Paying subscribers can ask Bernard Hickey about the week’s news, including the US & Swiss banking crises, the softening outlook for interest rates, the latest poverty & housing stats, & #auxit
1) What's going to be the useful indicators that a vote for any particular minor party will not be wasted but will help lever the Overton window a bit wider in parliament?
Thanks Andrew. Love the first question. I often think of that myself. We've seen the window open quite quickly and widely in some areas. I'm thinking in particular of LGBT+ issues, drug law reform, migration and cultural diversity. But the whole wealth tax and 30/30 fiscal straitjacket things are frustratingly intransigent. I keep an eye on the polls around Capital Gains Tax and Public Transport use/funding. When we see Ford Ranger drivers asking for a land tax to pay for cycle lanes, then I'll know the window is opening.
We're not doomed. We just have to work and laugh and love a bit harder.
Thanks Steve. It would work fantastically well. The minimum wage hikes of the last four years in particular have played a major part in avoiding a bigger deterioration. But quite a lot of it is lost in the brutal marginal taxation problem for people in the boundary areas between being a beneficiary or on working for families, and full good work. The more the better.
Yes, I crunched the numbers a couple of years ago and I had an effective tax rate over 100%. Yes, literally going backwards for earning more due to accommodation supplement and WFF clawbacks. It's madness.
It's awful. It's like a valley of doom until you get out the other side. Must be tempted to just shut your eyes and grin and bear it until you get out of the other side, assuming that's possible.
It is the reason I opted for a 4 day week. Getting 1 day a week back to spend with my family is much more valuable than 20% gross income that is taxed down to a sub 5% net gain. The incentives in my case were absurdly skewed.
Just to wind up some parties require the maximum income tax rate to be no less than what applies for lower incomes tax plus abatement rates. So without fiddling with the abatement rates the maximum would be 100%.
And some rule about when this maximum rate kicks in - say 4 times the median wage.
Great idea. You've got me thinking now. Let me work on that. Suggestions for people to talk to? I'm thinking Susan St John and Jonathan Boston. Your suggestions?
To clarify: this was only at one specific increment, I spreadsheeted approx 2500 pa increases to chart the growth and the black hole was somewhere in the mid 70ks I believe.
With potential softening of interest rates from RBs to reduce systematic pressure, how do you think the central banks are thinking about inflation targetting now - in a period of high inflation what do they do now? At what point does system stability from a wonky banking system outweigh instability caused by high inflation?
This is the question of the moment. What is more important for central banks: inflation or financial stability. They would say stability in the short term and inflation in the long run. The trouble is the short runs quickly turn into the long run. My bet is central banks and governments always, always, prioritise protecting the wealth of the wealthy, usually with an appeal to avoiding instability for all.
All fair enough. Just not coherent or realistic enough around debt, funding, tax and investment. The Greens need to be much more focused on ditching the criminal Fiscal Responsibility Rules they signed up to in 2017 with Labour.
Ha! Funny. National was the one that encouraged the use of consultants from 2012 to 2017. I'm printing off every statement they're making right now for when I see the consultant spend explode once they're in government bragging about falling numbers of fully employed public servants.
Hi Bernard thanks for doing this. I've been thinking alot like you about the housing affordability situation. While the house prices have fallen from their peaks I see this as a temporary pause on their upward climb which will resume again when interest rates fall. Anyway let's be optimistic. Suppose you met a time traveller from 2043 and he told you that New Zealand in 2043 had the same ratio of house prices to incomes we had in 2003 (and you knew for certain he was a genuine time traveller and telling the truth) and you were to get $1m from telling him how we achieved a return to 2003 house prices relative to incomes in just 20 years what would your answer be?
Fascinating idea. Sort of like a prediction market. My idea would be a 0.5% annual land tax on occupied residential zoned land, with a 5% land tax on unoccupied land, to fund $100b of borrowing over 20 years to build Public Transport and water infrastructure for a million new affordable, zero-emitting, medium-density homes in Auckland/Wellington/Hamilton/Tauranga/Rotorua/Palmerston North/Whangarei/New Plymouth/Whanganui/Nelson/Blenheim/Christchurch/Ashburton/Dunedin/Queenstown/Gisborne/Napier-Hastings. Pass an Affordable Climate and Housing Act with targets for percentage of households spending >30% of disposable equivalised household income going to zero by 2050, along with zero gross transport and housing emissions by 2050. Give the targets to an independent RBNZ-like agency and sack the CEOs until they get there. Also, debate and agree a target of 17m people in NZ by 2100.
I’m always lagging behind the political pulse. But I have seen calls for an environment party that doesn’t have the social policies of the Greens. The Greens have written that these things go hand in hand. They have a point, yet as you mention their mandate not to go with National limits their potential.
I was wondering how realistic is a single issue party? Ideally they could be some kind of king maker and go with either mainstream party.
The obvious problem for me is that a single issue like the Environment requires more joined up thinking, you need a range of policies that cover housing, urban development, transport, agriculture that a single issue party won’t actually be effective either?
Thanks Mark. Interesting question. There have been a couple of attempts to build a 'teal' party. Vernon Tava tried and failed with the Sustainable NZ Party. I think the problem is a bigger one around MMP. The only parties in Parliament now were actually there pre-1996, either directly or indirectly as Labour or National MPs who defected to form their own parties (NZ First, ACT, United Future,). Green is the one that has come closest to being a creature of MMP, but remember it existed well before that in the Values Party and in the dregs of the Alliance,, which was itself a bunch of exiles from Labour. Very, very hard to launch a party and either win an electorate seat or get over the 5% threshold from a standing start. Needs to be 3-4% threshold plus some sort of public funding. Hard to break the status quo. MMP has weaponised the status quo and cemented in the 1996 policy landscape. The changes since then are mostly cosmetic and/or additive in nature.
For sure the 5% threshold is a issue. I’m optimistic that this will eventually be cracked. The Teal concept wasn’t going to be centrist enough to draw much credible support. It also has the same issue as the Greens never to go with Labour in any foreseeable way. Which limits the ability to maintain sustainable pro environment pressure in either political wind.
But you were to entertain a Environment party would be able influence any mainstream parties, or do we have to wait for the major parties to go green on their own?
It's a chicken and the egg thing. If the Nats think there's no point in dealing with the Greens, they won't fashion their own half-way house policies to get them on board. Compromise and reaching out is how democracies progress.
There is a fundamental ideological difference between National and Greens, which makes all this handwringing about the Greens not being prepared to go with National just nonsense.
Although there is case for see the Greens sitting on the cross-benches as the alternative to a coalition with Labour.
Think back to the 1996 election and the subsequent following ones. Winston said in the 1996 campaign he would not work with a party which had Jenny Shipley in it. She was minister of health at that time. What did he do? Coalesced with National and his support base collapsed. The coalition even disintegrated before the 3 years was up. Anderton, leading the Alliance, saw this and realised there needed to be clear statements for the electors in advance of voting, about who would form a coalition. MMP was in its infancy. We had chosen it because of broken promises by Labour and National through the 80s and 90s. Then, here again, voters had the prospect of NZ First breaking promises. Was MMP to be no different?
So we developed an awareness of which parties would form a coalition. It took the media a while to get used to left and right blocks rather than just the 2 major parties. What we need now is not to pull the blocks apart, but to toughen the resolve to move away from the centre and have some real leadership.
The blue-green colour is a clash of philosophy. We really cannot have a sustainable economy which protects the environment without having a fair society. The blue-green concept still promotes economic growth to trickle down. That is not sustainable. Red and green do align!
Underrated comment. Labour has looked a lot like National especially on economic issues. We are unfortunately more tribal than we care to admit, it has a rather blinding effect on assessing policy
Thanks Jim, in theory yes, in practice I am not convinced. I wonder how aligned James Shaw feels they are? He has been forced to shrug his way though this last term.
Yep. An awful lot more rat swallowing i n 2020-2023 than the first term. Sort of inevitable, I suppose, given Labour's majority. Good argument to say Greens should have stayed completely out and raged from across the chamber. I think it would have had more impact.
I once decided that until Labour removed Roger Douglas’s knighthood I wouldn’t vote for them. Hasn’t happened. I think their colour ever since is murky brown
Inclined to agree. There's always been some level of fantastical thinking required to believe economic growth and sustainability are compatible. Sure, in theory, fusion energy and robot toilet cleaners and lab-grown eye-fillet and colonies on Mars... but in practice? Even if we eventually can do all those amazing things, any system that uses IP and access to concentrate and reward control of them - for the benefit of a fraction of the population - will ensure they'll never deliver on their potential. Unsustainability is good for business.
Thanks John. Do you know what LGNZ does day in and day out. Do you know about the Local Government Funding Agency? Do you understand how dependent on central government all councils are? Do you know how much taxpayer money from outside Auckland has made its way to Auckland in the last decade under both flavours of Government? That requires adults cooperating and talking constantly. Wayne Brown giving the rest of the country the finger is not that.
To what extent did you buy Julianne Genter’s argument that parties that are willing to work with either labour or national are bound to get thrown out the next election?
And her argument that National is far worse than Labour on climate?
I have doubts about both but curious on your take.
Thanks Nick B. It's not true for Greens in 2017-2020. Their vote went up between 2017 to 2020, although their version of 'working with' the Government wasn't as close as NZ First, which did get turfed. Also, Te Pāti Māori stayed in Parliament for three terms in Government with National. But I can see Julie-Anne's point. Hard not to get monstered by the big guys. It's why there's a lot of sense in staying on the cross benches. You could argue the Greens' best position is always in Opposition calling bullshit on National and Labour, and keeping the issues front and centre. Right now, the Greens are drowning in Labour, which is happily greenwashed by the relationship.
I hear a lot of the argument that when in government you can achieve more but wonder how true that is.
Parliament has private members bills. Can the Greens get traction in policies via this mechanism and still hold on to the ability to heavily criticize the govt (of whatever flavour) and thus gain more credibility and votes?
Back in the 90s, as a member of the Electoral Reform Coalition, we actually looked forward to the possibility of minority governments. It was thought that such an arrangement would lead to issues being debated openly in the Parliament, with the divergent policies of the parties being endorsed if support came together for IDEAS rather than control. The claim of the need for stable government, has always dictated the formation of a majority coalition, so we have not really achieved all that MMP offers.
I challenge the assumption that the Greens will always be a minority party. We are stuck in Lab plus, or Nat plus mindset, which is not serving the social or environmental needs of today. We are the grownups here, we hold the power to change the system.
Any idea how ANZ gets their truckometer data (which you linked to recently)?
I've read about companies using (eg) satellite imagery to count the number of customers in the carpark of a Walmart or Home Depot. I know Waka Kotahi has traffic cameras, are they counting trucks from those streams, or is it something different?
Are there other interesting examples of these kind of alternative economic indicators being used in NZ?
Yes. My understanding is NZTA have devices on roads to monitor number, frequency, size etc. May be cameras, or those weird rubber tubes that go across the road. But great thinking on counting things from the sky etc. Stats NZ calls that 'administrative' data and it hopes to do all its stats in future like this, instead of laborious and increasingly-unfilled-in surveys.
"Debate and agree a target of 17m people in NZ by 2100".
How many more motorways will National have to build to move all those workers across Auckland twice a day?
The world's population growth is slowing so why should NZ's grow by 300%? That 11 million more people is greater than all the Pacific Islanders coming here to live as climate refugees.
Thanks Steve. YOu can easily move that number around if they lived close together, mostly in the Waikato and Canterbury and Horowhenua/Manawatu. An awful lot of high/medium density housing/cycling/walking/trams. 17m is what we get to by simply having the same growth rate of 1.5%/yr that we had in the decade before covid. There are at least 100m rich people in our hemisphere who will be climate refugees, wanting a good, stable life in a moderate climate where their assets aren't destroyed or stolen. 17m no worries. China/India/Philipppines/Indonesia/Thailand/Malaysia/Laos/Pakistan/Pacific easy peasy 100m middle class wanting to send their kids and themselves here.
Are we in danger in NZ of developing a “crazy” left analogous to the “rabid” right wing / Trumpsters? The demonisation / Nazification of Posie Parker in Australia recently for daring to promote women’s rights as being seperate from absolute LGBQ inclusivity so that even reference to word “women” has to be dropped or qualified ,i.e. people with vaginas etc. Is this an emerging political trend in Aotearoa?
Thanks John. Some think it is. Not me. I stay well clear of that because...well...my life is too short to spend time on something I can't add value on...and I'm too busy looking at Treasury spreadsheets and tax tables and Reserve Bank statements...for fun... :)
I stay well clear of that because...well...my life is too short to spend time on something I can't add value on If that's so why did you put Nick McKim's tweet about 'running those Nazis' out of his home state of Tasmania into this morning's Kaka?
Thanks David. It was an extraordinary piece of Parliamentary rhetoric. I spend a chunk of my days watching boring politicians saying nothing in Parliament just in case something interesting happened. That was interesting. I have views, just the same as everyone, I just don't think they're particularly unusual or informed in this area. But I do have some skills and knowledge in covering Parliamentary debates and political rhetoric. I was a reporter in the Australian Parliamentary Press Gallery for a couple of years. That was some impressive rhetoric. And it was a retweet with a short statement, rather than an Op-Ed. I'd prefer not to get into a debate about the substance of that debate and those circumstances in particular.
Considering our reserve bank seems to be following the US Fed and with some in the US saying the Trump appointed Jerome Powell is the wrong man for the job may we have followed the wrong path since covid ?
Big topic. Actually, the Fed followed the RBNZ in terms of sequence of rate hikes, although has only just caught up to us and seems unlikely to peak above us, assuming the RBNZ sticks to its 5.5% forecast. The Fed says it will go up to 5.1% or so. We have followed the wrong path since covid, but the RBNZ not the only one to blame there.
Good question. I see none from any of the major parties.
1) What's going to be the useful indicators that a vote for any particular minor party will not be wasted but will help lever the Overton window a bit wider in parliament?
2) Are we doomed?
Thanks Andrew. Love the first question. I often think of that myself. We've seen the window open quite quickly and widely in some areas. I'm thinking in particular of LGBT+ issues, drug law reform, migration and cultural diversity. But the whole wealth tax and 30/30 fiscal straitjacket things are frustratingly intransigent. I keep an eye on the polls around Capital Gains Tax and Public Transport use/funding. When we see Ford Ranger drivers asking for a land tax to pay for cycle lanes, then I'll know the window is opening.
We're not doomed. We just have to work and laugh and love a bit harder.
Maybe a piece some day, or another 44min chorus, on how to make Ford Ranger man want a land tax to pay for cycle lanes?
Ha! Yes. Will have to involve an electric Ranger with electric mountain bikes on the back.
How do you think we can get out of this ‘fiscal straitjacket’? Is anyone other than you talking about it in any genuine way?
Am I just being simplistic, but would raising the Minimum Wage to the Living Wage work to bring some people out of poverty and if so how many?
Thanks Steve. It would work fantastically well. The minimum wage hikes of the last four years in particular have played a major part in avoiding a bigger deterioration. But quite a lot of it is lost in the brutal marginal taxation problem for people in the boundary areas between being a beneficiary or on working for families, and full good work. The more the better.
A podcast on the marginal tax problem and ways to solve it would be great..
Yes, I crunched the numbers a couple of years ago and I had an effective tax rate over 100%. Yes, literally going backwards for earning more due to accommodation supplement and WFF clawbacks. It's madness.
It's awful. It's like a valley of doom until you get out the other side. Must be tempted to just shut your eyes and grin and bear it until you get out of the other side, assuming that's possible.
It is the reason I opted for a 4 day week. Getting 1 day a week back to spend with my family is much more valuable than 20% gross income that is taxed down to a sub 5% net gain. The incentives in my case were absurdly skewed.
Hi Jono
Just to wind up some parties require the maximum income tax rate to be no less than what applies for lower incomes tax plus abatement rates. So without fiddling with the abatement rates the maximum would be 100%.
And some rule about when this maximum rate kicks in - say 4 times the median wage.
Great idea. You've got me thinking now. Let me work on that. Suggestions for people to talk to? I'm thinking Susan St John and Jonathan Boston. Your suggestions?
Geoff Bertram
someone for Tax Justice Aotearoa
Brian Easton
To clarify: this was only at one specific increment, I spreadsheeted approx 2500 pa increases to chart the growth and the black hole was somewhere in the mid 70ks I believe.
With potential softening of interest rates from RBs to reduce systematic pressure, how do you think the central banks are thinking about inflation targetting now - in a period of high inflation what do they do now? At what point does system stability from a wonky banking system outweigh instability caused by high inflation?
This is the question of the moment. What is more important for central banks: inflation or financial stability. They would say stability in the short term and inflation in the long run. The trouble is the short runs quickly turn into the long run. My bet is central banks and governments always, always, prioritise protecting the wealth of the wealthy, usually with an appeal to avoiding instability for all.
Question for Bernard as self described policy wonk. Apart from Greens being annoying by sticking with Labour, what do you think of their policies?
All fair enough. Just not coherent or realistic enough around debt, funding, tax and investment. The Greens need to be much more focused on ditching the criminal Fiscal Responsibility Rules they signed up to in 2017 with Labour.
That was ditched by Greens long ago.
What do you think are the chances that Labour and/or National will copy some of TOPs policies?
Possible. Teal card is a no-brainer for National. Land tax will be hard.
Presumably national would fund it by "saving on consultants" rather than increasing taxes though..
Ha! Funny. National was the one that encouraged the use of consultants from 2012 to 2017. I'm printing off every statement they're making right now for when I see the consultant spend explode once they're in government bragging about falling numbers of fully employed public servants.
Hi Bernard thanks for doing this. I've been thinking alot like you about the housing affordability situation. While the house prices have fallen from their peaks I see this as a temporary pause on their upward climb which will resume again when interest rates fall. Anyway let's be optimistic. Suppose you met a time traveller from 2043 and he told you that New Zealand in 2043 had the same ratio of house prices to incomes we had in 2003 (and you knew for certain he was a genuine time traveller and telling the truth) and you were to get $1m from telling him how we achieved a return to 2003 house prices relative to incomes in just 20 years what would your answer be?
Fascinating idea. Sort of like a prediction market. My idea would be a 0.5% annual land tax on occupied residential zoned land, with a 5% land tax on unoccupied land, to fund $100b of borrowing over 20 years to build Public Transport and water infrastructure for a million new affordable, zero-emitting, medium-density homes in Auckland/Wellington/Hamilton/Tauranga/Rotorua/Palmerston North/Whangarei/New Plymouth/Whanganui/Nelson/Blenheim/Christchurch/Ashburton/Dunedin/Queenstown/Gisborne/Napier-Hastings. Pass an Affordable Climate and Housing Act with targets for percentage of households spending >30% of disposable equivalised household income going to zero by 2050, along with zero gross transport and housing emissions by 2050. Give the targets to an independent RBNZ-like agency and sack the CEOs until they get there. Also, debate and agree a target of 17m people in NZ by 2100.
I’m always lagging behind the political pulse. But I have seen calls for an environment party that doesn’t have the social policies of the Greens. The Greens have written that these things go hand in hand. They have a point, yet as you mention their mandate not to go with National limits their potential.
I was wondering how realistic is a single issue party? Ideally they could be some kind of king maker and go with either mainstream party.
The obvious problem for me is that a single issue like the Environment requires more joined up thinking, you need a range of policies that cover housing, urban development, transport, agriculture that a single issue party won’t actually be effective either?
Thanks Mark. Interesting question. There have been a couple of attempts to build a 'teal' party. Vernon Tava tried and failed with the Sustainable NZ Party. I think the problem is a bigger one around MMP. The only parties in Parliament now were actually there pre-1996, either directly or indirectly as Labour or National MPs who defected to form their own parties (NZ First, ACT, United Future,). Green is the one that has come closest to being a creature of MMP, but remember it existed well before that in the Values Party and in the dregs of the Alliance,, which was itself a bunch of exiles from Labour. Very, very hard to launch a party and either win an electorate seat or get over the 5% threshold from a standing start. Needs to be 3-4% threshold plus some sort of public funding. Hard to break the status quo. MMP has weaponised the status quo and cemented in the 1996 policy landscape. The changes since then are mostly cosmetic and/or additive in nature.
For sure the 5% threshold is a issue. I’m optimistic that this will eventually be cracked. The Teal concept wasn’t going to be centrist enough to draw much credible support. It also has the same issue as the Greens never to go with Labour in any foreseeable way. Which limits the ability to maintain sustainable pro environment pressure in either political wind.
But you were to entertain a Environment party would be able influence any mainstream parties, or do we have to wait for the major parties to go green on their own?
It's a chicken and the egg thing. If the Nats think there's no point in dealing with the Greens, they won't fashion their own half-way house policies to get them on board. Compromise and reaching out is how democracies progress.
There is a fundamental ideological difference between National and Greens, which makes all this handwringing about the Greens not being prepared to go with National just nonsense.
Although there is case for see the Greens sitting on the cross-benches as the alternative to a coalition with Labour.
Think back to the 1996 election and the subsequent following ones. Winston said in the 1996 campaign he would not work with a party which had Jenny Shipley in it. She was minister of health at that time. What did he do? Coalesced with National and his support base collapsed. The coalition even disintegrated before the 3 years was up. Anderton, leading the Alliance, saw this and realised there needed to be clear statements for the electors in advance of voting, about who would form a coalition. MMP was in its infancy. We had chosen it because of broken promises by Labour and National through the 80s and 90s. Then, here again, voters had the prospect of NZ First breaking promises. Was MMP to be no different?
So we developed an awareness of which parties would form a coalition. It took the media a while to get used to left and right blocks rather than just the 2 major parties. What we need now is not to pull the blocks apart, but to toughen the resolve to move away from the centre and have some real leadership.
You seem to have forgotten Te Pati Māori.
The blue-green colour is a clash of philosophy. We really cannot have a sustainable economy which protects the environment without having a fair society. The blue-green concept still promotes economic growth to trickle down. That is not sustainable. Red and green do align!
Thanks Jim. Depends whether you think Labour is actually red. Or just a very deep shade of blue.
Underrated comment. Labour has looked a lot like National especially on economic issues. We are unfortunately more tribal than we care to admit, it has a rather blinding effect on assessing policy
Perhaps a shade of pink, Bernard? But you are correct. Definitely not sufficiently committed to real alternatives to the blue side.
Thanks Jim, in theory yes, in practice I am not convinced. I wonder how aligned James Shaw feels they are? He has been forced to shrug his way though this last term.
Yep. An awful lot more rat swallowing i n 2020-2023 than the first term. Sort of inevitable, I suppose, given Labour's majority. Good argument to say Greens should have stayed completely out and raged from across the chamber. I think it would have had more impact.
I once decided that until Labour removed Roger Douglas’s knighthood I wouldn’t vote for them. Hasn’t happened. I think their colour ever since is murky brown
When you said red, I thought you meant communist, not Labour!
Inclined to agree. There's always been some level of fantastical thinking required to believe economic growth and sustainability are compatible. Sure, in theory, fusion energy and robot toilet cleaners and lab-grown eye-fillet and colonies on Mars... but in practice? Even if we eventually can do all those amazing things, any system that uses IP and access to concentrate and reward control of them - for the benefit of a fraction of the population - will ensure they'll never deliver on their potential. Unsustainability is good for business.
why should we auclanders care about 'pulling out of LGNZ" > who loses them or us?
Thanks John. Do you know what LGNZ does day in and day out. Do you know about the Local Government Funding Agency? Do you understand how dependent on central government all councils are? Do you know how much taxpayer money from outside Auckland has made its way to Auckland in the last decade under both flavours of Government? That requires adults cooperating and talking constantly. Wayne Brown giving the rest of the country the finger is not that.
To what extent did you buy Julianne Genter’s argument that parties that are willing to work with either labour or national are bound to get thrown out the next election?
And her argument that National is far worse than Labour on climate?
I have doubts about both but curious on your take.
Thanks Nick B. It's not true for Greens in 2017-2020. Their vote went up between 2017 to 2020, although their version of 'working with' the Government wasn't as close as NZ First, which did get turfed. Also, Te Pāti Māori stayed in Parliament for three terms in Government with National. But I can see Julie-Anne's point. Hard not to get monstered by the big guys. It's why there's a lot of sense in staying on the cross benches. You could argue the Greens' best position is always in Opposition calling bullshit on National and Labour, and keeping the issues front and centre. Right now, the Greens are drowning in Labour, which is happily greenwashed by the relationship.
I hear a lot of the argument that when in government you can achieve more but wonder how true that is.
Parliament has private members bills. Can the Greens get traction in policies via this mechanism and still hold on to the ability to heavily criticize the govt (of whatever flavour) and thus gain more credibility and votes?
Back in the 90s, as a member of the Electoral Reform Coalition, we actually looked forward to the possibility of minority governments. It was thought that such an arrangement would lead to issues being debated openly in the Parliament, with the divergent policies of the parties being endorsed if support came together for IDEAS rather than control. The claim of the need for stable government, has always dictated the formation of a majority coalition, so we have not really achieved all that MMP offers.
I challenge the assumption that the Greens will always be a minority party. We are stuck in Lab plus, or Nat plus mindset, which is not serving the social or environmental needs of today. We are the grownups here, we hold the power to change the system.
Any idea how ANZ gets their truckometer data (which you linked to recently)?
I've read about companies using (eg) satellite imagery to count the number of customers in the carpark of a Walmart or Home Depot. I know Waka Kotahi has traffic cameras, are they counting trucks from those streams, or is it something different?
Are there other interesting examples of these kind of alternative economic indicators being used in NZ?
https://www.anz.co.nz/about-us/economic-markets-research/truckometer
Yes. My understanding is NZTA have devices on roads to monitor number, frequency, size etc. May be cameras, or those weird rubber tubes that go across the road. But great thinking on counting things from the sky etc. Stats NZ calls that 'administrative' data and it hopes to do all its stats in future like this, instead of laborious and increasingly-unfilled-in surveys.
I'm not in the mood for heavy discussion. Your favourite jellybean flavour, Bernard? Pink all day for me.
Oooh! Orange. And lemon. No. Black. And the purple ones. Quite like red. Just give me the whole packet!
"Debate and agree a target of 17m people in NZ by 2100".
How many more motorways will National have to build to move all those workers across Auckland twice a day?
The world's population growth is slowing so why should NZ's grow by 300%? That 11 million more people is greater than all the Pacific Islanders coming here to live as climate refugees.
Sounds like we need another long form piece on population Bernard
Never a shortage of those. :)
Thanks Steve. YOu can easily move that number around if they lived close together, mostly in the Waikato and Canterbury and Horowhenua/Manawatu. An awful lot of high/medium density housing/cycling/walking/trams. 17m is what we get to by simply having the same growth rate of 1.5%/yr that we had in the decade before covid. There are at least 100m rich people in our hemisphere who will be climate refugees, wanting a good, stable life in a moderate climate where their assets aren't destroyed or stolen. 17m no worries. China/India/Philipppines/Indonesia/Thailand/Malaysia/Laos/Pakistan/Pacific easy peasy 100m middle class wanting to send their kids and themselves here.
Are we in danger in NZ of developing a “crazy” left analogous to the “rabid” right wing / Trumpsters? The demonisation / Nazification of Posie Parker in Australia recently for daring to promote women’s rights as being seperate from absolute LGBQ inclusivity so that even reference to word “women” has to be dropped or qualified ,i.e. people with vaginas etc. Is this an emerging political trend in Aotearoa?
Thanks John. Some think it is. Not me. I stay well clear of that because...well...my life is too short to spend time on something I can't add value on...and I'm too busy looking at Treasury spreadsheets and tax tables and Reserve Bank statements...for fun... :)
Haha, very wise! Maybe you could get your Hoon co-host to opine?
You (and I) would be asking for trouble. :)
I stay well clear of that because...well...my life is too short to spend time on something I can't add value on If that's so why did you put Nick McKim's tweet about 'running those Nazis' out of his home state of Tasmania into this morning's Kaka?
Thanks David. It was an extraordinary piece of Parliamentary rhetoric. I spend a chunk of my days watching boring politicians saying nothing in Parliament just in case something interesting happened. That was interesting. I have views, just the same as everyone, I just don't think they're particularly unusual or informed in this area. But I do have some skills and knowledge in covering Parliamentary debates and political rhetoric. I was a reporter in the Australian Parliamentary Press Gallery for a couple of years. That was some impressive rhetoric. And it was a retweet with a short statement, rather than an Op-Ed. I'd prefer not to get into a debate about the substance of that debate and those circumstances in particular.
Considering our reserve bank seems to be following the US Fed and with some in the US saying the Trump appointed Jerome Powell is the wrong man for the job may we have followed the wrong path since covid ?
Big topic. Actually, the Fed followed the RBNZ in terms of sequence of rate hikes, although has only just caught up to us and seems unlikely to peak above us, assuming the RBNZ sticks to its 5.5% forecast. The Fed says it will go up to 5.1% or so. We have followed the wrong path since covid, but the RBNZ not the only one to blame there.
Many thanks to you all. Great session. See you for the hoon!