Tiwai doesn't have to pay for transmission (except for a short direct cable), distribution or retail. And for the generation, it is buying in bulk so of corse it's prices are a lot lower than retail.
Printable View
Granted, but their cost is one quarter of the consumer retail price? Generations of taxpayers had to cover the capital cost of Manapouri, Rio Tinto didn't have any costs there. But the point is that Manapouri has an asset or replacement value, yet its capital cost has been paid off. This unit, and other hydros like it, generates 70% of our power, for 0.5c to 1.0c per kWhr cost.
For many years successive governments have used their control over power generation to levy a bit of extra tax. Retail prices in particular have not been as competitive as in other countries, and the GST rate of 15% has not helped end-users. Labour/Greens are simply setting up a proposal to tax a bit less, in the hope that it will stimulate the economy. And it should do. Lower income earners spend most of their income, so power savings will normally be spent in other retail areas.
I'm pleased to see the Greens and Labour standing together on this idea, it's a powerful message. If they want to achieve results in the next parliamentary term, the first step is to win the elections.
It's a powerful message alright. Either party is happy to pursue their own self interests by using economic suicide.
Why not solve the problem simply Sell Manapouri to Rio Tinto the wanted to build & own it in the first place
How long will the Labour Party take to find a charismatic leader with positive policies and not the negative "anything the government does, we will undo - without any consideration of whether it is right or wrong" I know that all the main parties, from time to time elect leaders that are without substance or appeal and only hang around for a limited time. But if they really expect to win the treasury benches, then they need their star performer to walk on stage now, not after most of the audience has left. I expect to do well out of Shearers pronouncement on nationalising power simply because the fleeing investors from that sector may boost the demand for Telecom shares.
Craic, are you saying John Key is charismatic? He's still popular enough though. David Shearer is getting better at the job, he'll be fine by 2014.
The power cost saving proposal is not radical, it just means the govt and MRP/CEN make a little less profit. $300 per household p.a. implies the retail saving will be small percentage-wise. Today someone rang up for a phone survey about my opinion on various matters affecting NZ. Sensing it could be political in nature, I said yes to a 35 minute survey. I'm not sure who commissioned it, Nat/Lab/TEL/SKY, but the questions were around those NZ issues, and who would I vote for in an election held today. Possum, I did my best :).
JK leaves Shearer for dead as a leader. He is popular. Have a look at the drop in the NZX when Shearer made his pronouncement, albeit with a certain Green hand up his back working the strings. There will not be a $300 reduction - what will occur is that the price will remain the same or increase and the excuse will be that the price would have increased by more than $300 had they not taken the steps they took.
FP, wasn't it you who said watch Face the Nation or Q&A to see a poor performance by David Parker? I watched both and David Parker was well prepared for any questions. Like the Greens, their research on these matters goes back many years. I thought Rachael Smalley's questions showed a big lack of understanding of economics on the part of whoever posed them for her. That explained Parker's responses, he probably couldn't believe the inane questions.
In the SST today, a good writeup on the need for a systematic approach to R&D in NZ, and while those giving their views are part of the current system, the data implies the SME sector in NZ needs prodding. They're spending only 0.6% of GDP on R&D, and the OECD average is 1.6%, nearly three times higher.
I was most impressed by an article written by Jesse Medcalf on the facing page (D7), giving his views on the importance of IT career support at Secondary and Tertiary levels. He showed great perception about the new world 7th formers (year13) are entering.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/85...-with-IT-goal/
But think of the jobs it will create. We'll need a whole new govt dept to run it too!
Won't it be a renamed Electricity Authority? Already there. In any case, say 10 staff, 1 mill cost p.a., half of that coming back in taxes, not a big price to pay for hundreds of millions of savings in power for the retail consumer. Don't forget that's the target, not existing wholesale users. Small SMEs will benefit too, of course. MRP and all of the other electricity SOES have a team of database analysts, doubling up on each other's work no doubt, keeping an eye on the trends in power use, figuring out their power deliveries in the weeks and hours ahead, working out how best to supply the cheapest power to the end-users who are paying at a fixed rate. If we still had the NZEC, there would just be one team doing that work, and it would have saved us all some costs. Like these costs.
Too right - I think it's time we had an option like the big power users, to buy on the spot market, or to negotiate a deal (like we think we can with the banks, on interest rates).
By the way, there are some charts being pointed at by National, showing that the power prices went up when Labour got in around 1999, just after National's power reform (Max Bradford). The power prices had dropped a bit, and then started climbing. The key bits of information missed out, are that the SOEs probably started figuring out how they could work together after a few years, the new normal. And more importantly, the giant Maui gas field started running down about the same time. This put the price of wholesale gas up (it doubled) and of course Huntly was then used to set the lowest spot base price, while running on gas. We were using most of the power available back then, and there were rolling blackouts in dry winters. So Huntly often featured in the spot pricing, because it had to run full bore at 1000MW to conserve the hydro lakes.
Nowadays the E3P side is used, and of the four older 250MW turbines in the main structure, one is mothballed at the moment. The other three appear to be getting looked after for longer-term use.
What are the chances I was one of those polled by TV1? :) http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/nati...w-poll-5413152
Yes, CJ, maybe a Labour/Green coalition has a real chance this time. I did find out who polled me, it was UMR. Here's their research for all of 2012. It shows that the public are starting to get a bit disenchanted with the govt, steadily.
http://umr.co.nz/sites/umr/files/umr_mood_of_the_nation_2013_online_0.pdf
Bryan Gould has written an article that was published in the Herald on Friday. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10878341
Bryan Gould has been around the clock so many times and learnt so little there must be rubber strips flapping off his tyres as well as peeling paint.
He was a Labour MP in the UK for Yonks and yonks and his thinking has never advanced since about Harold Wilson circa 1964. He's bl**dy lucky to still get published let alone still breathing.
Wrong MVT. Bryan Gould eyes a comeback in NZ as this week´s version of the Labour Party has moved far enough to the extreme left to include him right smack bang in the middle of it !
I had to read this statemen from David Parker (defending why he as a Minister in 2006 opposed their newly announced policy) several times as I did not believe my eyes : " However, Parker told BusinessDesk much had changed in seven years, and that the only reason for continuing with the market arrangements at the time was because there was a shortage of new generation, and the changes could discourage such investment from occurring."
In other words, investment was sorely needed in new generation and only the private sector could fund it. Now that several billions of dollars have been invested by private investors, the time has come to nationalise it.
This is something one would expect from the late Hugo Chaves or Cristina Fernandez Kirchner.
Good luck to Labour to explain this to the average and not so silly NZ voter, once the dust settles on the headlines about power price reductions. No mention yet for the average punter on the fact that the sugegsted poer savings will be eaten up and some, by implementation of Labour/Green ETS alone. This purely populist, misdirected and economically destructive policy will not withstand the coming scrutiny.
Don't expect too many voters to look past the $6 a week - even though there is no guarantee they will get that, but whether they do or don't the govt. will miss out so have to pick it up from another tax. Labour has shown before how easiky the voters can be bought. (Think Cullen - remove interest from student loan.)
Leopards don't change their spots do they? This sort of stuff has been well covered already. Labour performed brilliantly in building up the number of SMEs, budget surpluses, and tax income in their last three terms. They had every right to see that tertiary students, who had gone through completely state funded in the past, had a small rebate on their interest costs, now they were funding about 1/3 of their education costs themselves. There were also a lot of other good initiatives that were allocated some of the new tax base.
Conversely, National has reduced their tax base, and their voters would like to see it reduced further. The govt is probably still meddling too much, it will probably always be meddling too much, nothing new there from this faction. Meanwhile more NZers are unemployed, SME numbers have dropped, manufacturing has continued a decline but it's much faster, and we are looking at a surplus of power generation for the first time in many years. As for budget deficits, National has set some records there.
Rubbish, Cullen ran down and ran down the Budget surplus he had inherited until in his last Budget projecting beyond the election it had become a deficit.
Illogical and intellectually dishonest opportunism EZ. You know that the deficit would be much bigger now if Labour was in power and I bet you are not willing to identify what Labour would cut to balance the Budget.
MVT, you forgot about this post from Sept 2012.
http://www.sharetrader.co.nz/showthread.php?8606-If-National-wins&p=382027&viewfull=1#post382027
Labour's policies would have helped keep any deficits smaller, because there would have been a bigger tax base. No reduced taxes for the well off, because they didn't need them and had other options to reduce tax, (and will try them all). There would also have been a lot more employed through this last period, also helping the domestic economy and retailers, while reducing social security costs.
If they had been left in place, the very clever R&D tax credits and similar policies would have spurred the manufacturing sector on with new exports from SMEs. We all need a bit of direction sometimes.
Major von tempsky do not forget that the higher GST also cut into retailers because the lower incomes got F/all in compensation for the increase.
This is what Mark Warminger a portfolio manager at Milford Asset Managers, one of the countries best performing Kiwisaver managers had to say.............>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Labour and the Green Party announced plans to establish a new agency, New Zealand Power, which would act as a single buyer of wholesale electricity. The plan would cut the nation’s power bills by up to $700 million a year, lowering household power bills by up to $330 a year, and giving the economy a $450 million annual boost according to Labour and Green Party analysis. This analysis is naïve and does not take into account the full direct and indirect costs.
NZ currently has $253bn of external debt and each 0.01% movement in the cost of debt adds $25m in interest payments. The uncertainty caused by the Labour/Greens Nationaliation by stealth policy is likely to add up to 1% to the cost of debt for New Zealand, due to lenders requiring an increased return for lending to a nation with political and economic instability. The cost of capital for all New Zealand companies will rise due to the same factors. A 1% increase in debt servicing costs for New Zealand’s overseas borrowing, in time would add up to NZ $2.5bn a year to the debt bill.
In addition to higher financing costs for the economy as a whole, the Government would receive around $450m a year less in dividends from the state owned power companies. The state owned power companies would need to write down asset bases by around 30% on an asset base of $15bn. This equates to $4.5bn of capital destroyed.
Vote -Labour / Greens = 3rd world NZ ///\\\\
positives on having a far left gunament would be a much weaker NZD ....
JB, that article doesn't really make sense. Why would the fact that retail NZ pricing for power could be dropped a bit, because the govt in turn takes a drop in returns, mean that the interest on overseas borrowings goes from say 4% p.a. to 5% p.a? It might do that anyway, and there would be no way of knowing what caused it.
The big picture is that the economies of the world depend on cheap energy for profits and growth, in one form or another. Here we have cheap hydro and the sun and climate for farming. And yet we are paying a lot for our home power needs, even though the hydro plant was paid off long ago. The splitting up of the energy assets and the better profits made by each generator, have created a larger asset list - but it's only real for as long as the profits stay over-high.
This is a political argument, no doubt. Should some of the assets that were paid for by the taxpayers from previous working generations be sold off in our times to some well-heeled investors for a small one-off state profit, with the risk that control moves offshore later? Or should we use these public works as they were intended, to provide a solid base for growth in our economy in perpetuity?
If the latter is applied, every NZer gets the benefits, it would be the gift that keeps giving.
Here's a small bit of extra detail that I like. NZPower will also tender for new generation. A lot like ECNZ, they used their overview to decide where best to site new power generation, for the good of NZ.
Here's a taste of the results of ETS policy from National: forestry isn't the exciting investment we were hoping for.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10879544
While the Super Fund still has a lot of bigger forestry blocks, China is only interested in our raw pruned/unpruned logs. It's hard to even make a dollar growing, tending, harvesting and transporting them to a port. A long time to wait, 30 years for not much. So they've caved, China can buy some of the smaller blocks that are least profitable.
A stronger ETS policy would stop cheap ETS credits from Russia killing the market for them here. A few have made windfall profits from the ETS scheme in the past, but deforestation is the next move. What to use that land for afterwards: that's another problem. It could be farmed at a loss, that would perhaps be OK for land banking and to defray taxes, and National has made sure that no ETS applies to farmers until at least 2015.
I'm intrigued by the National party's new byline. 'Less Debt, More Jobs'. I can only assume what is meant by this, is that we need to put aside any memory of better times in the recent past. When National reduces the recent debt they organised, we'll have more jobs, perhaps that is the message. It's not a great one, is it?
If they go into the next election with that slogan, here's what we'll quite correctly see amended on all the hoardings:
You're flogging a dead horse - ETS is dead, read The Economist. The price of carbon credits is down to $3 a tonne and going lower.
But the market is alive! Long live the market! Its the only efficient and long term sustainable mechanism!
It's the left wing w*nkers who try to rig the market and tax the market and regulate the market and strangle it with red tape who are the problem.
MVT - ETS, or something like it will be popping up again in the future, the fast-melting icecaps are proof of that.
Here's an idea from the Democrats, what if the Reserve bank printed the money we need to pay our debts. It has been done before.
http://www.democrats.org.nz/OurNews/MediaReleases/tabid/111/selectedmoduleid/545/ArticleID/727/reftab/106/Default.aspx
FP, when you say 'the merits or otherwise" of ACC or ETS, you won't be going to a Lord Moncton lecture with an open mind, because it's well known he is a conservative politician and part of a global climate change denial group. Lord Moncton would have told you what you wanted to hear as a liberal supporter - nothing to worry about, and the govt must steer clear of any role in ETS.
Let me guess, the climate is changing and it's always changed. The bit that is missed out, is how fast it is warming now. Lord Moncton gets a special mention in this paper on the global climate change denial movement. I've mentioned the Koch family before. ExxonMobil are just as bad, although they have put some money into biofuels.
http://scottvalentine.net/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/dunlap_cc_denial.302183828.pdf
Rather amusing all this talk of the far left, by those somewhere far right of Key's so called centre right. Cullen ran a surplus from 1999 to 2008. Key came in and it has been all downhill since then. To say that the deficit would be larger if Labour was in power is impossible to forecast.. To balance the budget bring in CGT. push up income tax on high earners and sit back and listen to all the squeals about how wealth will flee the country and knowbody will invest etc.
Westerly
I think you're right there, Westerly, it's time investors understood that there is no easy money coming their way - the safe way to earn returns domestically at least, is to have a well employed economy. Labour showed that in their last three terms. Have a look at this chart that I dropped out of Treasury reports. It shows that Labour managed to remove all the old core debt from the govt books by 2008, and also nearly removed the New core debt (not sure what these are). One thing I do understand is that National then borrowed all this back again plus a lot more (yes they had some excuses for that), and proceeded to reduce the crown net worth from over $100billion to under $60billion by 2012. So $40,000 million has been lost on paper.
I agree with a CGT but not the hobbled version Labour wants.
The reason that there is no capital gains tx in NZ is that the one group who would be hit hardest are farmers. Imagine what it would have done to the dairy industry where there have been massive capital gains. Every time a farm changed hands, father to son, a crippling tax would have been imposed, a similar situation to the stately homes of England where most families had to turn over the home to the National Trust instead of maintaining a viable family farm/business that usually supported a village and all that jazz. Go there now and see the many museums and the villages turned into holiday homes and 'escape to the country' middle classes. John Key would not be "one of the hardest hit" as he is intelligent enough to be able move his assets faster than most hungry Labour Tax Bandits. The VAT system we use is the fairest of all - if you spend money, you pay a tax.
"Lord Monckton is a climate change denier"?
Rubbish. No one is denying the climate changes all the time, always has, always will.
There are several issues (a) what part (if any) of the climate change is caused by man's activities (otherwise known as ethnocentric climate change) ?
(b) why have the Greens IPCC and media changed the teminology from "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change" if that isn't a backward step in the face of evidence that the world average temperatures haven't changed over the last 12 years?
(c) why, given that natural gas has much lower emissions than coal and diesel, the Greenies aren't backing natural gas and fracking
(d) why aren't the Greenies attacking China, given that it now produces more emissions than USA and India combined. in the way that they attack Western democracies
(e) why are the IPCC models so wrong? (see The Economist)
(f) why aren't the Greenies backing nuclear power, given that it has zero emissions?
And so on. I've left out several other embarassing issues for IPCC gullible believers.
You forget about ordinary businesses, they would also have a CGT. I'd be fine with that. Because I intend to make good profits each year by having a niche business, and if at the end I also pay a one-off tax on capital gain, no problem. Farmers as a whole, are making a very poor return on capital employed. They only carry on with it for the lifestyle, maybe someone else does most of the work, and good commodity cycle timing ensures a tax-free capital gain is made eventually. These inefficient businesses use up a lot of our capital employed, and our land area. No wonder we have such a poor GDP per capita. A CGT would start to fix this issue, maybe we'd see more investment in niche manufacturing for example.
You can't deny Lord Moncton is a anthropological climate change (ACC) denier, MVT. He has no formal qualifications that are suitable to be an expert in this area, and he makes up stuff about how important he was to Maggie Thatcher on climate issues. The ACC science is well proven and is becoming more proven all the time. You may as well say that evolution didn't happen. The world's oceans continue to rise, but the speed of that rise is unprecedented in modern history of the last few thousand years, maybe millions of years. Gas is a climate polluter too, just not as bad as coal or condensate, but the answer is to use only nuclear, photovoltaic, biofuels, wind and wave, hydro as our energy sources. Keep all the non-carbon neutral energy sources under the ground or seas, where they belong. But the losses to major industries using these energy sources is what keeps Lord Monckton on the gravy train. You and FP turning up to the lectures only delays the changes needed.
Exactly. If not structured properly it will do a lot of harm. e.g. a factory owner who owns his business premises and outgrows them should be allowed to buy and reinvest without tax. It's as huge step at the best of times. A small investor with a couple of flats who transfers with his job should be allowed to buy and sell. Farmers who are expanding to bigger properties. CGT should be an exit tax applying to funds only when they are released to be used as income. So a repatriation clause is essential in my view, particularly if they want to encourage savings and self reliance. So far share investors have been able to 'rebalance' without tax and pay tax only on holdings intended for sale, but Labour's scheme will tax all transactions and the disincentive of that is damaging. I hope they think it through (if they ever look like gaining power) more than the proposal before the last election. Although I have a feeling the Greens will insist on seeing every transaction as a gain.
Quote */CGT should be an exit tax applying to funds only when they are released to be used as income. So a repatriation clause is essential in my view*/
While I essentially agree, would this not be difficult to manage - another 400 - well qute a few, officials needed plus the loopholes smart accountants etc would find.
No. There are no loopholes to find although there will always be the question of whether the transaction is subject to income tax or CGT - but that situation exists now. Overall the best thing is to forget about it. CGT does stop things happening in the economy and discourages saving, and while it's easy to nab CGT on income producing assets, it's difficult on many things, such as antiques, collectables, metals, vintage cars etc. which seemed to fall under Labour's proposal - and if it doesn't, it will drive money there because it's easier to hide.
I'm not sure but I think different rules apply to repatriation in the USA with different states having different rules, some allowing a time period (18 months? ) to use the funds. There doesn't need to be any complications. Under any system some transactions will be subject to income tax as now, others currently not taxed would be subject to CGT. Forget about rebalancing the economy. It will produce some revenue but lose some as well as it will slow the economy. Always has and always will. For that reason I agree that a low rate is better, but nil is best. Then again Labour have not said if the proposed tax is over the rate of inflation as is the case in most systems. Neither have they said losses would be deductible, as is the case elsewhere. I guess final details will depend on the Greens, but it's a long long way off before anything happens.
Agree with you on Nil is not best..
Totally disagree with you on the CGT..
The present day taxation system has been added to and amended .. Twisted and turned... to suit the Govt. of the day since income tax was first introduced to fund the Napoleonic Wars..
With Revenue Men Hunting down the " Moon Rakers "..
Time and technology has moved on since then..
The Tax Department has not.... The man with the " Pince-nez " and Quill has been replaced by a man with a calculator.
The present tax system does not tax all equally.. As the system when it first came in did not ..
Today we can electronically extract Tax on SPENDING.. You spend... you pay..
With no rebates or claw back .. Call it what you will.. you SPEND.. you pay..
Simple.. Cheap..
You save .. and receive a dividend or interest.. The company or interest payer, pays the tax.. They are spending..
You spend the income from dividends.. You pay tax..
Every one at the same rate.. For every thing..
Please note :- I did not use the word FAIR once.. :-)
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. It is not the people trying their best to work the tax system.. It is the Tax System that is wrong..
I can't figure out how your tax idea would work Janner. If you had to buy $100,000 of raw goods and turned it into $101,000 of sales, you'd pay the same tax as someone else who was able to sell the goods for $300,000. The other party could obviously afford the spending tax, but you could not.
Here's Graeme Wheeler from the Reserve Bank on why manufacturing has had some issues. Interesting charts. He concludes that the answer is in making business capital more productive. I think he likes a CGT.
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/speeches/5150125.html
Quote:
Concluding comments
Globalisation, outsourcing, and international supply chains, along with competition from low cost producers and rising global demand for services, mean that the relative importance of manufacturing has been declining in all but the poorest countries for the past 40 years. New Zealand is no exception. Although the exchange rate is an important headwind for some manufacturers, the overall relative decline in our manufacturing sector is much more than a simple exchange rate story. Looking ahead, total manufacturing output is expected to increase significantly as a result of the NZD$30 billion Canterbury reconstruction.
There are no simple solutions available to the Reserve Bank on the exchange rate challenges we face. The causes of the over-valuation partly lie in the spillover effects of policies in countries most severely hit by the global financial crisis. The Bank will intervene when circumstances are right. We will use the OCR as circumstances require and we’re exploring the scope to use macro-prudential instruments that address increasing challenges to financial stability associated with ongoing increases in house prices, and that can also support monetary policy. But further efforts to improve the level and productivity of capital that labour works with, to reinforce ongoing fiscal adjustment, to re-examine the factors that diminish and distort the incentives to save and invest, and to reduce dependence on the savings of others, have to be a major part of the solution.
To expand on my original quote, nil is best unless your prime residence is included, with a repatriation clause as all investments should have. Normally this would mean it functions as a sort of death duty. Otherwise - guess where a lot of money gets directed, for the wrong reasons. But still - nil is best. It's really no more than an envy tax.
FP, other countries have a limit on the amount of capital that can be used in the prime residence, and anything above that can have a CGT levied on it. So there's one of your arguments blown out of the water. Is CGT an envy tax? What about calling it a Fairness tax?
Owning property and renting it out is one of the simplest businesses around. But knowing that in many cases, every imaginable and legal source of losses in that business are being defrayed against another normal PAYE income, to be followed by a (probable) tax-free capital gain, and where the normal annual income until that point could not really justify the capital being used - it beggars belief that we allow such a system. This capital-intensive industry is a poor employer, many properties are not maintained properly, and arguably it keeps property prices higher than they should be. IMHO.
A caution from Tim Hunter about overseas investors.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opin...hidden-baggage
We need to see more investment by NZers in some growth/export businesses. At the moment, profits in XRO etc are being taken off the table to fund the MRP part selloff. These are low-risk options, and don't show the sort of nous needed by investors to get the country very far ahead.
Pro-National Business NZ continues to have a go at the Labour-Greens idea to save costs on household power. I hope Labour dig in deep here, this is the sort of thing that will get more voters involved in 2014, because of its direct and real impact on household spending.
When large power users like Fonterra and local councils come to the end of their supply contract, what do they do? They tender for supply. They don't just roll over. Why should collective households be any different? Chopping and changing between similar supplier offers on the internet won't bring prices down to the level they should be. Prices posted on the internet are always retail or marked-up prices. These are the prices a business would like to achieve. They'll take less if pressed.
These are low-risk options, and don't show the sort of nous needed by investors to get the country very far ahead.
Who came up with the idea that investors should use their "nous" to get the country far ahead? Investors invest for profit - to get themselves or their company or family ahead. If they were stupid enough to Be like Queen Victoria and " think of England" (when she was having sex) when they were investing, then they would probably just have to wait for the next Labour led government to come along and stuff it up for them. The same applies to the local IT industry within govt. departments etc., The ones who can make it have done so and away working for real money elsewhere. My son, a keen electronics hobbyist was told that he couldn't do electronics at Napier Boys High school because at the time it was restricted. He left from Form IV and is now at the top of his field in London. The Labour/Green concept of a society where those who have should labour for those who have not to the point where everyone' has not' doesnt work - the Russians tried it for almost a century - go ther and have a look at the reality.
Craic, the Labour Party and the Greens aren't communists or fervent socialists, or they'd not get many votes. My take on this is that their policies, which have a stronger leaning towards looking after society in general (and that is how governments are judged), will bring the country forward in a way that National won't. Somehow government has to convince business owners to take on enterprise directions that lead to more staff being employed. This gentle persuasion won't be helped by Government shedding its own staff, their SOES shedding staff, their SOES being tidied up for partial sale, and other tuning and removal of incentives for SMEs.
And now one of their own drunk MPs is calling a hospitality worker a dickhead, and threatening to get him sacked. There's a hidden meaning there somewhere.
The Labour /Green concept of a society is probally more to create a level playing field rather than the trickle down of National/Act. As for the comparison
to the Russian experience. They were run by a dictatorship, hardly applicable to any Labour Govt. Muldoon was possibly as near as NZ has come to that and he wasn't in a bulls roar of being close.
Westerly
Helen Clarke had a good crack at the dictator model - far more so than Piggy. As for the level playing field, are you suggesting that all backs should carry bags of lead so they can only run as fast as the slowest forward? It doesn't work that way.
Helen Clark wasn't a dictator, she did have high standards though. She was nothing like Muldoon, her ideas and vision were much more conventional.
Interesting rugby analogy there Craic. If the NZ public were condensed into a 15-person rugby team under the National party colours, most of that team would be told to wait behind their own goalposts, and one or two players would be on the bench permanently, not even making it to the field. As National is mostly looking after the top 1%, there would be no complete forward player at all, they'd have about 15% of one player to work with.
As quick as the game got started, the National team would be selling off part of the equipment in use, maybe the crossbar first. The team would be told to hunker down and wait out the onslaught from the opposition, and to be thankful for that.
At half-time, the increasingly dubious-looking coach would promise the team that the game will swing their way in the second half, and with a bit of luck the scores will be tied by the end of the match.
In any case it would be a hollow victory, as there would be no-one watching from the stands, the match being too dull for words.
I see that the latest morgan poll doesnt agree with you two labour stalwarts - poor old JK has raced to the top again - and poor old whats-his-name has fallen down exhausted in a corner somewhere after his last attempt to gain public notice. I love NZ politics - one race the hounds chase the hare; the next the hare chases the hounds and no one is allowed to win as that might be unfair.
craic only national party voters are surveyed. All the others say F..off, stop wasting my time. Cannot afford a land line or are not home being to busy trying to make a living.
Interesting parallels between Helen Clark and Theresa Gattung. They both qualified in Political Science, well known as the easiest subject to get a degree in, they both inexplicably somehow ended up as the head of a major NZ organisation and they both left their organisation in a much worse state than they found it in....
BIRMANBOY You might like to sleep in your basket getting the occasional pat from John Key but not this Cat. This Cat says to surveyers as you are getting paid for this, send me a cheque or make an instant credit to my bank account (preferable as cheques can be stopped) or else do not waste my time.
The last big survey was the one JK won. Thats why he is running the country - its the only one that really counts. It's nice to be on the winning side and watch the losers search for excuses.
Yeah, as some sports supporter famously said when the losing side was coming out with every whinge they could think of that they shouldn't have lost and that they didn't really lose - "LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD! LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD!'
(I think it was on SKY Sports after the Highlanders or Otago had won at the House of Pain against some North Island team and the sports commentator was remarking how lucky they were, how the ref was on their side, how many injuries they had, how they wouldn't do so well next time....). The other appropriate quote being of course "WE'LL TAKE THE WIN!"
besides reading this forum i also read the politics forum on TM. and all i can say is alot of Labour supporters havent got a clue. their aim in life seems to be to protect their "tax free" status via endless forms of welfare. ....... nothing wrong with voting from the pocket...... except the cash is coming from the dwindling pockets of the so called rich.
example.... whats up with 90,000 women on the DPB in a land of 4 million people? work it out...... ok i'll do it for you.........
4 mill divided by 2.... male female. 2 mill female. 3/4 mill over 40 (aging population) and 1/2 mill under 18. so our breeding age females about 3/4 of a million with a large percentage on the DPB...... and most of the rest getting WFF. does this mean we have a very violent country where mothers with children have to abandon a family unit because of violent fathers or because the welfare system is far too generous....... or because the state is encouraging a higher birth rate to support population growth.
if its population growth..... why is it that that the poorest and uneducated amongst us are the ones doing the population growth with little potential for their offspring besides earning a welfare check
this is what is happening overseas.... and now here..... and NZ is always a decade behind the rest of the world.
welfare was meant to be a back stop to protect our citizens......and i am all for that.
but welfare seems to be a lifestyle now for almost 1/2 the NZ population and that cash to support that lifestyle is destroying the country.
and those welfare children are now becoming major statistics in our crime rates.
there is a problem...... and punishing business oriented folks is not the way forward....... eg..... labour and the greens.
this is why im consolidating all my financial affairs before we become a banana republic.... ty greenlabs
So Belg, you bracket everybody by their views and who they vote for?
Are you not the same belgarion who was red-carded some time ago for abusive behaviour?
the Greens policy on job growth... build windmills LOL ....new tech bah bah .....fact is once in power the job losses would set records on Fart Tax,anti fishermen,anti farming,anti mining,anti oil&gas exploration =higher auto reg/fuel prices,massive debt increases on,,, trains,windmills,observers....
What we’re going to do about it
The Green Party has a plan to create 100,000 new green jobs — a plan that will add resilience to our economy and protect our natural environment, without going further into debt.
We’ll create 100,000 new jobs through direct government investment, changing the way our state-owned energy companies work, and shifting the drivers for green jobs in the private sector.
How we’re going to do it
Our plan is detailed and fully-costed. It includes plans for direct government investment, building sustainable infrastructure, supporting the greening of our small and medium enterprises (SMEs), driving innovation, introducing smarter regulation, getting the prices of resources and pollution right, protecting our brand, reforming capital markets, making our workplaces fairer, and measuring progress differently.
Here are three of the highlights:
→ Direct investment We will ramp-up the Heat Smart home insulation programme ensuring it is rolled out to a further 200,000 homes over the next three years, costing $350 million and employing 4,000 people directly — 10,400 if you include indirect and upstream employment effects.
→ Keep it Kiwi We will retain ownership of our state-owned enterprises while creating the right incentives for them to partner with clean tech entrepreneurs in the private sector and develop renewable energy solutions that we can patent and export abroad. With the right incentives in place, if we can capture just 1% of the global market for renewable energy solutions, we’ll create a $6 to $8 billion export industry employing 47,000–65,000 people in new green jobs.
→ Support for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Through a mix of government procurement policies, tax incentives, start- up funding, and a $1 billion boost to R&D funding, we’ll support SMEs to step up and drive new job creation in the cleantech sector.
To view the full plan, visit greens.org.nz/greenjobs
I'm wondering if the South Island of NZ is a bastion for conservative views and National voters - you guys are terrified of a Labour/Green govt from 2014 onwards.
JB, here is the link to the green party site, it doesn't terrify me. Maybe I should vote Green.
http://www.greens.org.nz/greenjobs
In the US, the central states are full of right-wing conservatives and liberals, and the East Coast in particular has more left-wing voters. These are the ones helping Obama into office. Although I'm sure it's far more complex than that.
The Greens have been doing their research. The price of solar panels has dropped at least 10-fold in US$ over the last ten years. Many of the rolling Otago hills would earn far more income and return if they were simply filled up with PV panels, rather than trying to farm sheep on them. We should all generate our own power on our rooftops, that's now a payable proposition in many cases. The question is, what would we do with all the spare power, now our manufacturing businesses have been scuttled?
We don't have to accept the mantra that manufacturing in NZ is doomed, therefore all the new jobs will be in the service industries and in tourism. And even the big oil/gas industries might end up like the Huntly Power Station did: a lot of jobs for a short while, now just 100 staff needed to run it, almost no capital flow back to the area.
Could we use our clean-green image to export clever green tech around the world? You bet, that would be a win/win. We'd just have to steer clear of the solar panels themselves, look at the gear around the outside of it, for example.
More about tax evasion today:
Mark Hotchin of Hanover Finance denies link to BVI companies. But his personal accountant has been overseeing the two companies,
Australasian Forestry Investments & Forestry Management.
There's not much on the web about these companies, because they don't appear to be investing in other listed companies directly. The data will be well hidden. Hence Mark Hotchin can disavow all knowledge of any links. That was the whole idea of the BVI companies in the first place.
The personal accountant, Dwayne McGorman, was a director in numerous struck-off companies, or has been removed from office in them. He's still the accountant for the James Wallace Arts Trust, based in Auckland, according to the web.
Shares in Australasian Forestry Investments are apparently held by Managecorp. This is a strong clue, the firm Portcullis Trustnet (South Pacific origins around the Winebox Enquiry) controls that. See similar story regarding Managecorp.
Shares in Forestry Management were held by Bearer 1. Bearer shares explained, BVI style. In the BVI, no tax is due on investment income or dividends.
ElZ 'You guys are terrified of a Labour/Green government from 2014 onwards"
Not so. In a world where it just takes a button push or two to shift assets elsewhere, LabourGreen is just a vary temporary problem - just like a bad winter in farming - It ends and people just get on with the Spring. The greatest danger is that the weirdest Green policies will be accepted by a Labour party desperate to gain the treasury benches. We need a benign dictator to stop all the nonsense and get back to reality but there is no sign of a leader of that calibre anywhere in NZ politics.
No thats right you have Labour / Greens on the left to Far left ....National in the centre and very little too the right these days
"I'm wondering if the South Island of NZ is a bastion for conservative views and National voters - you guys are terrified of a Labour/Green govt from 2014 onwards."
maybe as more of the SI voters work(or supported by) in the export sectors more brought up on farms / fishing etc
majority of people I know that voted National run there own businesses & believe in making their own futures ,, ...many of the labour voters I know blame other for their problems and believe in more bigger governments/benefits
JB, I'm self employed too, but have a few other families and individuals dependent (at least for now) on the ability of our joint work, to earn us all a living. I look at the primary sector and I don't see too much in the way of long-term profits there. Not for most of the participants anyway. Some, of course, are doing very well.
I believe in making my own future too, and in paying my way. Our business has bucked the national trend in that our manufacturing output is trending upwards, exports and profits are generally increasing. Are we a special case? Far from it. I can see businesses far smarter than ours doing a lot better too.
But we have all needed to specialise and concentrate on smart outputs, generally lighter equipment or software. I prefer to see some IP-protected manufacturing included, that's harder to copy overseas. And manufacturing soaks up staff, makes all of us better off.
So from where I'm standing, I have to vote for a party that is right behind SMEs and manufacturing. That's not the National Party. Under National, the number of SMEs has dropped, and manufacturing job losses have been excessive. National's attention is elsewhere, on the larger firms and SOEs, the govt research firms. These are slow and cumbersome places to expect improvements from. It has been tried before, and never works. Larger firms automate to drop staff, SOEs get sold off and/or lose a lot of money, and govt research firms try hard, but don't commercialise much output.
Smaller firms have to immediately expand to complete R&D or to output more product/services. That's why they are so useful in the wider economy, and deserve a bit of attention.
Exactly JBmurc. Greens co-leader Turei on Marae Investigates (from memory) yesterday sang a similarly out of tune song. Just stated they are going to create so and so many new jobs but all their other policies are hugely anti job creation.
Just like the power policy that they claim will lower prices but when you look at some of their other policies like hugely increase emission trading charges, it soon become clear that power prices will rise and rise very significantly.
It is hard to take them seriously and that's why I think they will always be limited to about the loonie part of voters and never go over 15%. But that's exactly what Labour is relying on as they realise they are so awful themselves that they will never get back into Government without a big support and large ministerial representation from the Greens.
A scary prospect indeed !
Why not. Shes not a member for the McGillicuddy Serious Party any more and no doubt she has stopped smoking the green stuff since she left the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party.
Not exactly the perfect pedigree for a party leader. At least she wasn't a member of the Socialist Workers' Party ;)
I haven't heard much of her but Russell was damn good at the last election. He was everything that Goff wasn't.
I think that is part of the problem with them - they can say power companies rip you off, we will save you $300 and it sounds so good and convincing. But I dont think it is the whole picture and they are (un)intentionally misleading people.
Another comment: if Labour and the Greens have the same policies, Turia and Russell will sell it a lot better. Labour should be concerned.
Yet another proof we are slowly heading in the right direction while most other western economies are either stuck or going backwards :t_up:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/economy/ne...ectid=10881702
If say they haven't started fixing things that aren't broken in dairy. Unlike the greens will.
I think the lesson in that very interesting Herald article is for EZ and Possum who are always bewailing the state of NZ manufacturing.
It clearly shows that unlike Australia, NZ manufacturing is growing.
However I'm still not convinced that NZ manufacturing should grow apart from niche and hard to transport items.
I'd be happier, if it gave an overall higher standard of living to NZ, for manufacturing to nearly disappear so we could concentrate on our activities in which we have a comparative advantage - agriculture, horticulture, fishing, forestry, tourism and services. Let the Bangladeshis make our clothes and the Vietnamese our shoes....
Major Von Tempsky what are the other 80% of the population going to be Employed. Even if you can export all the production as there will be nobody here with Money to buy more than a small portion of what is produced.
MVT, if dairying is so good, why are nearly half of all dairy farmers going to report a loss for the last season? Because their interest costs and other farm overheads swamped out their income during the drought. In any case, normal returns are modest. Looking at the smaller size of our country, how much longer will we have before the exporting of our technology overseas results in powerful competitors in low-waged economies? The data is worse for drystock farmers. As PTC states, these businesses are all low in employee count.
Where did we suggest our manufacturers should be making shoes and clothes? Only at the very top end. But if you use your imagination a bit more, you'd see there are a lot of other areas we should be having a go at.
Finally, I'd be interested in your figures on the number employed in manufacturing here since say, 2003. You might be right about it increasing lately, that's because the GFC effect was made worse by National's policy of removing a lot of assistance to struggling SMEs, to help fund the tax breaks. Only now is National realising that they may have put the brakes on too hard. Stephen Joyce was on TV the other day exhorting SMEs to gear up and take on staff. And we're looking at him and wondering if National's finished gutting the public sector yet.
We're getting two conflicting messages.
Have a look at todays figures - reflected in a rampant sharemarket up over 40 points. Dairy farmers report a loss because many of them were not dairy farmers before and bought into this sector at nonsensical prices in the belief that inflation would bale them out. This is the same equation that investors use on the share market - sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
Not sure how you read that from my post Belg ! But I do think the current Government has found a reasonably successful way in between extreme austerity which risks causing too much hardship for many and extreme and irresponsible borrow/spend/print money policies that are proving to be completely ineffectual around the World.
NZ is benefiting and slowly working itself out of the World recession quicker and better than most. That's just a simple fact, wherever you look, but of course we can and should do better.
I spend a lot of my time traveling all around the World and its easy to see (and people tell you) that most of the countries and people I visit, would love to have their economies as healthy as ours currently is.
The constant nagging and negativity about NZ from you Lefties annoys me ! Stop concentrating on the negative and wake up and smell the roses :)
Exactly. A trip abroad does put things in perspective. The other comment often heard abroad is how lucky we are to have such a good Prime Minister. He's universally popular. Without a doubt he has drummed up huge publicity for New Zealand. Quite right about the negativity too. It gets pretty tiring. A change of attitude would certainly help in a lot of cases.
He's doing a darn good job, the IMF and other countries think so, better now than Australia (which happens to be Labour) he is streets ahead of any other NZ politician in popular support.
Possum, you really really need a course in Economics and the advantages of specialisation and exchange through overseas trade.
Any decrease in manufacturing will be taken up by the expansion of the other sectors I mentioned and NZ's standard of living will be rather higher than it is now.
So the Green/Labour petition was found to have around 100,000 false or duplicated signatures. What a disgrace and they, particularly the Greens & Russel Norman who have lead and used tax payer funds for this fiasco, should hang their heads in shame. A ridiculous waste of tax payers money !
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10882084
That would be one take on the article Iceman, but some signatures were illegible or incomplete, and I think it would have been based on a sample, not a complete read of all the documents. I know my details were filled in correctly :)
Labour/Greens will be back out collecting signatures for another 2 months, until the deadline. I don't suppose they can count on your support then?
Selling off part of the assets will be a big waste of taxpayer's money - previous taxpayers'. That MRP cash would not rebuild a fraction of the assets being sold off.
It's a firesale, selling a business off just when all the hard establishment work has been done, because it's the easiest way to balance the books. It's lazy and criminal management of our country, pure and simple.
Nah quite correct Belg. Another $50k of tax payers money should do it. By then the SOE's will be sold and majority of voters happy with the return, but the few remaining (of course I don't include you Belg) troglodytes thumping their chests with a "V "sign in the air. Sadly about 3 years late like other Green/Labour policies and do nothing but waste even more tax payer's dollars
Iceman, I'm just waiting for something even more embarrassing for National than new MP Mr Gilmore being tearful on TV about his behaviour. He had been given the word 'arrogant' to describe a negative trait. He's still an MP, but it must be one of the worst starts into public office - ever.
As I write this, I can hear Steven Joyce on TV3 doing the smooth talk to paper over the latest bungles with Novopay, Solid Energy etc, and David Shearer has just been on, showing increasing confidence when talking about the referendum on state asset sales.
I disagree with Janner - I think we'll see a lot more of David Shearer on TV leading up to the elections. By then, NZers might recognise which party holds more arrogant 'hollow men'.
At last, a comprehensive item on the Labour/Green power regulation proposal from a commentator.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10881834
The Canterbury area job recovery is well under way now, as the locals get on with rebuilding. The number employed in the area has risen to just above the level it was before the second major quake (but not as high as it was under Labour). While some new jobs are in the healthcare and social services area, the most accessible jobs for many, will be in SMEs.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/rebu...-to-Canterbury
Totally agree EZ about his behaviour and I think he should be sacked. But our silly MMP system doesn't give anyone the authority to sack him, like so many other before him. But being the worst ever to hold public office I don't agree with. Remember Taito Philip Field for example ?
Yes, although that was a few years into office, and Taito was voted in with a strong majority. It was a relatively small amount of possible gain (some cheaper tiling on a house etc), but that wasn't the point. Helen Clark set very high standards, and he was gone.
Tracy Watkins on Gilmore: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...e-numbers-game