The Right’s blindness towards middle New Zealand
I find it frustrating that the debate over tax concerntrates on the top rate rate, which doesn’t apply to 90% of taxpayers. It’s […]
Marty G
Key’s magic money-pot
John Key has indicated that the Government will lift the GST rate to 15% and remove depreciation from investment houses. According to the […]
How did Nats know parents’ addresses?
You’ll recall that last week National spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars on a proganda drop defending its national standards. This was a targeted […]
Commentators damning of Key’s visionless speech
Bernard Hickey: He had a chance to follow up all the talk of real reform to create a ‘step change’. He had all […]
Goff’s response to Key
Even National Party pollster, David Farrar, could only give Key’s speech a B Goff says that it’s ‘Alan Bollard 1, John Key 0’. […]
Key’s statement to Parliament
Very little specific so far. According to Stuff, National will increase GST to ‘up to’ 15% – which I take to mean 15%. […]
Fair share for workers best way to close gap with Aussie
30 years ago, according to John Key, wages in Australia and New Zealand were the same. Since then New Zealand wages have stagnated […]
Ideology trumps science for the Right
Consider these results from opinion surveys of experts different areas of research, I won’t tell you the areas of research just yet: In one, […]
Key: Look over here! Please, look over here
Well, wages are stagnating, unemployment is just shy of its all-time high, crime is up, and there is no chance of the Government […]
Quick thoughts
It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that a government that spends half its time on holiday and the rest on PR stunts […]
Nats lying over firing Aroha’s mum?
In yesterday’s Herald Jackie Blue told us she’d sacked the mother of young Aroha because she had to merge offices with Sam Lotu-Iiga. But some investigative work at The Hand Mirror suggests otherwise…
Unemployment: real action, not vague promises needed
The Herald reports: “[Key] also raised the 15 per cent Maori unemployment rate, saying improving education outcomes for Maori children would help address […]
Paula, John, seriously, put away the champagne
Paula Bennett and John Key have been, once again, prematurely popping the bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of rising unemployment. […]
The 59,000 failures of John Phillip Key
Nearly a year ago, John Key, shaken by the first whispers of disquiet over his government’s month-long holiday at the height of an […]
22,000 more jobless Kiwis
Unemployment hit a startling 7.3% in the December quarter, far higher than the 6.8% expected. There are now 159,000 officially unemployed workers in […]
More jobs lost, govt does nothing
Telecom is threatening to throw up to 1,500 workers out of their jobs so it can increase profits by offshoring. A good government in this situation is […]
Wages dropping under Key, as promised
Remember how John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“. You might remember the big corporate media refused to run it, […]
Unionised workers win pay rises, others get cuts
The latest round of the Labour Cost Index is out and it shows that the nation’s 400,000 union members are the workers holding […]
Nats soft on crime
Oh, sure, the Nats will lock a person up longer after they commit a crime, if they get caught. But what they won’t do is prevent them […]
Minimum wage myths: unemployment
One of the old saws that the Right brings out whenever the topic of increasing the minimum wage comes up is ‘oh no, […]
Speak up, Pita. We can’t hear you
TVNZ reports: “Associate Education Minister Pita Sharples has labelled the National Standards policy as damaging to Maori but later refused to comment after […]
Colin James on Labour’s election record
Dancr linked to Colin James’ piece in the Press the other day, in which he writes: Here’s Labour’s record for the five decades […]
Goff: no GST hikes or tax cuts for rich
In his speech yesterday Phil Goff articulated Labour’s position on tax in no uncertain terms and came out very strongly against wealthy tax dodgers […]
Goff advocates real solutions to crime
Goff and his advisers knew that the wage cap on public service CEOs would be the headline grabber of his widely praised speech. […]
Colin, I missed you
Colin Espiner’s back with his first blog of the year. It’s so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes […]
Joyce’s holiday highway
Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s money). […]
Nats in line for big $$ from own tax reforms
Fran O’Sullivan has a piece pointing out the vested interests of senior Nats regarding tax reform: “More than two-thirds of the National line-up have […]
On intellectual failure & economic crisis
Before they were swept along by the latest incarnation of US Right anti-intellectualism, National used to have some smart people. One of the […]
Double-dip recession on the horizon?
Leading US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman sees a 30-40% chance of the US re-rentering recession this year, and the conditions that […]
Campbell and Hooton on do nothing Key
I can’t work out how to embed audio alone, so here’s a YouTube of Andrew Campbell and Matthew Hooton on the Key Government. […]
You’re not a doctor, Tariana
Tariana Turia got her stomach stapled to tackle her diabetes and it seems to have worked. She wants more people to get the […]
Tax is the price the elite pay to maintain their privilege
John Roughan asks: “Nearly half of all personal tax revenue is contributed by just 10 per cent of us. Is this socially healthy?” […]
Massive jump in dole numbers – minister washes her hands
You may remember that late last year John Key, Bill English and Paula Bennett could hardly find the words to praise themselves for […]
Who wins and who loses from tax reforms
You’re probably up to your ears in this tax reform issue by now, but just one more. It’s a good ‘un, promise. I’ve made […]
33% nonsense
David Farrar has one of his dodgy maths posts, where he argues that getting rid of the 33% rate is necessary because typical New […]
The lucky country: Aussie tax system more progressive than NZ’s
It fascinates me that in all this talk about ‘catching up with Australia’ via tax cuts, nobody bothers to look at the Aussie […]