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6:00 am, August 26th, 2026 - 65 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Dolly Parton RIP.
Some outstanding music, and also more courage and a better moral compass than dozens of contemporary politicians. Will be remembered when most of them are long forgotten.
Her children's charity to fund free books to children is crashing as donations flood in from across the world.
.
She had a good heart, just like Sam Neill.
A wonderful interview with Tami Nielson on things Dolly.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019049190/tami-neilson-on-the-loss-of-music-icon-dolly-parton
People are starting to see the impact on house price of Opportunities tax policies:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1120357/what-the-opportunity-party-s-land-tax-would-mean-for-house-prices
As predicted, this is a traditional tax policy election contest.
Does anyone really lose when house prices drop? I can't think of a downside. Go TOP.
"Does anyone really lose when house prices drop?"
Won't someone think of the banks.
I'm on record as wanting to see long term settling and reduction in house prices.
However, if you have a substantial mortgage, incurred at the top of the property market – then you do, indeed, lose if house prices drop, and you need to sell.
The bank will get their cut. But the erstwhile homeowner may be left with no equity.
Agreed… and I'd thought of that ..the sellers for cash. But most people have to live somewhere, and if you've lost 'money' by selling in a down market the replacement house you buy will be also cheaper (in the case of Wellington $300k cheaper on average!!). So unless you're Chris Luxon or Chris Hipkins and you've got spare houses you're doing ok to sell & buy in the 'same market'. Vote TOP & drop house prices.
That only works if you have any equity left from the sale. With a 30% drop, you could be walking away with nothing. And good luck getting a mortgage with no deposit.
Is that assuming the land value doesn't increase or does increase?
Most owner/occupiers are unlikely to sell. The cost of the land tax is going to be roughly the same if you 'down-size' (unless you're proposing to shift a fair distance away). And, for everyone except beneficiaries (mostly pensioners) – the UBI will be roughly equivalent to the tax.
So, this is only likely to be a decision-point for landlords. Who are likely, I should have thought, to consider rent increases to compensate them for the land tax. After all – their tenants now have all of this extra UBI money.
Cynical, I know. But we see this every time the accommodation supplement is increased.
The accommodation supplement/subsidie needs to canned, it was done to farmers in the 80s it need to be done to landlords,
I’ve become an accidental landlord myself by the way.
I was just using it as an equivalent to the land tax. In that, if landlords perceive that tenants have a greater ability to pay, the rent goes up.
I know but I never let a chance go by to point out that rent subsidies are part of the problem.
The real estate industry
buysdonates heavily to National, to mess with the Accomodation Supplement would have the Nats in breach of contract.For the record, I agree, the AS is nothing more than a taxpayer economic stimulus to landlords.
So, using that logic, will the UBI just be a subsidy to landlords?
TBH, I'm not all over TOP UBI. I have glossed over those chats.
It was just an offhand comment about the banking industry that basically can't loose in the mortgage market. Witness the billions they export out of our economy each year.
Parasites.
It occurs to me that when the party first started, in 2017, the proposed property tax was based on equity, so the home owner's liability was small at the start, and increased as his/her equity increased as a result of mortgage payments and accrued capital gain. This is not the case with the land tax, which is based on the full value of the land right from the start.
Yes, if the bank effectively owns 80% of a property via the mortgage, should it not pay 80% of the land tax????
Well, they can, but your mortgage will go up to compensate.
Sure, if they occupy the property 80% of the time or 80% of the area. In which case they should also foot 80% of all utility bills, insurance, maintenance & repair, and water the garden.
National says a rates cap will require financial discipline from councils.
Yet their rates cap would not limit council fees for services
Therefore, placing a cap on both (fees and rates) would require far more financial discipline from councils. Preventing massive fee increases supplementing expected rate shortfalls.
Or maybe the bigger issue is that the financial problems facing local government aren't primarily the result of some objective lack of "financial discipline", but years of suppressing rates by deferring investment in increasingly expensive infrastructure and services.
Cutting spending to keep rates low, in order to solve the consequences of cutting spending to keep rates low, seems a monumentally stupid idea.
Because this is the recurring problem with neoliberal ideas of “discipline”: they assume that if an institution is producing an undesirable outcome, imposing a harder financial constraint will force it to behave better.
But that only works if a lack of constraint was actually causing the problem.
Hi Res
Furthering our discussion the other day, I posted a short video you should check out when you get the chance.
https://thestandard.nz/elon-musk-would-be-pleased-with-opportunity-partys-data-centre-policy/#comment-2070818
As for this discussion, It's a mix of factors. And yes, deferring investment is one, but far from the only one. Just about everyone can point to council waste in their own district along with nice to haves that ratepayers can't afford. So councils living within the means of their constituents is another.
Deferring investment to lower rates didn't prevent most councils from ticking up to their eyeballs in debt
You may be on a large income but for many rates increases are becoming unsustainable. So a new funding model is also required as this rates cap doesn't go far enough.
Auckland City and the Government have spent $100 million on the 2nd Habour Crossing already and they still can’t tell us whether a tunnel or another bridge is the best option. Now Mayor Brown wants to spend $1.0 million looking at the Meola Reef Option GOD HELP US this is BS, no wonder our rates bill keeps climbing????
The Let's Get Wellington Moving programme officially spent $180.7 million from July 2015 until it was wound down in March 2024, delivering no new major arterial roads
F8cking Amazing.
Correction: everyone can point to waste and money being spent on “nice to haves” in their opinion.
That's rather the problem with treating financial discipline as though it were some objective measure. What you consider wasteful expenditure, somebody else may consider an important public service.
Deciding what councils should provide, and how much we're prepared to pay for it, is ultimately a political question. That's what we have councillors, public consultation, proper process and, ultimately, elections for.
I agree that rates affordability is a real problem, and that we need to reconsider how local government is funded. But that's a quite different problem from councils supposedly lacking “financial discipline”, and an arbitrary cap doesn't solve it.
Oh Res you start to sound incoherent as you bring forward the blind following of administration sector dogma. As time goes on their attitudes are increasingly sending us 'to the dogs'.
We are a poor country which with judicious use of money and advantages could prosper but the embedded traditions of recent years don't stand up to acid criticism no matter how defended.
Indeed, greywarshark (@ 4.1.1.2.1)
What utter nonsense, Res
Financial discipline is widely recognized as a fundamental key to spending and investing wisely.
One of the reasons rates affordability is a growing problem is poor financial discipline.
Council debt at record highs. Decades of rate increases at higher than the rate of inflation with ongoing demand for more increases going forward. Yet, despite all that funding, a number of councils are still playing catch up on work that's been deferred or worse, ignored. All while the wasteful spending continues and nice to haves get done. Take Wellington for example.
As a result, the notion of a rates cap has become overwhelmingly popular with ratepayers. More so from the right but also from the left.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/573451/rnz-reid-research-poll-75-percent-of-voters-support-a-rates-cap
While opinions are subjective, it's when many no longer believe they're getting value for money (due to perceived wasteful spending and poor financial discipline) they desperately seek a solution.
This cap, expected to save the average household about $34 a year won't solve it.
You're still confusing two quite different things.
The actual cost of replacing pipes, maintaining roads, running libraries, collecting rubbish and providing the rest of the services councils are expected to provide is driven by the cost of infrastructure and services. It does not become cheaper because ratepayers are finding rates difficult to afford.
If affordability is the problem, then give councils better tools to deal with it: broaden their revenue base, change the funding model, alter central/local cost sharing, reform infrastructure financing, reduce the functions they're expected to provide, or identify specific spending that should actually stop.
Because the big costs facing local government aren't generally the colourful “nice to haves” people like arguing about. They're the decidedly unglamorous business of pipes, roads and other basic infrastructure.
There are plenty of real policy options. None of them require arbitrary rates caps. A cap simply constrains one source of revenue while leaving councils responsible for delivering essentially the same services and infrastructure, just with less ability to actually pay for it.
Unless the government is intending to regulate the costs of pipes, bitumen and structural steel in the same way?
And if the underlying costs don't fall, the difference has to appear somewhere: higher fees, more debt, deferred maintenance, poorer services, asset deterioration, or another source of revenue.
Nobody is arguing that councils shouldn't spend "wisely." All I'm suggesting is that wisely is relative to reality, not to whatever you want the costs to be.
It is you who is confused, Res
I'm not claiming nice to haves (although some coming with extremely extravagant costs) are the big costs councils face. I'm pointing out that nice to haves along with wasteful spending robs councils of funding that could otherwise go towards those larger costs.
As for lowering underlining costs, more councils should work together to better align their purchasing power in an effort to lower supplier costs. And bring more work in house to lower provider costs
Affordability is vital to constituents sustainability to continue to afford to pay the rates. Too many defer paying, funding will fall short, putting the whole system at risk of failing.
Unaffordable rates also deters businesses while adding to inflation and economic slowdown.
So again, affordability is vital and can't afford to be overlooked when spending and setting rates.
Yes, agree a new funding model is required
And the day before National squashed the Visitor Levy which would have reduced general rates by allowing councils to levy the tourism industry for the costs of tourism. So all ratepayers will continue to pick up this cost.
And most of the costs related to tourism aren't in the nice to have category, they're picking up litter, providing and cleaning toilets, and picking up shit where the council can't afford to build a toilet. So a strong public health imperative.
They just haven't a clue what they are doing.
Yeah they do, trying to getting elected by being the cheapest .
Of course the average voter is to thick to realize that deferred maintenance is the worst kind.
They are just talking to their extreme core though, not their left, or thinking flank. This is nearing desperation shit. Their internal poling must be a bit sad.
Agree Graeme.
That's why I think Labour should put a Visitor Levy in its policies. Bollocks to this "no more taxes" agenda being forced on us by the Trump-lite Nats.
Those travellers causing traffic chaos and damage to roads and needing toilets and parking and other facilities should be made to pay, and as you say, locals would no longer have to foot these costs that they are not causing, meaning rates will be lower.
And the monetary benefits from tourists, largely go to overseas companies who own the tourism business and are using us for their benefit.
National backflipping on the bed tax/levy was a huge mistake.
The Regulatory Impact Statement set out some benefits from a rate cap. It included a statement that multiple property owners will benefit the most. Another government policy that is for the benefit of the wealthy and sorted.
It is expected regions with the largest rates increases will save the most per home owned
Nevertheless. official government figures confirm the actual financial benefit is modest, expected to save the average household about $34 a year
Seymore still going on about the unfairness of the TOW and the advantages Maori receive over Other Nationalities when is this Race Baiting ever going to end God Forgive this chap he is a pain in the rear rnd IMHO.
God won't forgive Seemore – he is now too different from what should have been his direction through life, now increasng in embedded egoism and driven by malicious power.
Either Santana Otago gold mine investors have that Hearings panel fully in their pocket so well that they can just treat them like shit and presume they will get their approval anyway, or they are in for the biggest defeat in their professional lives.
They have 'requested' a further pause in decisionmaking while they did the document dump, but then faced immediate protests from environmental groups who said they had no time to read the documents. So the fast-track expert panel ruled that denying them a chance to respond would violate “natural justice”.
“The panel has the firm view that the information should in fact have been provided at the time of the initial application,” it said.
The panel said its target timeline for a draft decision had moved to the week of November 30.
So now the final decision on the gold mine is pushed out to January 20, 2027.
In an announcement to shareholders, Santana Minerals chief executive Damian Spring said there would be no further delays.
“We expect this is the final request for a pause from the expert panel before they begin their decision-making process … we are two weeks further out, but materially closer,” he said.
This delay means the decision now runs a high risk of running into a Labour+Green government.
Best of luck with that one Santana.
And well done the Spielbergs and Amblyn Entertaimnent for topping up the funds for this opposition.
Thanks, Steven.
I thanked Steven too, but what if the boot was on the other foot? A billionaire donor was funding the miners?
One could strongly argue this is already the case with pro-development groups. They have already bought some politicians.
Final decision might be 20/1/27 but a draft decision to decline could be announced on 2/11/26
Could National chuck Santana under the bus to claim that Fast Track is working, a week before the election?
I'm dreading the fallout if this is declined, a lot of vulnerable people have invested, emotionally and financially in this project. They are going to be a tad upset, to put it mildly, if it's canned and rationality isn't their strong suit (link to supporter's FB group). The above scenario would be preferable to it happening under a Lab + Green government, civil disorder would occur then. But good timing for that decision.
Those early investors prior to any consent took the risk with their eyes open.
This Fast Track legislation is deliberately stacked in the investors favour. If they lost and can't abide by this stacked law, and they generate civil disorder eg threats, then they should just go straight to jail.
There's already been threats, against Sam Neil and Sustainable Tarras and its members. I know a few of the more prominent / vocal supporters and a decline under a Lab / Green government would be a lightning rod to them, they'd completely loose the plot, and yes, they'd be inside pretty smartly.
At least it getting declined under the current Government will contain them a bit. If there's an incoming Labour led government they won't want to be wearing the blame for smashing their dreams. Unfortunately it'll give National the ability to crow about how effective and through Fast Track has been.
My fear is the panel will decide to approve the Santana application but try to please objectors by adding in about 500 conditions intended to mitigate the undoubted environmental effects.
Should that happen, I suspect Santana will likely meet only some of the environmental restrictions or conditions, and will later on go back to the panel and seek to have the rest cancelled for all manner of BS reasons, eg too harsh, unrealistic, things have changed etc.
And it is the local authority that will have the task of making sure Santana complies with any conditions – another cost for ratepayers.
"79 ridiculous questions"
Let's see how that flies!
A Trivia Quiz designed by ChatGPT that only AI can answer whilst sounding convincingly?
Erica Stanford's exclamation in the House today.
Nut-case.
Erica-no-Coup – say no more. She gives Nicky-no-Boats and Brooke-no-Equal Pay a run for their money.
Hey folks, another group source question.
Where to find someone who can oversee the giving of insulin three times a day.
There are options for general meds (opiates, anti-psychotics etc in blister packs) but those providors will not go near insulin.
We don't need the calculations done, just see that it gets injected.
Chur.
With 3x a day – it's pretty much got to be someone in the household. If there is not a family member close by, I think your only option would be a caregiver – but they're going to have to be on site for a full day, or make multiple trips.
It is possible for them to be trained to do this, by a diabetes nurse. But, very possibly, they won't want to take on the responsibility. And, it would be difficult, if they are unable to attend (sickness, etc)
You could talk to your GP, and see if they can refer you to a diabetes nurse, who may have suggestions.
We are fully engaged with the local diabetes crowd.
We are looking at a private provider but there is a strange anomaly that the usual caring contractors are risk averse when it comes to insulin.
Will we be able to grow low THC hemp in our gardens this coming season?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/1133265/industrial-hemp-sector-wants-more-seed-in-the-ground-across-new-zealand
"It's a simple email, then getting the seed and putting it in the ground come October, November."
great!
Why does MPI not want it fed to animals?
Legislative hurdle:
"This is because feeding harvested hemp to animals is against the law in Aotearoa. Under the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act (ACVM), any feed products derived from hemp must contain no detectable levels of tetrahydrocannabinols such as THC or CBD. In addition, feeding hemp to animals could also be an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act."
https://www.healthissues.nz/articles/greener-pastures-hemp-s-potential-as-livestock-feed-in-aotearoa
That surely will change…
Not until the corporates can get the market sown up.
That's right – same as it ever was.