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6:00 am, December 3rd, 2025 - 9 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
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Step up to the mike …
Dear Santa, I want to hear a touch of this rhetoric from some of our politicians.
Economic sovereignty.
Lessen the grip the unelected, well renumerated (inured and detached from the reality of millions of citizens) boffins at Treasury has.
Make the banks loan more for small business and less on mortgages.
While we are going n banks, have their obscene profits circulate a little in the local economy before going overseas.
“There are moments when a country realises its leaders no longer serve the nation. Instead, they serve the assets that enrich them.”
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/12/03/guest-blog-tadhg-stopford-the-guts-of-nzs-pain-is-a-great-betrayal/
What’s wrong with a windfall tax? Banks especially have profited hugely from the Covid driven housing boom.
Covid driven housing boom? During Covid I thought housing slowed due to the lock-downs. Still the Labour Government built x000 houses, and perhaps just as importantly refurbished and kept usable y000 Kainga Ora Houses, but all that was an abject failure because they had promised z000. Now we have a government that declined to promise any houses (is that true?) but have done really really well by building 15 (or was it 16?).
But there is no windfall tax – profits may come quickly or slowly, and for a variety of reasons, but it is the profit that is taxed. Trading profits are reasonable taxed as part of income, but I suspect the fixed rate for taxing property gains is because it is averaging over time.
Banks profit from the difference between the interest rate they pay on deposits (or the amount they pay to borrow from another organisation, including from overseas); they lose from mortgagee sales when people cannot afford to pay mortgage repayments. With so many moving overseas there are more empty houses, and many cannot afford rents because unemployment has increased, but the bank profits don't seem to have taken any major hit . . .
What chance the Transport Minister comes down on the side of well paid jobs for locals?
“However, NACC required Government sign-off to operate a foreign flagged vessel in NZ’s waters ”
Seems strange that a vessel that was commissioned in 2018 suddenly is too expensive to maintain.
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360905056/holcim-confirms-plan-its-coastal-cement-shipping
Buffalo was a stuffup from the beginning.
Requiring an expensive and protracted, almost rebuild in Nelson, on arrival.
Chinese built ships over 15 years old!!
Built in 1998, so already 20 years old in 2018. Makes even Winstons Temu ships look good.
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/buffalo-makes-maiden-visit-dunedin
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Labour 28 Greens 14.5 in the latest Roy Morgan.
If Labour keeps courting NZF and the nasty and bland so-called "centre" it will soon be Labour 24 Greens 19.
A divide increasingly by age.
Over 50
Men 66%-30 for NACTNZF
Women 53.5%-43
18-49
Women 66-25 for LGTPM
Men 43-52.5 (more for Green 23.5 than Labour Party 20 – this group is now the highest category of support for the Green party)
The most interesting detail is that women over 50 support for NACT is now above that of men 18-49.
Don't have a problem with that. Still not enough to win the 2026 election.
Roy Morgan, generally over-estimates teh GP polling.