Labour seen better than National on economy, cost of living, health & housing in Ipsos NZ Monitor poll in July; Confidence in Govt back to near record lows; Christchurch ED so full it may put up tents
IPSOS results interesting in that Greens are fairly consistently the third choice as best able to manage issue, with confidence in the Greens dealing with poverty issue being a standout. NZ First is close to Greens, sometime just ahead for some things. ACT is consistently considered best able to manage issues by 3-4% of respondents.
The Warworth-Te Hana PPP signed so National has something about Roads of National (Party) Significance looks like it could be based on some dubious accounting. The PPP (present value) is claimed to be $300 million cheaper than if the government had borrowed the money at a lower interest rate and contracted the road construction out. Some questions arise - what was the discount rate used to present value the 25 year long payments for this roading overbuild? how was the $1 billion sweetner loan from the government to the PPP contractors accounted for in the present value calculations, it will take 25 years annual payments to the PPP contractors to pay it all of - what interest rate, what annual payments, what grand total paid? The claim of a BCR of 1.6 - what assumptions, how does that compare with the alternative of government using its ability to borrow at cheaper rates and contracting the road construction out (have we lost too much institutional and professional knowledge and clerk of works skills to effectively do this since MWD was shut down). etc.
Yep, I was mighty suspicious about that number fudge as well... I thought it was pretty telling that Bishop compared it to a "household mortgage" - a way of paying for something that, famously, ends up with the borrower paying at least twice as much over the loan term.
I thought the same thing last night when I saw Minister Bishops announcement amplified on RNZ and One News without any queries by reporters of what might be missing or what it meant for all future New Zealanders in choices we have. It took me back to Bernard's April KāKā's where he raised questions about it. I feel like the outrageous comments by Winston Peters yesterday has taken all the media attention, but that we need more public discourse about it. I put my questions in link below and I hope journalists, Bernard, other analysts will get the answers to inform a dialogue and improve decision making going forward.
Now would be a good time for National to start messaging "The next government can't possibly blame us for the conditions they receive, they should take full responsibility from day one"
One of the pleasures of subscribing to The Kaka is reading the comments of other subscribers - e.g. Andrew Riddell's, below. Can you please attend a press conference with Chris Bishop, Bernard, so you can pose the questions? Or file an OIA? Roads of National (Party) Significance are an egregious waste of money, considering there is 'no money' to house homeless people and Chch Hospital is about to pitch a tent for the ED overflow.
Seems that some of our ruling politicians are physically scared of us - military choppers, bullet-proof cars and private Air Force flights that cost a fortune and sail above the plebs. And selling the family silver, which we’ve already paid for, as a rescue move.
National’s most popular election promises are all centre-left policies – sexual consent laws, paid parental leave, solar loans, the Kiwisaver "baby bonus"... The only reason why they are still leading the 'law and order' space is because they are going full-socialist and increasing public spending on it by nearly 30% over the next 2 years! Just imagine how their trust metrics would skyrocket if they increased the health or education budgets by that kind of bump! Which begs the question, if the voting public like left-leaning policies why not just vote for the parties that actually deliver them?
we have become so twisted into left vs right that objective facts on what this monster did get largely ignored. Distracted by tribalism whilst the psychopaths and narcissists that tend to rise to the top do as they please to get their fix.
One of Malcolm X’s most useful economic questions was not simply how much money was being spent in a place, but how that expenditure was related to the community.
Malcolm X asked: "How is this expenditure related to the community?"
That distinction seems highly relevant here.
A city, district or country may contain major institutions, rising property values, strong business activity and very large flows of money, while ordinary people living there receive remarkably little of the benefit. The activity may be geographically present without producing secure employment, wage growth, affordable services, local ownership or usable public capacity.
That is also why an economic recovery can be statistically real without becoming socially operative. Business confidence may improve and aggregate growth may return, while people continue to experience weak hiring, falling real wages, rising administered costs and health services operating beyond capacity.
The decisive question is therefore not only whether recovery is occurring, but how it is connected to the lives and communities through which it supposedly passes. Who receives it? Where does the money circulate? What ordinary needs does it serve? What employment, services, ownership or security does it leave behind?
Where growth does not produce those outcomes, “recovery” becomes a statistical description rather than a governing achievement. Prosperity may be visible everywhere while remaining economically out of reach.
That seems to be the credibility problem now emerging: the words used to describe institutional performance increasingly cease to predict what citizens and communities will actually receive.
I had a similar thought when they announced more trade deals… what’s the point of those deals if very little to no benefit arise for the majority of the population?
I really appreciate that you take your question to "me".
Yes - trade agreements are an excellent example of why this question matters.
An agreement may increase market access, export volumes or the total value of trade, but those figures do not by themselves establish that the wider population benefits. We still have to trace the pathway: which firms gain, who owns them, whether employment and wages improve, whether profits remain in New Zealand, whether domestic productive capacity grows, and whether households receive greater security or lower costs.
At PII, I have developed Malcolm X’s original question “How is this expenditure related to the community?” into a portable MX–PII analytical engine for examining cases of this kind.
This was not produced from the house-and-field metaphor alone. It emerged from a completed research sequence:
The work first reconstructed Malcolm X’s recurring concepts and analytical operations from the surviving record. PII then extended that unfinished work by adding provenance, admissibility, governance, assurance and repeatable application procedures. The resulting engine was tested across cases and is now capable of deployment.
This amounts to a real institutional continuation of Malcolm X’s intellectual work: not merely preserving quotations or metaphors, but carrying the underlying analytical capability into a form that can be repeatedly used.
It is intended not only for my own commentary. Other readers can use the same engine to test questions involving recovery, trade, infrastructure, investment and public benefit.
The subject changes, but the analytical discipline remains stable: identify the activity presented as beneficial, trace how its value is supposed to reach the community, and test whether that benefit actually becomes socially operative.
Without that connection, a trade deal may succeed in aggregate terms while remaining economically remote from much of the population.
IPSOS results interesting in that Greens are fairly consistently the third choice as best able to manage issue, with confidence in the Greens dealing with poverty issue being a standout. NZ First is close to Greens, sometime just ahead for some things. ACT is consistently considered best able to manage issues by 3-4% of respondents.
The Warworth-Te Hana PPP signed so National has something about Roads of National (Party) Significance looks like it could be based on some dubious accounting. The PPP (present value) is claimed to be $300 million cheaper than if the government had borrowed the money at a lower interest rate and contracted the road construction out. Some questions arise - what was the discount rate used to present value the 25 year long payments for this roading overbuild? how was the $1 billion sweetner loan from the government to the PPP contractors accounted for in the present value calculations, it will take 25 years annual payments to the PPP contractors to pay it all of - what interest rate, what annual payments, what grand total paid? The claim of a BCR of 1.6 - what assumptions, how does that compare with the alternative of government using its ability to borrow at cheaper rates and contracting the road construction out (have we lost too much institutional and professional knowledge and clerk of works skills to effectively do this since MWD was shut down). etc.
Yep, I was mighty suspicious about that number fudge as well... I thought it was pretty telling that Bishop compared it to a "household mortgage" - a way of paying for something that, famously, ends up with the borrower paying at least twice as much over the loan term.
I thought the same thing last night when I saw Minister Bishops announcement amplified on RNZ and One News without any queries by reporters of what might be missing or what it meant for all future New Zealanders in choices we have. It took me back to Bernard's April KāKā's where he raised questions about it. I feel like the outrageous comments by Winston Peters yesterday has taken all the media attention, but that we need more public discourse about it. I put my questions in link below and I hope journalists, Bernard, other analysts will get the answers to inform a dialogue and improve decision making going forward.
https://emsimes.substack.com/p/what-have-we-actually-signed-new?r=2rfmd&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Now would be a good time for National to start messaging "The next government can't possibly blame us for the conditions they receive, they should take full responsibility from day one"
One of the pleasures of subscribing to The Kaka is reading the comments of other subscribers - e.g. Andrew Riddell's, below. Can you please attend a press conference with Chris Bishop, Bernard, so you can pose the questions? Or file an OIA? Roads of National (Party) Significance are an egregious waste of money, considering there is 'no money' to house homeless people and Chch Hospital is about to pitch a tent for the ED overflow.
hi Bernard,
the cartoon from Rod Emerson is a visual metaphor of the Martin Niemöller poem
NZ First campaigning on an asset sale is wild. What is even going on this election‽
Seems that some of our ruling politicians are physically scared of us - military choppers, bullet-proof cars and private Air Force flights that cost a fortune and sail above the plebs. And selling the family silver, which we’ve already paid for, as a rescue move.
National’s most popular election promises are all centre-left policies – sexual consent laws, paid parental leave, solar loans, the Kiwisaver "baby bonus"... The only reason why they are still leading the 'law and order' space is because they are going full-socialist and increasing public spending on it by nearly 30% over the next 2 years! Just imagine how their trust metrics would skyrocket if they increased the health or education budgets by that kind of bump! Which begs the question, if the voting public like left-leaning policies why not just vote for the parties that actually deliver them?
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/30/sen-rand-paul-on-fauci-hearing-he-wouldnt-have-had-any-liability-if-he-told-the-truth.html
we have become so twisted into left vs right that objective facts on what this monster did get largely ignored. Distracted by tribalism whilst the psychopaths and narcissists that tend to rise to the top do as they please to get their fix.
WHEN RECOVERY FAILS TO REACH THE COMMUNITY
One of Malcolm X’s most useful economic questions was not simply how much money was being spent in a place, but how that expenditure was related to the community.
Malcolm X asked: "How is this expenditure related to the community?"
That distinction seems highly relevant here.
A city, district or country may contain major institutions, rising property values, strong business activity and very large flows of money, while ordinary people living there receive remarkably little of the benefit. The activity may be geographically present without producing secure employment, wage growth, affordable services, local ownership or usable public capacity.
That is also why an economic recovery can be statistically real without becoming socially operative. Business confidence may improve and aggregate growth may return, while people continue to experience weak hiring, falling real wages, rising administered costs and health services operating beyond capacity.
The decisive question is therefore not only whether recovery is occurring, but how it is connected to the lives and communities through which it supposedly passes. Who receives it? Where does the money circulate? What ordinary needs does it serve? What employment, services, ownership or security does it leave behind?
Where growth does not produce those outcomes, “recovery” becomes a statistical description rather than a governing achievement. Prosperity may be visible everywhere while remaining economically out of reach.
That seems to be the credibility problem now emerging: the words used to describe institutional performance increasingly cease to predict what citizens and communities will actually receive.
I had a similar thought when they announced more trade deals… what’s the point of those deals if very little to no benefit arise for the majority of the population?
Hello Juergen,
I really appreciate that you take your question to "me".
Yes - trade agreements are an excellent example of why this question matters.
An agreement may increase market access, export volumes or the total value of trade, but those figures do not by themselves establish that the wider population benefits. We still have to trace the pathway: which firms gain, who owns them, whether employment and wages improve, whether profits remain in New Zealand, whether domestic productive capacity grows, and whether households receive greater security or lower costs.
At PII, I have developed Malcolm X’s original question “How is this expenditure related to the community?” into a portable MX–PII analytical engine for examining cases of this kind.
This was not produced from the house-and-field metaphor alone. It emerged from a completed research sequence:
Malcolm X → Reconstruction → PII Extension → Application → Testing → Deployment
The work first reconstructed Malcolm X’s recurring concepts and analytical operations from the surviving record. PII then extended that unfinished work by adding provenance, admissibility, governance, assurance and repeatable application procedures. The resulting engine was tested across cases and is now capable of deployment.
This amounts to a real institutional continuation of Malcolm X’s intellectual work: not merely preserving quotations or metaphors, but carrying the underlying analytical capability into a form that can be repeatedly used.
It is intended not only for my own commentary. Other readers can use the same engine to test questions involving recovery, trade, infrastructure, investment and public benefit.
The subject changes, but the analytical discipline remains stable: identify the activity presented as beneficial, trace how its value is supposed to reach the community, and test whether that benefit actually becomes socially operative.
Without that connection, a trade deal may succeed in aggregate terms while remaining economically remote from much of the population.