For 10 years, the IRD has been investigating the tax dealings of the country’s 250 richest people and their 7,500 companies and trusts. It turns out they had underpaid $500m of tax with hundreds of millions more in dispute. If you and I went into a government office and stole $10,000 of stuff, we would go to jail. But ripping us off for $500m was all just a mistake, apparently.
Well, the same old lines just aren’t working now. Maybe its a factor of having 3 journos interviewing him, but they are just rejecting Key’s spin outright – they know that the lines are fundamentally misleading, so they just brush them off and ask tougher questions. He’s getting his arse kicked on everything from schools to the economy. I predict this’ll be one of Key’s last long-format interviews.
Austerity has failed in both the UK and NZ. But at least Cameron’s Conservatives have the wit to realise it, and the courage to act.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Iain Lees-Galloway has been leading an admirable campaign to keep Palmy North’s Capital Connection.
His latest effort is to have petition (online & offline versions) to present to Parliament at the end of the month. It has to be then, because it’s expected that the government (through NZTA) will cut the service in July or August.
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
National has reduced the multifaceted, extremely complex job of economy management to a simple bookkeeping goal: a surplus, whatever its size, by 2014/15. Treasury came to the party, projecting a $200m, 0.08% of GDP, surplus for 2014/15 in the Budget. Now, the Reserve Bank’s projected a 1.1%, $2.5b deficit. Oops.
We are using more than the planet can provide, and are growing both in population and in resource use per capita. Rio+20 is meant to be the opportunity to ensure both that the developing world can access the clean water and other resources they’re currently missing out on, while also committing ourselves to living within the planet’s limits. Is there any hope it will succeed? And is there any hope that we, as the nation with the world’s greenest image, might live up to our hype?
Most Kiwis won’t be able to afford to pay to buy what we already own when National sells our assets. When they sold Contact, only 5% of us got shares. You know who will buy the shares. Not your working families. Not Key’s new army of the unemployed. It’ll be the people who won big from National’s tax cuts. Now, to add insult to injury, Key is looking at making you and me pay a bonus to these people.
Peter Dunne would be really, really smart to back the Green amendment. He could still vote for the asset sales law but claim some moral high ground in saying ‘no sales until after the referendum’. Then, when the result is overwhelming opposition, he can do the commonsense shuffle and switch to opposing asset sales. It would be too late to stop the law passing but it might just save Dunne’s skin in 2014.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
National rushed its Asset Sales Bill back into the House today. Stephen Joyce argued that it was to reduce debt, deepen capital markets, and invest in schools etc. One-off asset sales asset increase debt and if schools depend on flogging off more assets, we won’t get many more before the assets run out. The real reason for the sale is the middle one. Asset sales produce huge windfall capital gains for the buyers. They should be taxed.
Update: Bill went through 61-59 – 2 opposed from Maori Party. Cushion?
Intense negotiations between Greece and UEFA officials over the last two days have resulted in an announcement that Greece will be the recipient of a bailout package.
No-one seems to know why the fish keep dying at King Salmon’s Waihinau farm in Pelorus Sound – or if they do they aren’t telling us. Maybe it had something to do with stuffing tens of thousands of these fish into an environment that is nothing like they have evolved to deal with. It is interesting that this has not been offered up as a potential cause.
David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”
Five to fifteen years of economic turmoil. Peak oil. Climate change. For “Western” / OECD countries it’s time to start creating a world based on a different kind of growth.
John Key’s days are numbered. His personal popularity is falling. His brand is tied to unpopular asset sales and a pokies for convention centre deal that is now subject to an Auditor-General investigation. He’s not winning the next election. So a change of leader is coming: pre-election or post. But who can succeed him? Parata? Collins? Joyce? They’re all shot.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
The Asset Sales Bill will be back in Parliament for its second reading tomorrow.
It’s a further abrogation of due procress, as it comes back 5 weeks early, curtailing proper scrutiny.
The Auditor-General has announced an enquiry into John Key’s SkyCity deal. The deal should now be put on hold while the enquiry goes ahead.
Another housing bubble. Just what we need. House prices up 5.4% in a year, 7.8% in Auckland. Inflation is 1.6%. Billions are being funneled into housing by banks who can make a buck off importing cheap credit from offshore and lend it to homebuyers here. The government could act. But this is National, does anyone expect solutions from them anymore?
We should remember to celebrate our victories, and yesterday was a day full of them. First, there was the announcement of a settlement in the Oceania rest-home dispute. Then, the man the Nats selected to push through ACC privatisation was sacrificed to protect Crushless Collins. Finally, the Nats gave up trying to stop caregivers getting paid.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
National have not had a great year, but the class size fiasco last week has raised the bar on their awful. Worse: the nice man Mr Shearer first raised their stupidity on class sizes, and their poll ratings have dropped noticeably. So it’s time to roll out their big gun again: a charm offensive from the nice man Mr Key.
Announced this morning before Question Time in Parliament that John Judge will be replaced as Chair of ACC on a temporary basis by Paula Rebstock. Judge is going to chair the ANZNational Bank; Rebstock has been chairing the advisory body to WINZ. It will be interesting to see which bits of the culture get changed and if there is any benefit to ACC claimants.
NRT on the situation in Canterbury, and the Nats’ contempt for elected democracies.
People are driving less because of high fuel prices. That means less road tax for the government – a $120m shortfall in the last two years -, which pays for the transport budget. The biggest slice of the transport budget – the uneconomic roads of national significance. So, National is quietly delaying the RoNS until after they know they’ll be out of government.
Times are tight, right? You’ve probably been told that when your boss says you can’t have a pay rise that keeps up with inflation. Yeah, well. It seems that doesn’t apply to managers. The largest jump in median weekly income has been for managers – twice the change across all workers. In hourly terms, no-one is keeping up with inflation. Welcome to the brighter future.
Parents and teachers are calling for Key to apologise over the stress and anxiety that Key’s government has caused them over the last 2 weeks. Want to guess how Key handled it?
On Superannuation Key is in a very strange position indeed, where keeping his word is doing him more harm than breaking it. It’s a disaster for the country.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
New Zealand has been enjoying a long period of uninterrupted sunlight, and this looks likely to continue until at least 2014. The abundance of light can be attributed to prudent and sensible economic management by government, and the implementation of sound fiscal and monetary policies.
When Righties say we can’t afford to support solo mums, what do they think we can afford instead?
Sharples and Turia remind me of an old couple running the family store with no kids to pass it on to. They want to retire. If they do, that’ll be curtains for everything they’ve built. Without them, the Maori Party goes to a deserving death. Plus Key will be pressuring them to stay. They’re his only ghost of a chance. How much longer can they keep going? They’ll be 72 and 70 in 2014.
