Looks like there's been mostly upsides from the election result, and any forecast Brexit instability will be camouflaged by Coronavirus economic impact.
The Scottish parliament have voted to have another independence referendum. Northern Ireland is going to blow up but now the old-Irish outnumber the Anglo/Scots-Irish so they'll probably rejoin Ireland. The UK is going to be just down to Wales and England. So, yea, if Boris' legacy is to lose resources, population and territory (which all equates to income and security) then he's doing a great job.
That's all just speculation. You're making the same mistake as other remainers – passing judgement based on hypotheticals. The EU is a poisonous animal that needs major reform. Hopefully Brexit will start a landslide of countries either leaving or demanding change.
Odd how progressives queue up to shit on the 'white racist, jingoistic' motives that saw Trump elected, yet when it comes to Brexit this is all a fine and good thing.
The impeachment is really showing how the false idea that there's a legitimate "both sides to every story" really gets in the way of reporting objective truth and facts. Sometimes the facts, law, and moral legitimacy are all on one side, and all the other side has is lying, wilful ignorance, and shamelessness.
My mother (long since departed this mortal coil) was an active member of the School of Philosophy in Auckland. It was a branch of the quite famous London School of Philosophy which, among its members, sported some famous names.
Around 1975 the NZ Truth printed a headline along the lines… "School of Philosophy in Auckland a Communist Front”. The claims made were bollocks – a finer more upstanding group of people you could not meet.
That is one example of the damage that sick rag incurred on organisations and individuals who were deemed, for one idiotic reason or another, to be a danger to the security of the nation. It was a time of gross ignorance and collective institutional madness and I sometimes wonder who was behind that newspaper.
While that rag has gone don't you think the ways of media in the world now are far more insidious? For example, a blog site posting headlines along the style of the one you quote, do it everyday about all sorts of things can, because of the nature of media, reach everywhere.
Fortunately there aren't people with scumbag motives any more which you thought were at the Truth.
I mean now we have ethical people like David Farrar.
Well, that scumbag Cameron Slater did try to resurrect it a few years ago. Fortunately it failed along with his own reputation.
Yes, you have a point. It still goes on… but there are plenty of people with scumbag motives. It's just they are more spread around now and not so concentrated.
Yes, Anne, the scumbags now are not so concentrated and are more visible through social media.
Worse now than when the mass media were the only source of news apart from word of mouth?
Twenty years ago, before social media really kicked in, as a parliamentary candidate I was very falsely rumoured to have had two drug convictions and to be a supporter of paedophiles.
What would have been the harm if social media had been used to perpetrate such lies?
Then a reporter asked about the drug convictions. My answer was of course no, and it would be a matter of public record for a journalist to verify or find false.
That never went further.
With today's social media and ratbags like Slater?
And how does this relate to the Hunter Biden issue?
Your link is to a US company effectively bribing foreign officials. This is explicitly illegal, although the combover con wants to make it legal.
Hunter Biden was hired for a fake job by a foreign company. There is no law against this. Presumably it was in hopes of getting Joe Biden to feel favourably towards that foreign company and hopefully influence Joe's actions. But there is zero evidence that any actual influence happened, and a lot of evidence that Joe's actions, as part of a public bipartisan and international policy, in fact were likely to make things more difficult for that foreign company.
So one instance is of a US company knowingly playing the corruption game with knowingly corrupt foreign officials. The other is of a foreign company gambling by putting bait out to try induce corruption in a US official, and losing the gamble when the bait failed to catch any actual influence.
But I'm trying to stay away from invoking the many much much worse instances of corruption going on right now in the dayglo swampzilla's team. Because that plays into the hands of those trying to paint a false "both sides" picture.
In this case, it seems absolutely clear that Joe did nothing, nothing, ethically questionable. Let alone anything dodgy, bending the rules or actually illegal. At worst, he failed to rise to the extreme purity level of asking his son to give up some easy cash because it might cause a bit of an optics problem.
While it's almost certain that Hunter Biden didn't technically break any laws, the media mantra that he's squeaky clean doesn't hold much water either. Given that Ukraine is a notoriously corrupt country, the probability that the Biden's could withstand serious scrutiny strikes me as pretty low.
But still Joe is or was the leading Dem candidate so I guess that makes him untouchable.
I've yet to see any media that says Hunter is squeaky clean. Pretty everything I've seen has a definite tone that Hunter is a low-talent sleazoid just cashing in on his proximity to daddy.
However, when it comes to corruption, the issue is Joe's actions. Not Hunter's. And it seems Joe's actions with respect to Ukraine corruption were indeed squeaky clean (possibly surprisingly), his familial proximity to Hunter notwithstanding.
Dunno about Joe being untouchable. There's plenty he's getting bashed for, quite reasonably. Like his record as the senator from MBNA, his openness to shit like gutting Social Security and so on.
But latching onto the Repug tactic of falsely smearing Joe to try to divert from Darth Drumpf's high crimes and misdemeanours just contributes to growing the bullshit pond making it ever harder to fish out the few chunks of truth still floating there.
And it seems Joe's actions with respect to Ukraine corruption were indeed squeaky clean (possibly surprisingly), his familial proximity to Hunter notwithstanding.
Trump is such a polarising figure there are few independent voices left who can be trusted to give us the whole picture. Everyone has reason to select only those parts of the story that fit their narrative. It’s not safe to accept uncritically anyone’s version of what is really happening here.
Still I keep circling back to my original contention, that this whole shit show is being driven by a group of very dangerous Washington anti-Russian hawkes who were enraged by Trump meddling with their insane scheme to split Ukraine and the Crimea away from Russia. Unable to attack Trump directly they're using the Democrats as a proxy.
Well there is the delicious possibility that Trump will be convicted and removed from office. But to imagine this will necessarily translate into a win for the progressive left … well that's a lot harder vision to conjure up.
Yes the sight of all the Brexiter's all gloating about their 'win' when none of the actual consequences and costs of this omnishambles have yet to arrive, is all a bit sick making.
Remember the vote was split pretty evenly, if Brexit does turn to custard, there will be a lot of people loudly and with very good reason turning hard on the political class that led them out of the EU.
And the US has not even started the process of demolishing the Brit's will to live when it comes to trade negotiations.
Ad, your optimism is Admirable – only time will tell if it’s also well founded.
"Brexit it is then. But 31 January seems like much ado about nothing other than the issuing of a reminted 50p coin that is going to highlight the stark differences that exist between young remainers and old leavers. We are living in an increasingly digital age and the young mostly don’t use cash, preferring plastic. Big Ben is also not going to bong so there will be no ringing in Brexit. Not a good start methinks.
GDP growth appears to be flat and imports have fallen after the stockpiling that took place on Brexit fears. Over the Christmas period retail sales failed to rise for a record fifth month in a row in a sign of just how weak the economy is. But PMI data released last week was slightly better than I had expected, while there was a marked rise in business confidence after the election. However, confidence is fragile and this may well be a temporary reprise before reality bites."
Much like a marriage, or a divorce, some ramifications of Brexit may take more than a few days to surface – I’m too cautious to rate it an unqualified success, yet…
The terror of the spread of Coronavirusfrom China he arrived in Rome. And in two distinct situations. On Thursday morning, a Costa Cruises ship was stopped in the port of Civitavecchia (after stopping in Marseille, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca) for two suspected cases of Coronavirus on board. The two people who manifested symptoms were put in isolation in the on-board hospital, their cabin sealed, and were joined by Spallanzani doctors to undergo specific tests: they are husband and wife, Hong Kong Chinese, boarded the "Costa Smeralda" in Savona a few days ago and arrived in Italy at Malpensa on 25 January. They had fever and breathing problems. In reality, the woman would have triggered the alarm after showing up on Wednesday evening at the hospital on board: but it would have been judged by health professionals not to worry and with "mild symptoms" of flu. On the other hand, her husband would not present signs of the disease. All the other passengers of the ship, about 7 thousand, were unable to disembark until 3pm.
Of course Xi and his privileged party officials will be just fine in their HazMat bunkers and kit. Fuckers.
The development is significant. If the virus spreads in Xinjiang it could leave the estimated 1 million Uighur Muslims detained in prison camps across the region highly vulnerable to infection. Uighurs call the region East Turkestan.
The camps are filthy, have poor infrastructure, and are packed to busting with prisoners, according to testimony of former inmates. This makes them an ideal breeding ground for disease and infection.
A better idea would be for the council to acknowledge the housing crisis, and as a response put a higher rate on unused housing. The income acquired from that would then go towards providing social housing.
Asking home owners that have the capital to invest in housing, and then leave those houses empty assumes it is only the 'hassle' of being a landlord that has stopped them using those houses for their intended purpose. In terms of the rise in capital value, when they leave them empty, it increases the scarcity of available property, thereby increasing the value.
Capital gains tax is also unlikely to kick in after a prolonged period of time, negating any social benefit from this type of housing investment. The owners are openly taking houses from the available market and hoarding them in order to increase their personal wealth. I consider it unlikely that they will change this strategy at a request from council. If they do it will have to be sweetened with further financial benefits from Housing NZ and Auckland Council.
In recognising the housing crisis for the problem that it is, we should consider those who purchase these houses to keep them out of the market in order to increase their personal wealth as hoarders. Safe, accessible, affordable housing is a necessity for our people, communities and country. House hoarders should be regarded as similar to those who would stockpile food or increase food prices during a food shortage. Therefore, they should be required to offset the harm done with targeted misuse of resources and charged higher rates.
it would also be nice if the government could look into tax loop holes that allow property owners – be it residential or commercial – to write of any looses incurred on a rental property to be written off.
If the loss incurred is that of the property not being rented then maybe the property is not rentable at the price the owner asks, or maybe it is in such a shitty state that it can't be rented in the first place.
But clearly as it is now, it must be more profitable to leave commercial properties empty to the point of whole towns centers being 'for lease' with no one biting. It can't all be the fault of those that wont' lease these properties? Right? And someone please explain to me why property in Tokoroa, Whakamaru, Putaruru, Rotorua etc cost the same as in AKL? Surely it ain't market forces?
Same with residential property that is empty for 9 month a year and only goes on air bnb every now and then, or is kept empty all year round. It must be more profitable to not rent these properties and in that case something is very very wrong in our tax system.
So where is the government here? Or is that one of the things they may look at this time around if we kindly vote them back in, cause obviously the last three years they had not time to look at that. Right?
There are some residential properties that aren't affected by the ring-fencing rules, including:
your main home (if you have more than one home, this is the home you have the greatest connection with)
property that comes under the mixed-use asset rules
farmland
property used mainly as business premises
property you've identified to us as land that will be taxed on sale, regardless of when it's sold
property owned by companies (other than close companies)
employee accommodation
property owned by Government enterprises
If you're unsure if a property is affected by these rules or not, we recommend you talk to your tax agent.
again, does not address the willful keeping empty of properties, and does not address business properties, commerical properties, etc. Essentially it addressed the bare minimum and again only 'residential' and only some 'residential'.
Our government does not have sharp teeth, but it allows for loopholes. For everyone they close they open half a dozen others.
I think you will need to describe the manner in which these land bankers are actually profiting prior to being able to identify how to collect the tax on that profit.
Its entirely possible that owning but not utilising a property is a loss making activity and that is what the ring-fencing rules discourage.
But my general conclusion on this situation is that, the govts focus on using monetary policy for circa 30 years has been much better at suppressing wage growth than housing price growth. The economy doesn't automatically balance these prices so that housing is affordable, nothing necessitates that. Its not an issue effected by tax rules and rates so even the implementation of the policy changes your demanding doesn't fix the problem.
Four of my ancestors directly benefitted from this, from the Kinloch estate on Banks Peninsula.
For a sum of $1 billion in today's money, 4,800 farm properties were created. That's $200,000 per property. The impetus came from a land tax that penalised land holders who farmed uneconomically, forcing them to sell. Yet, even then, only 13 of 219 estates were compulsorily purchased.
What essentially is the difference between then and now in terms of social harm, social need and social action?
Yes, and Prince Edward Island a favourite holiday destination for many, have increased tax rates on holiday homes specifically to address the harm that partially lived in houses have on community.
"P.E.I. has long worried about the impact of absentee landowners. But unlike the rest of the country, which is so consumed with the issue of foreign ownership that even Canada’s top housing agency has gotten involved, P.E.I. identified those people and enacted laws to prevent them from taking over ages ago.
“Years ago, the Americans and foreigners were just buying up the island like crazy. All the shoreline, farmland,” said Wayne Ellis, president of the Prince Edward Island Real Estate Association. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, Canadian, American or from the moon, a non-resident can own just five acres of land or 165 feet of shoreline. Listen, this is a small province, if there’s no rules, it could be bought out.”"
We seem slow in recognising this truth here.
"…Islanders already can’t compete with foreign buyers for land, so restrictions are trying keep property in local lands. Substitute empty lots for empty condos and Chinese buyers for Americans and out-of-province bidders – and you could be talking about Vancouver and Toronto and not beautiful coastline 20 minutes by car from Charlottetown.
“Rules on foreign ownership are the exception more than the norm. They have some rules like that in Australia,” said Bob Dugan, chief economist with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., about the island’s laws that are dealing with a sea of Asian buyers…"
"…P.E.I., equally, wants foreign investors and has a program to encourage them to come to the island, but it wants them to buy and become residents. This is a small province, if there’s no rules, it could be bought out
Scott MacKenzie, chair and chief executive of the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission known as IRAC, says the application alone costs one per cent of the purchase price, although if the deal falls through and you are rejected, only 50 per cent of the fee is refunded.
In a normal year P.E.I. gets 100 applications for individuals that exceed the five-acre or 165-feet of shoreline limits, and about 50 applications from corporations. There are a number of considerations before an appeal will be considered. One of the stipulations is that no more than 30 per cent of a community be made up of non-islanders…"
"…“If you are coming here to move here and be a resident of P.E.I. and be a member of the community, even though you are a non-resident right now, there is a good strong chance that the application will go through. If you are a corporate farmer from Ontario and you realize that you can buy farmland in P.E.I. for $2,500 an acre, whereas it would cost you $25,000 in Ontario and you simply want 1,000 acres to farm from afar, you’ve got a problem,” MacKenzie said.
Tracking out-of-province buyers might be a problem elsewhere in Canada but P.E.I. keeps a handle on the situation through a tax structure that effectively doubles property taxes for non-residents, creating an incentive for people to prove they are living on the island and meet the minimum stay of 183 days…"
There are many established and existing examples of ways to address the housing crisis. A number of solutions that will aid the increasing the access and affordability of housing our people. What we lack, is the political bravery and will.
They should use the Public Works Act, ie government declares there's a housing crisis and it will be aquiring empty houses in Auckland to facilitate a Public Work of housing people. Anyone with a house that's empty more than a few months will get a compulsory purchase order telling them what the government's going to pay them for taking their house off them. Advance notice that if rentiers were to win any court case resulting from this move, the government's response would be "Tough shit pal, Parliament's sovereign."
Give six months' advance notice and I'd expect it would be hard to actually find an empty house in Auckland when the notice period expired. The rash of sales by foreign capital-gain farmers might well also lower property prices in Auckland. Win-win, except for the rentier fucks causing the problem.
or say with tougher ring fencing,that the property is an investment and not a revenue earner hence deductions are not allowable for tax purposes (and no offsetting against salaries etc)
I wonder how much under-utilised Maori land is sitting around that could be compulsorily purchased at a non-negotiable price? There's a nice piece of unusued land near the Manakau that would make a great housing estate ….
Maybe if everyone could be clearer about what categories of people are going to have their land confiscated eh …. but starting with the kulaks has a satisfactory feel to it.
But it is confiscation of future value. People grudgingly accept compulsory acquistion under the Public Works Act because usually the resulting road, school or hospital is of benefit to the whole community.
Taking property off existing owners for the much narrower benefit of new occupants just doesn't have the same look and feel. You can argue this is a Good Thing tm for the new occupants, but this is balanced off by the negatives for the old owners.
Capital gain farming is the result of decades of distorted tax and fiscal incentives. The fix is to reform them (which incidentally TOP was the only party last election to directly address forward, centre and comprehensively … but of course all the tribalists here refused to even try to understand) rather than playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms.
Incidentally the fact that some owners prefer to leave valuable properties empty rather than rent speaks volumes to how much hassle and risk tenants can be, compared to the modest returns they generate.
Capital gain farming is the result of decades of distorted tax and fiscal incentives. The fix is to reform them…
Yes, we should fix the crap tax settings that encourage capital gain farming, but in the meantime we have a shitload of properties sitting empty so doing something about the symptoms would also be good. I wouldn't envisage many compulsory purchases taking place under my suggestion, because most of the capital gain farmers would cash in ahead of time rather than find out how little the government is willing to compensate them.
Incidentally the fact that some owners prefer to leave valuable properties empty rather than rent speaks volumes to how much hassle and risk tenants can be…
Then they should sell those properties to people who are willing to let people live in them. The country has a housing crisis and can't afford to have thousands of houses sitting empty.
This seems so bizarre – if owning houses that no one lives in for extended periods of time is OK (because of all that "hassle and risk" shit), then just imagine when the ranks of owners of untenanted accommodation swell to 11 billion.
All it would take (apparently) is limitless energy (to power the leap-frogging) – coming suddenly to a planet near you. Or maybe a new “global world order” is more your style – maybe one that approves of owning empty houses.
If you don’t like sharing your resources, just say so. I certainly prefer not to share, but tough times call for…
This seems so bizarre – if owning houses that no one lives in for extended periods of time is OK
Never said it was OK. It comes about because leaving the property empty and earning only capital gain is more attractive than the relatively modest return from tenanting it.
Let's say you own a $2m property and it's asset price increases 5% pa, which yeilds a paper gain of $100k risk free. It's essentially being used by the owner as a bank deposit with a decent interest rate. Yet tenanted it might also have another cash income of say $50k, although a tenant incurs extra costs around property management, repairs and maintenance, meeting ever changing rental standards and accounting. Not to mention the non-zero risk of some expensive drama with the tenant. All this reasonably reduces the expected rental income to maybe less than $35k pa which is a very low 1.5% return on the total asset value.
You can see why some owners rationally choose not to bother with the risk involved. You'd never go to the same effort to achieve such a low return from a bank deposit or similar low risk investments.
Of course socially none of this is desirable, but it makes a lot more sense to tackle the root cause of the problem. TOP's policy of taxing all assets at a low but consistent rate would achieve the outcomes everyone wants here, but without the proto-marxist revenge fantasies.
But it's more fun having a crack at property owners … right?
Hardly – I'm a property owner myself. I'm having a crack at people whose capital gain farming involves depriving others of housing. Regardless of how "rational" that farming is, in a housing crisis the government needs to strongly discourage it.
Here's another reason why a house may stay empty. For obvious reasons it's older people over 65 who tend to be home owners, but these are also the group who are most likely to be in hospital or rest homes for extended periods. If there is a reasonable prospect of their recovery, they aren't going to sell or rent the home they hope to return to.
Similarly if they've moved long term to a rest home, renting the property may have an immediate impact on their RCS. At that age they (or their PoE) may well have no interest nor capacity to become a landlord; so the home sits empty for an indefinite period. I've no idea how to guess the fraction of homes tangled up like this, but I'd wager it's more than a negligible few.
Yes, there are valid reasons why a house may stay empty. And there are valid reasons for the homeless, those living in cars or in other unsafe circumstances, or put up in motels by the state, to be granted access to empty or otherwise under-utilised houses or commercial properties.
Just suggesting that such access shouldn't be ruled out in perpetuity, and might make a significant contribution to addressing the growing shortage of affordable housing.
"Empty properties now made up 7.3 per cent of Auckland's private dwellings, compared to 6.6 per cent in 2013."
But you should not be provided with one tax write of either. 🙂 Instead you should be taxed to the fullest so maybe that you find a tenant who is not a Housing New Zealand tenant.
And i would also like to point out that there is not one 'house' in Ponsonby that would be worth 1.5 million, the land has the value, the hovels on them not. So the question that needs to be asked of the owner of that 1.5 million dollar sliver of land in Ponsonby, why should the rest of the country finance your land banking?
If the house is sitting vacant, no rental income is being earned and the owner is still having to pay maintenance, insurance and rates. If the property is not available to be rented, they cannot claim any expenses for tax deductions or for losses to be carried forward as these losses are now ring fenced. If house has been empty that long its pretty easy for IRD to say property is not available for rent therefore there is no tax deductions. So they shouldn't have even one tax write off.
If I owned a property worth $1.52m in Ponsonby, I would not want it rented out to HNZ tenants.
And if you were leaving it empty to farm capital gain during a housing crisis, your country might want to take some steps to make that seriously not worth your while.
Finally a well written and thoughtful article on where next for the global world order:
But Oxford University's Ian Goldin believes it is time for radical change.
He says many international institutions like the UN, the IMF and the World Bank have become "overloaded" with "mushrooming mandates".
What's needed, he argues, is a back to basics approach and a root-and-branch rethink of the very idea of global governance.
Professor Goldin has set out five core principles that he says could and should guide all future global initiatives or collaborations.
The first principle involves overreach, he says, recognising that not every dispute should actually be subject to global governance. Global action should only be required on genuinely global problems….
The second he terms "selective inclusion" — pinpointing the necessary key players who need to be included to achieve results…..
The third principle is what Professor Goldin calls "variable geometry". Efficiency is essential ….
The fourth principle, is legitimacy. ….
And the fifth and final principle, is enforceability….
Principles and big regulatory institutions are awesome, but I think you forget sometimes that they only emerge out of a sustained global crisis. Today, more people and governments are reacting with more force about a global flu than global warming or species extinction.
All of the post-WW2 UN machinery annoying Mr Goldin has lost mojo because they are broadly fine or they don't have executive power to change much.
In trade, the decline of the WTO is being replaced with big regional pacts.
In development, most people are getting hauled out of poverty.
In human rights, those states who allow themselves to be held to account, are accountable. In financial restructuring, pretty much the Washington Consensus and New Public Management are installed globally. The rest is honestly UN make-work.
Nothing has regulated the concentration of wealth, and since the late 1970s no one has even given it a good go.
Same with environmental degradation. Some big wins, but mostly losses.
So broadly people are settled about what they can change and what they can't.
And people generally accept that the global instruments they have are the ones that will stay around.
Most big regulatory orders only alter according to really big crises – and so far there's nowhere near enough agreement that there is one that needs a really big global regulatory body to regulate the crisis down.
Thanks, that's an engaging response Ad. I agree totally the timing is not now.
But there are two components to any substantial change, one is preparing the ground, sowing the seeds … and the other is the trigger to action. I accept, very reluctantly, that it will probably take another serious catastrophe like WW2 to trigger change …. but in the meantime it's definitely worth thinking ahead about the nature and range of choices we might have.
Red, I'm just in a different place.
Call it Pretend and Extend, call it NeoConLeft, call it anything you like.
But the institutional setting and the strength of democracy and distribution is about as good in Australasia as it is across the world bar Scandinavia.
In my remaining professional lifetime we should enjoy this peak institutional point and enable existing institutions and settings to stay there doing what they are doing for the foreseeable future.
Call it Pretend and Extend, call it NeoConLeft, call it anything you like.
lol … you may have noticed that I rarely label anyone with anything. I assume that everyone, has something to teach me.
It’s only going to get worse, so preserve it.
Probably, although at my age I've been around long enough to know that the future rarely works out quite like how I expect it will. Therefore there are reasonable grounds to remain somewhat optimistic.
I do respect your intensely realistic and pragmatic views, but keep small corner in your heart for your dreams to live on in.
The guy merely put the full blame for the spectacle provided on the shoulders of the republican senate. By doing so he provided a nice avenue for Roberts – now called out for doing fuck all and for trampling all over the constitution – to find a spine, guts, to the glory of the country and finally preside of this impeachment as the independent Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the US. Because as of now, with exeption to the question asked by Rand Paul – he was missing in action. Present but not engaged, certainly not ready nor happy to do his job as per the rules rather then party affiliation.
A nice calling out of woke and virtue signaling types who infest the internet.
Fav quote of the day. It's big sorry – It's at the 5:52 point of the below video. The rest of the video is neat, especially near the start with a clip from Joe Rogan.
Best that no-one speculates on who may have been charged at the moment especially on here
There was a lot going on last night in that regard with David Farrar having to take down a post on KB. (He was ‘asked’ to do so …) Certain MSM reports have also been running close to the line in trying to identify the accused, with one or two items also disappearing into the ether in the last 24 hours.
Legal situation is not as simple as EiE makes it out to be re name suppression – eg my understanding is that currently things are in the period when applications can still be made for name suppression.
Hi VV 🙂 Good advice, thanks. plunket was going on and on about it all afternoon, like he had the biggest scoop in the world, he even had slippery simon on his radio show cheering him on.
No doubt there will be a very good reason why the other news outlets haven't touched plunkets so called scoop.
I meant to listen to that broadcast (streamed on TDB) but forgot and comments on TDB about it are not very specific. Plunket will probably not be censored/charged with, for example, breaching name suppression as this is presumably not yet formally in place for anyone associated with the case – whether as a defendent or as a witness.* But I wonder whether he may have opened himself up for defamation depending on what he said, but its best not to pursue that line of thinking here on TS or elsewhere public.
Re other news outlets, Soper's speculation disappeared from The Herald tout suite, as did Farrar's post on Soper's contentions – and also tweets between Soper and Farrar where Soper supposedly claimed Farrar had misread Soper. But Farrar really needs to do a sweep and clean of his GD 30 January comments (354) especially from 6pm on … LOL
I don't recall Thatcher whacking anyone with her handbag. Admirable self-discipline. On the other hand, rugby forwards nowadays often use virtual hand-bags – unusual behaviour by macho guys. So perhaps it is a cultural trend worth watching.
National have probably already spent the $100k donation, but paying it back will be easy enough.
Just a quick phone call to Beijing with the promise of another Beijing-approved list MP, and the money will be in the Nats bank account before Simon can say "godbless Xi Jinping".
US media will have taken heart in the UK media's public destruction of Corbyn, and will surely be taking the gloves now that Sanders is becoming a serious threat to their comfortable status quo.
I get it that Corbyn's selection as Labour leader gave you a years-long bout of priapism that finally climaxed with the release of the 2019 manifesto. Which led to Labour's worst election result in almost a century.
Did the result give you even a moment's pause to consider whether the things that excite you personally might not in fact result in actual progress? Y'know, because implementing change requires actually holding power?
If the Sanders campaign wins Iowa Caucus, the industrial strength shit sprayer will certainly be deployed. Mr Sanders is running a similar organising style campaign on the ground as Trump, but appealing to vastly different facets of human thinking and behaviour.
A long public life offers more opportunity for vetting I guess, but from observing Bernie Sanders recent iterations I think he has less to worry about than ex Republican Warren and Welfare slasher Mr Biden! But if the Sanders campaign gets a few Primary wins on the board, all manner of revisionist takes on Bernie’s life will likely be presented.
joe90’s linked piece makes it clear Sanders regarded Wallace a quasi fascist type, and the praise was in regard to his populist radar.
"The pure temple politics of the Greens where exclusion is the new inclusion, where online Identity Politics activists create resentment and no solidarity are proving to be about as successful at recruitment as Donald Trump at a feminist folk festival." Guess who? Someone unable to comprehend political compromise!
"Green apologists will ignore all this criticism and state that the Greens can only do what they do because of NZ First. That’s horse shit. If you had good enough strategists, you’d outplay Winston and Shane in a second while holding the fire to Labour’s feet, but the Greens have no one good there other than Chloe, Julie-Anne Genter, Jan Logie and Gareth (who is resigning this election). The behind the scenes crew have all the strategic capacity of moss." https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/01/30/if-marama-davidson-made-s-speech-in-the-forest-and-no-one-noticed-did-she-make-it/
"Marama’s serious run in Tamaki Makaurau is likely to split the Labour vote and allow a John Tamihere candidacy for the Māori Party to succeed which would be the ultimate irony."
"I’ve been a Green voter my entire political life, it’s so sad to see the sorry state the Party is in now with such limp leadership when it’s core issue of the Climate Crisis is the ONLY issue." I'm genuinely surprised. He always seemed typical Labour.
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
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. ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
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 - ...
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Happy Brexit Britain.
Looks like there's been mostly upsides from the election result, and any forecast Brexit instability will be camouflaged by Coronavirus economic impact.
Sometimes the doomsayers are just wrong.
Britain gets its sovereignty back today.
Rather than beginning today as many predicted, the Brexit chaos ends today.
In this case, very wrong. Britain will be stronger for Brexit, much stronger.
The Scottish parliament have voted to have another independence referendum. Northern Ireland is going to blow up but now the old-Irish outnumber the Anglo/Scots-Irish so they'll probably rejoin Ireland. The UK is going to be just down to Wales and England. So, yea, if Boris' legacy is to lose resources, population and territory (which all equates to income and security) then he's doing a great job.
That's all just speculation. You're making the same mistake as other remainers – passing judgement based on hypotheticals. The EU is a poisonous animal that needs major reform. Hopefully Brexit will start a landslide of countries either leaving or demanding change.
Odd how progressives queue up to shit on the 'white racist, jingoistic' motives that saw Trump elected, yet when it comes to Brexit this is all a fine and good thing.
The impeachment is really showing how the false idea that there's a legitimate "both sides to every story" really gets in the way of reporting objective truth and facts. Sometimes the facts, law, and moral legitimacy are all on one side, and all the other side has is lying, wilful ignorance, and shamelessness.
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/30/give-it-up-media-cowards–theres-no-way-to-both-sides-impeachment/
It should make it easy for people with the Truth to win over the voters they need to take control of the levers of government then.
Some of us remember a salacious weekly rag of that name- the NZ Truth- and what it did, and to whom……
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/17/something-similar-political-skulduggery-was-rife-in-1975-why-not-in-2014/
And as Trotter asked in 2014, "Why not in 2020"?
Especially when, in the 'robust' arena of politics, the Advertising Standards Authority graphically itself sets a very low bar as to what truth is.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/408537/national-party-ads-ruled-acceptable-despite-criticism
The NZ Truth :
My mother (long since departed this mortal coil) was an active member of the School of Philosophy in Auckland. It was a branch of the quite famous London School of Philosophy which, among its members, sported some famous names.
Around 1975 the NZ Truth printed a headline along the lines… "School of Philosophy in Auckland a Communist Front”. The claims made were bollocks – a finer more upstanding group of people you could not meet.
That is one example of the damage that sick rag incurred on organisations and individuals who were deemed, for one idiotic reason or another, to be a danger to the security of the nation. It was a time of gross ignorance and collective institutional madness and I sometimes wonder who was behind that newspaper.
While that rag has gone don't you think the ways of media in the world now are far more insidious? For example, a blog site posting headlines along the style of the one you quote, do it everyday about all sorts of things can, because of the nature of media, reach everywhere.
Fortunately there aren't people with scumbag motives any more which you thought were at the Truth.
I mean now we have ethical people like David Farrar.
While that rag has gone.
Well, that scumbag Cameron Slater did try to resurrect it a few years ago. Fortunately it failed along with his own reputation.
Yes, you have a point. It still goes on… but there are plenty of people with scumbag motives. It's just they are more spread around now and not so concentrated.
Yes, Anne, the scumbags now are not so concentrated and are more visible through social media.
Worse now than when the mass media were the only source of news apart from word of mouth?
Twenty years ago, before social media really kicked in, as a parliamentary candidate I was very falsely rumoured to have had two drug convictions and to be a supporter of paedophiles.
What would have been the harm if social media had been used to perpetrate such lies?
Then a reporter asked about the drug convictions. My answer was of course no, and it would be a matter of public record for a journalist to verify or find false.
That never went further.
With today's social media and ratbags like Slater?
Hi Anne, I can happily report the School of (Practical) Philosophy is still going strong in the provinces here in the 'Tu.
By far the most impactful/nurturing/loving/growth periods of my life.
If a US based company gives the son of a well connected overseas citizen a fake job, it turns out to be illegal.
https://twitter.com/sbg1/status/1222992649092837384?s=21
Yeah.. somehow I can't see you making the same argument in respect to Peter Dunne and his son in the legal high industry.
🙄
And how does this relate to the Hunter Biden issue?
Your link is to a US company effectively bribing foreign officials. This is explicitly illegal, although the combover con wants to make it legal.
Hunter Biden was hired for a fake job by a foreign company. There is no law against this. Presumably it was in hopes of getting Joe Biden to feel favourably towards that foreign company and hopefully influence Joe's actions. But there is zero evidence that any actual influence happened, and a lot of evidence that Joe's actions, as part of a public bipartisan and international policy, in fact were likely to make things more difficult for that foreign company.
So one instance is of a US company knowingly playing the corruption game with knowingly corrupt foreign officials. The other is of a foreign company gambling by putting bait out to try induce corruption in a US official, and losing the gamble when the bait failed to catch any actual influence.
https://abovethelaw.com/2020/01/former-115k-a-month-qatari-lobbyist-is-shocked-shocked-at-hunter-bidens-sweetheart-deal/?rf=1
Well, yeah.
But I'm trying to stay away from invoking the many much much worse instances of corruption going on right now in the dayglo swampzilla's team. Because that plays into the hands of those trying to paint a false "both sides" picture.
In this case, it seems absolutely clear that Joe did nothing, nothing, ethically questionable. Let alone anything dodgy, bending the rules or actually illegal. At worst, he failed to rise to the extreme purity level of asking his son to give up some easy cash because it might cause a bit of an optics problem.
There is no law against this.
Hunter Biden's actions did not technically breach any law and were not criminal as such, but they certainly passed over the threshold of wrong-doing.
By the way, thank you for illustrating how easily a false "both sides" bullshit diversion gets traction and spreads around.
I thought you'd love it … 🙂
While it's almost certain that Hunter Biden didn't technically break any laws, the media mantra that he's squeaky clean doesn't hold much water either. Given that Ukraine is a notoriously corrupt country, the probability that the Biden's could withstand serious scrutiny strikes me as pretty low.
But still Joe is or was the leading Dem candidate so I guess that makes him untouchable.
I've yet to see any media that says Hunter is squeaky clean. Pretty everything I've seen has a definite tone that Hunter is a low-talent sleazoid just cashing in on his proximity to daddy.
However, when it comes to corruption, the issue is Joe's actions. Not Hunter's. And it seems Joe's actions with respect to Ukraine corruption were indeed squeaky clean (possibly surprisingly), his familial proximity to Hunter notwithstanding.
Dunno about Joe being untouchable. There's plenty he's getting bashed for, quite reasonably. Like his record as the senator from MBNA, his openness to shit like gutting Social Security and so on.
But latching onto the Repug tactic of falsely smearing Joe to try to divert from Darth Drumpf's high crimes and misdemeanours just contributes to growing the bullshit pond making it ever harder to fish out the few chunks of truth still floating there.
And it seems Joe's actions with respect to Ukraine corruption were indeed squeaky clean (possibly surprisingly), his familial proximity to Hunter notwithstanding.
Or maybe not.
Trump is such a polarising figure there are few independent voices left who can be trusted to give us the whole picture. Everyone has reason to select only those parts of the story that fit their narrative. It’s not safe to accept uncritically anyone’s version of what is really happening here.
Still I keep circling back to my original contention, that this whole shit show is being driven by a group of very dangerous Washington anti-Russian hawkes who were enraged by Trump meddling with their insane scheme to split Ukraine and the Crimea away from Russia. Unable to attack Trump directly they're using the Democrats as a proxy.
Well there is the delicious possibility that Trump will be convicted and removed from office. But to imagine this will necessarily translate into a win for the progressive left … well that's a lot harder vision to conjure up.
All the best for Brexit Day Britain.
Doesn't seem to have hurt your economy despite all the doomsayers. And any evidence of impact will now be washed out by Chinese virus impact.
Sometimes one doomsday just gets replaced with another.
There's not even this much spin for BoJo coming from the Tory machine!
Bojo doesn't need spin.
Unemployment is fine.
Business confidence is fine.
Inflation is fine.
Political order is locked in for the next five years, and opposition reduced to irrelevancy.
No major EU regulatory issues to speak of.
If you were going to do some major international trade rupture, now's about the best time.
Nothing about social consciousness?
Also an irrelevancy in your world it seems.
I was and am a Remainer, a Labour supporter, and very much an internationalist when it comes to social movements.
And on this one we lost on all counts.
There's no redeeming it.
2020 is now a year of accelerating entropy.
Yes the sight of all the Brexiter's all gloating about their 'win' when none of the actual consequences and costs of this omnishambles have yet to arrive, is all a bit sick making.
Remember the vote was split pretty evenly, if Brexit does turn to custard, there will be a lot of people loudly and with very good reason turning hard on the political class that led them out of the EU.
And the US has not even started the process of demolishing the Brit's will to live when it comes to trade negotiations.
Ad, your optimism is Admirable – only time will tell if it’s also well founded.
UK
Wage increases: Yes
Interest rates: Flat
Inflation: Good
Budget stimulus: coming this year
GDP growth: Solid
Balance of Payments: Good
Unemployment: Good
Inward investment: strong
We don't have to wait – the UK has appeared to have got on with things.
Much like a marriage, or a divorce, some ramifications of Brexit may take more than a few days to surface – I’m too cautious to rate it an unqualified success, yet…
The folly of international travel.
(google translate)
The terror of the spread of Coronavirusfrom China he arrived in Rome. And in two distinct situations. On Thursday morning, a Costa Cruises ship was stopped in the port of Civitavecchia (after stopping in Marseille, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca) for two suspected cases of Coronavirus on board. The two people who manifested symptoms were put in isolation in the on-board hospital, their cabin sealed, and were joined by Spallanzani doctors to undergo specific tests: they are husband and wife, Hong Kong Chinese, boarded the "Costa Smeralda" in Savona a few days ago and arrived in Italy at Malpensa on 25 January. They had fever and breathing problems. In reality, the woman would have triggered the alarm after showing up on Wednesday evening at the hospital on board: but it would have been judged by health professionals not to worry and with "mild symptoms" of flu. On the other hand, her husband would not present signs of the disease. All the other passengers of the ship, about 7 thousand, were unable to disembark until 3pm.
https://roma.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_gennaio_30/virus-cina-paura-due-casi-sospetti-roma-turisti-cinesi-ricoverati-all-istituto-spallanzani-607f1282-432f-11ea-bdc8-faf1f56f19b7.shtml?refresh_ce-cp
Of course Xi and his privileged party officials will be just fine in their HazMat bunkers and kit. Fuckers.
The development is significant. If the virus spreads in Xinjiang it could leave the estimated 1 million Uighur Muslims detained in prison camps across the region highly vulnerable to infection. Uighurs call the region East Turkestan.
The camps are filthy, have poor infrastructure, and are packed to busting with prisoners, according to testimony of former inmates. This makes them an ideal breeding ground for disease and infection.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/wuhan-coronavirus-xinjiang-uighur-squalid-detention-camps-2020-1?r=US&IR=T
In the other hand Joe, the Uighur's might be in one of the safest, most infection-isolated places in China at the moment.
In the early stages Xi's bungling, authoritarian mob covered up the epidemic, and then reported that it had confined the outbreak to Wuhan.
Do you really thing they'll lift a finger to contain, and prevent the spread of the virus into minority communities they view as enemies of the state?
https://twitter.com/Anne_MarieBrady/status/1221543476992495616
Why yes! I'm certain they want to keep their organs free from disease.
This is a very good idea….
A better idea would be for the council to acknowledge the housing crisis, and as a response put a higher rate on unused housing. The income acquired from that would then go towards providing social housing.
Asking home owners that have the capital to invest in housing, and then leave those houses empty assumes it is only the 'hassle' of being a landlord that has stopped them using those houses for their intended purpose. In terms of the rise in capital value, when they leave them empty, it increases the scarcity of available property, thereby increasing the value.
Capital gains tax is also unlikely to kick in after a prolonged period of time, negating any social benefit from this type of housing investment. The owners are openly taking houses from the available market and hoarding them in order to increase their personal wealth. I consider it unlikely that they will change this strategy at a request from council. If they do it will have to be sweetened with further financial benefits from Housing NZ and Auckland Council.
In recognising the housing crisis for the problem that it is, we should consider those who purchase these houses to keep them out of the market in order to increase their personal wealth as hoarders. Safe, accessible, affordable housing is a necessity for our people, communities and country. House hoarders should be regarded as similar to those who would stockpile food or increase food prices during a food shortage. Therefore, they should be required to offset the harm done with targeted misuse of resources and charged higher rates.
Brilliant!!
it would also be nice if the government could look into tax loop holes that allow property owners – be it residential or commercial – to write of any looses incurred on a rental property to be written off.
If the loss incurred is that of the property not being rented then maybe the property is not rentable at the price the owner asks, or maybe it is in such a shitty state that it can't be rented in the first place.
But clearly as it is now, it must be more profitable to leave commercial properties empty to the point of whole towns centers being 'for lease' with no one biting. It can't all be the fault of those that wont' lease these properties? Right? And someone please explain to me why property in Tokoroa, Whakamaru, Putaruru, Rotorua etc cost the same as in AKL? Surely it ain't market forces?
Same with residential property that is empty for 9 month a year and only goes on air bnb every now and then, or is kept empty all year round. It must be more profitable to not rent these properties and in that case something is very very wrong in our tax system.
So where is the government here? Or is that one of the things they may look at this time around if we kindly vote them back in, cause obviously the last three years they had not time to look at that. Right?
IRD introduced this last year.
https://www.classic.ird.govt.nz/campaigns/2019/ring-fencing-residential-rental-deductions/ring-fencing-residential-rental-deductions.html
hold your horses
under the exempt:
Excluded properties
There are some residential properties that aren't affected by the ring-fencing rules, including:
If you're unsure if a property is affected by these rules or not, we recommend you talk to your tax agent.
again, does not address the willful keeping empty of properties, and does not address business properties, commerical properties, etc. Essentially it addressed the bare minimum and again only 'residential' and only some 'residential'.
Our government does not have sharp teeth, but it allows for loopholes. For everyone they close they open half a dozen others.
IRD introduced this last year. The horses have already bolted.
So the appearance of doing something is more important than actually doing something. Oh my!
I think you will need to describe the manner in which these land bankers are actually profiting prior to being able to identify how to collect the tax on that profit.
Its entirely possible that owning but not utilising a property is a loss making activity and that is what the ring-fencing rules discourage.
But my general conclusion on this situation is that, the govts focus on using monetary policy for circa 30 years has been much better at suppressing wage growth than housing price growth. The economy doesn't automatically balance these prices so that housing is affordable, nothing necessitates that. Its not an issue effected by tax rules and rates so even the implementation of the policy changes your demanding doesn't fix the problem.
That's a much better idea…increasing rates on unused properties.
Similar actions taken in NZ 127 years ago under the Liberal government.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/cheviot-estate-taken-over-by-government
Four of my ancestors directly benefitted from this, from the Kinloch estate on Banks Peninsula.
For a sum of $1 billion in today's money, 4,800 farm properties were created. That's $200,000 per property. The impetus came from a land tax that penalised land holders who farmed uneconomically, forcing them to sell. Yet, even then, only 13 of 219 estates were compulsorily purchased.
What essentially is the difference between then and now in terms of social harm, social need and social action?
Something like this was used by Vancouver with some success; see :
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-empty-homes-tax-increase-1.5376581
Yes, and Prince Edward Island a favourite holiday destination for many, have increased tax rates on holiday homes specifically to address the harm that partially lived in houses have on community.
We seem slow in recognising this truth here.
There are many established and existing examples of ways to address the housing crisis. A number of solutions that will aid the increasing the access and affordability of housing our people. What we lack, is the political bravery and will.
They should use the Public Works Act, ie government declares there's a housing crisis and it will be aquiring empty houses in Auckland to facilitate a Public Work of housing people. Anyone with a house that's empty more than a few months will get a compulsory purchase order telling them what the government's going to pay them for taking their house off them. Advance notice that if rentiers were to win any court case resulting from this move, the government's response would be "Tough shit pal, Parliament's sovereign."
Give six months' advance notice and I'd expect it would be hard to actually find an empty house in Auckland when the notice period expired. The rash of sales by foreign capital-gain farmers might well also lower property prices in Auckland. Win-win, except for the rentier fucks causing the problem.
or say with tougher ring fencing,that the property is an investment and not a revenue earner hence deductions are not allowable for tax purposes (and no offsetting against salaries etc)
You don't only have a housing crisis in Auckland and you don't only have empty houses in Auckland.
You will find that housing crisis and empty houses for tax speculation and land banking go hand in hand in the whole of the country.
I wonder how much under-utilised Maori land is sitting around that could be compulsorily purchased at a non-negotiable price? There's a nice piece of unusued land near the Manakau that would make a great housing estate ….
Not nearly as ready as that golf course in Remmers nobody is currently living on..
Maybe if everyone could be clearer about what categories of people are going to have their land confiscated eh …. but starting with the kulaks has a satisfactory feel to it.
Compulsory purchase isn't confiscation. Also, if we have a housing crisis, why continue to indulge capital-gain farming in the worst-affected areas?
But it is confiscation of future value. People grudgingly accept compulsory acquistion under the Public Works Act because usually the resulting road, school or hospital is of benefit to the whole community.
Taking property off existing owners for the much narrower benefit of new occupants just doesn't have the same look and feel. You can argue this is a Good Thing tm for the new occupants, but this is balanced off by the negatives for the old owners.
Capital gain farming is the result of decades of distorted tax and fiscal incentives. The fix is to reform them (which incidentally TOP was the only party last election to directly address forward, centre and comprehensively … but of course all the tribalists here refused to even try to understand) rather than playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms.
Incidentally the fact that some owners prefer to leave valuable properties empty rather than rent speaks volumes to how much hassle and risk tenants can be, compared to the modest returns they generate.
Capital gain farming is the result of decades of distorted tax and fiscal incentives. The fix is to reform them…
Yes, we should fix the crap tax settings that encourage capital gain farming, but in the meantime we have a shitload of properties sitting empty so doing something about the symptoms would also be good. I wouldn't envisage many compulsory purchases taking place under my suggestion, because most of the capital gain farmers would cash in ahead of time rather than find out how little the government is willing to compensate them.
Incidentally the fact that some owners prefer to leave valuable properties empty rather than rent speaks volumes to how much hassle and risk tenants can be…
Then they should sell those properties to people who are willing to let people live in them. The country has a housing crisis and can't afford to have thousands of houses sitting empty.
because most of the capital gain farmers would cash in ahead of time rather than find out how little the government is willing to compensate them.
Ah so you really do have at least a partial confiscation in mind.
Yes, we should fix the crap tax settings that encourage capital gain farming,
But it's more fun having a crack at property owners … right?
This seems so bizarre – if owning houses that no one lives in for extended periods of time is OK (because of all that "hassle and risk" shit), then just imagine when the ranks of owners of untenanted accommodation swell to 11 billion.
All it would take (apparently) is limitless energy (to power the leap-frogging) – coming suddenly to a planet near you. Or maybe a new “global world order” is more your style – maybe one that approves of owning empty houses.
If you don’t like sharing your resources, just say so. I certainly prefer not to share, but tough times call for…
This seems so bizarre – if owning houses that no one lives in for extended periods of time is OK
Never said it was OK. It comes about because leaving the property empty and earning only capital gain is more attractive than the relatively modest return from tenanting it.
Let's say you own a $2m property and it's asset price increases 5% pa, which yeilds a paper gain of $100k risk free. It's essentially being used by the owner as a bank deposit with a decent interest rate. Yet tenanted it might also have another cash income of say $50k, although a tenant incurs extra costs around property management, repairs and maintenance, meeting ever changing rental standards and accounting. Not to mention the non-zero risk of some expensive drama with the tenant. All this reasonably reduces the expected rental income to maybe less than $35k pa which is a very low 1.5% return on the total asset value.
You can see why some owners rationally choose not to bother with the risk involved. You'd never go to the same effort to achieve such a low return from a bank deposit or similar low risk investments.
Of course socially none of this is desirable, but it makes a lot more sense to tackle the root cause of the problem. TOP's policy of taxing all assets at a low but consistent rate would achieve the outcomes everyone wants here, but without the proto-marxist revenge fantasies.
But it's more fun having a crack at property owners … right?
Hardly – I'm a property owner myself. I'm having a crack at people whose capital gain farming involves depriving others of housing. Regardless of how "rational" that farming is, in a housing crisis the government needs to strongly discourage it.
Here's another reason why a house may stay empty. For obvious reasons it's older people over 65 who tend to be home owners, but these are also the group who are most likely to be in hospital or rest homes for extended periods. If there is a reasonable prospect of their recovery, they aren't going to sell or rent the home they hope to return to.
Similarly if they've moved long term to a rest home, renting the property may have an immediate impact on their RCS. At that age they (or their PoE) may well have no interest nor capacity to become a landlord; so the home sits empty for an indefinite period. I've no idea how to guess the fraction of homes tangled up like this, but I'd wager it's more than a negligible few.
Yes, there are valid reasons why a house may stay empty. And there are valid reasons for the homeless, those living in cars or in other unsafe circumstances, or put up in motels by the state, to be granted access to empty or otherwise under-utilised houses or commercial properties.
Just suggesting that such access shouldn't be ruled out in perpetuity, and might make a significant contribution to addressing the growing shortage of affordable housing.
This is the best idea since the captain of the Titanic said "Lets have a closer look at that iceberg"!
If I owned a property worth $1.52m in Ponsonby, I would not want it rented out to HNZ tenants.
that is cool.
But you should not be provided with one tax write of either. 🙂 Instead you should be taxed to the fullest so maybe that you find a tenant who is not a Housing New Zealand tenant.
And i would also like to point out that there is not one 'house' in Ponsonby that would be worth 1.5 million, the land has the value, the hovels on them not. So the question that needs to be asked of the owner of that 1.5 million dollar sliver of land in Ponsonby, why should the rest of the country finance your land banking?
If the house is sitting vacant, no rental income is being earned and the owner is still having to pay maintenance, insurance and rates. If the property is not available to be rented, they cannot claim any expenses for tax deductions or for losses to be carried forward as these losses are now ring fenced. If house has been empty that long its pretty easy for IRD to say property is not available for rent therefore there is no tax deductions. So they shouldn't have even one tax write off.
Nice one
If I owned a property worth $1.52m in Ponsonby, I would not want it rented out to HNZ tenants.
And if you were leaving it empty to farm capital gain during a housing crisis, your country might want to take some steps to make that seriously not worth your while.
Another nice one
This will never happen. Be suicidal politically given the property rights ramifications.
Also ineffective given a few hundred dollars worth of timers would circumvent detection.
Finally a well written and thoughtful article on where next for the global world order:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-31/liberal-international-order-under-threat-china-us/11905652
Principles and big regulatory institutions are awesome, but I think you forget sometimes that they only emerge out of a sustained global crisis. Today, more people and governments are reacting with more force about a global flu than global warming or species extinction.
All of the post-WW2 UN machinery annoying Mr Goldin has lost mojo because they are broadly fine or they don't have executive power to change much.
In trade, the decline of the WTO is being replaced with big regional pacts.
In development, most people are getting hauled out of poverty.
In human rights, those states who allow themselves to be held to account, are accountable. In financial restructuring, pretty much the Washington Consensus and New Public Management are installed globally. The rest is honestly UN make-work.
Nothing has regulated the concentration of wealth, and since the late 1970s no one has even given it a good go.
Same with environmental degradation. Some big wins, but mostly losses.
So broadly people are settled about what they can change and what they can't.
And people generally accept that the global instruments they have are the ones that will stay around.
Most big regulatory orders only alter according to really big crises – and so far there's nowhere near enough agreement that there is one that needs a really big global regulatory body to regulate the crisis down.
We just don't have the political tide …
Thanks, that's an engaging response Ad. I agree totally the timing is not now.
But there are two components to any substantial change, one is preparing the ground, sowing the seeds … and the other is the trigger to action. I accept, very reluctantly, that it will probably take another serious catastrophe like WW2 to trigger change …. but in the meantime it's definitely worth thinking ahead about the nature and range of choices we might have.
Red, I'm just in a different place.
Call it Pretend and Extend, call it NeoConLeft, call it anything you like.
But the institutional setting and the strength of democracy and distribution is about as good in Australasia as it is across the world bar Scandinavia.
In my remaining professional lifetime we should enjoy this peak institutional point and enable existing institutions and settings to stay there doing what they are doing for the foreseeable future.
It’s only going to get worse, so preserve it.
Call it Pretend and Extend, call it NeoConLeft, call it anything you like.
lol … you may have noticed that I rarely label anyone with anything. I assume that everyone, has something to teach me.
It’s only going to get worse, so preserve it.
Probably, although at my age I've been around long enough to know that the future rarely works out quite like how I expect it will. Therefore there are reasonable grounds to remain somewhat optimistic.
I do respect your intensely realistic and pragmatic views, but keep small corner in your heart for your dreams to live on in.
this was a good question to ask, and it was a painful question for hte Chief Justice to read.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4851016/user-clip-chief-justice-roberts-reads-senator-warrens-fastball-question
Oooooh … fuck me that's brutal.
Ouch! And the answer is?
Schiff chickened out and sucked up to Roberts with an utterly shameless big sloppy wet kiss on the ass.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/480799-warren-puts-justice-roberts-in-awkward-spot-with-supreme-court-legitimacy
That is a bit harsh.
The guy merely put the full blame for the spectacle provided on the shoulders of the republican senate. By doing so he provided a nice avenue for Roberts – now called out for doing fuck all and for trampling all over the constitution – to find a spine, guts, to the glory of the country and finally preside of this impeachment as the independent Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the US. Because as of now, with exeption to the question asked by Rand Paul – he was missing in action. Present but not engaged, certainly not ready nor happy to do his job as per the rules rather then party affiliation.
A nice calling out of woke and virtue signaling types who infest the internet.
Fav quote of the day. It's big sorry – It's at the 5:52 point of the below video. The rest of the video is neat, especially near the start with a clip from Joe Rogan.
plunket is spouting off on the wireless telling people jlr is one of those who have been charged…….
Would that not be a breach of name suppression? There's no mention of it on the news.
Admin, please delete comment if not appropriate, thanks.
There is no suppression.
They just haven't been named by the SFO
What name suppression?
Best that no-one speculates on who may have been charged at the moment especially on here
There was a lot going on last night in that regard with David Farrar having to take down a post on KB. (He was ‘asked’ to do so …) Certain MSM reports have also been running close to the line in trying to identify the accused, with one or two items also disappearing into the ether in the last 24 hours.
Legal situation is not as simple as EiE makes it out to be re name suppression – eg my understanding is that currently things are in the period when applications can still be made for name suppression.
Of course applications can be made. That is why the SFO has not named them.
But there is no suppression order yet. That is why Soper and Plunket are saying who it is. They won't be charged for breaching suppression.
Hi VV 🙂 Good advice, thanks. plunket was going on and on about it all afternoon, like he had the biggest scoop in the world, he even had slippery simon on his radio show cheering him on.
No doubt there will be a very good reason why the other news outlets haven't touched plunkets so called scoop.
I meant to listen to that broadcast (streamed on TDB) but forgot and comments on TDB about it are not very specific. Plunket will probably not be censored/charged with, for example, breaching name suppression as this is presumably not yet formally in place for anyone associated with the case – whether as a defendent or as a witness.* But I wonder whether he may have opened himself up for defamation depending on what he said, but its best not to pursue that line of thinking here on TS or elsewhere public.
Re other news outlets, Soper's speculation disappeared from The Herald tout suite, as did Farrar's post on Soper's contentions – and also tweets between Soper and Farrar where Soper supposedly claimed Farrar had misread Soper. But Farrar really needs to do a sweep and clean of his GD 30 January comments (354) especially from 6pm on … LOL
Oh dang! Good advice to not get tangled up in that mess.
Rather dubious charging if the Nat whistleblower copped it…and leader & President wriggled out
That would be the system working exactly as intended – expendable bagmen protecting the higher-ups.
Never a truer word hath been spoke!
An amendment… bagmen and bagwomen.
Now that could get interesting
I don't recall Thatcher whacking anyone with her handbag. Admirable self-discipline. On the other hand, rugby forwards nowadays often use virtual hand-bags – unusual behaviour by macho guys. So perhaps it is a cultural trend worth watching.
She didn't have to. She had a habit of displaying them in a prominent way – quite big handbags too. That was enough to keep the troops in order.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-language-of-margaret-thatchers-handbags
Simon says he's not going to keep the $100k ill-gotten gains.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/01/simon-bridges-has-no-intention-of-keeping-100-000-donation-seeks-electoral-commission-s-advice.html
Lols. Nearly two years down the track the Nats have suddenly acquired a moral compass and have decided not the keep the donation.
I see he's also trying to project some of his conduct onto Jacinda Ardern. That's the action of a guilty person.
National have probably already spent the $100k donation, but paying it back will be easy enough.
Just a quick phone call to Beijing with the promise of another Beijing-approved list MP, and the money will be in the Nats bank account before Simon can say "godbless Xi Jinping".
Corporate Media Are the Real ‘Sanders Attack Machine'
https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-are-the-real-sanders-attack-machine/
US media will have taken heart in the UK media's public destruction of Corbyn, and will surely be taking the gloves now that Sanders is becoming a serious threat to their comfortable status quo.
Bernie 2020!
Turn Labour Left!
I get it that Corbyn's selection as Labour leader gave you a years-long bout of priapism that finally climaxed with the release of the 2019 manifesto. Which led to Labour's worst election result in almost a century.
Did the result give you even a moment's pause to consider whether the things that excite you personally might not in fact result in actual progress? Y'know, because implementing change requires actually holding power?
No?
Didn't think so.
Trump has turned his attention to Bernie now…https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/trump-sanders-2020-election/
If the Sanders campaign wins Iowa Caucus, the industrial strength shit sprayer will certainly be deployed. Mr Sanders is running a similar organising style campaign on the ground as Trump, but appealing to vastly different facets of human thinking and behaviour.
[Fixed typo in user handle]
Bernie is still the Republican gift of Trump Term 2 to the world.
The attack files go back a long, long way.
And, in case we didn’t see Corbyn’s Catastrophe Mark 2 coming, he’s as risky as Goldwater was, .
And the serious business of vetting hasn’t started.
https://www.al.com/news/2020/01/bernie-sanders-praised-alabama-segregationist-governor-george-wallace-in-1972-article.html
A long public life offers more opportunity for vetting I guess, but from observing Bernie Sanders recent iterations I think he has less to worry about than ex Republican Warren and Welfare slasher Mr Biden! But if the Sanders campaign gets a few Primary wins on the board, all manner of revisionist takes on Bernie’s life will likely be presented.
joe90’s linked piece makes it clear Sanders regarded Wallace a quasi fascist type, and the praise was in regard to his populist radar.
Small piece of advice
Are we allowed to mention the Mallard defamation case or is that likely to get me binned again?
Thanks
"The pure temple politics of the Greens where exclusion is the new inclusion, where online Identity Politics activists create resentment and no solidarity are proving to be about as successful at recruitment as Donald Trump at a feminist folk festival." Guess who? Someone unable to comprehend political compromise!
"Green apologists will ignore all this criticism and state that the Greens can only do what they do because of NZ First. That’s horse shit. If you had good enough strategists, you’d outplay Winston and Shane in a second while holding the fire to Labour’s feet, but the Greens have no one good there other than Chloe, Julie-Anne Genter, Jan Logie and Gareth (who is resigning this election). The behind the scenes crew have all the strategic capacity of moss." https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/01/30/if-marama-davidson-made-s-speech-in-the-forest-and-no-one-noticed-did-she-make-it/
"Marama’s serious run in Tamaki Makaurau is likely to split the Labour vote and allow a John Tamihere candidacy for the Māori Party to succeed which would be the ultimate irony."
"I’ve been a Green voter my entire political life, it’s so sad to see the sorry state the Party is in now with such limp leadership when it’s core issue of the Climate Crisis is the ONLY issue." I'm genuinely surprised. He always seemed typical Labour.
He should stop whining they only need 5%, and look like that could probably manage that.