General Debate 29 March 2024
This is a seriously good political ad, despite being nine minutes long. He brings back memories of the US at its best, makes a compelling case against the status quo, and uses his father and uncle to link back to those better times.
Now RFK is a very flawed candidate. I’d even call him crazy adjacent. But if he does more ads like that, he is going to get a fair few votes. The big question will be who he takes more of them off – Biden or Trump.
The crucifixion of Jesus is considered a well documented historical fact, along with his baptism. While the exact date is unknown, most scholars say it was in 30 AD, so 1,994 years ago.
Regardless of your beliefs, have a Happy Easter.
My response would be:
Our country is not a students’ association, and it shouldn’t be governed as if it is.
The attack by Islamic State terrorist in Moscow was an act of evil. 133 innocent people died. Islamic State is an evil organisation.
The response of the Putin Government was also evil, albeit in a lesser way.
The United States privately and publicly warned them of a likely terrorist attack on a concert, based on intelligence they intercepted from Islamic State.
Islamic State has publicly claimed credit for the attack.
Yet the Putin Government is publicly blaming the attack on Ukraine.
The ACLU said:
On March 18, the ACLU appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue another free speech case of great significance. In this case, the ACLU represented the National Rifle Association (NRA) against government overreach and censorship. Some may have wondered why the ACLU was representing the NRA, since the ACLU clearly opposes the NRA on gun control and the role of firearms in society. In fact, we abhor many of the group’s goals, strategies, and tactics. So, the reality that we have joined forces, notwithstanding those disagreements, reflects the importance of the First Amendment principles at stake in this case.
The ACLU made the decision to represent the NRA in this case because we are deeply concerned that if regulators can threaten the NRA for their political views in New York state, they can come after the ACLU and allied organizations in places where our agendas are unpopular.
This gives me hope, when we see principles win out. The ACLU abhors the NRA but are fighting for them in court, because they believe Government shouldn’t be able to threaten you for your views.
Likewise am pleased in NZ where we saw the FSU defend the rights of libraries to have drag queen story time. I know quite a few FSU officers probably personally abhor the concept, but they put the principle first of not letting security concerns take away people’s right of free association.
It brings back the quote from Noam Chomsky:
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”?
Simeon Brown announced:
Cabinet has agreed on the coalition Government’s direction of travel for a new Land Transport Rule to be signed by the end of 2024. This new rule will reverse the previous government’s blanket speed reductions imposed on motorists across New Zealand, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.
“The new rule will ensure that when speed limits are set, economic impacts – including travel times – and the views of road users and local communities are taken into account, alongside safety.
“The previous government’s untargeted approach resulted in blanket speed limit reductions across the country, rather than targeting high crash areas of the network. The new Rule will lead to blanket speed limit reductions being reversed by the end of next year, except where it is unsafe.
The new approach is basically just common sense. It’s amazing how many of the former Government’s policies were just ideology gone mad. Taking into account travel times, community views as well as safety is a balanced approach. Otherwise we’d just have a maximum 30 km/hr limit on all roads.
Stuff continues to break stories about Green MP Darlene Tana. The TLDR version is:
I think it is fair to conclude this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.
A quite stunning report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence. He has found that the GCSB hosted in New Zealand a signals intelligence system controlled by a foreign partner agency, and failed to even mention it to their Minister, or indeed their incoming Director!
He finds that the capability operated at GCSB:
How did this happen. Some extracts:
Late in 2011, the then Director-General, Simon Murdoch, noted in an email that GCSB legal
would need to be closely involved in the matter and that it would potentially require the
awareness or consent of the Minister, as well as consultation with the IGIS. This inquiry
found no record that the legal analysis, consultation and engagement with the Minister or
IGIS contemplated by Mr Murdoch occurred.
So Murdoch correctly said the Minister and IGIS should be consulted and a legal analysis done. It never happened.
Simon Murdoch’s tenure as Acting Director-General ended the week before Christmas 2011. On 3 February 2012 Ian Fletcher took over as Director-General.
The MOU was signed in March 2012 by a GCSB Deputy Director. My inquiry found no
records to indicate the Director-General was involved. Mr Fletcher advised the inquiry that
he did not recall being briefed on the capability when he started at the GCSB, and has no
recollection of the capability operating at GCSB or of Simon Murdoch’s concerns.
So a Deputy Director signed the MOU without doing what the Director had asked, and didn’t even mention it to the new Director.
I think it would be appropriate for the Deputy Director responsible to be named. Not briefing the Minister, the IGIS or the new Director undermines accountability.
Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
Enjoy. This is so good that Creative NZ should give $100,000 to fund it!
I never realised that a bridge would collapse so thoroughly and quickly from a ship hitting it. While this was a horrible accident, it makes you think about how vulnerable bridges would be to deliberate attacks.
The loss of life is only six at this stage and could have been so much worse. Kudos to local authorities who managed to stop most traffic entering the bridge when they were alerted to the out of control ship. If this had happened at rush hour, the death toll could have been in the hundreds.
US $80 billion of trade travels in the now blocked waterway and the cost off rebuilding the bridge which the US Federal Government has pledged to fund) will be massive.
Newsroom has an article from two academics at Otago University supporting the removal of GST on food – something opposed by almost every tax expert alive. The article is labelled “expert opinion” and they support the Maori Party bill on the grounds of “we need to start somewhere”.
An actual tax expert is Labour’s spokesperson Deborah Russell who noted:
I just want to take the House through some numbers and some evidence on this, to explain why we think there are better ways to address the cost of living. So, back in 2018, in the midst of all its paperwork, the Tax Working Group did produce a background note on GST, and, in it, it very explicitly examined the possibility of taking GST off kai, and looked at some of the numbers. They estimated which households would get a benefit from it. Now, by the time that’s adjusted for food price inflation since 2018, there’s been about a 28 percent food price inflation. A decile 1 household—so that’s the lowest-wealth 10 percent of our households—would, in today’s terms, get maybe about $19 a week benefit from taking GST off kai; a decile 2 household would actually get $18 a week; and a decile 3 household would get $23 a week. That’s the kind of benefit that would flow to low-income households from taking GST off kai. But a decile 8 household would get $46 a week, and a decile 9 household would get $53, and a decile 10 household would get $68 a week. The benefits of this change would flow primarily to high-income households. That’s the evidence of the Tax Working Group in 2018.
So the “expert opinion” from Otago University is that we should reduce the cost of living for the lowest income households by $19 a week and the highest income households by $68 a week!
The actual fiscal cost of doing this, of taking GST off food, would be—again, in today’s terms—about $3.3 billion to $3.9 billion.
That’s a lot of money to only reduce costs for the lowest income households by $19 a week.
Vaughan Gething has just been elected as First Minister of Wales. He is black (his mother is Zambian) and this makes him the first black leader of a country in Europe.
It also means that none of the four leaders of the UK are white men. And I (especially) have nothing against white men, but it is pretty remarkable that a country would have so many leaders not from the majority ethnic group. In most countries it would be unthinkable to have one, let alone so many. And this hasn’t happened because of quotas or a desire to have diversity for its own sake, but because they happened to be the ones who got elected. It speaks well of a country that people are judged not on their skin colour or religion.
So the UK currently has:
It is ironic that so many young people are brought up to think the UK is a racist country, when in fact they show the benefits of not judging people on their race or religion.
The Herald reports:
Of the currently estimated $280 billion required to deliver these investments, only $80 billion has been appropriated.”
Officials warned that the $280b cost of that investment “far exceeds the funding available”.
They sought new Transport Minister Simeon Brown to note that Labour’s planned investment was “unaffordable and undeliverable”.
This is Labour’s transport package. They announced projects which had no capacity to be delivered or funded, yet they continued to try and pull off what was effectively a con job.
he officials estimated that in order to pay for the plan, revenue into the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF), which mainly comes from fuel taxes and road user charges, would need to increase by 17 per cent a year for the next five years until revenue into the fund doubled from $7.3b in 2021/22 to $15.6b in 2026/27. Fuel excise duty is currently charged at 70 cents a litre. If all of that increase came from fuel taxes, it would mean increasing that to $1.40 per litre. GST and ETS would add another 40 cents to that price.
So Labour’s plan would have seen petrol tax doubling and the cost of petrol exceeding $3.50 a litre so a 50 litre car would cost $175 to fill up.
Most petitions to Parliament achieve little as they are raising a policy issue that MPs are divided on, and hence won’t lead to any change.
But some petitions can lead to change, and even lead to a debate in the House as happened to the petition of Claire Dale about mobility parks. It was debated in the House on Thursday and the recommendations from the Petitions Committee supported by all parties and the Government.
It is a useful reminder that disagreeing on many policy issues doesn’t mean MPs won’t work together in other areas where the common goal is to improve things for New Zealanders.
Grant Robertson’s valedictory is here. Some of the more humorous extracts:
I was poached from Marian’s office by Heather Simpson to come and work for Helen Clark. My job description was to count to 61—the number of votes that we required to pass legislation. In the five years I worked for Heather, I received four emails—take that, Mr Ombudsman.
She set incredibly high standards and is the best political operator I have ever seen in this building. She also had a Southland sense of humour that I appreciated. One day, a mysterious stain appeared on the carpet immediately outside her office door. Her executive assistant (EA) Stephen Woodhouse and I were staring at it when Heather appeared, grunted, and said, “Well, I guess now you know where the bodies are buried.” I have always presumed that was a joke.
Heh. Great sense of humour.
Being the Minister of Finance is an extraordinary privilege. It gave me the unparalleled opportunity to spend time with my colleagues when they were at their most stressed and anxious. I want to—[Laughter] You’ll know! I want to particularly thank Willie Jackson for his patient and calm advocacy. I genuinely felt his aroha when he said to me “Why do you hate the Maoris?” when I had just given him a billion dollars’ worth of funding. I also want to thank “Chippy” for not following through on his annual threat to resign during the education budget process, and all other colleagues who responded so well to the limited amount of funding we had available.
LOL at the Willie quote. I guess he is the same in private as in public 🙂
I remember vividly the day we shut the borders. We did it on a teleconference of Cabinet. I was in Jacinda’s electorate office with her. When the call ended, we looked at each other and recognised the enormity of what we had done. It felt very heavy. I tried to lighten the moment by noting that I knew when we went into coalition with New Zealand First our immigration policy might change, but I didn’t think it would go this far. Jacinda didn’t laugh.
I would have!
I endorse “Chippy” ‘s view that you cannot be the dog that barks at every car. It can be tough if there is a convoy of stupidity going by, but it’s still the right strategy.
I know National MPs in Opposition who would agree with that!
The Herald reports:
StraitNZ was founded by Ōtorohanga businessman Jim Barker in 1992 as Strait Shipping.
Its current Cook Strait vessels are the Strait Feronia, and the Connemara.
They each make four Cook Strait crossings daily and carry about 35 per cent of total Cook Strait passenger volumes. The business also operates a road freight network which carries about 55-57 per cent of all road freight, said McMahon. The company employs up to 600 people, depending on the season.
I didn’t realise they already did 35% of Cook Strat passengers and over 50% of road freight.
They do all this without costing the taxpayer a cent. In fact I presume they make a profit.
This makes me wonder what would happen if say Kiwirail just announced it would stop the Interislander service in say five years time.
The first thing I expect would be StraitNZ (Bluebridge) would increase their capacity – perhaps going from two to four ferries.
The second thing I expect is that one or more other operators would emerge as competitors to them.
This could be a good outcome.
Labour MP Camilla Belich has had her Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill drawn from the ballot.
The bill, on the surface, seems quite good. Basically it strengthens the rights of employees to disclose their salary or remuneration to others. I see this as a good thing. There might be unintended consequences but would definitely be worth supporting at least to select committee.
Green MP Ricardo Menendez March said in Parliament:
I rise in support of the Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill. As a true Marxist, I’m not really one to stand up for the petite bourgeoisie …
Now it is no real surprise that Ricardo is a Marxist. But what I find interesting is that an MP can call themselves a Marxist and the media won’t even blink. Will they ever refer to him as a far left politician (hard to go further left than Marxism). Some try to call anyone on the centre right “far right” but not even Marxists are called far left.
You do have to admire the tenacity of Marxists though. There’s been around 50 countries that have implemented Marxism, and it has failed in every single one of them. In fact up to 100 million people have died at the hands of communist regimes. But the Marxists insist that it is simply because none of them have implemented it the right way, and give them a taste of power and all will be great!
Labour and Greens in 2017 campaigned on capping core crown expenditure at no more than 30% of GDP. This was their election pledge. At one Budget I asked Grant Robertson about the policy and he (admirably) replied it was a limit, not a target.
The latest forecast had expenditure at 33.4% of GDP. That 3.4% difference is massive. It is $14.3 billion.
If Labour had kept to their 2017 promise (the temporary increase in 2020 for Covid-19 doesn’t justify it still being this high in 2024) then there would be no need for expenditure cuts. In fact we would have a $5 billion surplus instead of a $9 billion deficit.
The tax take as a percentage of GDP has increased also. It is currently 29.1% (32.3% for all core crown revenue) or $122 billion and in 2017/18 it was 27.9% or $80 billion. So tax has increased $42 billion in nominal terms and as a percentage of GDP it is $5 billion a year higher than it was.
Part of this is because of fiscal drag. We have an intolerable situation where people who do not work and are on welfare get their welfare payments indexed to inflation, but working people do not get tax brackets indexed, which means you net income drops due to inflation even if your gross income stays the same in real terms.
In April 2011 a worker earning $70,000 paid $14,020 in tax or an effective rate of 20%.
In December 2023, a worker earning the equivalent of $70,000 in April 2011 would earn $94,282 today.
The tax on $94,282 would be $22,033 on an effective rate of 23.4%. You have had a tax increase in today’s dollars of $3,177.
What the Government has promised in its budget is not tax cuts in the normal sense of the word. All they will be doing is partially refunding us for 13 years of tax increases.
The claim that spending has to be cut because of tax cuts is nonsense. Spending has to be cut because it exploded to $14 billion a year more than what Labour promised. This is why Labour was also announcing spending cuts just before the election.
The tax cuts will not restore us to where we should be. The person on $94,000 will only get a tax cut of $1,043 to compensate them for tax increases of $3,177. It is less than a third of the extra tax we have been paying.
The real solution is to treat tax brackets like benefits, and have them automatically adjust every year. If it is good enough for people not working to protect them against inflation, it is good enough for those who do work.
The Herald reports:
A high school student wrote a detailed “kill plan” and told his ex to stay away from school on the day he wanted to kill her new boyfriend.
But when his plans went awry, the teen instead went to his schoolmate’s home days later, swinging a machete at his victim’s head, slicing open his chest and forearm. …
The defendant started dating a girl in 2021 but, as the relationship progressed, he became “possessive” and would get jealous if she spent time with other boys.
Police told the court the boy felt deeply for his girlfriend, verging on an obsession.
The pair split after several months, and she began seeing the victim.
The defendant started to compile information from the internet and began forming a “kill plan”, which Judge Kelly described as “chilling”.
The last entry in his kill plan notes read: “If arrested, it is what it is”.
Days before the attack he told another classmate he had been hired to kill someone.
The next day he went to school, planning to use a knife to kill the victim, but his plan was thwarted after showing the knife to a friend.
He cold bloodedly planned to murder his classmate because he saw his ex GF as his possession.
Justice Grice took a starting point of seven years in prison, but with discounts for factors including rehabilitative prospects and time already spent in a youth facility and on bail, she came to an end sentence of 12 months home detention.
Once the law changes, his sentence would be four years and three months which seems much more appropriate for attempted murder.