Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
$2.4 billion of a total $3b was given by National to private organisations and doctors. Plus: The talk of the political town – a new model shows how National could win
In the Greens’ fiscal plan policy speech, Chloe Swarbrick lays out what good government is, and lays down a challenge to National’s Minister of Finance Nicola Willis.
A contribution to the current discussion of MMP and the next election.
It is crunch time. The next five days may determine who is the next Government.
Pleading for more protection for the super-rich during an election is not going to land well for National.
The most important issue for New Zealanders is inflation and the cost-of-living yet National and its Dirty Workers want us to talk and think about tax all the time.
I had a look at the New Zealand Election Survey for the 2023 election at what voters issues were in 2023. It looks very similar in the major issues today. Economy and cost of living predominating, then health, climate change and crime. That has to be problem for the conservative coalition and especially for National. They haven’t moved the needle to anything except worse.
National has announced two populist cruel policies today of benefit cuts for beneficiaries on the Jobseeker benefit for over two years and random drug testing for beneficiaries.
This is the diesel election and we need the fastest way possible out of it.
The PREFU reveals an approaching Nicola Willis surplus based on inflation and fiscal drag. It has nothing to do with economic growth. Meanwhile our young adults are experiencing the joys of very high and sustained unemployment. The same kind of environment that stunted the generation in National’s recession of the 1990s. This time we have a rapidly ageing population. And Nicola Willis in fantasy land.
Over the last three years, our current incompetent government has been running New Zealand into an artificial recession. But they keep blaming the previous government, especially on the oil and gas exploration ban. So over three years how have they done to realise active exploration? Not much. So we now have a typical Shane Jones face saving announcement, typically squandering taxpayers money again.
National proposed building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Port Taranaki. Ostensibly for dry year support for the electricity generators. National were planning to have this signed up before the election. Act and NZ First appear to have quashed that. The outrage of consumers to being taxed yet again by the National government for their piss-poor 1990s energy management broke through?
A review of its behaviour over time shows that National can’t be trusted with your Kiwisaver.
We are witnessing a full-scale trade war between Canada and the United States and there’s every sign it will get much, much worse.
Plenty of politicians will seek credit when it opens, but none of them will have lifted a spade. The reason New Zealand’s largest infrastructure project exists is because over 1700 workers actually built it.
Under National the MSD thinks that food is not an essential need. And it pushed through under urgency a botched up law change which cut the benefits for tens of thousands of elderly kiwis.
Last weekend saw a continuation of right wing parties coming out with inane policy announcements that make a media splash without any hard questions being asked.
This week the Government reluctantly reversed its intent to allow homeless teenagers to be prosecuted if they did not move to somewhere less safe when required to move on by police.
“Nurses who trained here should be able to work here. A good job. A future here at home. Better starts now.” – Chris Hipkins
Kiwibank are proposing to buy TSB Bank, before Heartland get it.
The Opportunities Party wishes to enrich Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison by giving them tax breaks to establish data centres in Aotearoa.
Very sad recent news from yesterday. Three homeless people in Aotearoa, the land of plenty, have recently frozen to death.
In the week that the Prime Minister offended small business, unemployment rose to 170,000 and over 6% in the North Island, and the Reserve Bank continues to raise interest rates, Labour showed, again, why the public knows they are better for small business than any other party.
As we enter the home strait for the 2026 election National strategists must be thinking “what the f*(k do we do from here”? Because Christopher Luxon’s complete indifference to the difficulties businesses are facing and his inability to control Winston Peters are harming National’s reelection prospects big time.
After the 2005 election, the Chinese Embassy sent Zhang Wei to ask me if Winston Peters would follow Labour government policy. I said I didn’t know, but would ask.
The very worst crisis is the one from which you learn nothing. New Zealand has not had an economic stagnation and housing market price decline this bad since the 1970s.
Iranian Ambassador Reza Nazar Ahari provides some fascinating analysis into why the Western strategy on Iran has been so disastrously flawed.
The Green Party’s Kiwipower policy has a lot of similarities to the policy that the Greens and Labour jointly launched in the 2014 election. It will again be major issue in this election.
Our reliance on fossil fuels is a ticking timebomb, There Are Real Alternatives, and the Green Party have a plan
The Greens’ energy policy is about reducing costs to citizens, and making our generation system more resilient
Norman Kirk once said people do not ask for much: someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work, and something to hope for.
Winston Peters has engaged in classic dead cat political behaviour by publicly announcing that one of the new Interisland ferries will be called “Cook” and diverting the debate from the cost to the name.
“Workers deserve the right to safe, fair and decent work, and being automatically a part of a collective is one of the best ways to ensure their rights will be fought for.”
Minister of Transport Chris Bishop has now finally admitted that National’s 2023 election promises in transport were “very ambitious, ” and pushed many of them into simply future unfunded ideas, at devastating economic cost.
I was struck by just how out of touch Simeon Brown is with the frustration of residential consumers of electricity. The ever rising prices, the frequent outages, and the stupidity of our electricity market. National’s fast-track doesn’t address any of that, nor their minuscule solar plan. Labour’s plan is a more useful fast-track to transform our real productive economy. Far more so than just exporting profits offshore from mining and data centres
This is a very impressive policy from Labour
