PM Christopher Luxon escapes being caught by 5 year ‘brightline’ capital gains tax after rule changed back to 2 years, & after delay in apartment sale for renovations at the apartment & Premier House
When the PM structures its finances on tax avoidance, you know where his principles are… "I’m sorted… fuc* everyone else". As you said 1000 times Bernard... it is a housing market with bits attached.
I romanticise the idea of a “general strike,” but I now think a “rent strike” for six months would be more effective. All landlords could not cope with mass evictions at once, and banks couldn’t cope with a flood of unserviced mortgages at once.
I know it is fantasy, but I needed some hope before 7.30 am.
People just can’t risk losing their homes though - it’s a nice idea but exactly why the housing market, landlords have everyone over a barrel, because you can’t just choose to not live somewhere, like you could actively avoid paying over the odds for a crap coffee
Interesting idea. You could frame it as renters claiming back the unpaid capital gains tax as a type of ‘peoples rent rebate.’ People could calculate the value of 0.5% of the land under the home and not pay rent to that extent. Eg 0.5% on a rental with land value of $500,000 equals $2,500 a year or five week’s rent at $500 a year. One way to publicise the idea of a land tax.
A good fantasy, but like withholding rates it will most likely become a debt people carry for long after the strike ends - and long after they are evicted.
Luxon has come to personify all the problems with our tax system and housing. Leaving a gap for solutions we’d eagerly anticipate someone anyone such as I don’t know ahem Chippy filling
Yesterday’s message from Luxon was unequivocal. If you work for a living (being PM) you pay tax. If your earnings are from capital gains you don’t pay tax. Your friends in Wellington will ensure it stays that way even though it’s so obviously unjust. Don’t sell off more government assets. They belong to the people of New Zealand. In private hands they just become cash cows for large investment firms, probably owned overseas. Our government is the only institution in New Zealand with the resources to build and maintain the big stuff - like hospitals.
Yesterday my GP said that even general GP services are starting to be privately owned as government appears to prefer to help tobacco companies than struggling health and sickness providers.
We can't afford beds for mental health care but seem to always find one in prison. It feels as if we're being herded along a really nightmare alley.
GP practices have mostly been privately owned, normally by the doctors working in them. What has started to change is that as GPs retire they are selling the practice to the highest bidder which is normally a corporate such as Tamaki Health, Green Cross, or Tend.
All with a profit maximisation rather than a health-as-a-service motive.
My GP practice is a large community practice in a non-wealthy area where fees are kept low and the extent of govt support is essential. I know what you are saying about the corporations. They make access impossible.
Yes, the government is the only enterprise big enough to not only fund - but organise - large scale infrastructure projects. This has been true throughout our post 1840 history. Anything of any real strategic, economic, social or infrastructure value - schools, hospitals, roads, 3 Waters, the railways, power generation, large scale irrigation - you name it - has been organized, funded and most often directly built by the people of NZ through their central, provincial and local governments - penny-pinching and short-sighted though they often were. This is because business in NZ has never been big enough to do it, nor has it had the interest or the long-term commitment to take the inevitable losses to step into that role - and you could argue, why should they have? There was and is, little to no private profit in the building of the commonwealth of a country - unless you were literally a bricks-and-mortar man.
Now it is built and paid for however, now we have all those clever, new financialised global tools, well, well, well. Time for Daddy to grab a slice o' the action. Preferably with a healthy tax incentive. But it's going to be OK. They are only after the profit-extraction bit you understand. The losses, the bill for upkeep, clean-up, and rebuilding after they walk away from the inevitable hollowed-out, shambling heap they create? That bit? That will still reside with us.
I invested some money, not much, into a fund that is building quality low-cost rental housing. I will pay tax on any income from that investment, and that is fine. How is that different to buying a place, rinsing tenants, and pocketing tax free capital gain?
It does seem bizarre that a prime ministger would advocate doing something that is clearly unjust just because it's not illegal. I suppose he'd have no qualms about jumping the queue for an organ replacement.
Our dear leader has been reported as saying that a capital gains tax (referring to property) would disincentivise wealth generation. If the intention in buying property is to make tax free capital gain, then surely that makes it taxable under the IRD Intention rule. He could be however, recommending the property seller is dishonest in declaring their intentions.
As somebody who spent years as a local body politician it saddens me to read this so untrue chant. We are cursed by a government which seems too often to leave ethics at the door, but we must always remember that most people enter politics to make it a better place. Too often power, and the trappings which go with it, carry them away. That's where the saying by Voltaire cuts in "the price of democracy is eternal vigilance"
Agree we must continue to expect that our politicians will behave in proper ways, and when / if they stray or work to deceive us will be held to account.
If the political system is unable or unwilling to call-out unethical practices by some politicians and hold them to account - then we have a problem.
“A spokesman for the Prime Minister said, “the management of the Luxons’ properties are private matters which are unrelated to Mr Luxon’s capacity as Prime Minister”.”
Members of Parliament are required to list their financial interests. This is to ensure conflicts of interest are managed, theoretically promoting transparency, openness and accountability. It’s identical to why campaign contributions to both parties and individuals are recorded. It’s about “following the money”.
So when changes to tax laws occur that impact on financial benefits to a member of government, it’s not a private matter. It’s actually in the public interest.
We should require the mp’s registery to not only record asset ownership and financial interests. We should require it to also list who is beneficially impacted (positively and negatively) by policy changes.
Making mp’s responsible for recording and publicly affirming those outcomes would help cast better clarity on their voting records.
All MPs should be required to state whether they have private medical insurance. They vote on health spend but unlikely to suffer the wait at public health centre's.
Yep - softening the health system up for privatisation...I think you called it here first Bernard. Perhaps we could get the cancer wing sponsored by Phillip Morris? You know, as return on investment?
This is from Democracy Project by Bryce Edwards, published yesterday. Is this a fair and correct representation? Did Arden also time her property sale to avoid tax? Genuinely interested to know!
"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has just sold two of his houses, reportedly making a capital gain of $460,000. It follows on from Jacinda Ardern also selling her house while in office, making a gain of $333,000 after owning her Pt Chevalier property for just two years. Neither of them has had to pay any tax on their windfalls."
Thanks! Of course. I understand the "family home" exemption is to ensure people selling their house have enough to buy another house in the same market.
#4 in Solutions news: Embracing ‘balkonkraftwerk’ is yet another example of blind hopium with renewable energy. Despite spending somewhere between €500 – 1000 billion adding renewable capacity in Germany, it has resulted in only a minimal reduction in the amount of conventional energy used. Wind and solar are now 55% of capacity but only 28% of electricity consumption and in 2023 of primary energy consumption 88.2% was fossil, 7.5% wind and solar So that eye watering amount of money and a few percent change in fossil input. The only declines are in consumption not fossil displacement.
Now think about all the materials for the renewable the mining the production ...
Forget supply side its demand side where we need to make change
'1News looked in depth at the issue of drug overdoses in a piece published online last night and based on the The Drug Foundation’s Drug Overdoses in Aotearoa 2024 report. It turns out Māori are twice as likely to die from an accidental drug overdose than non-Maori and are twice as likely to end up in hospital with drug poisoning.'
I wonder if this simply panders to the Māori grievance industry.
Why does the Drug Foundation (and 1News) break down mortality figures into Māori and non-Māori?
It doesn't give a breakdown into income and wealth groups. If it did, we might find that many or most people who die from drug overdoses are in the bottom income decile, the bottom wealth decile, the bottom housing decile. Those people may disproportionately whakapapa Māori to a greater or lesser extent. But what we might infer is that drug use and drug deaths are associated with poverty, and Māoriness is incidental. The answer, then, would be to lift all people from poverty, regardless of ethnicity.
Can you please explain "the Māori grievance industry"? It reads as a broad pejorative generalisation to me. As Sarah says, 'racism is not exempted in the "why"'. There is sufficient evidence of institutional racism in Aotearoa e.g. Wai2575 for that to be a key factor contributing to poverty.
Yes, to say 'the Māori grievance industry' is a broad generalisation. It is pejorative only if you choose to see it as such. There seems to me to be a tendency to impose an ethnicity stamp on problems that are essentially problems of poverty and lifestyle; in short, a resolve to find a racism angle, as in the expression 'racism is not exempted in the "why"'.
Here's one example:
'Access to a GP can make all the difference in surviving lung cancer – and that is a problem for Māori'
The story could have been about the lack of access in New Zealand to GPs; about how health care ought for all of us to be free, accessible, timely, and comprehensive. But perhaps that wouldn't grab headlines, so instead we add 'and that is a problem for Māori' and the story becomes not about the general failing of New Zealand's health system, but specifically how it is perceived to be failing Māori.
'New research finds ethnicity plays key role in dementia'.
The headline is mischievous. The sentence below it makes it plain what the story is really saying: 'New research on dementia shows economic disadvantage plays a key role in the likelihood of contracting the disease.'
Journalism in New Zealand increasingly seems corrupted by the determination to make every social problem a problem of ethnicity.
The real struggle in New Zealand, as always but now more than ever, is the struggle of the poor to rise from poverty. But economic inequality has become an unfashionable way of analysing the ills of society: the way to get attention is to insinuate ethnicity into the argument. That's what I call 'the Māori grievance industry'.
Contrary to what the headline wants readers to believe, the report says quite bluntly that:
'Our current NZ research demonstrates an association between social disadvantage and dementia. We have shown that the risk of developing dementia is 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas of NZ compared to those in the least deprived areas. We have also shown that higher rates of risk factors for dementia are associated with increasing social disadvantage, regardless of ethnicity. Māori and Pacific peoples are overrepresented in the more disadvantaged areas of NZ society, with over 40% living in areas of high deprivation. These findings indicate that the higher risk and rates of dementia in Māori and Pacific peoples are not due to ethnicity per se but their overrepresentation in areas of high social disadvantage and poverty.'
That statement exposes the deception of the headline 'New research finds ethnicity plays key role in dementia'.
Here’s a summary: “ For those professionals at the frontline of policy development, service commissioning and monitoring, the prevailing problem is the opposite: a mountain of robust analysis demonstrating higher Māori health need, and a trickle of initiatives to specifically target this need.4 The very presence of continued inequity for Māori in life expectancy,5 exposure to risk factors,6 access to care6–8 and health outcomes7,8 is evidence that measures to date have not been adequate to meet Māori need. Inequities in health need, access and outcomes persist for Māori at all levels of socio-economic deprivation and rurality.“
“In requesting that other variables be considered before ethnicity, the Government erroneously singles out ethnicity to require a higher standard of proof than allocations based on any other population risk characteristic (e.g., rurality, sex or age). Comprehensive, consistent and long-standing evidence demonstrates that ethnicity is a stronger marker of need than other commonly accessible variables such as rurality and the New Zealand Index of Deprivation (NZDep).6,9,10,11 Our most widespread marker for socio-economic deprivation, NZDep, does not assess individual characteristics, but is based on a collective neighbourhood score.12 By using age-based criteria alone, and ignoring that Māori have a younger population age structure, the bowel cancer screening programme failed to recognise that over half of Māori cancers occurred before the screening threshold of 60 years.13 Suggesting that these “colour-blind” variables may be better proxies for health need than ethnicity is blatantly untrue and misleading, and encourages weak analytical science and will likely lead to greater waste of public resources due to less effective targeting of resources towards groups with highest need. Racism distributes the determinants of health along ethnic lines and impacts health directly,14,15 so until racism is eliminated, ethnicity will be a valid marker of need.“
Bernard, thank you for pointing me to an accessible version of the NZ Medical Journal editorial. I’m wishing I had never written my initial comment. However, I think I am not alone in my belief that the current fashion for interpreting New Zealand’s social ills in terms of Māori versus non-Māori divides us into ‘us and them’ silos that hinder the struggle for economic fairness. So, in for penny, in for a pound:
The writers of the NZMJ editorial get off to a polemical start:
‘Last week, Cabinet released a circular to government organisations, giving effect to the coalition Government agreement commitment to “issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government’s expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race.” The term “race” originates from a long-discredited presumption of a biological hierarchy of human beings from white to black, and for decades the New Zealand health system has instead used ethnicity. This return to discredited terminology suggests that the foundations of white superiority are still alive and well in New Zealand today.’
This is not an academic or medical argument; it is a sneer. Will someone please explain to these writers that fashion in words changes: the word 'Negro' proudly used by James Baldwin was displaced by 'Black' a decade later, and 'Afro-American' a decade after that; in Australia Aborigine became Aboriginal became Indigenous became First Nations.
The editorialists, though they disparage the term ‘race’ are happy to call others racist:
‘Suggesting that these “colour-blind” variables may be better proxies for health need than ethnicity is blatantly untrue and misleading, and encourages weak analytical science and will likely lead to greater waste of public resources due to less effective targeting of resources towards groups with highest need. Racism distributes the determinants of health along ethnic lines and impacts health directly, so until racism is eliminated, ethnicity will be a valid marker of need.’
I think I get it: the good guys are ‘ethnicists’, the bad guys ‘racists’.
This long editorial argues (in its ethnicist but non-racist way) that the Government is wrong to base health care outreach on need alone; that it must also direct health care specifically to Māori because they are Māori:
Editorial writer Belinda Loring put it this way to The Press: “Most women don’t get breast cancer. But at a population level, their higher risk of getting the disease means we fund breast cancer screening for all women. So to use the objection that not all Māori have high health needs is not a scientifically justified objection to population targeting.”
But hang on. The thing about women is that they are women, 100%. You just don't come across a woman who is 50% a woman, or 25% a woman, or 1/16th a woman depending on her whakapapa. So you can save a lot of time, money, and resources by focusing your breast cancer screening on people who claim to be women.
The editorial twice mentions ‘socio-economic deprivation’ but does not once use the words ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’. It has this in common with the Government, but for different reasons. The Government wants to talk about ‘need’ without mentioning poverty, because to acknowledge poverty would lead to questions about the entire direction of government. The editorial writers don’t mention poverty because they want health care to be dispensed on the basis of ethnicity. To link poor health to simply being poor might lead to the conclusion that perhaps health inequity is the consequence of living in a capitalist society, that poor health affects people who are poor, that it is not about Māori versus non-Māori, not about ethnicity at all.
And where would that leave the editorial writers? This brings me back to that reviled phrase ‘the Māori grievance industry’. The published profiles of the editorial’s writers suggest they all have ‘skin in the game’:
*The principal writer, Belinda Loring, is described in her Auckland University profile as 'a non-Māori specialist public health physician, with >15 years’ experience working on health equity and health policy at local, national and international level', and now 'Senior Research Fellow Te Kupenga Hauora Māori'. 'In Aotearoa, she has supported Māori health equity work at Te Aka Whai Ora and the Ministry of Health, as well as equity initiatives at DHBs and public health units.'
*Papaarangi Reid is Tumuaki and Head of Department of Māori Health at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. She has tribal affiliations to Te Rarawa in the Far North of Aotearoa and her research interests include analysing disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens as a means of monitoring government commitment to indigenous rights.
*Elana Taipapaki Curtis (Ngāti Rongomai, Ngāti Pikiao, Te Arawa) is a Public Health Physician, Associate Professor at Te Kupenga Hauora Māori, University of Auckland.
*Melissa McLeod (Ngāi Tahu) is a public health physician and Associate Professor working at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare, University of Otago, Wellington. Melissa's research interests include Māori health, epidemiology and the investigation and elimination of ethnic health inequalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
*Ricci Harris (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Raukawa) is a public health physician and Kaupapa Māori epidemiologist at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare. Her research is primarily concerned with upholding Māori rights to health and health equity as ensured by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and in-line with International Indigenous Rights. She draws on Kaupapa Māori Research theory to undertake and develop decolonial approaches to epidemiology that centre Māori and are contextualised within systems of ongoing racism and colonialism. This has included research into the classification of ethnicity, ethnic disparities in health status and receipt of health services, and the impact of racism on Māori health and inequities.
*Rhys Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a Public Health Physician and Associate Professor in Te Kupenga Hauora Māori (TKHM). As Co-Director of Teaching in TKHM, he contributes to oversight of Māori Health teaching, learning and assessment in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. Rhys’s research broadly addresses Indigenous health and health equity. In 2005-06, he was a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy based at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, examining interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health care using organisational case studies. He has a particular interest in environmental influences on Māori health and wellbeing, with a focus on climate justice and Indigenous rights. His research also examines the role of health professional education in advancing Indigenous health and equity, and he was Principal Investigator of the international research project, Educating for Equity.
PPP’s let’s make health profitable for the shareholders. Not the people.Harvard business school ( Dr Cigaretti). Watch Lester Levy very carefully. By the way I am also “sorted” but have a social conscience and a spine. The Worst and most expensive health system is in the US only if you have health insurance cover. Have a look at “the resident” on netflix. I could only manage three episodes before becoming despondent and unable to continue watching and I once was a resident! Off to protest against Sea bed mining in Patea. Likely to get wet!
Yay! Privatised hospitals with a gimlet eye on their bottom line. I can picture it now - the medical team at the foot of your bed, clipboards in hand, followed closely by the Upsell Team, looking to sign you up for some pricey cosmetic surgery while you're just laying around not doing much.
Does Luxon-the-Sorted have any idea how repulsive his attitude is? If ever we needed an out there advertisement for how desperately NZ needs the Maori half of our culture, he provides it. Untouched by anything other than money like a bad Greek myth.
Agree. I checked back on his maiden speech where he spoke of his Christianity. He didn’t mention Jesus being someone who worked hard to get wealthy and sorted. Yp, Hamersley, very messed up.
A person’s beliefs can say a lot about what motivates them but appears to be impolite to speak of it. Strange.
When the PM structures its finances on tax avoidance, you know where his principles are… "I’m sorted… fuc* everyone else". As you said 1000 times Bernard... it is a housing market with bits attached.
I romanticise the idea of a “general strike,” but I now think a “rent strike” for six months would be more effective. All landlords could not cope with mass evictions at once, and banks couldn’t cope with a flood of unserviced mortgages at once.
I know it is fantasy, but I needed some hope before 7.30 am.
People just can’t risk losing their homes though - it’s a nice idea but exactly why the housing market, landlords have everyone over a barrel, because you can’t just choose to not live somewhere, like you could actively avoid paying over the odds for a crap coffee
Interesting idea. You could frame it as renters claiming back the unpaid capital gains tax as a type of ‘peoples rent rebate.’ People could calculate the value of 0.5% of the land under the home and not pay rent to that extent. Eg 0.5% on a rental with land value of $500,000 equals $2,500 a year or five week’s rent at $500 a year. One way to publicise the idea of a land tax.
A good fantasy, but like withholding rates it will most likely become a debt people carry for long after the strike ends - and long after they are evicted.
Luxon has come to personify all the problems with our tax system and housing. Leaving a gap for solutions we’d eagerly anticipate someone anyone such as I don’t know ahem Chippy filling
Chloe?
Yes Chloe definitely but if Labor had another go. I feel like that would do it, the time has surely come
Yesterday’s message from Luxon was unequivocal. If you work for a living (being PM) you pay tax. If your earnings are from capital gains you don’t pay tax. Your friends in Wellington will ensure it stays that way even though it’s so obviously unjust. Don’t sell off more government assets. They belong to the people of New Zealand. In private hands they just become cash cows for large investment firms, probably owned overseas. Our government is the only institution in New Zealand with the resources to build and maintain the big stuff - like hospitals.
Yesterday my GP said that even general GP services are starting to be privately owned as government appears to prefer to help tobacco companies than struggling health and sickness providers.
We can't afford beds for mental health care but seem to always find one in prison. It feels as if we're being herded along a really nightmare alley.
GP practices have mostly been privately owned, normally by the doctors working in them. What has started to change is that as GPs retire they are selling the practice to the highest bidder which is normally a corporate such as Tamaki Health, Green Cross, or Tend.
All with a profit maximisation rather than a health-as-a-service motive.
My GP practice is a large community practice in a non-wealthy area where fees are kept low and the extent of govt support is essential. I know what you are saying about the corporations. They make access impossible.
If you annualise Luxon's profit, you'll find it is at least equal to the average NZ salary. So, a second salary, tax-free.
Nice ‘work’ if you can get it!
Yes, the government is the only enterprise big enough to not only fund - but organise - large scale infrastructure projects. This has been true throughout our post 1840 history. Anything of any real strategic, economic, social or infrastructure value - schools, hospitals, roads, 3 Waters, the railways, power generation, large scale irrigation - you name it - has been organized, funded and most often directly built by the people of NZ through their central, provincial and local governments - penny-pinching and short-sighted though they often were. This is because business in NZ has never been big enough to do it, nor has it had the interest or the long-term commitment to take the inevitable losses to step into that role - and you could argue, why should they have? There was and is, little to no private profit in the building of the commonwealth of a country - unless you were literally a bricks-and-mortar man.
Now it is built and paid for however, now we have all those clever, new financialised global tools, well, well, well. Time for Daddy to grab a slice o' the action. Preferably with a healthy tax incentive. But it's going to be OK. They are only after the profit-extraction bit you understand. The losses, the bill for upkeep, clean-up, and rebuilding after they walk away from the inevitable hollowed-out, shambling heap they create? That bit? That will still reside with us.
I invested some money, not much, into a fund that is building quality low-cost rental housing. I will pay tax on any income from that investment, and that is fine. How is that different to buying a place, rinsing tenants, and pocketing tax free capital gain?
It does seem bizarre that a prime ministger would advocate doing something that is clearly unjust just because it's not illegal. I suppose he'd have no qualms about jumping the queue for an organ replacement.
Our dear leader has been reported as saying that a capital gains tax (referring to property) would disincentivise wealth generation. If the intention in buying property is to make tax free capital gain, then surely that makes it taxable under the IRD Intention rule. He could be however, recommending the property seller is dishonest in declaring their intentions.
I think being a politician means that lying is an occupational hazard.
As somebody who spent years as a local body politician it saddens me to read this so untrue chant. We are cursed by a government which seems too often to leave ethics at the door, but we must always remember that most people enter politics to make it a better place. Too often power, and the trappings which go with it, carry them away. That's where the saying by Voltaire cuts in "the price of democracy is eternal vigilance"
Agree we must continue to expect that our politicians will behave in proper ways, and when / if they stray or work to deceive us will be held to account.
If the political system is unable or unwilling to call-out unethical practices by some politicians and hold them to account - then we have a problem.
He meant, specifically, his wealth generation
but he (his capital gain/income) is not generating wealth
Great little Pūtangitangi cameo at the end there 🙂
They love wandering around near where we live. Makes me smile every time I see them. Even more when they fly together.
This is simplistic and not completely true.
“A spokesman for the Prime Minister said, “the management of the Luxons’ properties are private matters which are unrelated to Mr Luxon’s capacity as Prime Minister”.”
Members of Parliament are required to list their financial interests. This is to ensure conflicts of interest are managed, theoretically promoting transparency, openness and accountability. It’s identical to why campaign contributions to both parties and individuals are recorded. It’s about “following the money”.
So when changes to tax laws occur that impact on financial benefits to a member of government, it’s not a private matter. It’s actually in the public interest.
We should require the mp’s registery to not only record asset ownership and financial interests. We should require it to also list who is beneficially impacted (positively and negatively) by policy changes.
Making mp’s responsible for recording and publicly affirming those outcomes would help cast better clarity on their voting records.
All MPs should be required to state whether they have private medical insurance. They vote on health spend but unlikely to suffer the wait at public health centre's.
Health insurance, seems some of them have interests in health providers.
Very interesting point.
Private ownership model for Health NZ. Who would have thought?
Yep - softening the health system up for privatisation...I think you called it here first Bernard. Perhaps we could get the cancer wing sponsored by Phillip Morris? You know, as return on investment?
I'm not an expert at interpreting x-rays, but it also looked like most of the spine was missing too.
This is from Democracy Project by Bryce Edwards, published yesterday. Is this a fair and correct representation? Did Arden also time her property sale to avoid tax? Genuinely interested to know!
"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has just sold two of his houses, reportedly making a capital gain of $460,000. It follows on from Jacinda Ardern also selling her house while in office, making a gain of $333,000 after owning her Pt Chevalier property for just two years. Neither of them has had to pay any tax on their windfalls."
I think the difference it was her family home when she sold to buy in Mt Albert when she won the by election.
When David Shearer resigned to take up the UN post
Thanks! Of course. I understand the "family home" exemption is to ensure people selling their house have enough to buy another house in the same market.
Something made me feel uncomfortable about the way Edwards spun that one.
Yes, we should hold all politicians up to the light and interrogate their motives and actions, but Ardern and Luxon are not the same animal.
Jacinda Ardern sold family home which would be exempt if CGT was introduced. Compare like with like.
It’s one reason why I prefer a simple and boad-based annual land tax/levy on all residential-zoned land.
Am I misunderstanding the proposal Bernard?
On top of rates? Many with only one family home and/or low incomes would be forced to find somewhere else to live.
But while on the subject - how does one distinguish between their $7 million dollar family home and their $7 million family bach?
#4 in Solutions news: Embracing ‘balkonkraftwerk’ is yet another example of blind hopium with renewable energy. Despite spending somewhere between €500 – 1000 billion adding renewable capacity in Germany, it has resulted in only a minimal reduction in the amount of conventional energy used. Wind and solar are now 55% of capacity but only 28% of electricity consumption and in 2023 of primary energy consumption 88.2% was fossil, 7.5% wind and solar So that eye watering amount of money and a few percent change in fossil input. The only declines are in consumption not fossil displacement.
Now think about all the materials for the renewable the mining the production ...
Forget supply side its demand side where we need to make change
Yes!!!
Demanding less resources, is the natural choice - or at least it should be.
Absolutely!
Suggestions for reducing demand-side in a way that also reduces emissions one for one?
'1News looked in depth at the issue of drug overdoses in a piece published online last night and based on the The Drug Foundation’s Drug Overdoses in Aotearoa 2024 report. It turns out Māori are twice as likely to die from an accidental drug overdose than non-Maori and are twice as likely to end up in hospital with drug poisoning.'
I wonder if this simply panders to the Māori grievance industry.
Why does the Drug Foundation (and 1News) break down mortality figures into Māori and non-Māori?
It doesn't give a breakdown into income and wealth groups. If it did, we might find that many or most people who die from drug overdoses are in the bottom income decile, the bottom wealth decile, the bottom housing decile. Those people may disproportionately whakapapa Māori to a greater or lesser extent. But what we might infer is that drug use and drug deaths are associated with poverty, and Māoriness is incidental. The answer, then, would be to lift all people from poverty, regardless of ethnicity.
Māori Pasifika are disproportionately represented in the "bottom housing decile" and "bottom income decile".
If course it's a poverty problem. But rascism is not exempted in the "why".
Can you please explain "the Māori grievance industry"? It reads as a broad pejorative generalisation to me. As Sarah says, 'racism is not exempted in the "why"'. There is sufficient evidence of institutional racism in Aotearoa e.g. Wai2575 for that to be a key factor contributing to poverty.
Yes, to say 'the Māori grievance industry' is a broad generalisation. It is pejorative only if you choose to see it as such. There seems to me to be a tendency to impose an ethnicity stamp on problems that are essentially problems of poverty and lifestyle; in short, a resolve to find a racism angle, as in the expression 'racism is not exempted in the "why"'.
Here's one example:
'Access to a GP can make all the difference in surviving lung cancer – and that is a problem for Māori'
https://theconversation.com/access-to-a-gp-can-make-all-the-difference-in-surviving-lung-cancer-and-that-is-a-problem-for-maori-239808
The story could have been about the lack of access in New Zealand to GPs; about how health care ought for all of us to be free, accessible, timely, and comprehensive. But perhaps that wouldn't grab headlines, so instead we add 'and that is a problem for Māori' and the story becomes not about the general failing of New Zealand's health system, but specifically how it is perceived to be failing Māori.
Here's another one:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018954373/new-research-finds-ethnicity-plays-key-role-in-dementia
'New research finds ethnicity plays key role in dementia'.
The headline is mischievous. The sentence below it makes it plain what the story is really saying: 'New research on dementia shows economic disadvantage plays a key role in the likelihood of contracting the disease.'
Journalism in New Zealand increasingly seems corrupted by the determination to make every social problem a problem of ethnicity.
The real struggle in New Zealand, as always but now more than ever, is the struggle of the poor to rise from poverty. But economic inequality has become an unfashionable way of analysing the ills of society: the way to get attention is to insinuate ethnicity into the argument. That's what I call 'the Māori grievance industry'.
Contrary to what the headline wants readers to believe, the report says quite bluntly that:
'Our current NZ research demonstrates an association between social disadvantage and dementia. We have shown that the risk of developing dementia is 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas of NZ compared to those in the least deprived areas. We have also shown that higher rates of risk factors for dementia are associated with increasing social disadvantage, regardless of ethnicity. Māori and Pacific peoples are overrepresented in the more disadvantaged areas of NZ society, with over 40% living in areas of high deprivation. These findings indicate that the higher risk and rates of dementia in Māori and Pacific peoples are not due to ethnicity per se but their overrepresentation in areas of high social disadvantage and poverty.'
That statement exposes the deception of the headline 'New research finds ethnicity plays key role in dementia'.
It seems you are commenting on mainstream media using shock jock /click bait tactics. Perhaps stick with that.
"Māori grievance industry" is a derogatory and unhelpful term that smacks of victim blaming.
I note that you ignore the examples I give of what I see as the real clickbait words, and proceed to the ad hominem putdown.
It is only my intention to "put down" your use of the term "Māori grievance industry", not put you down. I apologise for not making that clearer.
Media use exploitative tactics to garner attention - that, for me, is the issue to focus on.
I agree with you, I think, that misusing data and or exploiting peoples in order to sell news is harmful - on many levels.
I have no objection if you are using your term "Māori grievance industry" ironically.
I'm just not sure that you are?
So on that matter, I simply see things differently to you, I think?
Hi John. Here’s an editorial from last week’s NZ Medical Journal from doctors and health academics on the issue. It’s free to subscribe. Just an email address. https://nzmj.org.nz/journal/vol-137-no-1603/ethnicity-is-an-evidence-based-marker-of-need-and-targeting-services-is-good-medical-practice
Here’s a summary: “ For those professionals at the frontline of policy development, service commissioning and monitoring, the prevailing problem is the opposite: a mountain of robust analysis demonstrating higher Māori health need, and a trickle of initiatives to specifically target this need.4 The very presence of continued inequity for Māori in life expectancy,5 exposure to risk factors,6 access to care6–8 and health outcomes7,8 is evidence that measures to date have not been adequate to meet Māori need. Inequities in health need, access and outcomes persist for Māori at all levels of socio-economic deprivation and rurality.“
And a bit more:
“In requesting that other variables be considered before ethnicity, the Government erroneously singles out ethnicity to require a higher standard of proof than allocations based on any other population risk characteristic (e.g., rurality, sex or age). Comprehensive, consistent and long-standing evidence demonstrates that ethnicity is a stronger marker of need than other commonly accessible variables such as rurality and the New Zealand Index of Deprivation (NZDep).6,9,10,11 Our most widespread marker for socio-economic deprivation, NZDep, does not assess individual characteristics, but is based on a collective neighbourhood score.12 By using age-based criteria alone, and ignoring that Māori have a younger population age structure, the bowel cancer screening programme failed to recognise that over half of Māori cancers occurred before the screening threshold of 60 years.13 Suggesting that these “colour-blind” variables may be better proxies for health need than ethnicity is blatantly untrue and misleading, and encourages weak analytical science and will likely lead to greater waste of public resources due to less effective targeting of resources towards groups with highest need. Racism distributes the determinants of health along ethnic lines and impacts health directly,14,15 so until racism is eliminated, ethnicity will be a valid marker of need.“
Bernard, thank you for pointing me to an accessible version of the NZ Medical Journal editorial. I’m wishing I had never written my initial comment. However, I think I am not alone in my belief that the current fashion for interpreting New Zealand’s social ills in terms of Māori versus non-Māori divides us into ‘us and them’ silos that hinder the struggle for economic fairness. So, in for penny, in for a pound:
The writers of the NZMJ editorial get off to a polemical start:
‘Last week, Cabinet released a circular to government organisations, giving effect to the coalition Government agreement commitment to “issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government’s expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race.” The term “race” originates from a long-discredited presumption of a biological hierarchy of human beings from white to black, and for decades the New Zealand health system has instead used ethnicity. This return to discredited terminology suggests that the foundations of white superiority are still alive and well in New Zealand today.’
This is not an academic or medical argument; it is a sneer. Will someone please explain to these writers that fashion in words changes: the word 'Negro' proudly used by James Baldwin was displaced by 'Black' a decade later, and 'Afro-American' a decade after that; in Australia Aborigine became Aboriginal became Indigenous became First Nations.
The editorialists, though they disparage the term ‘race’ are happy to call others racist:
‘Suggesting that these “colour-blind” variables may be better proxies for health need than ethnicity is blatantly untrue and misleading, and encourages weak analytical science and will likely lead to greater waste of public resources due to less effective targeting of resources towards groups with highest need. Racism distributes the determinants of health along ethnic lines and impacts health directly, so until racism is eliminated, ethnicity will be a valid marker of need.’
I think I get it: the good guys are ‘ethnicists’, the bad guys ‘racists’.
This long editorial argues (in its ethnicist but non-racist way) that the Government is wrong to base health care outreach on need alone; that it must also direct health care specifically to Māori because they are Māori:
Editorial writer Belinda Loring put it this way to The Press: “Most women don’t get breast cancer. But at a population level, their higher risk of getting the disease means we fund breast cancer screening for all women. So to use the objection that not all Māori have high health needs is not a scientifically justified objection to population targeting.”
But hang on. The thing about women is that they are women, 100%. You just don't come across a woman who is 50% a woman, or 25% a woman, or 1/16th a woman depending on her whakapapa. So you can save a lot of time, money, and resources by focusing your breast cancer screening on people who claim to be women.
The editorial twice mentions ‘socio-economic deprivation’ but does not once use the words ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’. It has this in common with the Government, but for different reasons. The Government wants to talk about ‘need’ without mentioning poverty, because to acknowledge poverty would lead to questions about the entire direction of government. The editorial writers don’t mention poverty because they want health care to be dispensed on the basis of ethnicity. To link poor health to simply being poor might lead to the conclusion that perhaps health inequity is the consequence of living in a capitalist society, that poor health affects people who are poor, that it is not about Māori versus non-Māori, not about ethnicity at all.
And where would that leave the editorial writers? This brings me back to that reviled phrase ‘the Māori grievance industry’. The published profiles of the editorial’s writers suggest they all have ‘skin in the game’:
*The principal writer, Belinda Loring, is described in her Auckland University profile as 'a non-Māori specialist public health physician, with >15 years’ experience working on health equity and health policy at local, national and international level', and now 'Senior Research Fellow Te Kupenga Hauora Māori'. 'In Aotearoa, she has supported Māori health equity work at Te Aka Whai Ora and the Ministry of Health, as well as equity initiatives at DHBs and public health units.'
*Papaarangi Reid is Tumuaki and Head of Department of Māori Health at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. She has tribal affiliations to Te Rarawa in the Far North of Aotearoa and her research interests include analysing disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens as a means of monitoring government commitment to indigenous rights.
*Elana Taipapaki Curtis (Ngāti Rongomai, Ngāti Pikiao, Te Arawa) is a Public Health Physician, Associate Professor at Te Kupenga Hauora Māori, University of Auckland.
*Melissa McLeod (Ngāi Tahu) is a public health physician and Associate Professor working at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare, University of Otago, Wellington. Melissa's research interests include Māori health, epidemiology and the investigation and elimination of ethnic health inequalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
*Ricci Harris (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Raukawa) is a public health physician and Kaupapa Māori epidemiologist at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare. Her research is primarily concerned with upholding Māori rights to health and health equity as ensured by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and in-line with International Indigenous Rights. She draws on Kaupapa Māori Research theory to undertake and develop decolonial approaches to epidemiology that centre Māori and are contextualised within systems of ongoing racism and colonialism. This has included research into the classification of ethnicity, ethnic disparities in health status and receipt of health services, and the impact of racism on Māori health and inequities.
*Rhys Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a Public Health Physician and Associate Professor in Te Kupenga Hauora Māori (TKHM). As Co-Director of Teaching in TKHM, he contributes to oversight of Māori Health teaching, learning and assessment in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. Rhys’s research broadly addresses Indigenous health and health equity. In 2005-06, he was a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy based at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, examining interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health care using organisational case studies. He has a particular interest in environmental influences on Māori health and wellbeing, with a focus on climate justice and Indigenous rights. His research also examines the role of health professional education in advancing Indigenous health and equity, and he was Principal Investigator of the international research project, Educating for Equity.
PPP’s let’s make health profitable for the shareholders. Not the people.Harvard business school ( Dr Cigaretti). Watch Lester Levy very carefully. By the way I am also “sorted” but have a social conscience and a spine. The Worst and most expensive health system is in the US only if you have health insurance cover. Have a look at “the resident” on netflix. I could only manage three episodes before becoming despondent and unable to continue watching and I once was a resident! Off to protest against Sea bed mining in Patea. Likely to get wet!
Patrick Medlicott
I made it to series 3!
Nats are supporting those who support them. They don't care about the lower 80% . Their mates are in the top quintile.
Reti's statement "The most obvious is the freeing up of capital that the Crown can then deploy elsewhere" is a plug for massive tax cuts for landlords
Agree, I am sorted but lots of good luck & not via tax avoidance.
With all the proposed building consent changes, who will be the last organisation responsible WHEN things go wrong? Who will be liable??
Currently it is Council. We can't afford another leaky buildings or defective materials fiasco. Have nats learned nothing from the past?
Yay! Privatised hospitals with a gimlet eye on their bottom line. I can picture it now - the medical team at the foot of your bed, clipboards in hand, followed closely by the Upsell Team, looking to sign you up for some pricey cosmetic surgery while you're just laying around not doing much.
If you make it to a bed....
Does Luxon-the-Sorted have any idea how repulsive his attitude is? If ever we needed an out there advertisement for how desperately NZ needs the Maori half of our culture, he provides it. Untouched by anything other than money like a bad Greek myth.
I wonder if this is his Pentecostal-ness seeping through? Prosperity theology has some messed up views on wealth and the wealthy.
Theology driven by the Old Testament rather than the New Testament,
Agree. I checked back on his maiden speech where he spoke of his Christianity. He didn’t mention Jesus being someone who worked hard to get wealthy and sorted. Yp, Hamersley, very messed up.
A person’s beliefs can say a lot about what motivates them but appears to be impolite to speak of it. Strange.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
All things bright and beautiful ….
Unlikely that writer of said lyric lived herself at said gate. Apparently this verse was banned in schools for being classist (written in 1848).