Are you able to ignore yourself?
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I never said we should get rid of GST. Far from it. Your own personal enmity towards me is now leading you to making things up on the fly.
Yeah, GST on food and petrol and what not, everyone’s paying it.
I’ve pointed out that GST on luxury and big ticket items is essentially a tax paid only by wealthy people.
If that causes anyone to blow a fuse or experience extreme cognitive dissonance, it’s not my problem.
Exactly. Any contributions over that amount are taxed. So for the middle class and upper class there is little incentive to treat KiwiSaver as a serious pension scheme. For that the tax efficiency remains in leveraged home ownership and long term investor real estate with the expectation of untaxed capital gains.
The gst on any earning assett can be claimed back by a registered person so in effect real estate has no gst advantage.
(Ths is simply because of the necessarily large amounts with real estate being debits and credits which acheive nothing and would make financing transactions more difficult.)
If you only buy real estate and shares, at what point do you ever get to enjoy the fruits of all your wealth? You can’t eat, drink, sail, or drive shares. At the point where you want to turn some of your wealth into a brand new Volvo, or a sumptuous lunch at a 5 star restaurant, or a brand new sailing boat - that’s when the state clips the ticket to the tune of 15%. And if the wealthy aren’t purchasing these things, then I guess we’ll have to pretend that there are no marinas in the ‘City of Sails’ and no prestige European car dealerships about the place either.
Goodness me, what a hornets nest has been stirred up simply by pointing out some obvious facts.
‘GST immediately on every drop of income’? Lol. Turn it up, you’re thinking of PAYE.
Again, if you are a wealthy person wanting to do anything besides ‘walk around your mansion and gardens’ then at the point where you want to turn some of your wealth into a brand new Volvo, or a sumptuous lunch at a 5 star restaurant, or a brand new sailing boat - that’s when the state clips the ticket to the tune of 15%. And - like I said in my previous post - if the wealthy aren’t purchasing these things, then I guess we’ll have to pretend that there are no marinas in the ‘City of Sails’ and no prestige European car dealerships about the place either.
That is true they cannot avoid paye and then gst, by purchasing assets.
In my experience many wealthy folk accumulate their real estate portfolio etc. on the back of frugality and a less ostentatious consumer lifestyle. And yep they often enjoys the fruits of their wealth by being homebodies without getting a Lambo or going to St Moritz! Being wealthy of course gives you more choice as to how much and when the state “clips the gst ticket”.
Well if you do go and buy ‘a Lambo’ you’ll be a wealthy person and you’ll pay 15% GST (consumption tax) when you do so. Waiting for them to get cheaper isn’t a viable strategy, and if you go ahead and make the purchase there is no way you can avoid this tax.
‘Both the Urus S and Urus Performante are available for sale in New Zealand now, with the S starting at $395,000+orc while the Performante carries a $50,000 premium.’
Someone is buying ‘lambo’s’, someone wealthy. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be offered for sale here.
When’s National going to release their tax cuts, the second edition.
Hope to see National do some billborads like these soon as Hipkins get more desperate and more personal :
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
So National's new catchphrase is "squeezed middle", and they seriously believe an extra $20/fortnight, for a family, is meaningful "tax relief." I am trying hard to keep an open mind here, as some of what they are announcing, I do agree with, but I think they are seriously out of touch with the realities many Kiwis are facing right now.
National appears to have zero concern for/interest in, those Kiwis who do not fall into the "squeezed middle" category. Especially those who are single, or have no children in their care. And, no, I am not just talking about myself.
I will be watching future announcements with interest.
Not a national voter but balance up the money in hand vs the reduction in costs over all. I hear them when they are saying it's about making the environment in which we all live in better than it currently is. We all want to see more opportunity and prosperity and the conditions need to be right to allow that to flourish.
I 100% agree with Luxon's point that the focus has been too great on amount of spending as a measure of performance. Show me the outcomes!
I'd happily pay more tax if I thought or could see it was being spent well, and don't read that as well meaning selfishly for me.
I'd like to see it invested well in health, aged care, child care, education and so on... none of those particularly benefit me directly
(ok aged care yes as an OCA investor) but I want to see NZ being a place people are able to feel positive to live in. Even if they don't have a lot today, we should all feel like it's possible to do better.
Too few of us are saying that and after 6 years of Labour it's hard not to see where the blame for a lot of this lies.
I have a different view after listening to National's Leadership team. I think they've got it pretty much right with this. They are unashamedly targeting the "squeezed middle" ( a boring term already) with meaningful and fully costed tax relief that is long overdue. Furthermore, the fuel price reduction and slowing or reversing of rental costs will give the average family a lot more than the $ 40-50 per fortnight they get from the tax adjustments alone.
This is the first announcement I have seen from National at this early stage of the election campaign that I like a lot.
I watched the unveiling of the tax policy and heard various amounts given as to much people in the ‘squeezed middle’ would get by way of tax relief. The very lowest figure mentioned was ‘$20 a fortnight’, other amounts mentioned were multiples of that. The fact that you put forward the lowest figure out of all of them tells me that your mind is very much closed, and it will be the same with many of the Labourites and chardonnay quaffers that post here: we will have a busy day of pooh-poohing and attempted discrediting no doubt. It was inevitable.
I think any hope of rents reducing, is pie in the sky fantasy. Best we can hope for there, is a slowing of rent increases. The vast majority of landlords are unlikely to give any consideration to passing the savings onto tenants.
Fuel? Well, we all know how that goes. The price of fuel is impacted by many other things, not just govt fuel tax. So while reducing the tax is helpful, it by no means guarantees that we will pay less for our fuel over time.
Besides which, none of this comes into place until July next year (correct me if I'm wrong) - so not going to relieve the pressure for anyone, until then.
Of course it doesn't guarantee that rents and fuel costs will go down. But it's highly likely they will both be lower than they would under current settings. I as a small landlord with a great longterm (single mother) tenant have not raised rents to recover the elimination of normal accounting of interest payments. I had recently warned my tenant that I would have to raise the rent soon to recover this increased cost. I am hopeful that this policy change, if implemented, will make it possible for me to not increase rents for a while yet.
I've got two rentals and I'm currently running them at a loss of 10k each this year. If I head up to 7% plus when my lending renews in April 2024 I'll be looking at a 30k loss on each. I am already at what I feel is top of the market. I renewed one at $795 a week recently, the other we approached the existing tenant to broach the idea of an increase and they advised they were already considering to end their stay with us as the current rent ($750) is getting tight for them.
They are great tenants and we want them to stay so we left it as is and let it go periodic. The house they are in is superior to the one I'm getting more rent for as well.
If market conditions improve and my lending costs come down, I definitely would consider it for great tenants. I have shown them my books and they know I'm running a loss, rates and insurance have also gone up quite a bit recently so it seems pretty unlikely I could lower however.
Also just to try and paint the picture of some landlords not being evil, the tenants in the front house paying $795 a week asked about the middle (better) house and I said it could be coming up in the near future. They asked if they could move into that one if it does become available with no other changes to the existing lease and I said yes. In writing.
Your personal testimony shows your humanity and the complexity of the situation. You have very real responsibilities and financial concerns which no doubt cause you stress and worry and require careful management. Unfortunately the Left are raised on some pretty basic tropes where all nuance and reality are discarded and all landlords, business owners, and those disparaged as ‘wealthy’ are reduced to a caricature: privileged, selfish, greedy, soulless exploiters whose only motivation is a life of comfort at the expense of their fellow man.
‘So National's new catchphrase is "squeezed middle", and they seriously believe an extra $20/fortnight, for a family, is meaningful "tax relief." I am trying hard to keep an open mind here,’
If you were ‘trying to keep an open mind’ then you wouldn’t have posted that families will get an extra $20/fortnight.
The package -
Incomes
————
A family with children earning the average household income of $120,000 will be $250 a fortnight better off.
An average income child-free household up to $100 a fortnight better off.
Full-time minimum-wage workers get a $20 boost to their fortnightly incomes, and paying lower rates of tax on extra hours worked.
Anyone earning over $78,100 gets the same tax cut of $40 a fortnight.
A superannuitant couple will get up to $26 a fortnight more.
Tax Cuts/Credits
————————
17.5% threshold moves from $14,000 to $15,600.
30% rate moves from $48,000 to $53,500.
33% rate moves from $70,000 to $78,100.
Extend eligibility for Independent Earner Tax Credit from $48,000 maximum income to $70,000.
Previously announced childcare tax credit of up to $150 a fortnight for 25% of costs of early childhood education for low and middle income families.
Increase WFF in-work tax credit by $25 a week.
Canceled taxes
———————
Fully restore interest deductibility for rental properties.
Bring the brightline test back to two years.
Cancel Labour’s planned fuel tax hikes which would add 12 cents per litre of petrol, or $8 for a full tank.
Remove the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax which adds 11.5 cents per litre of petrol.
Cancel Labour’s new App Tax.
Fully costed?
They say that they'll get $8.4Bil from cost savings but don't say where most will come from (they have a few figures but not $8.4B worth).
Much like them harping on about billions in wasteful spending but only ever coming up with a few hundred million.
I developed/built them.
I am in it for the long term, or was. I am lucky to live in the area I grew up in, I worked for Kiwibuild for almost 4 years and during that time I learnt a lot from my peers but also saw a lot of housing development I didn't think would be good for social outcomes in years to come.
I built in a way I thought was a useful contribution and made better use of the largely underutilised land I had (70m² footprint house on 645m2). I shifted the original dwelling back and added 2x more stand alone, 3 bed, 2 bath w garage homes which also look like the original house. I put a new roof on mine too and painted it so they are all the same.
I ran through all the costings before hand and modelled what it would look like at interest rates as high as 6 - 6.5% which was the peak of rates while I've been a homeowner. Wasn't going to get rich quick and I manage them myself. We were looking alright but costs went up, the project went over budget (I did put a bit of money into improving our personal home but I also did alot of the work myself). I've ended up borrowing about 300k more than I had planned, but I didn't compromise on materials or outcomes.
In fact we actually turned down unconditional offers from 3x developers (williams, wolfbrook and faisandier) with the best offer being $1.2m, I'd already sunk 100k out of my own pocket (not the banks) and had my building and resource consents signed off. The developers would have stuck an ugly, low quality, high density here instead.
I am getting to the point of considering selling, but at this stage if we sold anything it would be our personal home. We've figured we can clear out enough debt by doing that we'd have more cashflow by renting, cutting my rates and insurance bills, I can get rid of 2 out of 3 vehicles I own and we can be closer to work in the wellington cbd.
Or head to Australia again.
‘Much like them harping on about billions in wasteful spending but only ever coming up with a few hundred million.’
————
Yet ‘Spread your legs’ Chipkins and ‘giant fiscal hole’ Robbo have been saying for months that no cuts can be made without impacting frontline services….they with an embarrassing PREFU looming they suddenly find $4 billion of cuts!!!!
I can’t believe the Labour faithful allow themselves to let the likes of Chipkins and Robbo pull the wool over their eyes time and time again.
What's this fortnight nonsense, they think we're in Australia?
I am sure your tenant appreciates your willingness to be a supportive landlord. A lot of landlords automatically refuse to rent to single mothers, without ever giving them the opportunity to prove their reliability and trustworthiness. There is still a lot of negative stigma attached to solo motherhood unfortunately.
The message National has sent to pensioners is... here's 11 bucks... oh and we're raising the retirement age and Act wants to cut your base rate too.
So either the National policy is ‘profligate’, or derided as being too little. Make up your mind.
If you want to talk about the policies of potential coalition partners, perhaps go and have a look at the radical policies of the Greens and Te Pati Maori. You may not have any qualms about a LABGREETEPATI government taking power, but I do.
It’ll be great when this election is behind us and in the rear view mirror. Labour and Robertson aren’t some ultimate source of truth and they don’t have a God given right to be in power either. The sight of Chipkins lying his ass off by saying that ‘the Maori Party’ has not changed at all since 2008 is the standard disingenuous behaviour I expect from people on the Left.
The online gambling tax seems so specific... must be a luxon captain's call.
Let's tax those sinners.
more specific than removing GST on fruit and veg?
That's easy to implement compared to an online gambling tax.
And what about in-person gambling.
After all the backwards & forwards by Labour on Fruities & Veges - it take a special kind of stupid for anyone
with half a clue to want to support the clueless Comrades, after the past 6 years dismal performance ;)
When Robbo's Election Year Showtime budget sees a mere empty sack with a few low value freebies trotted out then the really stupid still supporting the very lame cause & poor excuses become very visible ;)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/electi...P5KYFUD2RVDOQ/
Election 2023: Christopher Luxon attack ad accidentally launched early
Quote:
An attack ad campaign targeting National Party leader Christopher Luxon has accidentally been launched early.
A digital billboard spotted in Auckland this morning featured a black and white image of Luxon with the slogan “Out of touch. Too much risk”.
It was on the corner of Sandringham Rd and St Lukes Rd and has since been removed.
The billboard said it was authorised by Richard Wagstaff who is the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions [NZCTU] president.
The Labour affiliated CTU Union dumb bells cant even get their launch out without making a fu%k-up of it ;)
In true Labour style when the residual excuses for Labour Losers who haven't been stabbed or kicked out of Govt - have nothing to offer most Kiwi's, then get the Left aligned CTU Unions to attack the leader of the opposition party ;)
A sure sign that Labour & Chumpkins are indeed headed towards the mother of all large avalanches OUT of power ;)
Luxon out of touch?
I would have thought the party that had lost more than 40% of its voter base (according to pollsters) since the last election was the one out of touch! That would be the Chipster, aided and abetted by none other than his predecessor in their ruinous reign. From rockstar economy to 159th place in GDP growth. Cindy...you did this! Chippy, you helped her. Grant, you couldn't help yourself!
Sad that they don't have enough money to run those ads.
Millions are pouring into Nat/Act coffers with the other parties getting scraps (though they aren't bought and paid for at least).
Tova O'Brien comes up with an interesting idea.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...y-for-tax-cuts
Instead of silly online gambling taxes how about removing all of the religious tax exemptions (and the maori ones too I might add). ;)
Sad that the Unions haven't woken up to what the spiralling COL, Interest rates, Rents, Transport costs etc etc
courtesy of Labour's own incompetent policies & direction is doing to their Union members ;)
Perhaps the Unions should been more awake to their members going financially backwards on Labour Policies rather
than ignoring it and instead involving themselves in Political posturing :)
What the Parties are pulling in in donations clearly suggests that large sectors of the Country are prepared to pay good money to help see the current hopeless Govt gone for good on their recent dismal performance ;)
Lab/Green asleep at the wheel again .. 6 years on rather chasing Landlords, Dumb ideas like Tech Sector Micro Taxes, confusing themselves on Supermarkets, playing with Potholes.. or perhaps they didn't want offside with all the religious outfits & charities that would otherwise come bashing on Robbo's door for funding instead ? ;)
No Govt would want to offside with Religious Organisations - that would be like Labour well and truly signing their early exit passes on top of already abismal plummeting support levels that Lab/Green are now seeing ..
Your mates Lab/Green dug a large hole -- now they get to be made to lie in it - very simple
A large slice of NZ has become totally sick and tired of the Lab/Green blight on what was once a far more vibrant positive place and all deserve considerably better than what the current bunch of Lab/Green losers have orchestrated :)
Our Left wing media have a real cheek. The red New Zealand Herald want me to subscribe to their ‘Premium’ service for a $1 a week for the first 8 weeks, this so I can have the privilege of accessing pro-Labour cartoons by (Australian) cartoonist Rod Emmerson & columns by left wing activist Simon Wilson - who always seems to have a bee in his bonnet about NZ’s miniscule (0.17%) contribution to global emissions.
Over at Stuff they are giving plenty of oxygen to a claim that National has a $130 million dollar hole in its tax plan. Robbo’s entire financial management of this country is one gigantic fiscal hole. Labour claims their plans are always ‘fully costed’, so I guess monumental waste and an extraordinary borrowing rate are ‘fully costed’ and were always part of their plan. Well if that’s true I don’t care much for their ‘fully costed’ plan.
National said they were not the party of new & higher taxes.
Then they announce a series of new taxes.
National manage to announce that they will remove the Regional Fuel Tax in Auckland because it is only used for Light Rail - wrong.
Then they say that they can do this because there is lots of money in the bank unused - wrong, it is earmarked for projects in Auckland (and not light rail) that Auckland say they need.
Brown is quite right - remove it but supply the money some other way. No mention from National of this - smoke and mirrors again.
This cruel regional fuel tax has been on place for years and years and money languishes in a bank account while hard-working Aucklanders struggle with a ‘cost of living’ crisis. It is simply not acceptable. I don’t accept that people should have to pay extra levies just because they live in certain parts of the country. Should Hawkes Bay residents have to pay a ‘Hawkes Bay Reconstruction Tax’ simply because they live where they live? I don’t think so.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politi...FZ6LVRC26UW5I/
‘More than $300m collected in Auckland Regional Fuel Tax remains unspent, nearly half of the $700m collected.
From the day the tax was brought in on July 1, 2018, to the end of March 2023, it has collected $703.4m, of that, only $375m was spent, leaving $327 unspent.
The tax was brought in by Labour to help fund ATAP commitments.
Big winners include the Eastern Busway which has spent $246m over the period, road safety improvements which spent $239.2m and the Downtown Ferry Terminal redevelopment, which spent $136m.
National’s Transport spokesman Simeon Brown said it was “a bit ridiculous that they still seem to be spending just over half of every dollar they take in”.
“Aucklanders are being fleeced by Labour’s Regional Fuel Tax which Labour imposed on Auckland, which was meant to deliver transport projects, but which almost half of it’s just simply sitting in a bank account at Auckland Council,” Brown said.’
Brown needs to make cuts to the bloated council staff numbers before he asks hard-working Aucklanders to pony up more $$$$.
If the left wing council won’t make necessary cuts now, then I guess taking away the ‘regional fuel tax’ boondoggle will force their hand soon enough.
Yeah, Aucklanders want roads and they get a redeveloped ferry terminal instead. Fullers will be happy.
Time to knock the ‘regional fuel tax’ on the head.
———
‘Big winners include the Eastern Busway which has spent $246m over the period, road safety improvements which spent $239.2m, and the Downtown Ferry Terminal redevelopment, which spent $136m.’
Just earlier this evening on ZB Drivetime, huge fish hooks discovered with the revenue National counting on from the 15% tax on foreign buyers of NZ homes over $2million, towards funding the $14.6 Billion tax cuts.
Up until the Labour govt brought in the foreign buyer ban on existing homes, buyers form China accounted for 37%, Australia 19% & I think it was Singapore 3% of all foreign purchases.
Due to existing & new trade agreements, buyers from all those countries are excluded from the tax, - so that's 60% of foreign buyers are automatically excluded from paying the 15% tax, & National want to open the door to them plus reduce the Brightline test from 10 years to 2.
There's a massive mistake in the forecast revenue, fine if you're Luxon owning 7 houses or Willis owning 4 houses, but what about Kiwi first home buyers who were really coming back into the market, they will be stuffed!
First home buyers cannot possibly be more stuffed than with what this clueless Labour government under Hipkins, Ardern & Robertson have done to them :
1. Record high prices for properties,
2. Bought at artificially record low interest rates,
3. Government making the housing problem into a disaster,
4. Government competing in the property market to buy homes and driving up prices even higher (refer 1).
Now all the chickens are coming home to roost with many of the first home buyers in negative equity situation while having to pay ever higher mortgage rates & interest.
So Blue Skies, spare us your Ardern BS & spin & scare mongering. Spare us your hypocrisy & crocodile tears of pretending to care for first home buyers when the facts are to the contrary.
NZers know exactly what this Labour government has done to them - nothing positive and everything negative.
If i'm not mistaken, when Jacinda imposed the foreign buyers ban, how was she able to ban Chinese buyers from parking their laundered money in NZ houses? She did it by a stroke of pen and if you consider from China's point of view, they would welcome more of this kind of restriction as China has currency controls and prefers it's citizens to not engage in an exodus of wealth manner.
I feel Luxton could have gone harder with a tax on non-resident buyers. Recently Trudeau has imposed a 1% annual stamp duty tax on all non-residents owning residential properties in Canada. I'm also not surprised in NZ being not familiar of imposing the 15% sales tax but if Canada can do it, why can't NZ? Canada has many tax treaties with the US and China and has no issues imposing their own tax laws. Remember, it's only an issue if it disadvantages the other country and if you look at China, well I can't see how they would disagree. Oh BTW, can foreign nationals buy houses in China? Nope.
Balance don't you get it?
When Nicolla Willis says the Labour Govt has spent all the money, how come they are at the same time offering an eye watering $14.6 Billion in tax cuts!
No prudent economic manager would do this, its wilful blindness to ignore the contradiction.
Further to this, a growing number of independent Tax & Trade experts (not the Labour govt) are saying around 60% of foreign buyers will be exempt from the Foreign Buyers Tax & there's nothing the govt will be able to do about it, its enshrined in International Law due to the deals we've signed & we're hardly going to put at risk around 1/3rd of our export market by breaking parts of existing Agreements.
Plus an independent chorus of experts (again not the labour govt) including NZ Internet Vivien Maidaborn Chief are saying the funding National is depending on from overseas Gambling operators to help fund this $14.6 Billion is not going to work either, its too easy for people to get around Geo blocking & overseas gambling operators are not going to comply with any new regulations when they don't have to.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...down-wont-work
If the economy is such bad shape as they say, you don't give away a $14.6 Billion tax cut & you don't pretend its not inflationary either.
They will never find $14.6 Billion without borrowing or increasing GST & it's irresponsible to pretend they can.
Labour's targeted $3.6 Billion in savings & reducing the debt while supporting those at the bottom is far more realistic & responsible.
Not to be outdone there's the kiwisaver withdrawal plan to pay rent or "bonds" (Logen will tell us how he prefers a term associated with slavery) to one of these landlords.
I like Matthew Hooton I thought he might be right leaning considering his past but he sums National's tax policy up well in the herald this morning.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...FSJA6LVJ6DOWU/
National faces probably the most incompetent Government in New Zealand’s history. Our trade, fiscal and general economic outlook is the worst since the 1984 and 1990 financial and political crises.
Jacinda Ardern quit rather than face the electoral consequences of her Government’s failure to deliver its key promises and the hubristic excesses of its Covid response.
The current account deficit for the March 2023 year - after Covid was behind us - widened to $33 billion, 8.5 per cent of GDP, up from $24b or 6.8 per cent of GDP the previous year. That’s the worst ever recorded.
In the last decade we have dropped another six places on the OECD’s productivity league tables. We now have among the worst productivity in the developed world, according to the Government’s own Productivity Commission.
In 2024, the IMF says New Zealand will be the worst-performing economy in the entire world in terms of GDP growth, except for Equatorial Guinea, a small African dictatorship on the brink of economic and social collapse.
Grant Robertson’s profligacy has made public debt material again and his fiscal deficit already appears structural.
Debt servicing is again becoming a major area of government expenditure, as it was before Ruth Richardson, Bill Birch and Michael Cullen repaid Robert Muldoon’s, Roger Douglas’ and David Caygill’s reckless borrowing.
Serious people know there are no circumstances in which tax cuts or increased handouts could be justified in the short or medium term.
Here is what some Kiwis are thinking.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/polit...ax-policy.html
"Its not enough I need more". That is what politicians have to pander to.
The bludger mentality whether it is someone too lazy to work wanting more benefit or a wealthy asset owner fighting capital gains tax, someone earning $100k or more with their hand out for national super, your average Kiwi seems to be only thinking what they can get back from everyone else's tax or ways to contribute less to the pot.
Killing off farming & growing the public service like Topsy will 'transition (us) to a more productive economy'? Yeah right.
This economy is increasingly infected with a 'post work' attitude. Working is for schmucks. Go have a look at the roads in any of our major cities at any time of the day and the roads are absolutely clogged. Must be people 'working from home', working 4 days a week, 'on a course' (a golf course), or travelling to their next 'meeting'....or they are on 'jobseeker'. We are the new Greece.
Transitioning to a productive economy? 'Mate, you're dreaming'.
Fundamental reform in the fiscal/investment environment is needed. Netiher Labour or National are proposing to do that.
Unfortunately I don't see how keeping the 39% top income tax rate while reducing the bright-line CGT down to two years will have anything but a further negative effect on productivity.
Right wing parties are up against Progressives / Social Democrats...whatever they are calling themselves these days.....whose raison d'tre is to roll out more socialism, redistribute income from 'wealthy' to 'poor' (Robin Hoodism) and re-make society. It is literally what progressivism is all about. They don't believe in capitalism, they don't care about debt, they respond to an inflation crisis by pumping more money to people that will spend it and accelerate inflation. At the end of the day these people only ever produce a drop in living standards in their endless quest (and it's the ultimate in tilting at windmills) to make everything fair.
Unsurprisingly, giving away 'free' stuff is really popular with many voters.
Faced with progressives whose entire reason for existence is to further the aims of socialism and redistribute income, right wing parties HAVE NO OTHER OPTION than to offer tax cuts. It is highly disingenuous of the left to howl with indignation whenever right wing parties find ways to offer tax cuts, because if right wing parties didn't they would lose every single election to the socialist lolly scramble merchants on the other side of the fence.
Roberston's claims to be fiscally responsible and have everything always 'fully costed' is akin to me racing out and borrowing $5 million dollars and then telling everyone it's all ok because even though I have a job that pays me an average salary I've itemised what I'll spend the $5 million on line by line and it's all 'fully costed'. I'll be spending this amount on wine, this amount on women, this amount on song, this amount on consultants, and I've set up an 'Infrastructure Fund' of $1 million for work on my house. I've then managed to find 'savings' of $50,000 from the money I've borrowed, and of course I have the 'savings' in my (borrowed) 'Infrastructure Fund'.
This country has entered a twilight zone where we have a finance minister who doles out money for RAT tests that are never used, cycle bridges that are never built, light rail that is never started, a media merger that was canned, a mega-polytech merger that was not needed.....it's all 'fully costed' folks! All this waste and non-delivery is 'fully costed'. "Oh, fully costed is it? Well that's a relief". It is beyond a joke.
The party of economic management can't come up with costed policies though, and base it on dodgy gambling taxes & a foreign buyers tax which violates many international agreements.
How bad is that esp when they apparently have the "skills" of an ex-CEO economic master.
Lets correct this for a start.
For the first 2 years of Labour govt they brought the Debt to GDP ratio down to the lowest level for decades & only after Covid hit the globe & then the 2 devastating cyclones, that ratio has climbed significantly, so its only last 3 years of the govt, not 6 as is being misquoted.
And that was to support businesses to stay afloat, support employment, managing the Covid response & support for devastated areas. e.g. without support, horticulture would have been be wiped out, to never recover in regions like Hawkes Bay, roads & rail lines need to be rebuilt, peoples homes destroyed etc.
But never mind what I think, what do you think?
You constantly criticise the govt for our high debt levels, so tell us how do you reconcile National promising $14.6 Billion in tax cuts (which they know full well can not be anything like fully funded, instead of reducing our Debt?
Even Right Wing Mathew Hooton says you're being conned.
Tell us how Mathew's wrong.
Not one single person in the media calls Robertson out on his 'fully costed' bull sheet. It was 'fully costed' to for 10 Waters to blow out by $1 Billion?! WTF?!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...AC5I6GA2FPH54/
Three Waters cost blowout expected to hit $1 billion in ‘mega-bureaucracy’
By Kate MacNamara
29 Jun, 2023 04:55 PM
Amendments to the Three Waters reform plan have blown out establishment costs by an estimated $1 billion.
Matthew Hooton: National's tax plan is a cyncial con-job.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...FSJA6LVJ6DOWU/
Though another con-job is the NZ Herald's paywall (sorry about this).
Keep going with your 'fully costed' horse sheet when the whole country can see Robertson wasting billions and billions of dollars with zero accountability. It's actually become a sick and sadistic game for the left and its patsy media enablers to bray about 'dodgy numbers' when any numbers Labour comes up with are demonstrably not worth the paper they are written. A $130 million 'hole' in Nationals tax plan you say? Goodness me, however will they cope! Well, if that does transpire then I guess they'll cope the same way the Labour government coped when they found $200 million for a disastrous and absolutely needless polytech 'mega-merger'......and then another $100 million just to keep the whole thing afloat.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows...nts-staff.html
Newshub Nation: National polytechnic merger Te Pūkenga buckling as it asks for more money and fails students, staff
25/03/2023
Laura Tupou
Gray Gibson
'There are serious concerns about the management of Te Pūkenga as it asks for more money for I.T. systems while course completions are plummeting and some enrolments are down.
January 1st, 2023, marked the official start of Te Pūkenga, the new national polytech and institute of technology conglomerate.
In 2019, then-Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the merger would be "transformational," but as it unfolded, it did not meet the Minister’s expectations.
Four years after the merger began, and three months into the fully formed crown entity, Te Pūkenga has been chewing through funds, shedding staff, and has poor provisional results for Māori and Pacific students.
Two former polytech CEOs and a current staffer and union representative spoke to Laura Tupou at Newshub Nation about their concerns.
"I'm fearful that we've put all of our eggs into the Te Pūkenga basket,” former co-leader of Unitec and Waiariki Polytechnics Keith Ikin said.
“I'm fearful that students don't have a choice."
Ikin was involved with Te Pūkenga until the end of last year. He dreads "the ongoing carnage of non-achievement and non-delivery just continues on,” and if it got worse, it would be a travesty, he said.
Merran Davis, who was CEO of Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology before joining Te Pūkenga in September 2020, said things were getting worse in terms of enrollments, equity, staff morale and student morale.
"That will continue to happen because the trust and credibility is gone," Davis said.
Steve McCabe, a senior lecturer at MIT who also functions as MIT's TEU (Tertiary Education Union) Branch President, said people would start pulling out.
“It’s going to be a death spiral,” he warned.
"If we continue to operate in this way, we are going to see the entire edifice just collapse.”
In 2019, Te Pūkenga was formed after intense consultation with the vocational education sector.
Hipkins acknowledged at the time that the system was “unsustainable”.
"Last year alone the government had to put an extra $100 million into the polytech sector simply to keep it afloat, even though the number of students was declining."
Official advice provided to Hipkins at the time around whether money could be saved said mergers were “subject to execution risks”.
Advice listed the main risks as "very high and extended costs of change”, "a lack of regional responsiveness", and "the risk of systemic failure."
$200 million was then spent on the transition costs to merge the 16 polytechs and institutes of technology with the nine industry training organisations to form Te Pūkenga.
Four years on McCabe was still waiting to see any benefits in his day-to-day experience as a lecturer, in a sector that was promised transformation.
"Twice a month now on my bank statement, my salary comes from Te Pūkenga and not from M.I.T," he said.
"That's about the most profound change I've seen."'
GFC. Christchurch Earthquakes. Kaikoura Earthquake. The previous government had to deal with all of those.
Global events such as pandemics and financial crashes, & natural disasters, are part and parcel of life on this planet.
Stop blaming Labour's failures such as the total non-starter KiwiBuild, failed mergers, the '10 Waters' debacle and all the rest of it on 'the pandemic'. It's disingenuous in the extreme.
Blue Skies, tell us how Left Wing Chris Trotter is wrong.
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https://www.interest.co.nz/public-po...ipkins-weekend
Chris Trotter gives his assessment of PM & Labour leader Chris Hipkins' weekend speech on which political parties he will & won't work with
28th Aug 23, 1:19pm by Chris Trotter
'What are we to make of Chris Hipkins speech “Working With Others”? Ostensibly about unity, the Prime Minister’s address homes in on the two issues which, for the last three years, have divided New Zealanders the most – Ethnicity and Gender. For good measure, he has also ruled out leading Labour into any kind of coalition agreement with NZ First. Taken in its entirety, Hipkins’ speech has much less to say about unity than it does about refusing to work with anyone who declines to embrace Labour’s radical social agenda. That being the case, it would have been more honest to entitle his address: “Going For Broke With Woke”.
Implicit in this strategy is a strong belief that New Zealand society, or, at least, a majority of those New Zealanders determined to vote on 14 October, have embraced the Labour Government “line” on Ethnicity and Gender. Clearly, those who balk at the idea of injecting the concept of co-governance into the provision of public services; or reject as unfair the idea of trans-women competing against biological women in sport; will no longer find a welcome in Labour’s “big tent”. Once celebrated for its broad inclusiveness, Hipkins’ party has opted to greet potential supporters with a grim pair of ideological bouncers.
This is not, however, the picture Hipkins wishes his audience to conjure-up. Quite the opposite, in fact:
“Elections are contests of policies and values”, says Hipkins. “Disagreements are a fundamental part of a healthy democracy. But I won’t seek to divide our communities.
Labour’s focus in this election won’t be on imported culture wars, but fighting an economic war against inflation and inequality.”
From the man who issued a “Captain’s Call” ruling-out a Wealth Tax, these lines have a disturbingly Orwellian quality to them. It wasn’t Labour’s opponents who commissioned the He Puapua Report, and then kept its recommendations hidden from both NZ First and the voting public in the months prior to the 2020 General Election. Nor was it National, Act or NZ First that whipped-up opposition to the visit of “Posie Parker”, and then downplayed the violence unleashed upon those who came to hear women exercise their right to free speech. No, when it comes to importing culture wars, Labour is well out in front of its rivals.
How else are we to interpret the following sentence explaining Labour’s refusal to work with Winston Peters’ party?
“New Zealand First has become a party more interested in toilets than the issues that really matter.”
The reference is to NZ First’s policy of ensuring that biological women’s – and men’s – right to privacy is protected by requiring public toilets and changing-rooms to include spaces for those whose definitions of gender differ radically from those of their fellow citizens. NZ First’s “architectural” solution to the intrusion of biological males into biological women’s spaces, may well strike voters as a laudable attempt to broker a compromise between the contending parties.
That’s not how Hipkins sees it. According to the Prime Minister, Peters is:
“[S]eeking to make trans people the enemy in this campaign.”
That is an extraordinary accusation. It does, however, comport with the political style of the aggressively woke, who interpret anything other than 100 percent acceptance of the “correct” ideological position as proof positive of “incorrect” beliefs and “genocidal” intentions.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Hipkins presses on:
“Living fully in your own skin isn’t always easy for any of us at the best of times, and it can be particularly hard for our rainbow communities. None of them deserve the kind of abuse that is being directed their way, stoked up by politicians who should know better.”
This is hard to take from the political party which, alongside the Greens, lent its support to a social movement whose followers openly threatened violence against those who dared to oppose them – and then delivered it.
It is all of a piece, however, with a party so convinced of its own rectitude that it has become incapable of construing disagreement as anything other than – to use the buzzwords du jour – “misinformation, disinformation and malinformation”. In its mildest form, this mindset offers “education” as the optimal solution to the “wrong-think” of dissenters. Among the hardcore, however, dissenters are to be suppressed. What Hipkins has signalled in his speech is a personal preference for the hardcore’s response to the communicators of “wrong-thought” – among whom he clearly includes Winston Peters and NZ First.
That Hipkins has opted to drag New Zealanders into the strange, looking-glass world of the super-woke is deeply troubling. According to the Prime Minister, dissent on questions of gender threaten the unity of the nation and automatically disqualify the dissenting party, NZ First, from any role in government. At the same time, Te Pāti Māori may pour scorn upon the principle of majority rule, and the democratic system it upholds, without rebuke. The party’s claim that Māori genes are superior to those of New Zealand’s other ethnicities, likewise, presents no barrier to entering a Labour Party-led coalition government.
What Hipkins’ speech makes clear is that Labour has opted to “go negative” for the seven weeks remaining before the election. The Prime Minister may wax eloquent about the unity of the nation, and claim that only Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have the right to speak for the shining Aotearoa-New Zealand of tomorrow; but what he has done, in the fractious world of today, is divide the nation into an “Us” who agree with the Red-Green-Brown troika’s radical programme, and a “Them” who cling to the wrong-thought of their outdated ideas and dangerous beliefs.
It is the intractable problem that besets all populist movements, be they of the Left or the Right. Who is, and who is not, to be counted among “the people”? Because, once you have determined who may properly be included in the “true” nation, then it follows that all those who fall outside your definition must be “untrue”. And what is the usual fate of those who prove untrue?
By the strictures set forth in his speech, Hipkins has identified the untrue nation as those who still believe that one-person, one-vote, one-value is the unalterable foundation of representative democracy. Also excluded from Team Chippy are those who answer the question: “What is a woman?”, with the words “Adult human female”.
By sunrise on 15 October, New Zealanders will know which nation is larger: the Woke Left’s “Us”, or the Centre-Right’s “Them”. Whatever else follows, the “others” being “worked with” are unlikely to include the untrue. The ones, representing close to half the nation, who lost.'
Im afraid your perceptions are not based on fact.
The previous govt has not had to deal with anything like the same challenges.
The effects of the Global Covid Pandemic absolutely dwarf those of the GFC, it was a once in over 100 year event,
But in the last 100 years there have been at least 7 major International Financial Crisis & the GFC was only 1 of them.
The Great Depression 1932
Suez Crisis 1956
International Debt Crisis 1982
Asian Economic Crisis 1997-2001
Russian Economic Crisis 1992-1997
Latin American Debt Crisis 1994-2002
Global Economic Recession 2007-2009
and the devastation caused by the 2 cyclones across so much of the North Island, are on par with the Christchurch Earthquake & far higher than the Kaikoura earthquake.
Whose chris trotter..? Haven't heard of him.
National are dreaming if they think they will get $200mil from gambling and $740mil from 15% tax on houses - $1billion in the hole for a start on their tax plan.
They can't tax the Chinese but seem to think they have that covered.
Matthew Hooten is not a fan of the budget
Election 2023: National’s tax plan is a cynical con job - Matthew Hooton
National’s tax policy was much worse than expected. It reveals a party undeserving of being taken seriously. It has no plan to “fix the economy”, nor any idea of what one might look like. It seems uninterested in achieving power to avert economic disaster, and content merely to hold office.
Sums it up pretty well.
Preium Herald content
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...FSJA6LVJ6DOWU/