By Bernard Hickey
With 74 days left until the September 20 election, here's my daily round-up of the political and governmental news from in and around Wellington on Tuesday, July 8, including the latest from Winston Peters on the sale of Motukuwaiti Island near KeriKeri.
Radio New Zealand reported the mortgagee owner of the Island, Jun Zhang, had put the island up for sale for NZ$30 million, despite the Overseas Investment Office having yet to complete a four year investigation into whether it was legally bought in the first place.
The Island, which is 30 km north of KeriKeri, was sold to St Morris NZ Ltd, owned by Wenning Han, in August 2010. It was then repossessed by Jun Zhang last year after he put St Morris into liquidation, claiming it owed him NZ$16 million. The OIO has confirmed it has not completed its initial investigation into the original sale.
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters said the sale highlighted the need to "fence off New Zealand from foreign speculators" and showed the Government's "cavalier attitude towards a free-for-all in land sales to foreigners."
“Why has the OIO not been held to account for its tardiness around the ‘sale’, or its failure to use all its powers to ensure that New Zealand law is complied with?," Peters asked.
“The OIO excuse that it is separate from the land transfers unit, even though they are both part of Land Information New Zealand, shows that complaints about the rubber stamp nature of the office are valid," he said.
“The island has one certificate of title which surely means that if the OIO request for information from the original buyers was in any way diligent or efficient the matter should have been determined years ago. A first year law office clerk could have resolved this in a matter of a few months. Why would it have taken two people in the OIO 48 months to not get to the truth," he said, adding the OIO, Land Information NZ and its minister were showing contempt for the public interest.
“Speculation is causing land price inflation, ruining the chance of land ownership for New Zealanders. Recent land sales approvals by the OIO list land purchases from people who intend to become resident, who intend to migrate to NZ and who intend to start a bed and breakfast. None of these benefit New Zealand."
'Raise student benefit'
Meanwhile, United Future Leader Peter Dunne said he supported calls from the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations to increase the NZ$40/week cap on student accommodation benefit, which had not changed since 2001.
"We need to ensure there is an appropriate level of fairness and equity. For those studying in our larger centres where rent is significantly higher the current arrangement is unfair," Dunne said, adding students currently received the same support regardless of where they were studying.
He said UnitedFuture would also seek a review of the student allowance's independence threshold currently set at 24.
"Tertiary students are the next generation of our workforce and we need to make sure that we recognised that and support students appropriately," he said.
I'll keep updating this through the day.
See all my previous election diaries here.
See the index for Interest.co.nz's special election policy comparison pages here.
(Updated with Dunne's policy on student benefits)
13 Comments
Green's pushing for roof top solar, meanwhile over in OZ its destroying some business models (and hence i assume share price),
http://climatecrocks.com/2014/07/07/coal-is-over/
"Negative pricing not supposed to happen in the middle of the day. Daytime prices are supposed to reflect higher demand, when people are awake, office building are in use, and factories are in production. It is supposed to be the time of day when fossil fuel generators used to make most of their money.
But that has now been turned on its head by the influx of rooftop solar. There is 1,100MW of it on more than 350,000 buildings in Queensland alone (3,400MW on 1.2 million building across the country), and it is producing electricity just at the time that coal generators used to may hay (while the sun shines).
The impact has been so profound, and wholesale prices pushed down so low, that few coal generators in Australia made a profit last year."
Yes, buying IPO state generation shares is such a great idea.........
regards
Of course, germany has been this way for afew years. So meanwhile its in the interest of the Power companies to not put too much new generation on line as that it seems can force prices down. Get residents on as an alternative and oh boy, we see slashing of profits as Air Con in the summer and heating in the winter becomes solar powered.
What an interesting twist, introduce competition really introduce it.
regards
.... they had little choice , given they'd shut down their nuclear power industry , as a consequence of the Fukushima earhtquake/tsunami in Japan ....
And as eveyone one knows , compared to nuclear power , lignite is quite ..... ummm ..... quite .... not green .... but something .... surely ..... a less vulnerable power source to earthquakes & tsunamis ! .... yup , that must be it ....
.... has Germany ever had an earthquake or a tsunami ? .... they have alotta high winds , I know that , but that's mostly because of all the pickled cabbage they gobble by the tank full ...
Me too. There seems to be alot of evidence that many who bought their residency failed to deliver on the full promisory note - the infamous Mr Liu as well from what I've read. And having looked past the requirement for English speaking/literacy - I see we're now funding iPads with specialised software as interpretive devices in our hospital system. We are absolute mugs.
Really?
Thought migrants were supposed to have some degree of fluency in the local language
Except of course the high-worth-investor category who are exempt from the language test
In which case it must be those high-worth-investors who are receiving welfare in the form of free iPads and translation software
No, lots of non-English speaking parents are coming in under the unification ("centre of gravity") immigration policy;
http://glossary.immigration.govt.nz/centreofgravity.htm
Peters is asking lots of Qs in Parliament on it - as his information suggests that parents of Chinese children with perm residency seem to be by far the greatest number entering on this policy - and there are no language requirements for these parents.
From this 2005 article on the subject of interpretors in hospitals;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10353913
New Zealand residents do not pay but non-residents get charged up to $102 an hour.
Which to me seems to give these parents no real incentive to learn English. Interpretor costs (be they by people or machine) should be completely user-pay to my mind for all but our official languages.
We have to be careful whom we blame. The Chinese investors are only doing what most people would do if given the opportunity to profit from favourable conditions.
I know plenty of Kiwis who have availed themselves of these kinds of loopholes open into the USA and the UK.
Blame the greedy and stupid locals and their Get Rich Quick dreams, including of course the greediest of them all right at the very top. You know who I mean.
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