A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Tuesday; house prices slide, big new housing project approved, dairy auction awaited nervously, lower settlement balances, swaps up, NZD holds soft, & more

So credit card like rates. Hense why smb sized companies borrow against their houses, or secure against same.

Ahh apologies misread it! Cheers

Repercussions that’s what. Great example during the Canterbury EQ sequences. Prior to that if you wanted to add an extra louvre to the dunny window then the council was over you like a rash. Then suddenly, foundations? Oh no, we don’t need to get involved in them, trust the insurers engineers they  are far better at that than us, just get them to sign off, we don’t even need to have a look.  From our family experience(s) it was a despicable dereliction of duty.  A fine display  of the standard slogan, “all authority, no responsibility.”

To be fair to councils, the courts keep coming out with some ridiculous decisions that make councils (justifiably) more risk averse.

Rather than bashing planners and councils, David Parker should have a look at the damage his lawyer mates cause, and the judiciary.

The simple solution be to make public notification decisions more black and white. Unfortunately Parker’s farcical RMA reform makes things even more ambiguous than they are now.

if this content stands there will be litigation over many years and things will be worse than they are now. Hard to believe, I know.

Our workforce is already underskilled, overworked and low-paid by international standards.

Not by international standards. Maybe by OECD standards, but even then likely not on a like-for-like job basis except for a few outliers like Aus, US, Switzerland.

We lost a good one with Norman Kirk.

Key word in your statement is 'wasn't'. Anyone thinking the 'good' times of greedy house hoarders making bank anytime in the next long while is in a serious state of denile. Long may that continue and houses become homes again rather than the get rich quick pyramid ponzi we've had for way way to long. 

Agreed, I'm currently listening to the audiobook:

Prefect X

Great X

Good V

Capitalism is typically a very robust system. But the issues could have longer-term effects on Queenstown.

What happens if someone's stay is wrecked because of all the staffing issues? Then they go back to their country and tell all their friends and family how awful it was. Slowly but surely a reputation that's been built over many years can get torn down brick by brick until the allure of the place starts to fade which means you can lose future tourists, and repeat tourists which can have some nasty long-term effects on an industry as fickle as tourism.

Or it might all be fine I don't know, I struggle to extrapolate anything from Queenstown seems to exist in its own reality.

Tourism in NZ thrives on low-wage workers, not enough to pay through the high living costs in places such as QT. Not going philosophical in saying greed is the cause here, but simply the GVA per worker from tourism in NZ is 33% lower than the rest of the economy. So tourism operators generally speaking don’t make enough dough in the sector to cover exorbitant living costs of their staff.

Just FYI, fixed term tenancies still exist, they weren't done away with. All that changed was landlords being able to kick tenants out in order to increase rent for the next lot with no cause.

There are plenty of short fixed-term tenancies in other holiday places - and holiday homes are not the panacea for local short-term employees you say they are, as the workers are required when the holiday homes are full, not when they are empty.

I think that has had some effect but you're probably overstating it. 

This isn't a problem that is unique to Queenstown, look around the world and you will see this issue in similar locations all over the world. Aspen, Whistler, and even entire cities like Prague or Lisbon have similar problems. This issue seems to more stem from these being globally desirable places so you end up having remote workers move in and wealthy investors buying up all the property which effectively prices working-class people out of the market.

The problem is you actually need working-class people for these places to function which is where the problems come in.

Labour has changed the rules but they are rules that have been designed for the rest of the country, not an edge case like Queenstown. The rules aren't even that onerous compared to some that you would see in Europe and the States.

If people keep getting priced out of home ownership you can't be surprised when some regulatory pushback comes into play. Renters don't have any choice when it comes to securing housing, in contrast, landlords have more flexibility and can choose to sell their properties if they find the regulations to be overly restrictive. 

Yeah but China buyers normally buy ahead, it does have a lead time and WMP can be stored.....   serious issue here given no major downward NZD movement to compensate.   No wonder all the sundry have been cutting the farm gate forecast for next year.    Less earnings for current acc numbers as well.    I wonder if recent weakness in NZD is international positioning for a leg lower , possible downgrade and confirmed recession.

Implies they see way less consumer demand, or are buying elsewhere, not sure what there alternatives are?

Future proof sales volumes by tipping some nicotine into it too. Trademark it Nicomilk.