By Chris Trotter*
The Coalition Government has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It is angry with the poor. It is angry with the regulatory environment. It is angry with those who resist its policies. Some would say it is angry with the last 50 years of New Zealand history, and with the political forces that have driven it. Inevitably, anger breeds nostalgia. The explanation, presumably, for the powerful sensation of déjà vu in which this government is now wreathed.
The Coalition’s anger at the poor is manifested in many ways. It began with the restoration of the sanctions which Labour had removed from the Ministry of Social Development’s repertoire of responses to what it regarded as the delinquent behaviour of beneficiaries. As the first 100 days drew to a close, the Housing Minister, Chris Bishop, reinforced this trend by announcing the phasing-out of emergency motel accommodation for the homeless who have run out of options.
On the face of it, putting an end to accommodating homeless people and their families in motels sounds like a positive and compassionate policy. What began under Bill English’s government as a genuinely ad-hoc and temporary response to the burgeoning housing crisis, morphed under Labour into a seemingly permanent answer to the growing discrepancy between need and supply. Entirely predictably, this concentration of the most vulnerable into the “motel rows” of New Zealand’s cities and tourist towns attracted all manner of dangerous predators. What had started out as a short-term fix, turned into a long-term nightmare.
And an expensive one. By the time the government changed, the state was pouring in excess of a million dollars a day into the pockets of New Zealand’s motel owners. Just as well, given that it had not taken New Zealanders and travel organisers very long to twig that motel accommodation was not an option to be considered seriously unless one actually enjoyed the soundtrack of immiseration. Loud music played at all hours, accompanied by frighteningly imaginative offensive language and behaviour, frequently spilling-out into the motel car-park, where a situation could deteriorate from the merely disruptive to the outright criminal in the flash of an illegal blade.
Stories multiplied of kids roaming unsupervised under the predatory gaze of gang members; of drunkenness and drug-use, and of the MSD’s wards “trashing” motel units. The effective nationalisation of the nation’s motel accommodation, far from mending homelessness, had created crime-ridden no-go zones, where defenceless victims were thoughtfully gathered for the convenience of their victimisers. Included among whom, as the years passed, turned out to be the very same state that had set the whole sorry mess in motion.
It was enough to make anybody mad. But, what turned out to be much harder for the Coalition’s ministers was getting mad at the right people. Rather than ask themselves whether the clamour from moteliers and developers to kick out the homeless beneficiaries might have been prompted by the end of the Covid emergency and the steady recovery of the tourism industry, the ministers called for ever more aggressive invigilation of the homeless.
MSD was instructed to make even tougher checks of their wards’ eligibility. Were they guilty of biting the hands that fed them? Did they have a history of trashing their rooms? Was there really no one who could take them in? Never mind that in the absence of such MSD scrutiny the homeless would never have been provided with a motel room. Scrutinize them harder!
Such intensification of what is already a profoundly stressful environment only makes sense if those responsible believe poverty to be the fault of its victims. It’s what happens when it is both ideologically and politically impossible to address fundamental causes.
A society which, 40 years ago, gave up on the idea that it is the state’s duty to ensure that all its citizens are adequately housed, is left with no option but look to the market for solutions. These will not be forthcoming, for the very simple reason that there is nowhere near enough profit in poverty. (Unless, of course, the state is willing to provide that profit by paying exorbitant prices for the motel rooms in which the market economy’s victims are warehoused).
And then there’s the state’s ever-increasing collection of rules and regulations – society’s legal acknowledgement that an unregulated marketplace is a dangerous marketplace. How can society be so sure? Because, 150 years ago, society witnessed with its own eyes the consequences of allowing public health and safety to be ignored. It was around the same time that people began to become alarmed at how rapidly their country’s natural environment was falling foul of Capitalism’s costless externalisation of its waste. The response of the politicians was to create reserves and national parks.
It wasn’t enough. Post-war New Zealand was hungry for energy, and its electrical engineers, working alongside the Ministry of Works, gave it to them. It wasn’t until the early-1970s that the costs of such breakneck development became insupportable. The campaign to “save” Lake Manapouri grew into New Zealand’s first mass environmental movement. The “Baby Boom” generation, now old enough to vote, made sure it would not be the last.
The electoral heft of that generation was sufficient to limit the plans of those who had been encouraged to “rip-in, rip-out and rip-off” in the name of national development. It presented the Right with a problem: how to keep National’s long-term love-affair with mining companies, forestry interests, roading contractors, and urban developers hot and steamy. The strength of the environmental movement, and the rise of “green” politics, enforced a frustrating measure of discretion – and it rankled.
But in 2024, with the political phenomenon of “wokeness” having driven strategically devastating wedges into the Left’s electoral coalition, the numbers are finally with the Parliamentary Right. All that pent-up fury with the constraints imposed upon those willing to dream and think “big” is now being released. For the first time since the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s, New Zealand has a government that understands the state’s key role in fostering and protecting national development. That, without the state riding shotgun, the market – especially in a country the size of New Zealand – is too weak to play the role of nation-builder.
The truth of this proposition has been clear since the 1870s, when Sir Julius Vogel launched New Zealand’s first “national development” plan. It was equally clear to Bill Sutch in the 1950s. And even clearer to Rob Muldoon when he launched his own “Think Big” push for economic growth in the late1970s and early-1980s.
To make it work, however, the House of Representatives will have to reassert its supremacy over all the other players in the New Zealand polity: the judiciary, the public service, te iwi Māori, the trade unions, the universities, and the mainstream news-media. All the elements, in short, whose resistance to the Coalition Government’s plans, be it actual or merely potential, is fuelling the Coalition’s leaders’ resentment and anger.
That the Coalition’s political conduct harks back to the days of Rob Muldoon is no accident. To find the precedents for what this government is proposing; and for its willingness to engage in the most ruthless kind of majoritarian politics to make it happen, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.
No wonder so many New Zealanders are gripped by the feeling that they have been here before.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
166 Comments
But we haven't been HERE before. Not by several orders of magnitude.
Muldoon's Cabinet understood the Limits to Growth, better than any since; hence Motunui. The pressures were coming on, even then. But there were 4 billion global inhabitants, and an orders-of-magnitude less-raped planet.
This lot don't have any chance at all. The 'business case' for future repayment, is a cacophony of reducing opportunities, and global debt is outpacing GDP; a widening gap. Don't expect much.
Ah, so fossil fuel use, and a new global population high make all the difference?
Humans have broken population records for thousands of years. Developed technology that achieved amazing feats, long forgotten or unrepeatable, that even now we are still trying to reverse engineer. It's all happened before, arising, and passing away.
We'll either create a civilisation so fragile it'll disappear overnight, or that'll fracture and decay over time, and something new will come about to replace it.
Not a new tale, even if it's got V8s in it.
If we make it to space in a serious way, it all changes. Musk is working towards breaking the cycle and creating a more robust civilisation - or at least one with some redundancy!
I agree with your sentiment. I think humanity has risen and fallen a few times, although perhaps not to our current heights. I'm hoping that cycle can be broken.
Space, Fusion, AGI - this convergence of high technology could change everything.
Predicted at the dawning of this government that they would soon run headlong into concerted opposition from the trade union movement, the public service and Maori activism. There is much to come. To cast back to the time of Muldoon as Mr Trotter alludes, that adminstration experienced, along with the rest of the country, what organised civil disorder and/or disruption can produce.
Never mind trade union movement, the public service and Maori activism, they appear to be gathering as much opposition as possible from everyday kiwis.
Luxon the great saviour less popular than Hipkins after his 100 days. Those that got sucked in by anti-woke rage are coming to see this coalition for what it is: out to protects the interests of the super rich, sell off our public assets to the highest bidder, run public services into the ground and destroy the environment in the name of letting their mates make a few bucks.
They are doing a great job.
Luxon's rating have gone down because the media made a big deal of him taking a payment he was entitled to. I don't see the point of making an entitlement available if when you take it, everyone complains, even those that are taking it for themselves, like the serial complainer Willie Jackson (who also takes his entitlement and apparently owns 3 or 4 houses too).
The media made a big deal out of nothing and it has temporarily effected his ratings, that's all.
They're doing a great job for you because you're not a swing voter, so not the target demographic for my comment. I would say the ratings have gone down because people who don't staunchly stand by a certain side see glaring issues with the hypocrisy, methods, and some of the policies the current govt have said/used.
The problem was the moral hypocrisy at a time he's tut-tutting at others for entitlement to taxpayer money.
"If I can pay, I should pay", he said, telling others the general rule that should apply. Then he took taxpayer money to pay for his Maori language lessons while telling others they should pay their own way. Then he put his hand out for more taxpayer money while wanting cuts for the poor.
I saw people justify him as "working the system", where instead he could have showed moral leadership and an example of what he was asking for from others.
Um, yes, but that wasn't about Tobacco was it. It was about the creation of different classes of people that Labour were so determined to do, remember, vaccinated versus not, some people allowed to go to pubs, and some not. Maori versus not. Priority services based on race nonsense. True to form they invented another way to create separate classes of people, some adults were going to be able to buy cigarettes and some adults were not. So this concept is completely against everything that the Coalition stand for, which is equal rights for everyone, so it was rightly cancelled and has nothing to do with smoking. There was also the small issue of the current policy already working, the new policy not even implemented (like most of the rest of what Labour did), and also the fact that it would obviously increase crime based around tobacco and also ruin peoples business (both things Labour did very well at). So the policy was a loser on a number of fronts and just had to go. People that complain that the policy cancellation was designed to kill people (especially Maori), are just idiots.
Quite the recast of it, to be honest. None of that proposed justification needed the allowance to keep cigarettes full of nicotine to keep population addicted.
Moreover, if those were the actual motivations one would imagine National would've been consistent vis-a-vis marijuana and crime/business.
Personally, I'd get rid of the first two changes, retain the reduction in allowable nicotine so Kiwis have greater freedom of choice and less addiction, and be consistent toward marijuana. That'd be actual sensible policy. But then, I'm not driven by donors.
The first 10mm of rain does not end a drought and so five months in Govt does not fix 20+ years of poor policy and little delivery of actaul benefits to most NZers, mistakes will be made and already have so the point is if the lessons are learned and fixed. Whatever mistakes Muldoon made it is undeniable the benefits are real and continuing. A fundamental issue is excess immigration as an easy fix which it isn't I would hope a solution would be around accepting no new appliacnats other than short term work visas and then sorting the underlying issue of productivity.
I would agree, except selective immigration is necessary. We have dumbed down our population to a point that hiring New Zealanders is a stupid idea. Too entitled, too lazy, with low skill levels (due to our brilliant education system). That is why the 90 day probation period is back, so businesses do not get stuck with those who lie on their CVs and introduce a raft of issues into the workplace. In comparison immigrants come from the real world, where handouts are not common and people actually have to become properly educated and work for a living. These people are necessary of New Zealand companies to grow as we don't have the skill base here, and the properly skilled people have mostly left for greener pastures overseas. The big problem for New Zealanders that think someone else owes them a living and sit around doing nothing all day, is that these immigrants are going to end up running the country. They will effectively be squeezed out of their own country, and it will be their own fault.
That is one of the dumbest statements I've read here Jeremy. There are at least 1m highly skilled Kiwi's living and working abroad, if we paid competitive wages, many of these would return. Perhaps some Kiwi's here don't see why they should turn up and work their butt's off for half the wage they could get if the jumped on a plane to Australia?
The question you need to ask is, why are our wages so low?
I don’t understand what you are talking about. There are many opportunities to get ahead here. Some people do, some can’t be bothered. The wages are a function of our productivity. So overall on average our wages are low. Some people do very well and they deserve it, although they are generally disliked by the lazy mob. The 1m people that left did so mostly for a better life, better people, like minded people. Instead of hanging out here with the moaners…..
How does a nurse, tradie or engineer become 100% more productive by catching a plane to Australia? They don't. Of course in a low wage economy with 1m of our brightest having left those remaining by default are likely to be not as motivated. You ar blaming our education system and I disagree, that's not the issue we have, not now anyway.
Nurses are essential. Why would I recommend that nurses get themselves hooked into an investment you would lose money on. That would be crazy.
Maybe in a few years when prices have dropped some more and the investment makes sense. Then, yes, maybe, but definately not now.
Fun fact, nurses are paid half in the UK than NZ.
But average wages in the UK are about the same as NZ in general. Actually we have some of the highest wages on earth.
So, we value Nurses more in NZ than the UK.
And Australian values them more still, because they have a competitive advantage we don't, they can dig state revenue out of the ground.
Fun fact 3: They also have lower home ownership than us, despite a cheaper national average.
This is partially due to their houses where most people want to live, being significantly more expensive than our houses where most people want to live.
You can pick up a nice 3 beddie in parts of NZ for 300k (or less). Problem is, most people aren't interested, so pointing that out, kinda irrelevant. Or not, depending on whether home ownership beats out living like a caged chook.
I agree even though there was an entitlement, the fact that Chis owned the house before he became am MP indicates it was his personal choice and benefit so by not claiming the allowance would signal his policies of curtailing expenditure included himself not just everyone else and the kudos of not taking the allowance outweighs the value. I hope a valuable lesson has been learned and followed through by all Govt Mp's.
It was fine for Luxon to take the allowance when he was an MP (as do other MPs from out-of-town who have to rent in Wellington - whether they rent their own place or someone else's is neither here nor there).
But as PM, he's provided a rent-free house in Thorndon - and it's not unlivable/condemned. He choose not to live there.
That's why taking the allowance was double-dipping.
No need to shout.
There is an allowance that he’s entitled to and he took it. Many others take it too. Somehow it’s different when the likes of Willie Jackson take it. He’s a multiple house owner too.
Some dumb people seem to think Luxon is different because his house was mortgage free. Those dummies don’t understand opportunity cost. Some other authoritarian control freaks think Luxon should have had to live in a shitty draughty old mansion. Thank goodness their ilk are out of power.
All another example of media double standards.
I have nothing to do with "the trade union movement, the public service and Maori activism".
But this government is hell bent on implementing some idiotic and devastating changes that will see me join protesters wherever they hail from.
My general view is that kiwis are so naive on economic issues that whoever they vote for will probably not help any situation much - or at all - and could even make it worse. Thus, for me, voting is mainly a obligation and I don't expect anything much to change.
But when a government is doing something really stupid, it is time for me to exit my self enforced periods of political indolence and start educating kiwis so they make better decisions. If this means getting out, talking to people, making speeches and waving placards, then so be it.
On this we agree 100%.
Working WITH tobacco companies, prioritising Fossil fuels, encouraging investment in property over business, planning large projects with serious environmental impact without proper consultation and due diligence... likely doing water with cogovernance anyway.
What a bunch of stone age, self serving, fatcats.
The media collapse will aid them tho.
I predict a winter of unrest and protests on a scale we havent seen before - they have managed to upset pretty much everyone i know in every social and cultural category..... beggers belief they think they will get away with it. i am in for some joint maori-environmentalist-antitobaccoindustry-greenparty motorway sit ins or whatever is the way
"It is angry with the poor. "
No. The Government and many of the NZ voting public are angry with people who abuse welfare, are capable of working and should otherwise be contributing to society.
We're angry that Kainga Ora had a policy of no evictions. Violent, abusive and house damaging tenants weren't evicted. They were left to intimidate neighbours and take advantage of a privilege that could otherwise be redirected to someone more deserving.
A lot of us have been poor. We understand the concept of working overtime, cleaning school toilets as immigrants. Don't group us in a common bucket.
Translated; The floggings will cease when morale improves.
Those folk were the factory workers, when we did real stuff in this country. We don't do real stuff here any more - we (don't) pay others overseas, to do it for less than we choose to 'earn'. Don't blame the displaced, for being displaced.
And don't blame them for our current malaise; that comes because too many chose to be rentiers, and chose extended debt as their mechanism. Inevitably, that has benefitted ever-less folk, ever more in relative terms. It was a ponzi - and a ponzi that was NOT the fault of the bottom end - if there were jobs which returned them a modest suburban house and a modest family car, they'd still be working in those factories.
I was a factory worker all my working life (from age 16 to 60, from the floor to the boardroom).
It's not about blame, it's about expecting people to help themselves not expecting others to. We still do stuff here that 100,000+ low skilled immigrants pa are willing to do.
It must be awful being you PDK. Obsessed with nonsense, claiming we should not producing 'anything' as as our resources are 'finite' and we are about to drop into the Abyss. But, yet at the same time blaming others because we don't have factories here that produce things any more and that the jobs that are here in factories don't pay enough for the workers all to buy houses.
The problem we have here is that governments like the last lot, don't actually support business like other governments do to promote success. High taxes and insane regulation just drives companies off shore. Combined with that, general laziness makes us collectively poorer. There is heaps of money to be made if you are actually not lazy and entitled.
The problem we have here is that governments like the last lot, don't actually support business like other governments do to promote success. High taxes and insane regulation just drives companies off shore.
Agree, but unfortunately that's also the current lot.
Not supporting and incentivising hard work and productive business, just simply rewarding the lazy value-takers instead.
I once came across on a open home for renters, a mother who works in a MSD branch came in with her 30ish daughter who is on the dole, I remember their entire conversation was around how the daughter's 16 year old daughter should be on xxx benefit so that she got more money, and how they could live in a bigger house.
somehow those conversations still stuck with me for many years.
Echoes, when we adopted an adult cat. The owners were heading to Australia and suddenly had had to speed up proceedings to get there in time before the existing “social allowances” were reduced. A family of five who existed entirely on welfare and were as cunning as the proverbial rats in extracting optimum payments. Great cat though.
Why let one sour interaction change your view on the system/people as a whole? There are always going to be people who abuse any system, and taking it out on the people who need support/benefits the most isn't ideal, and absolutely isn't fixing the issue at its root. The methods NActFirst are using are against all evidence for what would actually fix the issues that cause abuse of social benefits.
Looking at current benefit spending, nothing holds a candle to NZ Super, but that continues to be given to people who don't need it and is becoming a greater burden over time. Problem is that doesn't grab attentions like the dole bludging boogeyman that current government supporters want to punish. Plus the people taking the piss the most with NZ Super are almost certainly the coalitions biggest supporters who couldn't possibly let the poor/disabled/struggling receive more benefits at the cost of a fraction of people abusing it, but are happy to collect their NZ Super benefit despite having more than enough to support themselves through retirement without it.
I guess the difference is, we expect people to get old.
Not too many people would begrudge providing the homeless with a home, or refuge for a battered mother. The problem becomes when it's embedded in society that that's always there as an option, like Luxon has shown, offer an entitlement, people will take it.
I don't think the state can actually solve poverty at it's "root". It's a human problem, not a legislative one.
The state did pretty well in the post-war decades when it focused on making work valuable and housing affordable. Certainly benefited today's older generations. Reversing direction to benefit the few has not helped, and increasing welfare to those at the bottom has only enabled more capture further up.
Less than 3M people helped a lot.
The unions were a dysfunctional entitled rabble bent on stuffing up as much of the economy as possible in pursuit of their self interest & to hell with everyone else: good riddance.
It was a fools paradise lead by a blinkered Canute trying to hold back the global economic tide, the piper had to be paid eventually as we found out in 1984.
Unemployment was HIDDEN by getting government departments to take on people to do non-existant work.
Usually in marginal electorates so as to help National's re-election.
Railways and the Post Office were two takers. The former had 25,000 staff at its peak, moving less freight than 5,000 staff did a decade or two later.
Don't forget - both railways and the post office trained thousands of New Zealanders each year via apprenticeships. Virtually all our fitters and turners and telecommunications technicians - plus so many other jobs in logistics, supply, warehousing, etc. And many of these trained staff then moved onto the private sector.
The demise of those state-sector apprenticeships has a lot to do with the decline of our manufacturing sector and the need to import many of those trained staff from elsewhere.
Yes, but they were also a dumping ground whenever the dole figures were going up. Nothing slows work down like too many people standing around. Railways also had the toad services buses, which was sold off, so it's not an exact comparison to the railway today. Ditto, post office had post bank.
That, and shifting ideas and trends for vocations.
Tried doing an apprentice drive at some local high schools a few years back. The faculty weren't interested, they want to steer everyone to university.
So now we have a surplus of low value degrees, and an experienced interior plasterer can earn quarter of a million dollars a year, but there's still not enough.
The problem is when the retirees are increasingly becoming a financial burden while it seems to the people just starting out in their career that NZ Super is already looking to be pushed back every election cycle. It isn't a vote of confidence that the youth are going to be receiving NZ Super at their retirement, almost definitely not the same amount. That means the feeling of paying for NZ Super for retirees now and collecting far less than the current retirees are getting (if there's any left to get at all) after their working life, and therefore having to rely on their saving more than previous generations for their retirement and a lifetime of paying for previous generations retirements.
Also I agree somewhat, but the benefits the struggling receive are already tough to live on and I don't see how decreasing it is going to improve outcomes for those on it. It's a long term issue and cutting the rope isn't going to help the future generations learn how to avoid poverty traps any better and get out of the cycle. They need more than financial support. The disability benefit cuts are also not helpful, being disabled is as much of a choice as getting old yet cutting benefits as costs are rising is punishing people who need it while getting almost no benefit out of the tiny amount of bad players there are for the disability benefit.
Also agree about solving poverty, but we can do things to hurt or improve it. Studies universally show that current govt thinking/proposals will not improve and will likely hurt it long term.
Also I agree somewhat, but the benefits the struggling receive are already tough to live on and I don't see how decreasing it is going to improve outcomes for those on it. It's a long term issue and cutting the rope isn't going to help the future generations learn how to avoid poverty traps any better and get out of the cycle.
It's interesting too to ask, will making the life of the poorest more precarious while we constantly subsidise and bail out the wealthier actually make society better overall for the rest of us to live in?
I have already live for years in multiple developing countries. Doing the above did not seem to result in a society that was better overall to live in, even for the elite.
Sure, some things were good about living in a gated subdivision with security guards everywhere...but then you realised you had to live in a gated subdivision with security guards everywhere. Quite unlike the times when work was valued and housing affordable in NZ.
(Or are National just trying to make sure the likes of John Key and Paula Bennett don't successfully emerge from a generous welfare system again?)
Dole bludgers can work and choose not to. The retired generally cannot work, and did contribute all the way along (apart from if they were on the dole their whole life). Even gang members get the dole, which is astonishing. The whole thing needs a complete shake down. Some sort of limitation needs to be in place, i.e max two years of dole bludging and hen you are done (except for of course people genuinely in need).
So what do you say to those who are going to work all of their life currently supporting retirees while having to save for their own retirement because NZ Super is very likely to be much lower or gone completely? While current retirees didn't have to save for their own retirement and can rely on NZ Super?
I’d say suck it up. They are only doing what everyone else has done during their working career. Nothing has changed here. Sure, there will be some more old people to support than the last generation (including me) is funding now, but it will be manageable. It’s rocket science.
Then they're perfectly in their rights to vote for governments to rebalance taxation to reward hard work instead of lazy land speculation and to enact policies to make work valuable and housing affordable, for example. Lazy speculators likewise should just suck it up. Those swings have occurred before (post-war decades), nothing has changed here.
Well, your dreaming. Kids are not going to vote their parents into poverty. If change comes, it will be the kids that will be effected. They will have to stump up for their own retirement, just like, well. I am.
However, it's 20-30 years away before a change made now would be implemented. I totally support it. But if you think there is going to be some sort of hard stop date in a few years time because some virtue signallers are unhappy with the status quo, then think again.
If we put their parents into poverty, they may as well vote for more reward for work and less for value-takers. As to when things will change, it probably depends how rapidly things deteriorate.
Feels like we're still in a time of delusion, that commonsense Chris will restore some glory days of early 2000s (or other) by applying 20th century solutions to 21st century problems. When that doesn't happen... will be interesting to see what folk are willing to suck up.
Moreover, if someone votes in a government that removes tax deductability for sometimes-a-business-sometimes-not property speculators, suck it up.
Ah Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, I've heard all these boring arguments before, about 15 years ago in the UK, dole bludgers, single mums, immigrants, loony left ...
The UK Tories have been in power for a decade now implementing all the policies you anti-woke angry old white men demanded, go have a look how it's worked out to see how great things can truly be...
Yes, I guess you are right. We just give up and give all the bludgers everything and it will be ok right. That's what we had for the last six years with money spraying around like it was going out of fashion. Please explained how right that went again. How do you know I am old or white. Neither of these are true, you are just making assumptions. None of this effects me anyway. I have organized myself so it matters little whether a left or right government is on power, things will just get better and better. Math trumps politics every time. I guess to can complain all you like, but if you put as much effort into succeeding as you do bleating, things might turn out better for you.
Even gang members get the dole
Only if they meet the same work-test requirements as everyone else, but still cannot find steady, paid employment.
If they fail to meet the work-test requirements, like everyone else, they will lose the Jobseeker benefit.
It is also harder to find employment if one has a criminal history - some useful stats;
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/statistics/quarterly_prison_s…
Property management email to clients - WINZ are no longer rubber stamping rent payments. Apparently, whenever beneficiaries felt like a bit of extra cash, they simply stopped paying their rent. Knowing that it took months for a date in the Tenancy Tribunal for eviction orders, the tenants didnt pay months of rent. Then under the WINZ "Sustaining Tenancies" policy WINZ would then pay off the entire outstanding amount in order to avoid the tenant being evicted. This is how the welfare system is being abused.
But the biggest welfarism has been for property speculators and for the olds regardless of need.
Of those on welfare for the poor, approximately how many people do you propose are serial abusers of it? And on what basis?
In comparison, during COVID we spent $11 billion of taxpayer money on welfare for the property sector, on top of billions in rental yield and price subsidies each year.
We need to build more accommodation for the poor, this is true.
Your "corporate welfare" soap box is tired and of course not based in reality. Property Investors receive no benefit, you know this but can't just say "some people are so poor that they need help to find a rental property to live in".
re ... "Property Investors receive no benefit".
I do wish people would stop saying that. It's simply has not been true.
With interest deductibility being restored to 100%, 'investors' will receive a benefit that owner occupiers do not get.
In many countries, including the USA, home owners are allowed to claim a percentage of their mortgage interest bills off their total income thereby reducing income tax. This balances out the tax advantage that investors have over owner occupiers.
I have rental properties and I would encourage the government to look at the economic analysis of 'investor' vs. owner occupier to ensure fairness re-enters the NZ residential property market. This can be done by never making interest 100% deductible, or as other countries have done, by allowing owner occupiers to write off some interests against their income.
I've also previously quoted the USA mortgage deduction as something that NZ should consider, along with no recourse mortgage loans which ensure the bank has skin in the property market to restrain their lending excesses.
However, on a recent inquiry, it's not straightforward (apparently the USA has a std personal tax deduction that can't be claimed together with the mortgage deduction) & also legislation has change a few years ago to limit this.
Someone with more knowledge of the USA situation than I may be able to explain better.
Unfortunately, I am unable to pretend with you that property receives and has received no benefit and no welfarism. That is simply not based in reality.
The $11 billion cost to taxpayers of monetary stimulus of the property market during COVID was but one example. A massive wealth transfer carried out effectively with the support of taxpayer money.
As are demand-side subsidies for rental yields and prices, even if some have emotional desire to pretend otherwise (notably, Treasury didn't seem as motivated to pretend in their advice years back to Bill English).
As are handouts when properties get wet - $120 million for commercial property in Hawkes Bay, $778 million for Auckland houses.
As are subsidies for rates/councils/infra to land from productive Kiwis' taxes. Even wealth transfers from working Kiwis' taxes to subsidies for insulation are welfare for property.
All of that's not even mentioning the ride that is tax privileging while using zoning to constrain supply, while productive Kiwis disproportionately bear the tax load.
It may be emotionally uncomfortable to acknowledge, but there's a lot of welfarism for property in NZ.
None of that was asked for by Investors.
As others have called out interest as an expense. This is normal accounting practice as it is a cost of running the business. All business loans have the same treatment as it is a cost on the business of operations. It's not hard to understand I would have thought.
In regards to giving home owners interest relief I could say a way to do this if they were providing a service say through renting a room. Otherwise this would be unfair to those that rent, and of course we wouldn't want that!!
Whether they asked for it (including campaigning, voting etc) is a different point to whether they received it. And receive welfarism they certainly did. But they certainly asked for help when houses got wet, and they certainly screeched and squealed when asked to pay their share.
If you want to run a business, start a business and run the business. Not too hard to understand, I would have thought.
Actually, we're moving towards a situation where the main contributor of your future wealth is how rich your parents were. We are moving away from a meritocracy but it because we are implementing policies that concentrate the wealth in ever fewer hands.
The issue here isn't dole bludgers (the peasants in feudal times) but the rich 10% (the feudal lords). Any guesses who this government is looking out for?
Well said Cheetahlegs66.
We are also angry with the last government for squandering billions of our hard earned money. Also, none of us who voted in this last government are unhappy with the scorched earth policy in respect of undoing the mess the last idiots left behind. We are 100% behind them. In fact I am kind of shocked at the balls they have shown.
"For the first time since the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s, New Zealand has a government that understands the state’s key role in fostering and protecting national development"
Really? It seems like we have a govt that is more interested in tearing down everything the last govt did, than building or developing anything new.
They are stuffed. They need lots more money. And 3x as many nurses than are being trained domestically.
You can either pay more tax to accomplish that, or manifest more workers to also assist in paying and staffing it - new migrants are net contributors to the health system.
None of our options are without peril.
And 3x as many nurses than are being trained domestically.
We really should look toward restoring hospital-based nurses training. It used to be very much like an apprenticeship - work/study combined and all trainees did most of their learning on-wards - far less need for nurse aides, orderlies or cleaners - as much of that was done by the nursing students. It also used to be that accommodation + meals were provided - hence the pay was miniscule (but enough to go out to eat or to the movies, or pay for a bus fare home during your time off).
The word from teacher friends (centralish Auckland) is it's getting harder to teach/less time per student with the recent load of extra immigrant children who need alot of support in terms of language, catching up in other areas. For all that National rabbit on about improving learning, they won't utter a word about this you can be sure.
They are both follically challenged. That's were the similarity ends. I think Muldoon would find the idea of a man with seven houses running for prime minister during a perpetual housing crisis abhorrent. Then if that same man tried to explain his entitlement to claim a 52K allowance to live in his own freehold apartment. I think Muldoon would be tempted to rise from the dead and give him a good bollocking.
Apparently the boomers were the first greenies (saving Manapouri) - who woulda thought!!
But actually National Parks and Reserves have been around a lot longer than that so really the tension between preservation/respect and development is not so new after all.
Anyway Chloe will sort it for us - she has years of experience in environmental management -doesnt she?
You may start by naming one thing that the Greens have proposed or achieved that would have a net positive outcome for the 'environment' without wrecking the economy and making poor people poorer. Sure they have heaps of commie type stuff going on like wealth taxes and goodness knows what else, and there is the pandering to Maori thing, and supporting Palestine (a classic environmental issue if every I saw one). They should really be renamed 'The Rudderless Opportunist Party'. They are really just gathering up all the fringe issues they can find to garner enough support to exist. They are gaining support right now purely on the back of the Labour party being at possibly it's lowest ebb, ever.
-ETS strenghtened
-new sustainable public transport framework
-Tax change to enourage employers to subsidise public transport for employees
-live animal exports banned
-moratorium on seabed mining
-public oversight of fisheries preserved
- more single use plastics phased out
-more funding for predator free 2050
- more deer and goat control
-more walking , cycling and better public transport
- ending coal boilers in school
-climate emergency response fund
-decarbonising our energy grid
-community energy fund
-clean vehicle discount
- ban of new low temp coal boilers
-food waste collection service
-support for regenerative agriculture
-better waste management
-carbon neutral govt programme
-emissons reduction plan
-hauraki gulf marine protection
-additional funding for kauri protection.
-climate finance for vulnerable countries
-exposing climate risk
-green investment fund
--zero carbon bill
-jobs for nature
-boost to doc funding
- doubled size of maui dolphins sanctuary
-single use plastics ban
-2 new great walks
-new energy research centre
and so on....
Our approach to passenger vehicles is a classic.
- Monied people get given more money to buy a new fancy electric car
- We restrict the number of used ICE cars coming in
- New ICE cars are taxed more
Result: poor people are paying more for worse vehicles.
Every new regulation comes at a financial cost. That's ultimately born by the consumer, because a company forced to make something for $1.10 when they can only sell it for $1 can't exist - unfortunately not the same for a person.
I don’t really see the similarities to Muldoon
Luxon is approaching NZ as a classic corporate turnaround situation. Slash costs, remove some stale middle management types; cut consultants. That’s the easy part though. I am reminded of a lecturer telling a story of how a PE turn around team had staff standing outside so they could shower them with dust when they landed their helicopter.
The flood of people into emergency housing was a direct result of the Labour Govt ending the ability to terminate a tenancy at will. This made landlords extremely reluctant to rent to people who presented any risk at all - because if they turned out to be bad tenants the landlord was still stuck with them for life (or at least the 4-6 months it takes to get them evicted through the Tenancy Tribunal and District Court).
Had nothing at all to do with Kainga Ora's managed housing stock going from 67k in 2015 to 63k in 2017?
No, because the number awaiting public housing in 2017 was only 5,000 - Labour blew that out to 32,000. In 2017 National was spending $36m a year on emergency housing, while Labour blew that out to $365m a year. Turns out that when you get beneficiaries into jobs, and then move them from public housing to private housing that they can afford, you free up public housing for new people. The turnover means you need less public housing. Of course nowadays, certain groups of beneficiaries expect housing for life, and that they dont ever have to get a job, so now taxpayers are being forced to spend billions on building million dollar properties to house these grifters.
I went along to an MBIE "consultation" evening to have my say on that one. The new grads they sent around the country to collect information had no understanding of supply and demand, the RTA, or even wear and tear. They had been given a pre-loaded set of questions that sounded like Marama Davidson wrote them. Complete and utter farce.
So that stopped people renting to those folks.
Then, they removed deductibility so people who had rentals in those areas as soon as they could moved the leases to emergency housing. So people were going onto emergency housing lists as their properties went the same way. I know someone who has renovated over a dozen sh*tters over the years and held them. They're all emergency housing now, in one he has the same tenants!
This is nothing like Mudoonism.
Muldoon was a despicable dictator who gouged hard working kiwis up to 66c in the dollar tax.
Who can possibly forget the tyrant's 'boat and caravan tax' that destroyed those industries, the 'think-big' projects, and dopey CNG powered cars? Anyone remember the 'carless days' debacle? I refused to comply and used my car whenever I wanted. I was stopped at Auckland Airport by a jackbooted Nazi wannabe in a black SS-type uniform and issued with a ticket, which I refused to pay. Eventually it all just went away.
Muldoon was a despot, and any comparison to the current government is farcical. I would work at night, and it made my blood boil that I was working 2/3 of the time for the govt., and 1/3 for myself.
I do have something to thank Muldoon for though - His gouging made me decide to invest in an industry where there was a lot of tax perks in those days, and I made a fortune.
So far he's doing a terrific job of slashing and burning his way through the socialist excesses of the previous government, which squandered billions.
I won't list them all here because there's too many. But suffice to say the moronic gun buyback, the light rail fail, billions on Maori, 3 Waters, Pike River, the Harbour Bridge Cycleway, bike lanes no one uses and 14,000 extra bureaucrats managed to swallow quite a few billion.
Yes. Billions. 200 million alone was spent on setting up the failed Maori Health Authority. 200 million to set up something that delivered nothing......and that was just one waste of money, and just for last years funding. A drop in the ocean compared the rest of the waste.
Yes. I think so. That would be hugely beneficial.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/budget-2023/490223/maori-development-ministe…
It's a billion a year, so yes, billions.
Ahhh… just like how Cindy and Chippie totally treated all citizens the same, with same rights and responsibilities….surely that is the only way to bring people together…by starting with universal rights for all!
I fear the soothsayers of old are right (Orwell, Huxley, Rand and Hayek et al)… the masses will willingly march to the socialist pipe
I voted National and I think that some policies are misguided but when both sides are put on the scales my belief is that they will be less bad than the other mob. So the left can pick holes and point to error in this policy or that policy (and I'll even agree with some of it) but it's not going to swing my vote because I believe that a repeat of anything like the last government will leave this country destitute - which is a whole lot worse than a few annoying pork barrel policies introduced by the current crowd.
Sorry, can’t read past the first paragraph sounds like you’re angry Mr Trotter.
People please keep in mind, the latest poll might have Luxon down 16% as an individual as the msm happily report, but the coalition govt. on the whole is the same % above labour/greens/tepati. Yeap, the coalition is 16% above those other 3 parties. Tells me the majority are ok.
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