-joking above, but I am also tired of these right-wing assertions of ‘leftie’ resentment etc. etc. I thought Gabby’s contribution added some humour (which is often sadly absent around these parts), while also interrogating the reasoning behind such broadbrush opinions.
Thanks. I appreciate your comments and contributions to the debates here. OTOH, Gabby’s contributions leave something to desire – I take a ‘holistic’ view when/before I moderate. A joke and some humour are indeed welcome, but there’s a time & place for these, not in the middle of a serious convo. Gabby can take the hints or not; my patience is shorter than a piece of string …
BTW, please be careful yourself with labels such as “right-wing”, as they tend to polarise and seed division and sometimes (!) they’re misplaced …
HTH
There's nothing 'right wing' about noting the repeated acting out of 'anti-landlord' sentiments here – it's simply an observable fact.
Yet almost all people at some stage of their lives are going to rent privately, and for many blue collar working people earning less than a median income it's likely to be all their lives. You'd actually want them to have a choice of good stable homes, to a decent standard at sensible prices – and that implies landlords willing and able to supply.
There are of course crappy landlords and tenants on both sides of the deal, but overall it's an essential and legitimate social service. Yes we have some serious price problems in the NZ market, but the root cause of this is not the residential rental business – it lies in the structural narrowness of the NZ economy and it's relative lack of productivity.
Put bluntly NZ is in many ways a highly desirable place to live with a constrained supply of housing, which means ordinary kiwis, maybe up to 40% on low incomes, simply cannot afford a home here unless the govt subsidises them in some way. There are many reasonable ways we might want to approach that problem, but a new tax on landlords doesn't seem to me one of the most obvious.
Incog. Interesting you caution against the use of the descriptor right-wing but allow Redlogix to freely use woke-left, etc.
Is it because he's a fellow moderator?
Redlogix. Three successive governments have identified investors and investor behaviour as a problem and a great risk to New Zealand. First National introduced the bright line test and ring fenced something or other. Labour/NZF extended the bright line test, and now Labour have extended it further and disincentivised maxed-out leveraging by removing massive mortgage interest deductions.
It’s not about lefties’ resentment and envy. It’s about investors greed, a the market they broke.
[Interesting that you think that my comment was for and to Arkie only. Maybe because it suits your narrative and gives you another opportunity to rail against RL and the ‘special treatment’ he’s receiving here?
FWIW, RL was half-correct that there’s an awful lot of resentment on display in the commentary on this site. At the same time, resentment is universal, as one brief visit to KB will show you. Labelling RL’s comment as “woke-left” displays the thinking & talking of a 5-year old again; it lacks any decent analysis and argument.
On that note, your reoccurring nagging as self-appointed ‘critic and conscience’ on and of this site is starting to wear a little thin. Six days ago, you were at it again too and in a déjà vu all over again you proudly proclaimed “This is a hill I’ll happily die on with respect to that author/commenter. I believe he’s a wrong ‘un”.
You wouldn’t be the first mountaineer to die here on a self-erected molehill in a blaze of glory of imaginary martyrdom deluding yourself that you made a personal sacrifice for the greater good.
Criticism is valuable if it is constructive and comes with useful suggestions on how to improve this site. But that’s not the nature of your nagging, which is often personal, biased, and manipulative. If you keep up this nasty habit of nagging, you will indeed receive your martyrdom status – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 6:52 pm.
lol
Most people will also be employees at some stage of their lives, that doesn't mean people shouldn't point out that the basic employer/employee relationship is practised in a dramatic inequality of power that is routinely abused by employers.
The term is "class warfare". The haves using what they have to extract even more from the have nots.
The term is "class warfare". The haves using what they have to extract even more from the have nots.
And in the usual highly predictable neo-marxist fashion everything gets reduced to a power struggle.
The great folly of course is that you imagine that if and when the oppressed rise up and defeat the 'haves', their innate moral purity will magically usher in a utopian era of peace, love and eternal happiness. In reality of course it would be 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.
My argument to DMK touches on this same theme, that unless we're willing to examine the root causes of inequality dispassionately and accurately, any 'cure' we're likely to come up with (eg marxism) is likely to be much worse than the disease.
I'm not making a call about revolution or whatever.
But of course things like rent and employment are power struggles. It's the basic core of the capitalist relationship. The person with the more scarce resource is the person with more power in the "negotiation".
Sure, #notAllCapitalists, present company excluded, all of that ointment to salve the bruised egos of the haves who might be reading. Whatever lets you sleep at night.
tl,dr: The root cause of inequality is the nature of relationships people are required to build under capitalism.
If you recycle marxist tropes like 'power struggle' and 'class warfare' you don't get to credibly deny 'call to revolution'. But that's old and sour ground we've trod over before.
What if the root cause of inequality was simply baked into our innate desire for progress? As I outlined to DMK at 6:30pm above, the observed wealth inequality seen in the world, can be modelled very simply by applying the Pareto power law three times. This is a simple mathematical rule that has nothing to do with 'greed' or 'class warfare' as it's frequently applicable in situations where these things don't apply – such as engineering quality control.
If for the sake of argument, we accept that all economic systems will produce a predictable degree of inequality, then the next questions that come to mind are, do some systems tend to amplify it, or dampen it out?
And we might ask why is a huge power inequality acceptable in some instances, but not others? For instance a parent has a massive power imbalance over their children – yet it would be entirely weird to call this a 'power struggle' or 'family warfare'. (That some people do in fact behave like this is evidence only of their dysfunction.)
We know that once inequality exceeds a certain gradient it generates all manner of social problems – and much of this is probably linked to the innate human sensitivity to social status. We also know that with wealth and status comes power, which can be wielded for both good and evil. As you correctly state – the person controlling the scarce resource has the power in a negotiation, but that does not necessarily mean that power will always be used to harm those lacking it. I'd argue that in most instances it's not – but these constitute 'good news' and are thus ignored.
Essentially we've created an economic system that's capable of eradicating absolute poverty – most humans are radically better off than their ancestors 200 years ago. Yet the same system by the very nature of it's purpose has paradoxically expanded inequality. The challenge here is how to address the latter problem without killing the goose that's solved the former. It may turn out to be a much more subtle problem than 'class warfare'. And have a much more satisfying solution I'd wager.
What a load of rot.
Family relationships are not created by economic systems, and the individual power dynamics are guaranteed to change over time.
Capitalism is about maximising personal wealth. The same impulse to innovate for economic advantage is the impulse to export food rather than feeding the people who produced it.
The requirement for employment, safety, construction, and every other damned regulation says #notAllCapitalists is trumped by #moreThanEnoughofThemAreBastardsThough.
Family relationships are not created by economic systems,
So what, power relationships are created in all manner of contexts, it's an inescapable fact of human hierarchy. The point is that power is not innately harmful, and there is no reason to assume this in an economic context either.
The same impulse to innovate for economic advantage is the impulse to export food rather than feeding the people who produced it.
And now after 200 years of capitalism and technology we produce enough food to reliably feed most of humanity. Indeed obesity is a more common problem than famine.
As usual all you have is power struggle … it's dull beyond belief.
The family unit (not sure if you've ever experienced one) is described by caregivers and dependent children. For it to be successful, love and parental empathy are required.
It is perverse, or plain stupid, to try to analogise this family unit to the landlord/tenant relationship.
Is obesity a problem because we grow so much good food, or because of things like coke being half the price of milk in the supermarket?
Because that's captalism, too.
Are wages not keeping up with productivity because workers are so damned generous, or because employers have the power to increase their profits?
Does the government introduce workplace safety legislation for fun, or because employers are more focused on maintaining their profit margins than keeping their workers alive?
For it to be successful, love and parental empathy are required.
Now what if that was the key to successful economic relationships too? What if instead of 'power relationships' we were more invested in 'service relationships' instead?
I find that a more interesting prospect than 'smash capitalism'.
Does the government introduce workplace safety legislation for fun, or because employers are more focused on maintaining their profit margins than keeping their workers alive?
H&S legislation didn't spring from govt policy alone – it was a response to changing attitudes across the whole of society, including many employers.
In the 80's, well before NZ's own H&S legislation, every morning for seven years I attended a morning production meeting where the first question was always "are there any safety issues?", and nothing else would happen until we'd dealt with them. Employers are not ogres who like seeing the people who work for them hurt.
But it took everyone many decades to slowly develop the concepts and tools needed to turn mere sentiment into an effective legislative framework that could work. Even now it's still very much a work in progress as we learn more about the often complex sequences of events and misunderstandings that result in accidents. And it's lazy to just blame employers – often as not it was workers themselves who were most resistant to new rules and procedures intended to protect them.
Having worked in heavy industry settings all my life, watching the evolution of this H&S aspect has been a fascinating and frustrating aspect at the same time. And that's before I delve into the safety tech which has only appeared in the past 20 years.
We've reached the point where 'safety' processes and technology are considered an essential element of all projects. Not just for legislative reasons, but because of a virtually universal realisation from the board level down that accidents are way more expensive than mitigation. In many cases it’s now understood that a safety culture that works is potentially a competitive advantage.
Getting from the horrors of Victorian era industrial hazards, to the kind of tech I linked to above has been a complex story of changing attitudes, and growing insights on how to treat an inherently statistical challenge with many levels of complexity with a universally applicable formalism.
As usual your 'power struggle' narrative renders everything down to a dull and narrow view of the world, stripped of all interest and nuance.
lol
Workplace safety started with people (including Marx) documenting the willingness of employers to (amongst many other things) crush children in looms.
In the 1980s, tobacco companies were still lying about cancer to make a profit. BHP was still exposing workers to asbestos. But you discussed safety at meetings, so capitalism is fine.
Apparently it's possible for a landlord to love a tenant unconditionally as a parent would a child.
It's simple. Power is good, but only in the hands of the powerful.
@McFlock
Still in love with an ideological ghost from the 1800's eh? And pretending nothing has changed since – you're a fool for him aren't you?
@MB
Something like that – but then I’m the real radical around here.
RL, your love for capitalism is like loving a tiger at a zoo – sure, only a few people might get et in rare circumstances, so tigers are lovely and majestic. But in the wild, they're another thing entirely, especially if they're hungry.
One of the best-documented times capitalism was "in the wild" was the 1800s. And capitalism is always hungry.
How do you think child labour or even fucking slavery were abolished – their conditions in actual practise were documented by dozens, hundreds of people (including Marx and Engels). That stopped people ignoring it, and they pressured decision-makers or legislators. It wasn't that employers suddenly decided to be nice people.
But we don't need to go as far as the 1800s. As I said, even when you were being all safety conscious in the 1980s, many workplaces were knowingly endangering their customers or workers simply to turn a profit. Good luck turning the system that incentivises that into mutual "service relationships".
Landlords provide an essential social service for a very small (if any) cash flow gain. Almost all of your rent is consumed by various cash outgoings – especially if there is a mortgage.
They can be useful if they do things right. ie if they are not reliant on subsidies like interest deductibility or accommodation supplements.
And the simple answer is that for several generations now the only reliable investment in this country has been property. That factor alone is responsible for a very large fraction of the speculative bubble we are seeing – and until we have a political consensus around providing some decent alternatives, nothing much will change.
Yes. But it is a pity that not many know how to invest sensibly in the property market. Too many take on large mortgages and then wonder why they can't make any profit. So they rely on capital gains.
I have owned my rental property since the late 1980's. It was not purchased for the capital gain, it was purchased to hopefully provide an income stream once I retired and had paid off the mortgage, as I thought by the time I retire there may be no super. I'm sure it has increased significantly in value but its irrelevant to me as I'm not planning on selling it. The same tenant has been living in it for the last 15 years or so as the rent is about $120 per week under market value.
I certainly do not feel like I am creaming it.
Good on you Jimmy. Seriously. If you read what I have written above you will see I was in a similar situation. We are likely amongst the few who are smart enough to avoid charging excessive rents and still do ok out of being landlords.
The thing is if you have bought an investment property and have to borrow so much, that there is no leaway for rates going up or tax right off changing then maybe you haven't thought through your business so well.
There is nothing to stop a landlord making a profit, though of course the interest should never have been deductible in the first place. In any case, isn't the house, that he will eventually own freehold, profit?
The capital payments on loans have never been tax deductible. Its capital payments which lead to freehold ownership or as you called it profit.
I've explained this to mike three times now and he still doesn't seem to get it.
Is it the fourth or fifth or seventh time thats the charm? I forget.
I 'get it' alright. Don't worry about that. I just don't believe it. It's crap.
I’ve lost count of how may times I have refuted your claims.
At this point you now have at least two moderators considering your honesty – or lack thereof.
The capital payments on loans have never been tax deductible. Its capital payments which lead to freehold ownership or as you called it profit.
Without paying interest you would not have a house. So you need both principal and interest in order to own a house..
The interest is a loss and always has been. For all businesses that take out a business loan in order to set up business or expand (AKA renovate). The owner foregoes the enjoyment of use of their property and in return receives rent to cover costs and to make a business profit on which they must pay income tax. Whether it’ll be mortgage free or not after the tenant(s) has moved out is irrelevant but FWIW, most tenants don’t stay for the whole duration of a mortgage. I have no idea how many ex-rentals are sold with zero mortgage, but it is irrelevant, as I said, and a separate issue.
You seem to be saying that the property owner should carry the interest costs as well as not charge the tenant for the principal component of the mortgage because it is “personal”. In other words, property owners should provide a social good to tenants, like State Housing, and only charge part but not all of the costs they incur!? Where is the profit in that??
I’ve given the example of a car rental and no company could operate successfully under such conditions. The rent of the car covers all operating costs + a profit to the company. These operating costs include interest on any business loan as well as salaries of company employees. A property owner usually cannot and does not receive a salary from the rent, but any professionals (e.g. accountant or property manager) contracted do because that’s their business.
Well the more a business borrows, the more it will need to pay back, thus they will end up putting the rent up. And then complain because they are not making enough money.
As I have said earlier on this thread, being a landlord was the easiest "job" I have ever done in my life. Money for jam. More like a hobby.
It seems some "businessmen/women aka landlords haven't factored in cost increases such as interest rates going up or tax changes and now are upset about this. I am sorry if this is stressful for you.
Emotions are irrelevant here.
Your comment did not address anything in my comment; you’re just repeating platitudes.
You seem to be saying that the property owner should carry the interest costs as well as not charge the tenant for the principal component of the mortgage because it is “personal”. In other words, property owners should provide a social good to tenants, like State Housing, and only charge part but not all of the costs they incur!? Where is the profit in that??
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you have to increase the rent in order to cover the mortgage, or at least break even, then your business is not resting on a sound footing. You should be prepared to run at a loss rather than increase the rent, otherwise you are being unfair on your tenants. I'm assuming your tenants are already paying the 'going rate'.
You should be prepared to run at a loss rather than increase the rent
Sighs – what you don't seem to understand is that is exactly what we did for almost 18 years, in order to cover the cash flow loss I put in many hundreds of thousands in shareholder funds earned in my day job to keep the business solvent, with interest rates close to 9% it was almost inevitable. Read that carefully – this is exactly what is meant by 'negative gearing'.
Previous governments recognised that due to the peculiar capital intensity of residential rentals that it would often take a decade or two before the business could be expected to become 'profitable' in the normal sense of the word.
It's precisely why the LAQC scheme was introduced, to allow the shareholder to claim the tax loss off their PAYE income in the year it was incurred, rather than store it up in the business to be claimed against future profits decades into the future. But that's long gone too.
It's almost as if these things disappear because of poor investor/landlord behaviour under low single digit interest rates…
… you only have yourselves to blame.
As Patrick Wymark said in the TV series The Power Game " Whom do we know who wants to flog a dead horse?".
Your arguing is starting to sound more and more disingenuous and now you’re appealing to the fairness principle. You have previously argued in several comments about the “personal” aspect of owning and borrowing for a rental property and that all associated costs are therefore (!) “personal”. I can’t be bothered digging up all the links to your comments where you said/argued these things, unless I (have to) moderate.
I can’t be bothered with commenters who display a lack of integrity.
Goodbye.
The government cannot rely on a landlord to not hike the rent. There will need to be assistance as far too many people are becoming stressed out over rent increases or worse homeless.
Just to set people up in a rental is beyond many people and getting into debt increases stress.
Hope everyone here got their climate submissions in.
Good to see Goff humiliate Ports of Auckland on their safety record.
Imagine if he did that to Auckland Transport for the same reason.
This is what we get when government starts splitting itself off from its jobs and contracting them out to some stand-alone agency, eg the Transport Authority – Te Waka Kotahi.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/439447/auckland-mechanic-witnessed-threat-over-truck-certification-process
…The mechanic has written a two-page letter to the minister of transport, following on the heels of a mass complaint against the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi from certifying engineers.
Two truckers in recent days had told him they could not risk going in for a Certificate of Fitness inspection – equivalent to a Warrant of Fitness for a car – because the chance of expensive delays was too great, the mechanic – who RNZ agreed not to name – said."It's not [safe]," he said.
"They've gotten that frustrated with the inspection process and systems, with how rigidly they're currently being enforced and how poorly outlined they [standards] are, they'd rather pay a fine than go through the process of doing major repairs on things that are highly unlikely to have any safety risk to them at all.
"Yeah, it's just gotten to a point of madness."
In the USA they call agency directors Czars because they gather so many powers. (J. Edgar Hoover was one, in the job from 1924 to 1972! The USA Government couldn't get rid of him – what a pathetic system. Do we want one like that, or with similar obvious failings?) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi
J. Edgar Hoover joined the Justice Department in 1917 and was named director of the Department’s Bureau of Investigation in 1924. When the Bureau reorganized as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, Hoover instituted strenuous agent-recruiting and advanced intelligence-gathering techniques. During his tenure he confronted gangsters, Nazis and Communists.
Later, Hoover ordered illegal surveillance against suspected enemies of the state and political opponents. Despite receiving harsh criticism from the public, Hoover remained director of the FBI until his death on May 2, 1972. https://www.biography.com/law-figure/j-edgar-hoover
We have an ageing trucking fleet and NZTA are making up for years of v weak regulation.
Next step will be another wave against the WOF certifiers.
It's a bad look when expecting effective and efficient working together for the transport industry and controlling agencies. We cannot have a country that operates so erratically must be the conclusion about this. situation. Past weak regulation and probably also weak implementation, cannot change on a spin of a coin so a better practice should be planned and implemented, and truckers helped now to get up to standard without ruining them. I thought that the idea of the 'less government' method was to co-operate with business in setting and enforcing appropriate regulations.
Business has tended to have contractors instead of employees, and I'm guessing those contractors are running expensive machines that need to be paid for by getting and doing the work and of course, getting paid for it promptly. The government agency needs to be cognisant of this and assisting them to bring their vehicles to compliance in a way that gets them back on the road in an ok condition in a timely manner.
In the future the agency should help them keep up with their requirements so punitive and immediate sanctions don't have to be suddenly applied. The government agency could set up check points on their truck routes for instance, if it hasn't at present, so that they don't need to take time off for a big detour to the checking station. Perhaps inspectors can go to them. At present it looks very unprofessional – are these generic managers in the agency, who have no experience in this field, or just a weekend educational workshop to get oriented? One never knows in these crazy theoretical days.
I know this industry and this regulator very well.
You may recall three years ago there were a series of RNZ stories demonstrating WOF failures, then the Chief Executive of NZTA Fergus Gammie was roasted in Select Committee for regulatory failure and then shortly 'resigned', then the Chair was fired and a hard-man brought in to kick ass, then there was a Ministerial report demonstrating multiple failings, then there were multiple restructurings and firings in the NZTA regulatory teams. It went on internally for the next 2.5 years – at one point there was a 40% staff turnover across the whole of NZTA in a year.
The Tier 1 contractors own their own fleets because they run really big Network Operating Contracts (NOCs) from NZTA and local councils and need very close accountability for them. Tier 1 freight delivery companies are the same – though some of the smaller ones still owner-operate their rigs.
They both have a vested interest in a very well regulated heavy fleet.
If you want to see cowboys in action you can still see them in the super-crappy-budget end of the taxi industry .
NZTA have better regulatory staff than they've had – and the Head of Regulatory is pretty good. NZTA Regulatory Legal are very specialised and focused on what they do. That hasn't always been the case.
That's very interesting Ad. Those people that take over a dysfunctional entity and settle in to get it steaming nicely deserve a medal. Take Sir Roger's off him and give it to someone cleaning up the messes that he was very forward in enabling.
But what can be done to help the people found with big faults? They can't be blamed entirely, the whole system encourages cost cutting – it has been the most prominent exercise the country has been engaged in. Get rid of the fat etc. It was inevitable that she'll-be-right would find her way in.
It aint sweetness and light – regulators dont have enough staff and fleet operators are incredibly marginal. I dont think it will ever come right.
No pollie cares about regulation until its too late – Twyford was case in point.
Has Nick Leggett asserted that truckies can be trusted to monitor their vehicle's condition yet?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/439427/suez-canal-backlog-new-zealand-containers-caught-up-in-blockage
The skyscraper-sized ship has been blocking as many as 50 ships a day from getting through their main route between Europe and Asia, and has more than 300 ships waiting in traffic either side of it.
Note that this shipping system is operating in an efficient and effective manner for its owners, to the point where it is a restraint on others' trade and has failed in its task of transporting goods from buyer to seller. Business must have restraints or it grows to be a near-monopoly or part of a narrow cartel excluding others. Ultimately it is so big, that if it fails, too many others get hurt, so it ends up being propped up – the opposite of business dogma.
Can we get behind limiting our buying from overseas? Supply chain weakness would not then be so concerning, and country-wide incomes would start to rise if we self-limited foreign purchases where good stuff made by us sold to us, was available here. Good for us, good for the planet.
We would have to build up our personal barriers to blandishments from well-heeled people making their money from selling us stuff, encouraging constant change and fashion. We could go all NZ funky and end up like fascinating Hobbits with our own style – the wonder of the world – in that odd little country down there living so happily while the rest of the wealthy world jumps to every new sensation that someone wants to sell them, and anti-stress devices are the latest gimmick.
"Compared to February last year the decline in consents was particularly severe for apartments -36.7% and retirement village units -31.4%, while consents for stand alone houses were down very slightly at -2.5% and consents for townhouses and units were up 6.4% (see the second interactive table below for the trends in building consents by type of dwelling).
However, on an annual basis, consents for new dwellings are still running higher, with 39,725 new dwelling consents issued in the 12 months to the end of February, up 4.9% compared to the previous 12 months."
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/109751/fewer-apartments-stand-alone-houses-and-retirement-village-units-were-consented
With the borders closed and almost 40,000 consents issued in the past 12 months thats a big boost in dwellings that will flow into the property market over the coming months….and its worth noting the change of mix with a big reduction in apartments.
With the expectation that international travel will be significantly curtailed for the next couple of years there is a good opportunity to make big inroads into housing issues, especially when placed alongside the latest changes in the housing package.
Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink? Wellington's burst pipes shoot water into the air, and has damaged buildings from the blast and constant onslaught.
Now – another example of what we all know, too many new people into an area, too little preparation, repair and maintenance and renewal with too much new stuff going in.
They sometimes call that a flood – bit of word-play there!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/439453/wellington-councils-warned-over-risks-around-spending-big-on-water-infrastructure
When Campbell Barry became mayor of Lower Hutt in 2019, he quickly realised the city's water pipes had a trifecta of problems.
"An underinvestment over a number of decades; ageing infrastructure coming home to roost; and also the growth that we're seeing in the city as well," Barry said.
"Those three issues are really colliding together to make a situation where we need to act now with our investment and our focus."
It's something their neighbours in Wellington have been well accustomed to – sewage pipes frequently bursting and geysers occasionally erupting…
Wellington City is looking to invest $2.7 billion in water over the next 10 years and its capital expenditure programme is a third more expensive than previously budgeted for.
Elsewhere, Porirua is budgeting to spend $1.1bn over the decade.
And 32 cents for every dollar spent by Upper Hutt City Council will be going towards Three Waters.
What's the problem with what they're doing about the problem?
But there is a big question underlying all of these big money commitments: is the local contractor sector actually capable of doing the work?
One way to get some notice taken about this sort of stuff is to coarsely curse – we have gone arse-over-tit under our continuing neolib-freemarket experiment.
How can we change now? Could The Standard get a selection of leftish, Keynesian-commenting, Riccardo-ruminating, Smith-surmising economists to think up a Ted talk-type discussion, and then put it on youtube for all to see easily at any time. Perhaps Yannis Varoufakis would come on screen and clear some sediment or lees here where we need to learn to dance at the bottom of the world.
Might want to hold still until Minister Mahuta has her reforms through the LTP discussion processes.
Wellington's burst pipes shoot water into the air, and has damaged buildings from the blast and constant onslaught.
The water in the main supply pipes is under considerable pressure (otherwise it would never get to where it's needed). The height of the geyser from a broken pipe is pretty much a measure of this pressure. This is not anyone’s fault, it’s innate to any water supply system, especially one operating in hilly terrain.
I think I've mentioned this before, but Wellington Water operate the assets of four separate cities, Wellington itself, Porirua, Lower and Upper Hutt. An astute observer will notice that the vast majority of the problems are occurring in just one of these cities.
Yes Red Logix – about the fountain. That is a fact and water is wasted and it can do some damage because of its pressure. Please don't go off in your engineering mind and not look at the main point.
You allude to the number of cities being administered. Why do you think that Wellington is the one to show up as particularly troublesome? Do you think it is merely because it is the oldest? Of course it may be the earthquake/s there. Is there something that engineers can do to pipes to obviate that? Perhaps it is too big an area for one controller and Wellington should become a separate entity with enough problems to fill any engineer's day and year.
Well like Ad said above, I know this entity well.
There are three root causes I know of; the obvious one is that Wellington does have the oldest pipe network. It's also the one with the most challenging topology – water doesn't get to the high suburbs by itself, it requires big pumps and control systems to carefully control the flows and high pressures involved.
Secondly since the 2013 earthquake there has been a real increase in failures just from all the ground movement stressing old and relatively brittle pipes.
The third is that prior to the Wellington Water amalgamation, the city of Wellington's water supply department was in my view, clearly the underperformer for many decades. The reasons for this lie with successive councils more interested in grandstanding than spending money on core services.
And finally I'd want to convey just how big a job it is to fix. WW have been around since 2014 and if their mandate (and funding) doesn't change, it could take at least another decade to get on top of – and that's a wild-arsed guess.
The good news is that as old pipelines are replaced with modern fusion welded HDPE pipes both the leak rate and their vulnerability to bursting should dramatically improve. They really are a huge improvement.
edit
Thanks for that Red Logix. It does sound as if it needs a specialised team for Wellington who have a cunning plan, keep their eye on the ball, are using that system that checks for leaks and people draining or not, wastewater, stormwater etc in the wrong place, and have a continual working team ready to cap blowouts and with the road up for the new which will have to be ordered well in advance what with this disordered world, or maybe overhead pipes, so that the water people are onto it.
I see Chch is going to have a Great Big Stadium said to cost over $400 mill. They are going to need more water fairly soon. And they aren't well over the 2011 earthquake yet, and the next one might come along in another decade. I think a sports arena is a sort of Paradise winking in the sunlight for these big noters.
If only they could get a clear plan for after upheavals. First attend to emergencies, second get hospital tents up, three house people in emergency sleeping and cooking quarters, four restore roads and some sort of public transport, five get everyone working on preparing ground for the new sports arena (hint, we will feed you and give you a place to sleep) and be ready with eager contractors and designs based on somewhere in the world that sounds sophisticated.
Crown approves Christchurch stadium funding | Stuff.co.nz
https://www.stuff.co.nz › sport › crown-approves-christch…
2/03/2020 — Cabinet has signed off in its promised $220 million share of the $473m stadium cost after considering the city council's business case for the
Previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_Arena#History
1998 – Construction company Chas S Luney Ltd built the stadium. The arena opened in September 1998 at a cost of NZ$32 Million.
You shouldn't lose all hope here, there is a good team of competent people in WW – but their budgets are both constrained and carefully accounted for. It took over a hundred years to build the current system, and it's no trivial task to replace.
are using that system that checks for leaks
On the bulk water side (from the treatment plants to the reservoirs) there has long been a system in place to balance out all the inflows and outflows on a daily basis. It's possible for the office person doing this work to spot even quite small leaks within a day or so of them developing – well before anyone reports it on the ground.
But the domestic reticulation side (from the reservoirs to the consumers) is a different story – way more complex and difficult to monitor. Having said that there are numerous techniques that have been developed that go a long way toward picking up the worst of them.
But as for the big pipeline breaks – that's literally shit happening. There is no easy solution for this other than the long, unglamorous slog of digging them all up and replacing them at considerable expense. They'll start with the lines they believe are the oldest or most vulnerable – but sods law will still apply. Wellington is actually a tough landscape for a water supply system but with a big bucket of extra funding, the challenge can be met.
How sickening it is to see, the little yankee puppy dogs, Canada and Australia spew out sanction drivel on Russia over a Crimean bridge build, it looks like the death throes of the American empire got stuck in their puppy dog throats. Has NZ yet to spew out the same crap on behalf of Uncle Sam I wonder.
um – what?
Is Russia consolidating its recent territorial gains with a bridge, or something?
Yeah – they attacked Ukraine, so their utilities got cut off. Still a long way to go before normal service is restored. It would be so much cheaper to roll into Ukraine and take it all by force, but absent Trump that might not go so well.
interesting. Actually discovered something new as a result of a link-free rant lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqq8clIceys
I notice no mention that 95% of Crimeans voted in a legitimate referendum to break away from the Ukrainian coup Government sponsored by American interference.
I assume that this is the low level bridge that cuts off sea access to Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.
Here is an article about it. It would be like building a bridge across the Wellington heads where the span was only a couple of meters above the water.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50894282
The Canadian and Australian regimes are also shameless endorsers of the tearing apart of Syria.
https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1376612790945861638
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018789468/sydney-s-western-suburbs-australian-nightmare
The relentless sprawl into Sydney’s west is far from creating an Australian suburban dream, more an Australian nightmare, an academic says.
Poorly designed, crammed-in homes in new developments west of the city are reaching hazardous temperatures, Sebastian Pfautsch says.
Pfautsch is an associate professor of urban studies at Western Sydney University and says the urban sprawl to suburbs in the city's outer west could be a ticking time bomb for the health of hundreds of thousands of people, with some new suburbs experiencing heat 15 degrees hotter than other parts of the city.
He took six readings in the Western Suburbs last summer that recorded more than 50 degrees celcius.
“Which is half way to boiling point. In some places of the world, particularly Scandinavia, you may use that as a sauna temperature.”
But people have to roast in these temperatures for hours, he says.
The prediction is for longer lasting heatwaves in this part of the Sydney basin, he says, only making the problem worse where there could consecutive days of extreme heat.
More important still are the night time temperatures, he says.
“This is where our body would normally recover from the extreme stress during the day but if night time temperatures are 30 degrees and more your body can not recover.”
Does anyone look with sorrow at the rabbit hutches new in NZ with all the same look and dark roofs and no privacy or play space crammed in together. And the dream of owning one of these? Let's Go Back to the Future and make those changes that would have been so important for keeping us to the right path instead of jumping the rails. An exciting ride for some, but what a devastation of a culture wreck.
What smarts can we bring to bear now? Let's open up to all citizens who can find some appropriate land to take something forward that is modest, and preferably allows room for two dwellings, with proper permissions and designs etc.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/439497/forestry-export-prices-reaching-three-year-highs
Laurie Forestry managing director Allan Laurie said trade issues between Australia and China meant Australia was not sending logs there at present, and exports of spruce out of Europe were also lower.
Here is an opportunity to buy from Australia. We can help them out with their surplus logs yes indeedy, at the right price and then use them here! Not do one of those smartarse deals if there is money in it to import them here and then sell them ourselves to China. We won't do that will we, will we!!
lol – that would be ironic. In 2003 I spent four months helping to commission a fantastic new saw mill at Tumbarumba in NSW – that imported crappy twisted logs from NZ and processed them into top grade lumber. One of the machines was an earlier version of this, each log is scanned and according to it's shape the multiblade arbor follows the grain almost exactly. Hellish noisy and impressive to watch.
As much as it would be delightful to see logs sent back across the Tasman for once, unfortunately I don't think NZ has got the milling capacity to take advantage of this situation. For decades we refused to invest in productive capacity to add value to one of our best resources – and it bloody shows.