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.
I also forgot to mention local government revenue streams need to be completely reviewed. Relying mainly on property value for assessing rates is seriously dated.
but will the Kainga Ora employees who make the applicable decisions stop selling Kainga Ora land. It seems to me that they (one in particular) are in cahoots with some property developers.
It is self-imposed. S&P is agnostic. They’re just as happy to rate BBB- debt as AA+. It’s just the BBB- has to offer higher interest rates. Keeping an obscenely low limit ensures better credit ratings that lower interest rates for everyone, especially mortgage borrowers, and therefore inflates land values.
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.
Bit more sneaky than that, the regulator will advise the Minister for Local Government on Council proposals and the Minster will make the decisions about the adequacy of meeting growth etc. Far more open to lobbying and short term decision making.
You are right on this. The problem with government regulators is they almost never have the teeth to make change for the benefit of the majority. Look at the Commerce Commission over the last ten years - Petrol, Supermarkets, Airports, Building Products etc. Did we see any meaningful regulation? A regulator of council water assets will be the same - open to lobbying by local councils. We are already seeing it with the "two fingers up" from the Christchurch City Council on behalf of the median ratepayers in regards to the MDRS regulations. Councils will just ignore central government because they continue to pander the "No rate rises" demands of the wealthy property owning ratepayers and the central government won't want to appear (especially a National-led government) over-regulating people's lives by making councils conform. Sigh!
No the response from CCC is that the proposed legislative design to achieve intensification may be appropriate to Auckland but not Christchurch. It was an example of a local authority telling central government that their central plans have vast limitations.
Thanks Garry and respect your view as a person who is well informed, particularly with regards CCC. I was just trying to emphasise that local government will always stick up for assets (or things like the MDRS) on behalf of their ratepayers.
BTW, if CCC succeed in pushing back on MDRS regulation - other councils will follow suit which in turn makes the regulation/regulator toothless and the vicious circle continues.....
Might not be by design, its hard to tell what is deliberate and what is neglect.
But do you think someone in charge wouldn't be adverse to having some Councils invest in certain areas at certain times, and other not so much? After all its not their money, or their plan but they can claim credit and disperse blame to the council and regulator.
Or worse, it will change arbitrarily depending on what point in the cycle the council submits their plan. When the Government is pulling the immigration lever they’ll reject plans that don’t have enough room for growth. When they’re trying to sound tough on migrants they’ll tell councils their plans are not financially sustainable in order to get them to scale back.
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?
If National (and Act) become the government later this year Luxon's stated policies will result in a another feeding frenzy of property investors/speculators and residential property prices will rapidly increase to greater/higher astronomical/stratospheric heights/levels. Rents will increase, poverty will increase and crime will increase. and there will be some who will be some who will be able to, and will arrange their finances/incomes to pay no tax except GST.
The asset based part of it is annual, and brings the questions you raise - what happens when values fluctuate year to year, do you get a credit? (Answer: No)
The CGT part of it is a one-off that occurs when you sell, and year to year fluctuation doesn't matter. Another reason why CGT is the way to go
Who shall pay?
Labour: central govt will raise debt, and hide it off balance sheet (good pointing this out BH!)
National: local govt will raise debt, it will cost more, some won't be able to, and in general will be a helluva mess
I should have probably said concrete "asset based capital gains tax" referring to land, housing etc as opposed to the value of held stocks , shares & bonds, where dividends & sales of which usually counted in income tax.
the two rhetorical questions
"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?"
were speaking more to the fairness of an annual CGT, as it is quite possible to have the residential market price drop for two financial years, bump up with resulting CGT implications in the third then drop again in the forth.
A delayed to sale / stamp duty ends up just being a tax passed on to the buyer, yet again inflating property prices at sale.
As for 4th -
a) Borrow more , using government bonds
b) Re-create 1950s-70s Ministry of Works but greener:
b1 ) first as project management;
b2) then equipment bulk purchase with rental to contractors;
b3) then maybe becoming joint owner of large infrastructure projects for structured loans.
c) Commerce Commission granted powers to investigate & prosecute so that market prices do not surpass cost plus pricing by any unreasonable margin , especially supermarkets, renting, utilities etc.
d) return GST back to it's original 10%
e) Set living/minimum wage so that those on it do not require government benefits/subsides to rent & live.
f) using (e) as the cut off point for paying income tax, re-jig the tax system accordingly so higher income earners pay a proportionally higher amount of tax, increasing the number steps up the tax ladder rate to more than six.
g) If the residential loan market is so profitable, why shouldn't the NZ government itself gain income from entering that market in competition with the other providers.
h) Require a portion of KiwiSaver savings to be in bonds from (a).
i) Once residential house prices return to a sane level, introduce a capital gain tax.
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.
Think about the daily operations of water supply and sewage disposal and stormwater disposal and all the personnel interactions that are required. Labour's proposed (extremely "top heavy") system will be impossibly complicated/unworkable, and when there are catastrophes (earthquake, storms, accidents, etc) it will be disastrous. Their proposal concentrates on co-governance and financing and ignores the complexity of OPERATING water and sewerage and stormwater networks.
Thanks for the reply. Re the complexity of operating water/wastewater and stormwater networks - other complex infrastructure is successfully provided by similar setups to that proposed for three waters eg Scottish Water, NZTA, Transpower. An advantage of have organisations of this scale is that scarce expertise can be employed in house, instead of either making do without or having to employ consultants at extra cost.
But only if this 'party' were allocated seats in parliament, with no MPs to sit in them. So whenever a vote is taken these seats (if they get over the 5% threshold) are recorded as abstaining.
Gov't still needs to get 60/61/62 (depending on overhang) votes to pass legislation but there are only 114 or whatever votes available.
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.
Absolutely. Thanks Ben.
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.’
Hadn’t heard of that poem. I voted log captures the mood nicely.
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.
I also forgot to mention local government revenue streams need to be completely reviewed. Relying mainly on property value for assessing rates is seriously dated.
but will the Kainga Ora employees who make the applicable decisions stop selling Kainga Ora land. It seems to me that they (one in particular) are in cahoots with some property developers.
Do we know that it is S&P driving the 30% or is it self-imposed?
& if the government moves debt off balance sheet, the 30% can't be relied on anyway.
It is self-imposed. S&P is agnostic. They’re just as happy to rate BBB- debt as AA+. It’s just the BBB- has to offer higher interest rates. Keeping an obscenely low limit ensures better credit ratings that lower interest rates for everyone, especially mortgage borrowers, and therefore inflates land values.
Thanks Garry. Great points on localism and the need to fix that central-local relationship.
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.
That’s excellent, thanks for sharing Anne.
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.
Bit more sneaky than that, the regulator will advise the Minister for Local Government on Council proposals and the Minster will make the decisions about the adequacy of meeting growth etc. Far more open to lobbying and short term decision making.
Ah missed that! Still rubbish then 😅
You might very well say that...
You are right on this. The problem with government regulators is they almost never have the teeth to make change for the benefit of the majority. Look at the Commerce Commission over the last ten years - Petrol, Supermarkets, Airports, Building Products etc. Did we see any meaningful regulation? A regulator of council water assets will be the same - open to lobbying by local councils. We are already seeing it with the "two fingers up" from the Christchurch City Council on behalf of the median ratepayers in regards to the MDRS regulations. Councils will just ignore central government because they continue to pander the "No rate rises" demands of the wealthy property owning ratepayers and the central government won't want to appear (especially a National-led government) over-regulating people's lives by making councils conform. Sigh!
No the response from CCC is that the proposed legislative design to achieve intensification may be appropriate to Auckland but not Christchurch. It was an example of a local authority telling central government that their central plans have vast limitations.
Thanks Garry and respect your view as a person who is well informed, particularly with regards CCC. I was just trying to emphasise that local government will always stick up for assets (or things like the MDRS) on behalf of their ratepayers.
BTW, if CCC succeed in pushing back on MDRS regulation - other councils will follow suit which in turn makes the regulation/regulator toothless and the vicious circle continues.....
Correct and about time
How do we build enough houses for the 17 million people we’ll have by 2100?
Interesting. Usually the politicians and bureaucrats default back to the mean-reverting forecasts from low-level Stats NZ people.
Might not be by design, its hard to tell what is deliberate and what is neglect.
But do you think someone in charge wouldn't be adverse to having some Councils invest in certain areas at certain times, and other not so much? After all its not their money, or their plan but they can claim credit and disperse blame to the council and regulator.
I'm getting too cynical.
Or worse, it will change arbitrarily depending on what point in the cycle the council submits their plan. When the Government is pulling the immigration lever they’ll reject plans that don’t have enough room for growth. When they’re trying to sound tough on migrants they’ll tell councils their plans are not financially sustainable in order to get them to scale back.
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?
If National (and Act) become the government later this year Luxon's stated policies will result in a another feeding frenzy of property investors/speculators and residential property prices will rapidly increase to greater/higher astronomical/stratospheric heights/levels. Rents will increase, poverty will increase and crime will increase. and there will be some who will be some who will be able to, and will arrange their finances/incomes to pay no tax except GST.
I can sense the barracudas already getting excited.
correction: and there will be some who will be able to, and will arrange their finances/incomes to pay no tax except GST.
"asset based capital gains tax" is an oxymoron.
The asset based part of it is annual, and brings the questions you raise - what happens when values fluctuate year to year, do you get a credit? (Answer: No)
The CGT part of it is a one-off that occurs when you sell, and year to year fluctuation doesn't matter. Another reason why CGT is the way to go
Who shall pay?
Labour: central govt will raise debt, and hide it off balance sheet (good pointing this out BH!)
National: local govt will raise debt, it will cost more, some won't be able to, and in general will be a helluva mess
Bernard: $5000 per homeowner annual tax.
is there a 4th idea anyone?
I should have probably said concrete "asset based capital gains tax" referring to land, housing etc as opposed to the value of held stocks , shares & bonds, where dividends & sales of which usually counted in income tax.
the two rhetorical questions
"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?"
were speaking more to the fairness of an annual CGT, as it is quite possible to have the residential market price drop for two financial years, bump up with resulting CGT implications in the third then drop again in the forth.
A delayed to sale / stamp duty ends up just being a tax passed on to the buyer, yet again inflating property prices at sale.
As for 4th -
a) Borrow more , using government bonds
b) Re-create 1950s-70s Ministry of Works but greener:
b1 ) first as project management;
b2) then equipment bulk purchase with rental to contractors;
b3) then maybe becoming joint owner of large infrastructure projects for structured loans.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2110/S00273/rising-to-the-challenge-a-ministry-of-green-works-for-aotearoa.htm
c) Commerce Commission granted powers to investigate & prosecute so that market prices do not surpass cost plus pricing by any unreasonable margin , especially supermarkets, renting, utilities etc.
d) return GST back to it's original 10%
e) Set living/minimum wage so that those on it do not require government benefits/subsides to rent & live.
f) using (e) as the cut off point for paying income tax, re-jig the tax system accordingly so higher income earners pay a proportionally higher amount of tax, increasing the number steps up the tax ladder rate to more than six.
g) If the residential loan market is so profitable, why shouldn't the NZ government itself gain income from entering that market in competition with the other providers.
h) Require a portion of KiwiSaver savings to be in bonds from (a).
i) Once residential house prices return to a sane level, introduce a capital gain tax.
A tax on the value of residential zoned land.
Thanks David. I’d prefer a simple land tax.
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.
Labour's so-called three waters legislation will be a disaster if fully legislated. It is insane.
Mōrena. Do you have any rational reasoning behind your assertion?
Think about the daily operations of water supply and sewage disposal and stormwater disposal and all the personnel interactions that are required. Labour's proposed (extremely "top heavy") system will be impossibly complicated/unworkable, and when there are catastrophes (earthquake, storms, accidents, etc) it will be disastrous. Their proposal concentrates on co-governance and financing and ignores the complexity of OPERATING water and sewerage and stormwater networks.
Thanks for the reply. Re the complexity of operating water/wastewater and stormwater networks - other complex infrastructure is successfully provided by similar setups to that proposed for three waters eg Scottish Water, NZTA, Transpower. An advantage of have organisations of this scale is that scarce expertise can be employed in house, instead of either making do without or having to employ consultants at extra cost.
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🥹
I like the name on the voting form....."anyone but the above"
Hi Garry
But only if this 'party' were allocated seats in parliament, with no MPs to sit in them. So whenever a vote is taken these seats (if they get over the 5% threshold) are recorded as abstaining.
Gov't still needs to get 60/61/62 (depending on overhang) votes to pass legislation but there are only 114 or whatever votes available.
May Parliament live in interesting times.
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?