just tax the owners of the boats behind you in the clip - they look like they have sufficient amounts of dough...

HI BERNARD SEEMS TO ME YOU HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS ON FARMS AND TAX AND CAPITAL GAINS YOU ARE STARTING TO SOUND LIKE AN OPPOSITION POLITICIAN OR A VOICE FOR THE GREEN PARTY?HMMM.can we expect to see your name on the Green Party List at the 2011 elections ,hope so.

Jill - Bernard can speak for himself but I would suggest that is an unreasonable accusation.
All he is supporting is reform to rebalance the NZ economy in a manner which will give this country's future economy some hope
At the moment we are on a disastrous and unwavering course

Did anybody seriously think that a conservative government with a popularity obsessed banker as PM would be interested in economic reform?

Not with all those vested interests to pander to.

ANIMAL FARM....is here...in more ways than one..... NZ.

SEEMS that we are in for that which we really deserve for making yet ANOTHER monumental MISTAKE in appointing an EX- BANKER to run, yes run...... New Zealand further into the ground

(Yes he has RUN with the MOB from overseas...who have their snouts deeply buried).

Along with someone who may be ENGLISH mister, but will have to soon speak fluent MANDARIN...according to the PROPERTY TARGETING we seem to be pushing daily.

What is MR KEY's real Agenda......to give the KEYS away to NZ totally??.

SEEMS that all we will be soon is a SUBURB of CHINA...never mind cheap AUSSIE retirement haven.

(And I know which I would rather live under, in abject poverty, ask any miner)

What we need is a REAL man to fess-up and do the HARD thing to put us back on TRACK.

There are enough LIKE MINDED people here who all should be doing something to FIX this problem, not putting us all further in DEBT and the MIRE....... in more ways than one to feather their own nest.

We do not need further AGRO....we need action.

We do not need to BAIL-OUT the idiots until we are all BANKRUPT in fact, if not in deed.

We do not need to Borrow another 40Billion each year to stoke up the fires to further the SNOUTS in the TROUGH mentality.

We need a LEADER and NO... yes men...or women..

The inevitable is the inevitable if we capitulate. What part do you want to play....

Do you want to POUR water or PETROL on the flames to fuel/extinguish the GREED and stupidity.

We cannot AFFORD to sit back and watch.

I read the book...I do not want to live and watch the reality TV.

Key's appearance on Letterman totally summed him up to me.
Nice guy but vacuous.

What's progressive (in the social or economic sense rather than the tax sense) about a flat tax? All it does is to speed the return journey to feudalism.

Key may lack a strong ethos but he's right to rule out a flat income tax.

Well that pretty much leaves digging up our national parks then as the only plan the Key govt has up its sleeve to turn this country around. Should be a welcome distraction from all the rearranging of the deckchairs (so far to date) on the good ship New Zealand.

I would like to at least see Key leave his options open wrt the recommendations of the 'Working Group'. Surely he should be waiting until they've presented all their information before ruling anything out. By saying No and No and No to everything, then it ends up being a wasted exercise - which is what Labour are starting to say, hmmm not sure I like to agree with them.....

I think John Key is serious about remaining our elected dictator for a second term. That is very much about maintaining the status quo irrespective of longer term outcomes.

Nowhere does serious reform of any sort enter John Key's picture - only some tinkering around the edges necessary to maintain that status quo.

Leadership it is not.

I've been wondering!

It appears to me that John Key made a big misjudgment when he supported the anti smacking legislation because since then it appears that he probably would have been even more popular at elction time if he had said something like "Sue's heart's in the right place but this is poorly worded, lets leave it until after the election and we'll do it properly". Now he got advice to support the bill from some misguided souls about that.

Who is advising him to resist CGT? Is it the same misguided souls that were reading the tea leaves previously? I can't see that the losers are really very powerful, especially if the family home is excluded and there is a lead in time to allow anyone to sell up stuff and get a one time gain before the tax kicks in. After all we all only get one vote each (well two sort of), and I can't see that 50% of us need to keep the status quo regarding CGT.

It isn't about stopping property bubbles and all that misguided chatter. It's about making the tax base wider, more equitable and sending signals that we want a higher rate of productivity. The time frame to actually gather more tax as a result of it isn't really that urgent. After all what's three or four more years of living the way have been overspending etc. It's just that ten years and no plan to alter it is a major worry.

So who really thinks that a whole lot of voters will really mind if property speculators 'appear' to get clobbered. Won't the masses secretely cheer while filling in the voting paper?I can't work it out. I couldn't work out why the previous socialist party didn't do it so where are these dark mysterious forces that will arise and take him out of office if he does it? It's a bit like the Emporer's clothes isn't it. There's actually nobody there.

If it's all about votes it's a nonsense surely. Can anyone help me understand this? Bernard do you know? Does anybody know?

Key has far too much to say. He is a T... for voicing his views. The only way for NZ to get ahead is lowering the total tax take which means lowering government spending.

Liberty Scott has this to say about flat taxes.

"So moving towards a flat tax IS good policy, it isn't extreme, it isn't uncommon, it is a sensible way to show New Zealand as a low tax small government economy, and it would help attract people. It does mean getting rid of the two top income tax rates, and that means some proper culling of the state. Not the limp wristed "efficiency gains" that haven't delivered.

It means abolishing agencies and functions.It means saying the government needs to do less."

Brian W - you need to do your homework, and then you'd understand:

http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/index.php/2009/08/05/have-your-say-h...

And read the lot.

It's called the 10/50+ rule - get the drift? Plus, both, all sides are into it, so whad'y expect?

Grandy asked, "How to change?" Clearly, lobbying, reason (as some of us see it) won't/don't work, so next step is a political party dedicated to challenging/changing the 'status quo'. And the intermediate step is a CIR, on the back of Lab's banking inquiry, the TWG, the PWG - to generate a new mandate for change (with all the comms. Bryan/David), by either side taking that mandate, or 'a.n.other' party leading us out if the quagmire. Otherwise let's just 90% of us piss off.

Bernard - how many of the 90% read this website? Like in the days of 'olde' you need a rag - and it could be free. How else will you reach the majority? Nevermind the %'s of your survey, the volume is telling, and as for the 'clicks' all good, but again, how many of the 'one person one vote' 90% read this website - and so have zip chance of understanding the issues?

I wonder what the reaction would be if he introduced a FAT TAX ,now that would be interesting.

Flat tax - well ACT have had that policy platform for years - and where's it got them?

What was it - less than 5% of the popular vote?

Key is just taking an incremental approach ... and flat tax now isn't incremental - it's 'big bang' - dear old Roger's mantra. And look at the unintended consequences of that time he had at the helm;

We ended up with a long-term unemployed problem, intergenerational welfare dependency, scarcity of a technically skilled bluecollar workforce resulting from the abrupt end to apprenticeships, the Resource Management Act 1991 (a fundamentally flawed piece of neo-liberal ideology which we've been trying to fix ever since, the NZ Dairy (monopoly) Board, and I could go on and on and on.

Some of the worst legislation NZ has ever seen came out of the rapid change revolution that dear old Roger and his Treasury cohorts engineered during those heady days. And then an equally balmy lot of ideologues in the form of the National Party carried on the 'big bang' experiment - just cementing in the unintended consequences.

If John's cool on 'big bang' - it only shows that he understands why Aussie is doing so much beter than us - they undertook incremental reforms - they didn't follow Roger's 'big bang' approach.

What a joke Key is.

He has had a year now and done nothing.

The time is ripe for a new party to start campaigning for the next election. None of the current pigs with their noses the trough have any merit.

Time for some new blood, ideas and ideals.

NZ'ders are a joke for putting up with this.

They are more interested in rugby and babies drowning.

Maybe if John Key was down to his last brass razoo he would be able to make a real decision or two. You have to feel the pain, hardly possible with his fat portfolio.
United-We-Stand says"What we need is a real man to fess up and do the hard thing to put us back on track". Exactly right. Key is as soft as butter, no wonder he thinks so much of Fonterrible. Call for a state of nation address and tell us how it really is. Stop keeping us in the dark and feeding us bullsh*t

We Are Stuffed says:

"NZ'ders are a joke for putting up with this.

They are more interested in rugby and babies drowning."

And I say, Expletive deleted
No apologies to anyone.

Edited by Alex. Just a reminder to readers, please refrain from using expletives, we like to think of this as a family site. You can put your arguments across without such language

Just to compound everyone's misery:

12 october 2009:
The Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating is at 155.5 (up 12.5 points and the highest recorded) with 72% (up 4.5%) of New Zealanders saying New Zealand is "˜heading in the right direction' compared to 16.5% (down 8%) that say New Zealand is "˜heading in the wrong direction.'

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4421/

@ Barry...

You say the top 10% of NZders pay the most tax - probably not... imagine the total of all the tax take from the gross amounts the income beneficiaries never get to see. It sure would be a lot of free money never received by the elephant in the bedroom... in a way you could day they kind of support each other. every four people on the dole support the fifth (excluding cash under the table of course)

but all that means and equates to is three fifths of sweet fanny adams if the politicians are systematically raping the system themselves - blatantly and proudly raking it in

What is hapening here.

Everyone is getting really rabid about a politician who is making decisions made on political expediency. There is nothing new or suprising in this.

But the reaction from all there peeps here is suprising.

Everyone in the forum discussions seems to have one view based on de powering the housing market. Bernard has become a National commentator based on his dire predictions in the housing market and now every ( yes every) article he produces is pushing his agenda on this. These views are lapped up by the submitters to this forum

I personally think that more balance is required here. At Reuters where Bernard lerned his trade the mantra there was to report the facts without bias, something to remember perhaps?

..some other "tenderizing" solutions for our politicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Ye2Q8U-rY&feature=related

Thanks Les for the 'homework'. So your answer to my question about would the voters actually care if there was a CGT is actually 'No' and 'Some might actually silently cheer', as I thought. Because there isn't a dark force that will throw them out of government at all, it's just that all the politicians are themselves so far into property investment and tax free gain from it that they personally don't want a CGT and they don't care if the ultimate outcome of this is a distorted tax system that damages NZ's potential to make the changes in economic performance as long as they all personally do OK!

Come on now it can't be that simple surely. If it was, the journalists who report on all this stuff would 'out' them about it. There was an article a few weeks back in The Press about CGT that was headed up something like "Now they want to take a bite out of your house". It was slanted with a distorted view of what a CGT would do. Now who sponsored that? Surely it wasn't a politician. It couldn't have been the journalist alone because the editor would surely have stopped such a seriously slanted report. No something else is going on that encourages these slanted reports that influence thinking and must also actively prevent the other view in the media.

Where is that influence coming from? If there isn't one then all that needs to happen is that a small boy needs to shout "The King is in the all together" so that the crowd can understand they are allowed to see.

The funny thing is that tax has a multiplier effect of 3 on GDP while government expenditure has a multiplier effect of 1.

JK knows this of course, however staying in power has a multiplier effect of infinity for ones ego

One can only hope the nats are pandering so they can win by the 75% (inc coalition partners [ the reliable sort]) so they can have the necessary changes entrenched into law.

I am not holding my breath.

Leaders are actually not that different from one another no matter what political bend they are from because they are all constrained by the same geopolitical environment.

yeah rite! Get it out of here to where?
Zero % interest in US and UK.

Surely you don't mean Japan? No interest there.

Aussey? pretty crap exchange rate at the moment. Under the .85 ten year average by a bit.
Same rates, whats the upside there.

Nope, the rest of the world are buying NZ dollars at the moment. Ride the wave....

My party's policy will be:

- No income tax for $1 - $20,000 p.a.
- Reduce Govt health spending
- Income Tax rebate up to $1,200 for everyone who has their own Health Insurance
- Land Tax of 1.5% p.a.
- Loss made in properties to off set future profits only
- Restrict welfare hand-outs (only to people in real need)

Will I win some votes here in 2011?

J.K. is our first CEO and will only act in the interests of the shareholders. the shareholders have too much vested interest to allow reforms to undermine an already unstable investment programme.
The ignorant will continue in apathy, the incumbents will smile with smug contempt and line thier pockets lest they be returned unto the masses.
You can buy your shares with compliance or become disenfranchised..... your choice!

The King is dead long live the King and the stupid peasants who install them.

Good thread, but I detect a collective (am I allowed to use That adjective?) denial of the elephant in the room: the fact that an infantilised electorate, well used to entitlements funded by OPM, and soothed into inaction by what Leonard Cohen terms 'that stupid little screen', is simply not going to vote for anything but a continuation of the status quo.

This is the inevitable result of the combination of a 'we-know-best', paternalistic/maternalistic style of Gummint, and the more recent folding in of a good chunk of Der Middle Class via WFF and other honeytraps. And if anyone thinks that these turkeys Will vote for Thanksgiving, I have a small but perfectly formed Harbour Bridge for genuine sale at a very reasonable price.

We are, I'm afraid, pretty much strapped to this rollercoaster, and all the Bright Ideas aboot Flat Tax and whatnot, will run up against this Inconvenient Electoral Troof.

The question of Where we go to is rendered moot by this dynamic: because basically anything that disturbs the status quo via the hip pocket, is going to be howled down.

I believe the technical term is 'Ochlocracy'.

What does this leave as the scope for action? Titiwhai'ing around the edges, quietly re-aligning the most outrageous perverse incentives, incrementalism....

We all must agree.