Monday's pick o' the links
The build-to-rent tax break; National security threats via 'Fire and Fury'; Christopher Luxon's gets tough on the disabled; Bupa selling NZ care homes; Spookies, profundities etc; The Craic
TLDR: Here’s a few useful links, scoops, longer reads and listens and profundities I’ve bumped into in my travels. It’s for paid subscribers immediately below the paywall fold. There’s also a few fun things below that too.
Scoops and news of note in Aotearoa-NZ
National security threats - I’d recommend watching the full Fire and Fury video documentary released yesterday by Stuff’s Circuit team of investigative journalists. But here’s a short preview via YouTube if you’d like a taste.
I wrote and podcasted at the time of the ‘Voices For Freedom’ protests at Parliament in February March that it was based on virulent and dangerous misinformation from overseas that was actually a national security threat. This excellent documentary only reinforces that view.
Angry ‘Mum and Dad’ landlords - Housing Minister Megan Woods announced on Friday that both new and existing build-to-rent investors would be exempt in perpetuity from the recent removal of interest deductibility for landlords if they offered 10-year tenancies in projects with at least 20 homes.
The Property Investors Federation is angry about the tax break going to build-to-rent projects, arguing the rents will be for higher-end rentals and therefore too high, as Miriam Bell reports here via Stuff yesterday.
“Interest deductibility should be reversed for all rental properties, not just high-end build-to-rent ones.”
The Government’s announcement showed it had bowed to big business lobbying and changed the rules for large developers turned landlords, he said.
“But the vast majority of rental properties are provided by ordinary Kiwis who operate with low overheads and low margins which provide true value for tenants. These are the rental providers that should be supported, not large corporate developers.”
The problem with leverage - Dileepa Fonseka has a good piece this morning via Stuff on why ‘Mum and Dad’ investors are an issue.
“Baby boomers shouldn’t be using their wealth and dumping it into the property market, they should be investing in sharemarkets that create jobs.
“Buying existing property just inflates the value, it doesn’t create any jobs. I’m a property developer, if you want to make money in property you should build new properties.
“That’s been the bane of my life, those type of investors, and negative gearing, that drive up property prices when I’m trying to buy property to develop to build new housing.” Ockham Residential’s Mark Todd via Stuff.
The repeatability problem - Andre Chumko reports via Stuff this morning on how media companies are starting to worry about what happens to the 122 journalists they hired through the $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund, which is due to run out next year. National have also pledged to kill it.
I haven’t applied for funding for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the time-suck involved in applying is too onerous for a small independent, and secondly, any new hire is vulnerable to the whims of bureaucrats and politicians for renewal.
The majority of roles were for fixed-term one or two year contracts, although actual terms of employment contracts lay between employers and employees.
NZ On Air head of journalism Raewyn Rasch said contingency planning to avoid redundancies was the media sector’s responsibility.
New roles were something the sector “explicitly advocated” to be included in the fund, Rasch said. “We were aware that this could cause challenges over the long term, once the time-bound funding ceased.” Andre Chumko reports via Stuff
Just briefly
There’s useful detail in this Tom Pullar Strecker piece via Stuff this morning about Onslow.
Bupa has hired Macquarie Bank to sell its 48 aged care homes in Aotearoa-NZ, Bridget Carter reports for The Australian-$$$ this morning.
Scoops and news of note overseas
The Australian-$$$ reports former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello worked as an undisclosed lobbyist for Crown Casino on behalf of James Packer.
Useful longer reads and listens
Spookies, profundities, curiousities and feel-goods
The Craic
Ka kite ano
Bernard
Regarding the pending potential loss of journalist jobs when the Public Interest Journalism fund runs out - this is such a common aspect across crucial sectors today. It's exactly the problem that has been facing the research and science sector for decades. If a researcher wins government funding for a research programme, early career researchers are hired to do the work. But when the funds run out after 3-5 years, they are out of a job. You could argue about the relative value of journalism and research in different subjects, and the level of ongoing public funding that is warranted, but this short-term, contestable funding mechanism hollows out every area it touches. We must change to a system that supports journalists, researchers, and every other vital aspect of our democracy and society without making it so these highly trained people need to waste their time reapplying for a job every few years, until they give up and leave the profession.
I’m still in the side of not allowing any state to require a vaccine for existing trained and qualified workers without compensation. It is a heavy thing to expect compliance on medical procedures or force them on people, staff or anyone and use coercion to achieve. I really felt for those women which this has happened to. Obviously I would have preferred they had held the line not had the Aussie bubble and introduced the virus to NZ. It was always going to cause chaos and deaths and great distress to everyone. I’m just hoping it’s being properly monitored and stopped from spreading at the border. Particularly new variants. Because it changes it is not like other diseases. They can do it for animal and plant diseases so I’d hope this capacity to screen for imported virus’ and disease for humans too has been ramped up permanently also as a precaution. A crisis either decades (like our child and women abuse and neglect of laws ) or a quickly emerging one like a pandemic, which HAD been warned about has exposed successive Governments as having had their pants down (along with the GFC, Housing, climate crisis etc) so it’s not irrational to mistrust authority here. I agree with Chris Finlayson on most being libertarian in nature but wanting to believe our QOL and institutions and politicians are able to pull the country out of the fire, which isn’t going anywhere and only going to get worse. People can only tolerate being exploited and extracted from abused and neglected so much before they will rebel or become violently angry. This is just a historical fact that needs to be faced. To refuse to support the poorest and most vulnerable and mess with their children, lives, property and income and fail in a duty of care is repulsive.