National confirms will repeal Three Waters and dump new water entities within 100 days; Plans new central regulator; Wants councils to use water charges & voluntary mergers & borrowing authorities
Yes a pyrrhic victory which even in the short term I don't think will work, whichever of the two win the election will have painted themselves into a corner for the next term. Intuitively I think the 'other election' this year will be on Anzac day when Australia opens a pathway for citizenship.
Is this a real policy or more of a bait and switch operation to attract disaffected voters? It contains errors that look to frame the appeal in that direction. But it also is confused on how the Commerce Commission and Part 4 industry regulation work, what's proposed just won't work without a massive rewriting of the legislation and defanging of the Commission. Possibly not something that is in the plan?
Brilliant - and thanks for going public straightaway, Bernard. I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which Labour’s approach was essentially no different to and certainly no better than National’s until you pointed it out. Aaargh!
Or to put it poetically, James K Baxter’s poem ‘Election 1960’ describes the electoral choice as being between King Log and King Stork. ‘Because I like a wide and silent pond / I voted Log.’
The fundamental issue is that we all need clean safe water. There is also no debate in my mind about the need for local accountability and ownership. It is absolutely possible to have regional structures which participate with local runanga. This complies with Clause 2 of the Maori version of the Treaty.
The government's moving of financing of Kanga Ora to its Balance Sheet is a good move. Now they have to stop selling the land they own to developers to minimize the amount they are borrowing for their own developments.
It's time to pause, reflect and prioritise our infrastructure deficit and its funding. This might require the creation of a modern day equivalent of the Ministry of Works. Your criticism, Bernard, of the obsession with the 30% limit is so correct. Above this limit is the funding for our infrastructure. The precedent for ignoring this sort of self imposed limit was the government of Sedden. Remember what they managed to achieve without outfits like S & P standing over them....
Another challenge is the relationship between Central and Local Government is stuffed. The Department of Internal Affairs has a very weak understanding of the sector and has proven through the 3 Waters process to be vulnerable to lobbying. In this case by Infrastructure NZ and Water NZ.
It's not dairy emissions or fossil fuel burning that are the biggest contributors to climate change; it is more humans.
To meet NZ's climate targets every person added to our population requires extra emission reductions elsewhere. A current plan of politicians is we'll buy our emission reductions from other countries. Fine; how do we pay for these reductions? Where is the foreign currency coming from? Yes, that's right more dairy exports. Duh.
One almost gets the feeling that our current crop of politicians want to be able to say in their political lifetime that they are part of the team of six million.
Buried with National’s policy document is the idea that the new regulator will tell Councils what an adequate plan for growth looks like. This was interesting to me. Seems like it would force National to finally say out loud what level of population growth Government wants.
Borrowing to build back what contributed to the problem is morally and creatively bankrupt. Why should the youth of today and future generations bear the burden of a situation created by lack of acknowledgement and action over decades, for commercial and political gain. The evidence has been deliberately ignored for 40 years because there was no political will to address it.
Under normal circumstances an asset based capital gains tax, including residential housing, would be great idea.
I believe that New Zealand would be in a significantly better position had it been adopted along with the adoption of GST on 1 October 1986.
However, residential land prices in New Zealand, along with many counties around the world, is massively over priced for its intended role of providing accommodation to the population as a whole.
The market has realised this and correspondingly ...
House prices expected to drop further 15-20% in second half of year
So if we introduce a capital gains tax on residential housing, especially the owner's place of residence/family home, what happens with the falling value of residential housing?
Under an asset based capital gains tax would that be a tax loss?
Could you use that tax loss to claim it against your other income taxes?
Or would this be a stamp duty type tax on the sale of houses?
If the latter isn't this just again increasing residential sale prices which comes back to the problem of housing people?
Levies to pay for infrastructure which adds value to the sale price of property is a good idea ...
"Since having an operational underground station in proximity does increase property value, lets also pay for it by putting a levy on property values when they are sold proportional to the difference in value to properties not near a metro station."
But paying for the backlog of public infrastructure by adding inflated property prices at sale may not be a good thing.
By the way, in my humble opinion, the problem of housing is going to turn into a crisis sooner than people think. We have a ageing retired population increasingly selling off the family home to move into gold plated or into even more expensive long term care. In terms of moving people into significantly more intensive housing, freeing up properties & land for housing it is a very good indeed, BUT a lot more of the next generation is just not going to have as large bequests handed to them to pass onto their children for down payments for over valued residential homes.
Either way isn't propping up over valued land, residential & rental prices in the end just funnelling money, to the point of force feeding, the loan/financing industry?
How much of that profit is being funnelled out of the country?
Another issue with National's water policy is that it means increased use of consultants by the many councils, each of which will have to upgrade their water supply and wastewater schemes. This is because of a shortage of (competent) water engineers to spread around all the councils.
This is not likely an issue with 4 three waters corporations.
All the Govt needs to do is request Treasure to issue 100 billion in bonds then the RBNZ buys the Bonds and then the reserve bank issues the cash to treasury.
This can be done for all govt expenditure thus reducing tax to 10% and cancelling GST
So as usual the Government andLocal Government are trying to cover the facts they have misspent and underinvested in their critical infrastructure and populations over many decades and without any planning or equity analysis at all. Consequently one way or another a huge hole has been left in the publics needs for these organisations to do their, jobs ,as usual, so we will now have privatisation and one way or another have to pay more and again. I think they’ll find the poor and middle classes have been well and truly tapped out by failed Government. This will always effect women and children the worst again also as usual and continue to destroy society and cohesion. Lots of violence, lots of exploitation (modelled by our leaders and masses of sexism). With people unable to afford to work. So there’s no winning for people you are right. And lots of theft and neglect of the most vulnerable. All illegal. Leaves us no choice and probably a safer option to provide our own tank water, community gardens and food shops, get Government out of our lives and use the the tax we provide them on community hospitals and hubs. Leaving them only to train workers adequately provide proper buildings and equipment for hospitals and the like and pay for the decentralised wind energy needed for communities and farms so they can reduce the use of fuel for power generation and have energy from wind for free. People are not adequately prepared for the resilience climate breakdown will cause but they’re smart so Government just need to give the resources to individuals to organise themselves. Both water and energy are available for free if properly harnessed. They may be overthinking matters to extract more profit.
Yes a pyrrhic victory which even in the short term I don't think will work, whichever of the two win the election will have painted themselves into a corner for the next term. Intuitively I think the 'other election' this year will be on Anzac day when Australia opens a pathway for citizenship.
Is this a real policy or more of a bait and switch operation to attract disaffected voters? It contains errors that look to frame the appeal in that direction. But it also is confused on how the Commerce Commission and Part 4 industry regulation work, what's proposed just won't work without a massive rewriting of the legislation and defanging of the Commission. Possibly not something that is in the plan?
Anyone know a KiwiSaver fund invested in guillotine manufacturers?
Brilliant - and thanks for going public straightaway, Bernard. I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which Labour’s approach was essentially no different to and certainly no better than National’s until you pointed it out. Aaargh!
Or to put it poetically, James K Baxter’s poem ‘Election 1960’ describes the electoral choice as being between King Log and King Stork. ‘Because I like a wide and silent pond / I voted Log.’
The fundamental issue is that we all need clean safe water. There is also no debate in my mind about the need for local accountability and ownership. It is absolutely possible to have regional structures which participate with local runanga. This complies with Clause 2 of the Maori version of the Treaty.
The government's moving of financing of Kanga Ora to its Balance Sheet is a good move. Now they have to stop selling the land they own to developers to minimize the amount they are borrowing for their own developments.
It's time to pause, reflect and prioritise our infrastructure deficit and its funding. This might require the creation of a modern day equivalent of the Ministry of Works. Your criticism, Bernard, of the obsession with the 30% limit is so correct. Above this limit is the funding for our infrastructure. The precedent for ignoring this sort of self imposed limit was the government of Sedden. Remember what they managed to achieve without outfits like S & P standing over them....
Another challenge is the relationship between Central and Local Government is stuffed. The Department of Internal Affairs has a very weak understanding of the sector and has proven through the 3 Waters process to be vulnerable to lobbying. In this case by Infrastructure NZ and Water NZ.
My literary response to the effect of the storms on West Auckland is here, in this version of a poem by a Tang dynasty poet: https://open.substack.com/pub/annefrench/p/seeing-allen-curnow-in-a-dream?r=2nwpw&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
in case you’d like another way of looking at the climate adaptation crisis.
It's not dairy emissions or fossil fuel burning that are the biggest contributors to climate change; it is more humans.
To meet NZ's climate targets every person added to our population requires extra emission reductions elsewhere. A current plan of politicians is we'll buy our emission reductions from other countries. Fine; how do we pay for these reductions? Where is the foreign currency coming from? Yes, that's right more dairy exports. Duh.
One almost gets the feeling that our current crop of politicians want to be able to say in their political lifetime that they are part of the team of six million.
Buried with National’s policy document is the idea that the new regulator will tell Councils what an adequate plan for growth looks like. This was interesting to me. Seems like it would force National to finally say out loud what level of population growth Government wants.
Borrowing to build back what contributed to the problem is morally and creatively bankrupt. Why should the youth of today and future generations bear the burden of a situation created by lack of acknowledgement and action over decades, for commercial and political gain. The evidence has been deliberately ignored for 40 years because there was no political will to address it.
Under normal circumstances an asset based capital gains tax, including residential housing, would be great idea.
I believe that New Zealand would be in a significantly better position had it been adopted along with the adoption of GST on 1 October 1986.
However, residential land prices in New Zealand, along with many counties around the world, is massively over priced for its intended role of providing accommodation to the population as a whole.
The market has realised this and correspondingly ...
House prices expected to drop further 15-20% in second half of year
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/483414/house-prices-expected-to-drop-further-15-20-percent-in-second-half-of-year
So if we introduce a capital gains tax on residential housing, especially the owner's place of residence/family home, what happens with the falling value of residential housing?
Under an asset based capital gains tax would that be a tax loss?
Could you use that tax loss to claim it against your other income taxes?
Or would this be a stamp duty type tax on the sale of houses?
If the latter isn't this just again increasing residential sale prices which comes back to the problem of housing people?
Levies to pay for infrastructure which adds value to the sale price of property is a good idea ...
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2022/02/01/sooo-tunnelled-light-rail/#comment-497705
"Since having an operational underground station in proximity does increase property value, lets also pay for it by putting a levy on property values when they are sold proportional to the difference in value to properties not near a metro station."
But paying for the backlog of public infrastructure by adding inflated property prices at sale may not be a good thing.
By the way, in my humble opinion, the problem of housing is going to turn into a crisis sooner than people think. We have a ageing retired population increasingly selling off the family home to move into gold plated or into even more expensive long term care. In terms of moving people into significantly more intensive housing, freeing up properties & land for housing it is a very good indeed, BUT a lot more of the next generation is just not going to have as large bequests handed to them to pass onto their children for down payments for over valued residential homes.
Either way isn't propping up over valued land, residential & rental prices in the end just funnelling money, to the point of force feeding, the loan/financing industry?
How much of that profit is being funnelled out of the country?
Another issue with National's water policy is that it means increased use of consultants by the many councils, each of which will have to upgrade their water supply and wastewater schemes. This is because of a shortage of (competent) water engineers to spread around all the councils.
This is not likely an issue with 4 three waters corporations.
Great piece Bernard and thanks for opening it up.
Also some great commentary today....maybe we should all start a new political party.... any suggestions for a name🥹
All the Govt needs to do is request Treasure to issue 100 billion in bonds then the RBNZ buys the Bonds and then the reserve bank issues the cash to treasury.
This can be done for all govt expenditure thus reducing tax to 10% and cancelling GST
So as usual the Government andLocal Government are trying to cover the facts they have misspent and underinvested in their critical infrastructure and populations over many decades and without any planning or equity analysis at all. Consequently one way or another a huge hole has been left in the publics needs for these organisations to do their, jobs ,as usual, so we will now have privatisation and one way or another have to pay more and again. I think they’ll find the poor and middle classes have been well and truly tapped out by failed Government. This will always effect women and children the worst again also as usual and continue to destroy society and cohesion. Lots of violence, lots of exploitation (modelled by our leaders and masses of sexism). With people unable to afford to work. So there’s no winning for people you are right. And lots of theft and neglect of the most vulnerable. All illegal. Leaves us no choice and probably a safer option to provide our own tank water, community gardens and food shops, get Government out of our lives and use the the tax we provide them on community hospitals and hubs. Leaving them only to train workers adequately provide proper buildings and equipment for hospitals and the like and pay for the decentralised wind energy needed for communities and farms so they can reduce the use of fuel for power generation and have energy from wind for free. People are not adequately prepared for the resilience climate breakdown will cause but they’re smart so Government just need to give the resources to individuals to organise themselves. Both water and energy are available for free if properly harnessed. They may be overthinking matters to extract more profit.
Brilliant and incisive Bernard. Excellent work.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Bernard. Now, how do we broadcast this just before the 6pm news?