Bernard is on site for an hour until 2pm to shoot the breeze with paid subscribers about the week's news, including: the PM's criticism of China at NATO; the RBNZ's housing 'tide turning' speech
I always think of things to ask you during the week and then forget them as soon as I get this notification 😂 I think I need to start writing things down!
There's a bunch around. Climate Commission and Transpower have done a few. All a bit redundant because we don't know what Rio TInto and Meridian/Contact are going to agree about the smelter.
Add in Onslow, gas development, viability of demand response, price of renewables, take up of EVs and other electrification as well as asset management practices of distributors and you have a lot of uncertainty
I'm pretty sure the ETS credits have gone. But Rio is coining it right now with high aluminium prices and 62c dollar. Could go on for ever. It will depend on how keen meridian/contact are to play hard ball. I expect Tiwai to keep going for many more years. Meridian and Contact won't want to dump the power on the market. There'll be a calculation where it makes sense to sell it cheap to Tiwai, rather than dump it and get lower prices for all its power
Which is why we need to renationalise our power supply, as the generators are too busy thinking about profits rather than what is good for the country.
Sorry if I missed you already covering this...but what does the new trade deal with the EU mean for us (kiwis) in terms of diversifying our export market? Is this trade volume expected to be large enough to make a difference if we begin to decrease reliance on exports to China?
Great question Ted. Not enough in the deal (only $600m a year extra for beef and dairy within 7 years). More work to do growing services exports and prying open the US, Canadian, Indian and Latin American markets.
Ha! Love your thinking. I like to mix it up. Boysenberry ripple and hokey pokey. Although neither work on my current keto diet....way too much sugar. Will have to look for something coconut-ty.
Not brilliant or as good as the UK one. Beef and dairy very unhappy. But kiwifruit, fish and honey very happy. PM made the 'captain's call' to go for the bird in the hand. Better than a kick in the teeth. But not nearly good enough if the Europeans and the Americans want us on their side in the clash with China.
Realistically though.. European agriculture has always been massively protected.. to get any concessions from 'Les Farmers' seems like a reasonable result?
There is a better prospect this time. The EU has been whittling away at the subsidies and anything that reduces consumer price inflation would be good right now. But you're right about the bloody French. They bomb our harbour. Bully us into giving back the murderers. Lock out our dairy and meat. And then they have the temerity to beat the All Blacks!
Wiley move from the PM/MFAT: Recognising NZ's future in lower volumes of premium-priced 'Pure Green' beef & dairy - and their plant-based alternatives, rather than a mass market arm wrestle with Euro neighborhood suppliers.
The reference to Paris Agreement in the FTA itself would effectively kybosh any massive expansion of NZ beef production / export (& emissions!) volumes anyway.
Ardern has effectively 'sacrificed' nothing, for sizeable benefits elsewhere. I'm especially surprised at the very limited stipulations around Geographical Indications.
What do you think it would take (i.e. what major economic, cultural, or political shifts) for the electorate (and thus politicians) to FINALLY do something about the housing crisis?
Different parties led by different people with different policies, along with some sort of societal or economic crisis. So not much chance, I think. The median-voting homeowners just can't imagine life without the easy, leveraged and tax-free capital gains on residential land, plus low income taxes.
Any thoughts of actual risks to our dairy exports to China vs just statements and posturing from China? Do we have the same luxury as Aus with coal exports to China?
I agree, some of the alternative milks esp almond aren't great. Oat is one of the best though. I make my own and then use the 'bits' in Bircher muesli so it feels like I don't waste anything but it's probably different on a commercial scale. Oats grow well in Canterbury & Southland so we could replace some of those cows if the right incentives were in place.
I think we're in much greater jeopardy. Nobody needs to eat meat & dairy even if they really like it. Coal has become embedded in China's economy so is a lot harder to give up. I actually think our whole economy is at risk by our reliance on a handful of primary products. If the world goes vegan, we're screwed (said as the daughter of a dairy farmer who now drinks oat milk).
Thanks Sonya. It's not so much the coal. India can get that from anywhere, and has plenty of its own. The real reliance China has is on iron ore from Australia. It's the only producer of scale and convenience that China can buy from. They hate it. It's why the Australians are so confident thumbing their noses at China.
Hard to know. It's all a mystery behind the great fire wall. But China's consumers can live without milk powder. China's economy can't live without Australia's iron ore and it's the only major source of the stuff.
If only milk powder could be used to build motorways and apartment blocks we'd be sweet.
Do you think TOP have a shot at 5% next year? It feels like many more kiwis have woken up to how the tax system holds back any real progress. Are TOP the only party serious about reform.
I used to think like that too but which is a bigger waste? : Voting for no-change protect-status-quo Nat-Lab,; or giving support to parties that are proposing meaningful improvements? Even 4% would give hope to the most desperate
The ranked voting is a superb idea, but not Australia's version of it. Australia still divides up the country into electorates and is thus captured by a two party system, the recent election is a rare exception. Somebody here, a while ago, suggested we convert our party vote to a rank vote and that would be the best of both worlds. If you'd like to just tick the party you want to form government then we should allow the status quo. What New Zealand should add is the ability to rank any or all of their party vote preferences. This would move to a nearly complete proportionality of parliament, short of scrapping the threshold entirely. Scrapping the threshold has the problem of potentially creating some one person parties, which is the principal argument against it, but if the above isn't considered a lowering to the 4% recommend by the 86 royal commission would be a good start.
Maybe. The last couple of polls showed TOP nudging up towards 2%. We'll know in the first couple of weeks of the campaign. A lot of people don't think about these things until the campaign begins.
Not one of your usual topics, but do you think the Roe v Wade debacle in the US will make the median (female at least) voter think twice about voting for National. Luxon can say all he likes about the law being settled but when you hold strong views that comes out when you have some power. We saw that baldly with those godawful Republican Supreme Court appointments.
Thanks Sonya. Hard to say without some surgical focus grouping and careful questioning. My view from previous polls is no. Most see the systems as different. And although they may not love Luxon's prevarications on it, those who have already dumped Labour in the heads are unlikely to change back because of it.
I wonder if you know of the work of Fred Harrison, a UK author of many books on land and other resource rent taxation as the most appropriate and just source of revenue instead of taxes on labour and produced capital. His first book was “The Power in the Land” in 1983. In many books and articles over almost 40 years he has very accurately predicted the timing of the major recessions years in advance. He researched the UK land market from its beginnings in the 1600s and found empirical evidence of an 18 year land cycle with a speculative boom in the second half ending in a bust and recession. Despite his accurate prediction record academic economics will not research his findings. Maybe they do not accept the concept of cycles or they do not like his prescription of land value tax to end speculation and stabilise the market.
He says that only severe international crises like world wars disrupt the timing of the cycle. Those who follow this cycle question whether the pandemic, land price boom and war in Ukraine have shortened the cycle. I will link an interview of Harrison in an April 2022 podcast by Moneyweek magazine. He says the 2026 peak of this cycle is still on track but if the war escalates to world war all bets are off.
An important point in this podcast is to distinguish a land value tax from a “wealth tax” because wealth can be earned income, whereas increase in land price is the community generated unearned income. I think those who have earned wealth have already paid tax on income and are justified in being opposed to a wealth tax.
A very recent interview of Harrison was done by Catherine Cashmore in her email newsletter “Cycles, Trends and Forecasts”. She is the founder and CEO of a property buyers agency in Melbourne and president of Prosper Australia, a small Geoist think tank which promotes land and resource rent taxation. It goes into more detail about why they think the land boom is not over and 2026 is still the peak for this cycle. I cannot link it as it is subscription only (well worth the $149).
I'm genuinely surprised by the number of women I know who dislike Ardern so much that they were enthusiastic about Luxon, will be interesting to see if he loses his shine a little
There is an actual phenomenon of women hating women leaders. I was always mystified by how hard my mother was on Helen Clark and held her to a much higher standard than any male politician. I see that being repeated against Ardern.
"Women continue to favour Labour/Greens while men firmly support National and Act NZ Support for the Labour/ Greens coalition is strongest amongst young women aged 18-49 at 55.5% compared to only 38% support for National/ Act NZ. However, for women aged 50+ support is at 50% for National/Act NZ and now ahead of Labour/Greens on 46.5%.
"There is a stark difference for men with 56.5% supporting National or Act NZ. In May 48% of men aged 18-49 supported National/ Act NZ compared to 43% that supported Labour/ Greens. For men aged 50+ there were 65.5% supporting National/ Act NZ compared to only 26% supporting Labour/ Greens.
"Support for the Greens is far higher amongst both younger women and younger men than their older counterparts. Over one-in-five women aged 18-49 (21%) and one-in-eight men aged 18-49 (12.5%) support the Greens compared to only 6% of women aged 50+ and just 5.5% of men aged 50+."
Do you think that we need to perhaps baseline house price growth with the rise of equities in the low interest rate environment that international markets have had since the 90's? While a lot of New Zealanders see house prices up 300% from some of your examples today, this is comparable to the S&P500 broadly, depending on where you start and stop at. And an investment in the S&P500 has a lot less rates, repairs, interests and ongoing costs than a house does. I've always thought a lot of the phobia New Zealanders have around stock in general traces back to Black Monday which scared a lot of the Boomer generation out of markets for life. Do you think that a price correction in housing my retip the scale somewhat when you can hold up what the gains would have been in a broad market index? Certainly far easier to exit in a hurry!
It's always, always about the leverage. Makes the comparisons pointless. Leveraged equity wins every time. Especially when prices only ever seem to ratchet up, and not down much.
Let’s preface my question with you don’t have to answer my family members conspiracy theory. She has been listening to voices for freedom and in particular Nichole Foss. She offers a fairly bleak picture of 90% reduction in house prices, while maintaining a straight face that is the govt is ramping up fear to control us. But I was trying to get a read on Nichole and saw she had been an contributor to interest.co.nz any overlap? Listening to her, the economic background is sound enough but jumps to conclusions a little too easily. Got a bit of end of days.
Will settle for a pat on the shoulder and to be told it will be alright.
If there's a 90% fall in house prices it will be because we have much bigger problems than a housing downturn. That's an apocalypse and societal collapse diagnosis. Or zombies. Not many real estate agents in 'The Walking Dead'.
Nicole was/is a peak oiler, and fracking caught her out the same as it caught everyone else. I really don't want to read voices for freedom so I don't know what she's saying now. There's a doomer sub media out there - I'd put Chris Martenson in it too - that feeds on dire predictions. In some specifics, they're not wrong! And there's always the broken clock phenomenon
Kia ora Bernard - thanks for all that you do, most appreciated. Re the disapperance of the 20 DHB's today, we're told that they have accumulated deficits of c $1.1 B, (due to consistent under funding) & that the new NZ Health Authority has to spend money extinguishing these debts. The DHB's are government agencies, as is the new Health Authority, so why is the new authority paying off their debts when all it takes is a journal entry in the governments accounts? (The government can't owe money to itself).
That's a great point. An accounting issue indeed. That money has been spent. It means the deficits in the last decade or so were slightly smaller as they were reported than was actually the case.
As abhorrent as I find Luxon’s views on abortion, I’d have far more respect for him if he stood by them. Is there research around the electoral impact of presenting yourself to the NZ public as a man willing to ignore what in your view is murder, in hopes of getting more votes?
Luxon has principles as noted by his earlier pronouncemnts:
Eliminate 39% tax rate (to facilitate the trickle-down effect on the poor)
Stop supporting “bottom feeders” (so they can go back to begging in the streets)
Stop subsidizing public transport and cancel the fuel tax (and spend the savings on more parking and new motorways through the city)
Eliminate Labour Day to enable Matariki day (he could have been one up on John Key flag failure by eliminating Queen Birthday which is closer to Matariki day)
Govt responsible inflation (but can’t identify more than about 2% of “wasted” expenditure in last 5 years) – Jack Tame 26/4/22
Address the “Persil Paty’s” diversification issue by considering only four white male candidates in Tauranga byelection!
Suggests referendum on use of the term Aotearoa to describe ANZ – possible backdown in light of potential kingmaker Te Pati Māori resistance. 8/5/22
Resorting to Dog Whistling politics by increased policing of Gangs (but not the gang members in the Ulysses Club) – despite having cut back on police budget when in power. 11/6/22 (during Tauranga byelection)
Flexibility is all that matters for a median-hugging part leader. The key is never to get out in front or behind the median. In a way, it's just a reflection of where the public already are. We blame the politicians a lot for what is actually just a mirror image.
It was an unfair question, because I was asking you to guess the effects of something specific to one politician in this one electoral cycle. But I disagree with you that flexibility will always be all that matters for a centrist. Luxon can’t reflect where we are on abortion, because we’re not in just one place. What he CAN do is show people he stands for something more than getting into power. Every now and then, not being an evasive smiling weasel does turn out to be something people value.
We're now clearly on the American-European side. We sent lethal weapons to Ukraine and we're training them on our little pop guns. The PM signed up to a joint statement with America that hammered China on Xinxiang, Hong Kong, South China Morning Sea and the Pacific. And we blocked Huawei. Game is well and truly over, although the public and NZ Inc have yet to really connect or believe it.
I always think of things to ask you during the week and then forget them as soon as I get this notification 😂 I think I need to start writing things down!
I'm here for a bit so come back when it pops back into your head. I'll watch through the afternoon.
Are you aware of any data/studies on NZ electricity rate projections over the next 10 years?
There's a bunch around. Climate Commission and Transpower have done a few. All a bit redundant because we don't know what Rio TInto and Meridian/Contact are going to agree about the smelter.
Add in Onslow, gas development, viability of demand response, price of renewables, take up of EVs and other electrification as well as asset management practices of distributors and you have a lot of uncertainty
I'd like the Govt to say no more cheap power or free ETS credits for Rio Tinto so we can have the power back to electrify NZ.
I'm pretty sure the ETS credits have gone. But Rio is coining it right now with high aluminium prices and 62c dollar. Could go on for ever. It will depend on how keen meridian/contact are to play hard ball. I expect Tiwai to keep going for many more years. Meridian and Contact won't want to dump the power on the market. There'll be a calculation where it makes sense to sell it cheap to Tiwai, rather than dump it and get lower prices for all its power
Which is why we need to renationalise our power supply, as the generators are too busy thinking about profits rather than what is good for the country.
Sorry if I missed you already covering this...but what does the new trade deal with the EU mean for us (kiwis) in terms of diversifying our export market? Is this trade volume expected to be large enough to make a difference if we begin to decrease reliance on exports to China?
Great question Ted. Not enough in the deal (only $600m a year extra for beef and dairy within 7 years). More work to do growing services exports and prying open the US, Canadian, Indian and Latin American markets.
The world is a hot mess right now and it's hard to feel any optimism right now about the "arc of history" (I'm still okay, I promise).
So with that in mind - what's the best ice cream flavour?
Mine is a toss-up between hokey pokey and goldrush.
Ha! Love your thinking. I like to mix it up. Boysenberry ripple and hokey pokey. Although neither work on my current keto diet....way too much sugar. Will have to look for something coconut-ty.
Rum and raisin and orange chocolate chip get my vote!
All this talk is very bad for my health... :)
Vanilla with clotted cream + 99 flake. Obviously.
Yum. My keto resolve is crumbling...
You had me at 99 flakes.
FTA with Europe, is it any good?
Not brilliant or as good as the UK one. Beef and dairy very unhappy. But kiwifruit, fish and honey very happy. PM made the 'captain's call' to go for the bird in the hand. Better than a kick in the teeth. But not nearly good enough if the Europeans and the Americans want us on their side in the clash with China.
Realistically though.. European agriculture has always been massively protected.. to get any concessions from 'Les Farmers' seems like a reasonable result?
I agree Russ, I'm surprised we got anything! National voting farmers were going to hate it regardless.
There is a better prospect this time. The EU has been whittling away at the subsidies and anything that reduces consumer price inflation would be good right now. But you're right about the bloody French. They bomb our harbour. Bully us into giving back the murderers. Lock out our dairy and meat. And then they have the temerity to beat the All Blacks!
Wiley move from the PM/MFAT: Recognising NZ's future in lower volumes of premium-priced 'Pure Green' beef & dairy - and their plant-based alternatives, rather than a mass market arm wrestle with Euro neighborhood suppliers.
The reference to Paris Agreement in the FTA itself would effectively kybosh any massive expansion of NZ beef production / export (& emissions!) volumes anyway.
Ardern has effectively 'sacrificed' nothing, for sizeable benefits elsewhere. I'm especially surprised at the very limited stipulations around Geographical Indications.
What do you think it would take (i.e. what major economic, cultural, or political shifts) for the electorate (and thus politicians) to FINALLY do something about the housing crisis?
Different parties led by different people with different policies, along with some sort of societal or economic crisis. So not much chance, I think. The median-voting homeowners just can't imagine life without the easy, leveraged and tax-free capital gains on residential land, plus low income taxes.
Any thoughts of actual risks to our dairy exports to China vs just statements and posturing from China? Do we have the same luxury as Aus with coal exports to China?
I agree, some of the alternative milks esp almond aren't great. Oat is one of the best though. I make my own and then use the 'bits' in Bircher muesli so it feels like I don't waste anything but it's probably different on a commercial scale. Oats grow well in Canterbury & Southland so we could replace some of those cows if the right incentives were in place.
I think we're in much greater jeopardy. Nobody needs to eat meat & dairy even if they really like it. Coal has become embedded in China's economy so is a lot harder to give up. I actually think our whole economy is at risk by our reliance on a handful of primary products. If the world goes vegan, we're screwed (said as the daughter of a dairy farmer who now drinks oat milk).
Thanks Sonya. It's not so much the coal. India can get that from anywhere, and has plenty of its own. The real reliance China has is on iron ore from Australia. It's the only producer of scale and convenience that China can buy from. They hate it. It's why the Australians are so confident thumbing their noses at China.
Hard to know. It's all a mystery behind the great fire wall. But China's consumers can live without milk powder. China's economy can't live without Australia's iron ore and it's the only major source of the stuff.
If only milk powder could be used to build motorways and apartment blocks we'd be sweet.
Do you think TOP have a shot at 5% next year? It feels like many more kiwis have woken up to how the tax system holds back any real progress. Are TOP the only party serious about reform.
I used to think like that too but which is a bigger waste? : Voting for no-change protect-status-quo Nat-Lab,; or giving support to parties that are proposing meaningful improvements? Even 4% would give hope to the most desperate
The ranked voting is a superb idea, but not Australia's version of it. Australia still divides up the country into electorates and is thus captured by a two party system, the recent election is a rare exception. Somebody here, a while ago, suggested we convert our party vote to a rank vote and that would be the best of both worlds. If you'd like to just tick the party you want to form government then we should allow the status quo. What New Zealand should add is the ability to rank any or all of their party vote preferences. This would move to a nearly complete proportionality of parliament, short of scrapping the threshold entirely. Scrapping the threshold has the problem of potentially creating some one person parties, which is the principal argument against it, but if the above isn't considered a lowering to the 4% recommend by the 86 royal commission would be a good start.
Maybe. The last couple of polls showed TOP nudging up towards 2%. We'll know in the first couple of weeks of the campaign. A lot of people don't think about these things until the campaign begins.
Not one of your usual topics, but do you think the Roe v Wade debacle in the US will make the median (female at least) voter think twice about voting for National. Luxon can say all he likes about the law being settled but when you hold strong views that comes out when you have some power. We saw that baldly with those godawful Republican Supreme Court appointments.
Thanks Sonya. Hard to say without some surgical focus grouping and careful questioning. My view from previous polls is no. Most see the systems as different. And although they may not love Luxon's prevarications on it, those who have already dumped Labour in the heads are unlikely to change back because of it.
It's gonna be squeaky bum material for Luxon on the live debates with Ardern/Robertson though!
I wonder if you know of the work of Fred Harrison, a UK author of many books on land and other resource rent taxation as the most appropriate and just source of revenue instead of taxes on labour and produced capital. His first book was “The Power in the Land” in 1983. In many books and articles over almost 40 years he has very accurately predicted the timing of the major recessions years in advance. He researched the UK land market from its beginnings in the 1600s and found empirical evidence of an 18 year land cycle with a speculative boom in the second half ending in a bust and recession. Despite his accurate prediction record academic economics will not research his findings. Maybe they do not accept the concept of cycles or they do not like his prescription of land value tax to end speculation and stabilise the market.
He says that only severe international crises like world wars disrupt the timing of the cycle. Those who follow this cycle question whether the pandemic, land price boom and war in Ukraine have shortened the cycle. I will link an interview of Harrison in an April 2022 podcast by Moneyweek magazine. He says the 2026 peak of this cycle is still on track but if the war escalates to world war all bets are off.
An important point in this podcast is to distinguish a land value tax from a “wealth tax” because wealth can be earned income, whereas increase in land price is the community generated unearned income. I think those who have earned wealth have already paid tax on income and are justified in being opposed to a wealth tax.
A very recent interview of Harrison was done by Catherine Cashmore in her email newsletter “Cycles, Trends and Forecasts”. She is the founder and CEO of a property buyers agency in Melbourne and president of Prosper Australia, a small Geoist think tank which promotes land and resource rent taxation. It goes into more detail about why they think the land boom is not over and 2026 is still the peak for this cycle. I cannot link it as it is subscription only (well worth the $149).
https://moneyweek.com/investments/property/house-prices/604717/fred-harrison-house-prices-will-peak-in-2026
Brilliant link. I'll have a listen over the weekend. Sounds like a good podcast interview for me to try to get too.
Has Luxon just lost a big chunk of female voters.. ? #AskChristopher
Did he even have female voters to begin with? Can’t lose what you don’t have
I'm genuinely surprised by the number of women I know who dislike Ardern so much that they were enthusiastic about Luxon, will be interesting to see if he loses his shine a little
There is an actual phenomenon of women hating women leaders. I was always mystified by how hard my mother was on Helen Clark and held her to a much higher standard than any male politician. I see that being repeated against Ardern.
Same thing happened, and even worse, with Julia Gillard.
FYI above on age. And remember the old vote at higher rates than the young.
Here's the latest Morgan poll breakdown on that issue.
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8974-nz-national-voting-intention-may-2022-202206070538
Here's Morgan on that. Depends on age a lot.
"Women continue to favour Labour/Greens while men firmly support National and Act NZ Support for the Labour/ Greens coalition is strongest amongst young women aged 18-49 at 55.5% compared to only 38% support for National/ Act NZ. However, for women aged 50+ support is at 50% for National/Act NZ and now ahead of Labour/Greens on 46.5%.
"There is a stark difference for men with 56.5% supporting National or Act NZ. In May 48% of men aged 18-49 supported National/ Act NZ compared to 43% that supported Labour/ Greens. For men aged 50+ there were 65.5% supporting National/ Act NZ compared to only 26% supporting Labour/ Greens.
"Support for the Greens is far higher amongst both younger women and younger men than their older counterparts. Over one-in-five women aged 18-49 (21%) and one-in-eight men aged 18-49 (12.5%) support the Greens compared to only 6% of women aged 50+ and just 5.5% of men aged 50+."
Hard to know without surgical focus grouping and careful questioning. His prevarications may have limited the damage.
Do you think that we need to perhaps baseline house price growth with the rise of equities in the low interest rate environment that international markets have had since the 90's? While a lot of New Zealanders see house prices up 300% from some of your examples today, this is comparable to the S&P500 broadly, depending on where you start and stop at. And an investment in the S&P500 has a lot less rates, repairs, interests and ongoing costs than a house does. I've always thought a lot of the phobia New Zealanders have around stock in general traces back to Black Monday which scared a lot of the Boomer generation out of markets for life. Do you think that a price correction in housing my retip the scale somewhat when you can hold up what the gains would have been in a broad market index? Certainly far easier to exit in a hurry!
It's always, always about the leverage. Makes the comparisons pointless. Leveraged equity wins every time. Especially when prices only ever seem to ratchet up, and not down much.
Let’s preface my question with you don’t have to answer my family members conspiracy theory. She has been listening to voices for freedom and in particular Nichole Foss. She offers a fairly bleak picture of 90% reduction in house prices, while maintaining a straight face that is the govt is ramping up fear to control us. But I was trying to get a read on Nichole and saw she had been an contributor to interest.co.nz any overlap? Listening to her, the economic background is sound enough but jumps to conclusions a little too easily. Got a bit of end of days.
Will settle for a pat on the shoulder and to be told it will be alright.
If there's a 90% fall in house prices it will be because we have much bigger problems than a housing downturn. That's an apocalypse and societal collapse diagnosis. Or zombies. Not many real estate agents in 'The Walking Dead'.
Nicole was/is a peak oiler, and fracking caught her out the same as it caught everyone else. I really don't want to read voices for freedom so I don't know what she's saying now. There's a doomer sub media out there - I'd put Chris Martenson in it too - that feeds on dire predictions. In some specifics, they're not wrong! And there's always the broken clock phenomenon
Kia ora Bernard - thanks for all that you do, most appreciated. Re the disapperance of the 20 DHB's today, we're told that they have accumulated deficits of c $1.1 B, (due to consistent under funding) & that the new NZ Health Authority has to spend money extinguishing these debts. The DHB's are government agencies, as is the new Health Authority, so why is the new authority paying off their debts when all it takes is a journal entry in the governments accounts? (The government can't owe money to itself).
That's a great point. An accounting issue indeed. That money has been spent. It means the deficits in the last decade or so were slightly smaller as they were reported than was actually the case.
As abhorrent as I find Luxon’s views on abortion, I’d have far more respect for him if he stood by them. Is there research around the electoral impact of presenting yourself to the NZ public as a man willing to ignore what in your view is murder, in hopes of getting more votes?
I agree Leaflemming, it makes him look like he has no principles.
Luxon has principles as noted by his earlier pronouncemnts:
Eliminate 39% tax rate (to facilitate the trickle-down effect on the poor)
Stop supporting “bottom feeders” (so they can go back to begging in the streets)
Stop subsidizing public transport and cancel the fuel tax (and spend the savings on more parking and new motorways through the city)
Eliminate Labour Day to enable Matariki day (he could have been one up on John Key flag failure by eliminating Queen Birthday which is closer to Matariki day)
Govt responsible inflation (but can’t identify more than about 2% of “wasted” expenditure in last 5 years) – Jack Tame 26/4/22
Address the “Persil Paty’s” diversification issue by considering only four white male candidates in Tauranga byelection!
Suggests referendum on use of the term Aotearoa to describe ANZ – possible backdown in light of potential kingmaker Te Pati Māori resistance. 8/5/22
Resorting to Dog Whistling politics by increased policing of Gangs (but not the gang members in the Ulysses Club) – despite having cut back on police budget when in power. 11/6/22 (during Tauranga byelection)
Flexibility is all that matters for a median-hugging part leader. The key is never to get out in front or behind the median. In a way, it's just a reflection of where the public already are. We blame the politicians a lot for what is actually just a mirror image.
It was an unfair question, because I was asking you to guess the effects of something specific to one politician in this one electoral cycle. But I disagree with you that flexibility will always be all that matters for a centrist. Luxon can’t reflect where we are on abortion, because we’re not in just one place. What he CAN do is show people he stands for something more than getting into power. Every now and then, not being an evasive smiling weasel does turn out to be something people value.
I thought Jacinda made it clear NZ is not on anyone's side until all the great powers get rid of their veto power in the UN Security council.
We're now clearly on the American-European side. We sent lethal weapons to Ukraine and we're training them on our little pop guns. The PM signed up to a joint statement with America that hammered China on Xinxiang, Hong Kong, South China Morning Sea and the Pacific. And we blocked Huawei. Game is well and truly over, although the public and NZ Inc have yet to really connect or believe it.