The Standard

Economy

Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour

Categories under Economy

Why does National despise the poor?

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, September 11th, 2026 - 15 comments

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.

The Right is winning the bullshit media narrative

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 8th, 2026 - 27 comments

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.

Government makes Move On Orders Bill less shit

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, September 6th, 2026 - 4 comments

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.

Labour will guarantee a job for graduate nurses

Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, September 1st, 2026 - 18 comments

“Nurses who trained here should be able to work here. A good job. A future here at home. Better starts now.” – Chris Hipkins

Could Kiwibank Buy TSB?

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, August 28th, 2026 - 5 comments

Kiwibank are proposing to buy TSB Bank, before Heartland get it.

Elon Musk would be pleased with Opportunity Party’s Data Centre policy

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 pm, August 22nd, 2026 - 69 comments

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.

Homelessness kills

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, August 21st, 2026 - 16 comments

Very sad recent news from yesterday. Three homeless people in Aotearoa, the land of plenty, have recently frozen to death.

A Labour Government Is Good For Business

Written By: - Date published: 4:06 pm, August 6th, 2026 - 8 comments

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.

Luxon’s biggest problem is Luxon

Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, August 4th, 2026 - 25 comments

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.

Sack Him Christopher

Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, July 31st, 2026 - 46 comments

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.

Our Worst Recession

Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, July 29th, 2026 - 16 comments

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: why the US blundered so badly, the state of diplomacy and ways forward.

Written By: - Date published: 6:17 pm, July 23rd, 2026 - 18 comments

Iranian Ambassador Reza Nazar Ahari provides some fascinating analysis into why the Western strategy on Iran has been so disastrously flawed.

Electricity Policy and Power Bills In Winter 2026

Written By: - Date published: 1:47 pm, July 22nd, 2026 - 10 comments

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.

Defusing the goddamn ticking time bomb

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, July 21st, 2026 - 8 comments

Our reliance on fossil fuels is a ticking timebomb, There Are Real Alternatives, and the Green Party have a plan

The Greens: Kiwipower and Power for All of Us

Written By: - Date published: 3:34 pm, July 20th, 2026 - 16 comments

The Greens’ energy policy is about reducing costs to citizens, and making our generation system more resilient

Four Promises, Fifty Years On

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, July 18th, 2026 - 6 comments

Norman Kirk once said people do not ask for much: someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work, and something to hope for.

Dead Cats everywhere

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 18th, 2026 - 28 comments

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.

Green Party calls for union membership as default setting for new employees 

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, July 16th, 2026 - 26 comments

“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.” 

A Very High Impact Climbdown by Minister Bishop

Written By: - Date published: 5:57 pm, July 9th, 2026 - 21 comments

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.

Simpleton Brown: an idiot about power

Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, July 9th, 2026 - 7 comments

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

Labour: Solar without the Upfront Cost

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, July 9th, 2026 - 25 comments

This is a very impressive policy from Labour

Where the Fight Against the DSS Bill Now Stands

Written By: - Date published: 10:11 pm, July 5th, 2026 - 1 comment

On Thursday, Victoria Coleman handed over a petition at Parliament calling for the Disability Support Services Bill to be scrapped — 16,458 signatures got in five weeks while she cares full-time for her seven-year-old son Levi. Campaigning on top of that responsibility tells you whats at stake for thousands.

This Government’s war on the homeless and the young

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, July 3rd, 2026 - 10 comments

In a land of milk and honey you would think that every kiwi would have plenty to eat and somewhere to live. But this week has shown the Government wants to refuse emergency to some poor people and feed young children inadequate school lunches.

Opportunity knocks.

Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, July 3rd, 2026 - 115 comments

Denmark produces excellent beer, world class design, unmanageable open sandwiches and an object lesson in the operation of proportional representation. A particular interest in Denmark is triggered by the emergence of the Opportunity Party as a possible threshold party in the NZ system. It may, at a stretch, arrive at 5%, which, as commentators have […]

The cut to Total Mobility doesn’t add up

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 pm, June 29th, 2026 - 8 comments

7 days after petitioning parliament seeking proper funding for Total Mobility, the government instead cut the funds.

With friends like NZ First …

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, June 27th, 2026 - 6 comments

This week Tama Potaka announced the Government will backtrack on a proposal that would have allowed for the sale of up to 60% of the country’s conservation land. But Shane Jones then completely undermined the announcement by talking about using Conservation land for mining.

Talking to the “enemy”: an interview with Russian Ambassador Stanislav Krans

Written By: - Date published: 5:21 pm, June 26th, 2026 - 20 comments

The reason I chose to interview the ambassador is because I accept as self-evident the truism that all wars end with diplomacy and the sooner we return to diplomacy the better.

National panics with Kiwisaver announcement as polling crashes

Written By: - Date published: 3:52 pm, June 24th, 2026 - 21 comments

National’s recent Kiwisaver announcement, expected to cost $110 million a year, only pays back some of the savings from its erlier Kiwisaver cuts expected to save $610 million a year, and appears to be signs ofincreasing panic.

No tears for Starmer

Written By: - Date published: 8:36 pm, June 23rd, 2026 - 52 comments

An MI6 plant in my opinion. A hollow man, deeply duplicitous, a Zionist warmonger whose only job was to expunge the Labour left. He will not be missed or regretted.

The Greens’ new tax policy: A tax system for all of us

Written By: - Date published: 6:11 am, June 22nd, 2026 - 48 comments

“Enough is enough. No more tinkering around the edges. It’s time for the super-rich to pay their damn taxes”

The trouble with AI

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, June 21st, 2026 - 21 comments

Is AI the great savoiur for our civilisation? Or a fast track to environmental, social and economic devasation?