A guest post by James Doolan:

If you own a second property, rent it regularly through Airbnb and have not told your council about the commercial use, this opinion piece is directed at you.

You may regard the omission as harmless or perhaps you’ve realised that the chances of being identified are low. Deliberately withholding information that affects your rates liability is not clever tax planning. It’s gaming the system and leaving other ratepayers to pay more. Kiwiblog readers are usually quick to condemn exactly this behaviour when it occurs in other contexts, particularly when there’s failure to disclose changes in circumstances affecting benefit entitlements.

The obligation to disclose already exists and unambiguous. Section 29 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 requires ratepayers to notify their council when circumstances change in a way that affects information in the rating database, including a change in land use. Councils are required to maintain that database because it determines which rating category applies and how much each property owner pays. 

Auckland Council has made the position especially clear. A property rented through Airbnb, Bookabach or a similar platform for more than 28 nights during the relevant rating year may be subject to increased business general rates. Owners are expected to complete a short-term accommodation declaration, even if Council has not contacted them. 

This is not a proposed tax. It is the existing law and Auckland’s existing rating policy for short-term rental accommodation (STRA). Basic analysis suggests the change of use disclosure system is not working.  It’s costing Auckland Council millions of dollars each year – money that could be spent attracting SailGP or events to Eden Park, something Mayor Brown has long advocated for.

Information obtained via LGOIA requests of Auckland Council showed approximately 505 rating units in its STRA-specific rating categories. AirDNA data, meanwhile, identified more than 4,700 entire-property short-term rental listings across Auckland, along with approximately 1,300 private-room listings. 

Those figures might not be perfectly comparable. One property can generate multiple listings, some hosts will fall below Auckland’s thresholds, and no dataset is perfect. Even after making reasonable allowances for those factors, it is difficult to reconcile a market containing several thousand active listings with only a few hundred properties captured in STRA-specific rating categories.

Auckland Council is legally required to maintain a rating information database capable of determining the correct rating treatment for properties. It’s questionable whether that legal obligation is being met.

The financial consequences are significant. For 2025/26, HCA’s analysis calculated Auckland’s approximate urban residential general rate at 0.00225223 per dollar of capital value. The corresponding STRA categories ranged from approximately 0.00303195 for urban medium occupancy to 0.00381167 for urban moderate occupancy. On a property with a capital value of $1 million, correct classification could therefore increase annual general rates by roughly $780 to $1,560 per year.

Using the earlier dataset of 4,777 active listings and subtracting the 505 rating units identified by Council leaves a potential gap of 4,272 properties. Applying the same $780 to $1,560 range across those properties suggests potential under-collection of approximately $3.3 million to $6.7 million annually. The precise figure is impossible to know because Auckland does not have comprehensive visibility of the sector. That, in many respects, is the problem.

The same issue exists with Auckland’s City Centre Targeted Rate. A residential apartment pays a capped charge of just over $75 per year, while a commercially-rated accommodation property with a typical $750,000 capital value would contribute around $990 annually. HCA’s analysis suggests more than 1,200 city-centre STRA properties may sit outside the intended framework, potentially creating another seven-figure funding shortfall. If two physically similar properties are being used to sell overnight accommodation, there should be a very good reason why one contributes more than ten times as much towards the main city centre targeted rate. 

There are only a handful of explanations. The market data could be materially wrong. Auckland Council’s records could be materially incomplete. Or a significant number of owners may simply not be disclosing commercial accommodation activity as required.  The “rates avoidance” angle gets far too little attention and it’s time to start calling out the hypocrisy of some STRA owners.

Kiwiblog readers tend to be strong supporters of personal responsibility. If somebody receiving a benefit fails to disclose a new income source or a change in circumstances that affects their entitlement, there is usually little sympathy. The same attitude should prevail with people who rent second properties on Airbnb while conveniently skipping past their disclosure and commercial rates obligations.

What is good for the goose should be good for the gander. If we expect honesty and disclosure from beneficiaries, employees and small business operators, we should expect the same from people earning tens of thousands of dollars a year by renting out investment properties and holiday homes through global technology platforms.

This Auckland situation is not unique.  That is where a national STRA register enters the discussion.

A cheap national register, funded through a modest annual registration fee, would give councils a practical way to identify commercial accommodation activity without requiring them to trawl Airbnb listings, cross-reference property photos and pursue individual owners one at a time. HCA has consistently argued that councils have a tourism funding problem only in-part because they lack a cost-effective STRA identification tool. A central register solves that problem. 

Before councils ask for new funding tools, they should absolutely make better use of the tools they already have, including collecting existing commercial rates and geographic targeted rates. 

A national STRA register is not a new tax. It is basic compliance infrastructure. And if your objection is that it might result in a commercially operated property being identified and rated properly, you are not really arguing against bureaucracy.  You are arguing for the right to remain below the radar and game the system.This should be the most non-contentious opinion piece ever submitted to Kiwiblog.  The call to action comprises two simple and connected next steps: (1) If you rent your property on Airbnb, then declare “change of use” and pay your rates fully if you’re captured by existing bylaws; and (2) Whether or not you’re a landlord, support a simple national STRA register that ensures everyone pays their fair share.

James Doolan is the Strategic Director of the Hotel Council Aotearoa.

Kate Truska writes:

I come from Sloviansk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

For anyone who has followed Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, the name will probably be familiar. Sloviansk was where armed men led by Russian citizen and former FSB officer Igor Girkin seized government buildings in April 2014, and where one of the first major battles of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine unfolded.

And yet, more than twelve years later, I still regularly encounter versions of the same story: “that something happened in Donbas in 2014 because the people there were fundamentally different from the rest of Ukraine; that Ukraine somehow fractured naturally between a Russian-speaking East and a Ukrainian-speaking West; that an internal conflict erupted and Russia subsequently became involved.”

For somebody from the region, it is difficult to overstate how profoundly misleading that narrative is.

The reality is that Putin exaggerated minor differences to cause resentment and justify his invasion.

In a piece published by Estonia’s Delfi under the striking headline A warning to Estonia: You too can be turned into a Donbas — so learn from us, Vlad describes Donbasification as something much more sophisticated than separatism. It is the deliberate construction of an enemy-made regional identity inside another country: taking real regional characteristics, layering mythology, propaganda and historical distortion over them, exaggerating genuine differences, suppressing inconvenient history, and eventually presenting the resulting artificial identity as evidence that the territory never properly belonged within the nation at all — and using that manufactured division against the state itself.

Sounds like the exact strategy that Te Pati Maori seem to advocate!

On 1 December 1991, Ukrainians were asked directly whether they supported an independent Ukraine. Every administrative region of the country voted yes.

Nationally, support exceeded 90 percent. In Donetsk oblast, 83.90 percent voted for Ukrainian independence. In Luhansk oblast, 83.86 percent did the same. Crimea and Sevastopol returned majorities for Ukrainian independence too.

That referendum is extraordinarily inconvenient for the mythology subsequently built around Ukraine’s East. When people there were actually asked which country they wanted to belong to, the answer was Ukraine.

Before this was, Ukranian and Russians were brothers and cousins, not foes and fatalities.

Alan Ringwood writes:

There is nothing new about religions seeking to shut down criticism and opposing views. 

It’s a story as old as religion itself. 

The question is to what extent the state should step in to outlaw and criminalise anti-religious speech.

Basically none, unless to calls for violence.

Religious beliefs are in a different category. Unlike race, they are not innate or immutable. 

Some religious beliefs – for example concerning the rights and permissible treatment of women and girls – are fully worthy of the contempt of others in a modern democratic society. Other religious beliefs may be just as deserving of ridicule. 

Millions of Young Earth Creationists believe that the Earth, and all living things, were very recently created by the Abrahamic God. We can assert that this belief is wrong. But it is worse than just wrong – it is nonsense.

And calling certain beliefs nonsense will in many religions will get you a shrug of the solider. While in others to will get r=death threats – or worse

Extending s.131 to cover religion consequently risks criminalising not just Brian Tamaki. It risks criminalising anyone who attacks Tamaki’s religious beliefs.

So hate speech law will be used to stop people criticising Brian Tamaki.

I think I should have the right to say the Brian has no more spiritual authority to appoint himself a Bishop or an Apostle than Ms Louise Ciccone.

Lucy Rogers writes at The Good Oil:

As readers may recall, in February 2025 the IPCA published a report about my arrest on 25 November 2023, finding that, while I was silently and peacefully counter-protesting an anti-Israel march on Queen Street, police officers wrongfully assaulted me, wrongfully took my sign off me, wrongfully arrested me and then told serious lies about me to justify it. (My sign said SELECTIVE CONDEMNATION OF GENOCIDE IS EVIL.)

Officer Q is Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry

By far the most serious lies about me were told by Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry, identified by the IPCA only as “Officer Q”. Perry was the most senior officer present and was also the public order policing commander for the entire police operation monitoring the anti-Israel protest that day.

Perry’s claims

Perry claimed that I was “yelling” at people and that my actions were so extreme that he thought I was “suffering from mental illness”. He claimed that my “behaviour was heightened to a degree of excited delirium” and that he “assessed the threat [to me] as high [due to my] heighten (sic), unpredictable, erratic, belligerent behaviour [I] was demonstrating towards the Palestian (sic) rally attendees”. He also says that he believes that my actions were “deliberate in intent to cause psychological harm to the Palastine (sic) people”.

He was lying

I shall not rehash the facts about my case here, but, suffice it to say, none of this has the slightest basis in fact. I did not say a single word to the protesters (let alone yell) and none of them yelled at me. In fact, hardly any of them even took any notice of me. If you would like to see what really happened, you can see footage here:

You can read the full post over on Cam’s blog. Lucy really doesn’t like cops that make things up.

Radio NZ reports:

Former Labour cabinet minister Kiri Allan has come out swinging against the public service saying it is bloated, slow, and overpaid. …

Allan said there were “exceptional people” throughout the public service and her comments weren’t an attack on individuals, but on the system.

She said in the private sector, the incentive to work hard was to “put food on the table” the next day, and maintained the problems she saw with the public sector were particularly acute in upper management.

“What I found with senior bureaucrats is that they’re often more political than politicians. They know they’re going to out-survive politicians.

This would change if they were appointed by Ministers.

In response to Kiri telling the truth based on her first hand experiences, the Labour Party’s PSA union lambasted her:

Really disappointed to see politician-turned-author Hon Kiri Allan in the media today taking a cheap shot at the public servants who supported her when she was a Minister.

It’s unjustified, gross and unbecoming. It also feeds a far-right narrative that leads to privatisation of important public services.

So here we have a left wing Maori wahine Minister saying the public service is bloated, slow and overpaid – and Fleur says it is a far-right narrative!!

Fleur seems to regard anyone who disagrees with her as far right – again an example of how meaningless the term now is.

Radio NZ reports:

Te Pāti Māori have made their election strategy clear: give us your candidate vote to get more Māori in Parliament, and give your party vote to the left bloc.

This is the first time I can recall that a parliamentary party has not campaigned for the party vote. TPM are trying to use the Māori seats to deliberately create and overhang in Parliament, so that the four parties of the left can from Government even if they receive fewer party votes than the current Government.

The whole idea of MMP is that the Government has more votes case for it, than the Opposition. It was a primary motivator behind ditching FPP.

TPM are playing with fire. Their strategy could lead to two different outcomes:

• A moral backlash to an election result where the Maori seats were used to install a Government that got fewer party votes than the Opposition. I would then expect to see National, ACT and NZ First to all campaign on a binding referendum to abolish the Maori seats. You can justify thir existence on the basis of them being seperate but equal to general seats. But when they are used to deliberately create overhang, that defence falls away.
• Parties on the right could retaliate. National could split into two parties – say “National” that campaigns for party vote only and “Community” that campaigns for electorate seats. This would give National/Community a 30 – 40 seat overhang!

I’m not the only one who thinks this is a very bad idea.I’m not the only one who thinks this is a very bad idea. Even Willie Jackson isn’t keen:

Labour’s Māori campaign chair Willie Jackson was asked yesterday if the strategy risked the legitimacy of the Māori seats in the eyes of the public. He agreed it did, as RNZ’s Lilian Hanly reported. Jackson said it threatened a backlash against the Māori seats that could lead to their abolition “when you start working the system like that.”

You better believe it.

Graeme Edgeler also writes:

But while an overhang has been created several times, two things have never happened: An overhang hasn’t changed which party got to govern, and no-one has tried to engineer an artificial overhang in order to deliberately cause a disproportionate result.

There have long been devoted party stalwarts who have argued that their political party should try to deliberately engineer an overhang by separating the MPs who can run in safe seats from the party that would contest the party vote in order to over-inflate the share of seats in parliament, but these proposals have always been rejected because MPs know voters would punish such shenanigans. Now, for the first time at this election, Te Pāti Māori appear to be indicating they may use the Māori seats to try this strategy: telling their supporters to only use their electorate votes to support the party’s candidates, while suggesting they use their party vote to support another party.

This is key – any overhangs in the past have been accidental and not changed who gets to form Government. Here TPM are proudly asserting they want to engineer an overhang, to try and get the Government out of office, even if the Government wins more party votes.

In New Zealand, this could mean a couple of things: National deciding that it’s now willing to go along with proposals from New Zealand First and ACT to get rid of the Māori seats, or parties on the right reacting by trying the same thing, running separate candidates in safe seats to create retaliatory disproportionality.

It may be ironic that the party that may end most responsible for getting rid of the Maori seats, will be Te Pati Maori.

Pleased to see at least one journalist asking tough questions of TOP. It is alarming that the party leader doers;t even know her own party’s rules, especially one as important as the board being able to over-rule the caucus. I guess this is what you get when a party leader is not a long-standing member, but someone who applied for it as a job,

The TOP Board is more powerful than any other party’s board. One of the board members is also a major funder of TOP. The powers of the Board include:

• Selecting the Leader
• Appointing all Electorate candidates
• Ranking the Party List
• Can over-ride the decisions of the caucus
• Appoints the policy committee which sets policy for the party

I know of no other party where the board can over-ride the caucus. This means that if they are part of a Labour-led Government, the board, not the caucus, will have the final decision on every bill and policy.

The caucus will be salespersons for the Board. The caucus will not have the power to elect its own leader, or decide without over-ride on how they will vote in Parliament.

UPDATE: The Board has announced it will ask for an SGM to remove its power to over-rule the caucus,

TOP has proposed a 1.75% tax on the value of urban land (except Maori communal land) and 0.5% on rural land. It is worth noting that land values have been declining for the last five years, so TOP’s policy is to tax you on an asset that is declining in value!

The average household in Auckland would pay almost $15,000 a year in TOP’s land tax – so an extra $280 a week. In Queenstown it would be $360 a week more tax.

Our primary sector would be whacked. The median arable cropper would be paying almost $1,000 a week in land tax. Vineyards $420 a week and beef and sheep farmers $830 a week more.

I’m sure this will of course lead to cheaper food prices!

Attorney-General Chris Bishop had made a hugely important speech. He politely but firmly pushes back against the courts making law, rather than interpreting law. He notes:

So what does it mean to say that, of the three arms of government, Parliament is sovereign?

The answer I want to expand on, is that Parliamentary sovereignty means that significant public policy choices should be made by Parliament.

This is because – of the three arms of government – Parliament has by far the best claim to both a democratic mandate, and the necessary institutional expertise, to make public policy choices.

This position used to be uncontroversial and long-standing, but I think the time has come for a robust assertion of the traditional, orthodox view that Parliament is our country’s supreme law making body.

The lanyard and academic classes quite like the idea of enlightened people such as themselves making public policy choices, rather than Parliament. But that is not their mandate.

Even where issues are hotly contested, and a broad consensus is not forthcoming, Parliament’s democratic mandate means that everyone has had the opportunity to have a say, whether or not their view ultimately holds sway. Through the democratic process all voters are respected as equal, and therefore each voter is treated as a bearer of rights. If voters don’t like the choices made by Parliament, they can vote to change Parliament’s composition.

Parliament is supreme, because the voters are supreme.

There is a difference between adopting a reasonably-available rights-consistent interpretation and interpreting a statutory provision to advance a public policy choice that the legislature has not adopted.

We have seen this occur three times now. The Supreme Court just ignored the clear statute of the Three Strikes law, as they didn’t like it. They massively expanded the role of tikanga in the law from cases between Maori, to the entire legal system. They also said that the courts can have a role in setting climate change policy, rather than Parliament.

Parliament and the Government should have acted quicker in all these cases. The only way you will stop judicial power grabs, if if you stamp them out promptly and surely. I’d have a standing agenda items for Cabinet called “Recent Supreme Court decisions”, and if the Court has exceeded its mandate, Parliament should introduce a bull to reverse their decision within weeks.

Development of statute law is for Parliament, not for the courts. Changing social values and mores are reflected in the democratically elected legislature, not an unelected and by definition unrepresentative judiciary.

This should not be controversial. But I doubt it is taught in law schools anymore.

(Not that the media even seem to but notice that aspect of the polls).

I have lived and worked in Auckland, primarily in Education, from 1998 until now (with a 6 year gap when I was in the BoI, which co-incided with your covid response).

I will try and keep this reponse to points.

• The combination of yourself and Jan Tinetti were the worst “Minister of Education” team I have ever observed.
  
• Your government made an understandable initial response to covid with closed borders. From that point on you lost the plot.
  
• You created situations where there was no nuance – the list is endless but – funerals missed, super-markets open but butchers and fruit shops closed, a lottery to come into the country but no circumstances being considered (e.g. being a pregnant reporter having to shelter in Afghanistan). Plus other false statements about people travelling within the nation.
  
• Arbitrary rules adopted that have since been significantly exposed, e.g. masks, 6m gaps, etc.
  
• Hiding information on the possible side effects of vaccines for young people – that are very likely to have resulted in injuries and deaths.
  
• Knowing, from March 2021, that the mRNA vaccines did not prevent transmission and yet imposing public sector mandates, in October of the same year, that destroyed many careers.
  
• Keeping Auckland (and, by association, Northland) locked down much longer than was needed/effective. Just as one example – this cost myself a tourism business and a $3.5million property in the Bay of Islands. That is a metonym for so many people in Auckland/Northland having lost life savings, restaurants, tourism businesses, employment … because you and your team had become enamoured with authoritarianism within your echo chamber.
  
• Auckland/Northland is still suffering. The coalition has not done enough to improve things but it has been a but like trying to pull the Titanic up with cotton after you had punched a hole in it.
  
• Not bothering to hear the concerns of protestors in Wellington and cheering on your Uncle Trevor while he hosed them and Michael Wood when he called them a “river of filth”.
  
• Being a part of a government when the PM clearly stated that she was creating “two classes of people”.
  
• Not having the personal/professional integrity to appear in person before the Covid-19 Royal Commission or to release the Pfitzer contracts (etc).
  
• Being a part of a government whose “economics” drove up debt, inflation, interest rates to such a destructive level that Eonomists are no longer talkng about when there will be a recovery – but “if”.

“Chippy” – I have met with you a few times and they were positive encounters. Somewhere along the way you lost focus that your role was to improve things for NZers. I figure the only reason that you are still Labour leader is that no one else wants the role and only 15% of the nation want you as the PM.

What is your best move for the country in this moment?

[email protected]

Jim Tucker writes:

Toi’s money has come from profits made by the TSB bank, not only from clients living in the region, but nearly half from people living elsewhere (who don’t get any say).

If the case goes beyond the first full High Court hearing and the losing side decides to fight on in the Court of Appeal or even at the top of the justice mountain, the Supreme Court, costs could reach millions of dollars.

There’s also another irony: the litigants on both sides could conceivably face big reimbursement claims.

Such a risk to individuals and donors involved in the society is far less – what’s left of their kitty would be forfeited, but personal wallets are immune.

However, if a full High Court hearing finds Toi’s trustees have been negligent to the highest level of the word’s meaning, their built-in protections would be invalid and they would be held personally liable.

Whatever way the full hearing – if it eventuates – goes, that’s the point where both parties will need to make a big decision: do they spend more public money appealing, or do they call it quits while Toi remains relatively unscathed?

In fact, someone else is likely to resolve that dilemma: the buyer, Heartland Holdings, would probably walk away.

So, the TSB debate has moved on from a widespread public discourse to a hazardous and expensive legal battleground, with a massive number of Taranaki philanthropic dollars at stake.

The purpose of the Toi Foundation is to serve the Taranaki Community. It appears they are seriously offside with the community they serve. They are of course not appointed by the community, but by Ministers. The majority were appointed by the previous Government.

I wonder (putting polling hat on) if anyone has actually polled the Taranaki community on whether they support or oppose the proposal to sell TSB Bank to Heartland?

Samira Taghavi writes:

Earlier this month, Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall questioned Health Minister Simeon Brown about the appointment of lawyer (and medical doctor) Roderick Mulgan to the Medical Council of New Zealand.

Among the matters raised by Verrall was that Mulgan has sometimes represented – amongst the many regulatory-body cases he handles – medical practitioners facing allegations of sexual misconduct. The exchange was brought to my attention by several lawyers who were troubled by what Verrall’s questioning appeared to suggest about the role of defence counsel.

Verrall’s questions – probably written by a non-legally qualified staffer – displayed an egregious lack of understanding of the delineation between the respective roles of advocate on the one hand and adjudicator on the other.  Lawyers, however, understand the distinction well.

As a criminal defence barrister myself, I found the premise underlying Verrall’s questions insulting to the defence bar and contrary to the fundamental principles of our justice system. From her  line of questioning, it appears to follow that defence counsel offering representation to those facing unpleasant allegations should be presumptively barred from appointment, or be very seldom appointed, to the bench or other adjudicative positions.

In fact, a lawyer’s willingness to represent somebody accused of serious or repugnant conduct tells us entirely nothing about that lawyer’s personal values, sympathies or capacity to exercise independent judgment. Rather, the promotion of the rule of law requires lawyers to fearlessly advocate for clients against the vast power of the State or regulatory bodies that can destroy livelihoods.

It is somewhat alarming that a senior Labour MP seems not to understand (or not to care) that lawyers advocate for clients, regardless of their personal views. Does she think Golriz Ghahraman would be unsuitable for certain roles, because of her previous clients?

A lawyer’s responsibility is not to decide whether a client is sufficiently virtuous to deserve representation, but to ensure that allegations are properly tested, legal rights are protected and consequences are imposed according to law. This means a lawyer who argues that a doctor should retain the ability to practise no more endorses the alleged misconduct than a defence barrister seeking an acquittal or proportionate sentence endorses the offending alleged against a criminal defendant.

It’s sad one has to explain to a senior MP (and former Minister), like you would have to explain it to a 10 year old.

Simeon brown points out:

After National alerted New Zealanders to the 11 new taxes on the table between Labour and its coalition partners, Chris Hipkins claimed that two of the taxes are not Labour Party policy.

Chris Hipkins and the Labour Party cannot be trusted on tax, and today they’ve again proven why, National’s Campaign Chair Simeon Brown says.

“After National alerted New Zealanders to the 11 new taxes on the table between Labour and its coalition partners, Chris Hipkins claimed that two of the taxes are not Labour Party policy.”

“Hipkins told media yesterday and again this morning that the Streaming Tax was never Labour policy.

“If that is the case, then why did senior MP Willie Jackson have a Members’ Bill to introduce a streaming tax in the biscuit tin as of this morning?

“Hipkins has tried to mislead the public and the media on the Streaming Tax. And it’s the same with the Ute Tax and the Capital Gains Tax.

“In September 2020, Labour said the Ute Tax was not their policy. Labour won the election in October 2020 and by June 2021 it introduced the Ute Tax. So that promise lasted eight months.

“Chris Hipkins ruled out a Capital Gains Tax under a government he led. Labour is campaigning on one now.

If there is a Lanour-Green-Te Pati Maori-TOP Government after the election, the only question is how many of the 11 new taxes get implemented.

Stuff reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has admitted he wasn’t aware of a member’s bill proposing to introduce a tax on streaming companies when he ruled the policy out.

Leader Chris Hipkins last week confirmed to Stuff that his party was not campaigning on introducing a streaming levy, despite his broadcasting and media spokesperson, Reuben Davidson, confirming in January that the party would seek advice on one if elected.

So the party leader was unaware that one of their very few polices was a streaming tax.

Hipkins said the party had made final decisions on the streaming tax “in the last few weeks,” but the bill had remained online due to an administrative oversight.

“We became aware of it, it was dealt with,” he said.

So it was never their policy, they simply had a bill to make one law!!

A guest post by David Schnauer- author of Uncomfortable Economics:

Compliments to Ashley Church for a well argued Post headed “Declining house prices are killing our economy”.    In this Post, I  put the opposing case. High and appreciating house prices have not been good for New Zealand. Instead they have done and continue to do this country major economic damage. 

  My book Uncomfortable Economics went on sale on 20 July.  It begins by describing the long term underperformance of the New Zealand economy.  From the 1950s when New Zealand was one of the most prosperous countries, we have drifted steadily down the ranks of world living standards. That relative decline continues-  voters in 2026 rank   NZ’s economy as their major concern. Unless our drift is arrested, New Zealand in another decade risks dropping out of first world status.  

Why has that longstanding underperformance occurred?  The central thesis in my book:  the New Zealand economy is seriously unbalanced. Kiwis have far too much of our wealth in property; and far too little of our wealth in NZ’s real economy.  My book argues New Zealand will only lift its economic performance and start keeping up with more prosperous nations, by moving its wealth away from housing and on to growing its commercial sector.   Some quotations from the book develop this central theme. 

After describing the fabulously wealthy Swiss commercial sector: 

Successful countries generate their economic success by having a

wealthy and successful commercial sector. Compare this with

New Zealand. Where is our wealth held? We don’t have even

one multinational company based in New Zealand….

Meanwhile, much of our commercial sector is owned from

offshore: our four main banks, our insurance companies,

breweries, one of our two supermarket chains, much of our

food manufacturing. Wealth generated by those overseas owned

businesses does not accrue to Kiwis; it gets sent out of the

country to the overseas owners. It is therefore no surprise our

economy has underperformed over the last 75 years……….

Then a comment on the limited contribution capital appreciation makes to the overall economy: 

In our North Shore legal practice, we saw countless clients

who had purchased their family home 25–40 years ago for, say,

$50,000. Their $35,000 initial mortgage had long been paid off

and their family had grown up and left home. Those clients were

now selling their home for $1 million, downsizing and buying

an Occupation Licence in a retirement village for $700,000.

The remaining $300,000 was put aside as their retirement nest

egg…..The problem for the country is that capital gains contribute

almost nothing to the economy and are not subject to tax in New

Zealand, so don’t add to the public revenue and do nothing to

lift New Zealand’s economic performance.

Businesses deliver much greater social benefit than houses

My wife  Tricia and I ran a law firm on the North Shore for 20 years.

 By the time of our retirement the firm had approximately $1 million

 Invested in it, aggregated across work in progress, book debts, office

equipment, office fit out and furniture, etc. The law firm used

total funds approximating the value of a North Shore house.

 It employed about a dozen people. Those employees back then

collectively earned, say, $1 million per annum, from which they paid

 income tax, ACC, KiwiSaver etc. The firm made profits from which

it paid income tax, GST, ACC, KiwiSaver, etc. I expect the firm and its

 employees in total paid several hundred thousand dollars to IRD each year.

My point should be obvious. A house creates jobs and income

for the building industry when it is first built but thereafter

contributes little to the country each year. On the other hand, a

sum of money equating to the worth of an average New Zealand

house, invested in a business, provides employment, tax revenue

for the Government and goods or services for its customers. A

sum invested in a business delivers far greater national benefit

than putting that same sum into housing.

Excessive house prices have done major damage not only to our economy, but also to  New Zealand society:

The housing boom has done major damage to New Zealand society.

 It has made two-income households common (with children raised in

crèches) to pay the enormous mortgages required to buy a house.

The Government, with already overspent budgets, has stepped

in with Family Support and other measures to help struggling

families and made its deficits worse. 

Exceptionally high house prices are driving major social disparity

 between Kiwis who can (almost always with family help) get onto

 the property ladder and those who can’t. Excessive house prices

 have diverted funds into housing that should have been going into the NZ

commercial sector, to drive our economic progress. Much of the

money the banks lend into the New Zealand housing market –

around one dollar in five – is borrowed from offshore, meaning

New Zealand has high private international debt. The list of

negative consequences of high house prices is a very long one.

In summary :

New Zealand’s overpriced housing is the ultimate

result of this country’s wealth being significantly misallocated,

with far too much in property and far too little in our commercial

sector. This misallocation is doing major damage to the country,

both economically and socially. A radical change, weaning

New Zealand off its housing addiction, reducing house prices

and moving the assets freed up from the housing sector into

institutional saving and the corporate sector, is vital for our long-term

success as a country and as an economy. Indeed, I would

go so far as to say that the New Zealand economy will assuredly

continue its disappointing trajectory of the last 75 years, unless

and until such a rebalancing takes place. The reality facing New

Zealand in 2025 is that clear.

So, while you wrote an interesting Post, Ashley, I am sorry, but I must differ from you emphatically. Doesn’t it seem too good to be true, that Kiwis should seek to generate high living standards without hard work, and just by sitting back and benefiting from house price appreciation?  

Lower house prices do not just benefit first home buyers, as you suggest. They deliver economic gains which are far more fundamental and far more important than that.  Lower house prices are a critical part of rebalancing the whole NZ economy back onto our real economy.  It is that real economy which creates the incomes, jobs, goods and services and wealth which this country desperately needs, if it is to start climbing back up world GDP per capital rankings again. 

In the national interest, and in tandem with a strongly enhanced KiwiSaver scheme, Kiwis need to build their wealth in the future from hard work and from saving large KiwiSaver balances, not from house price appreciation.

 For the NZ economy materially to lift in performance going forward, house prices ideally need to decline a lot further over the next decade. 

RNZ reports:

The Green Party is campaigning on establishing a $2.4 billion trust dedicated to marae.

So they are proposing more money be given to maraes than we are spending on the new Dunedin Hospital which will have 251 beds and 22 operating theatres.

The Post reports:

The Holocaust will have a place in New Zealand’s secondary school curriculum from next year, in a move welcomed by educators but accompanied by concerns about the prescriptive nature of the curriculum.

The Ministry of Education’s revised year 0-10 social sciences curriculum, released on Wednesday, will be rolled out from 2027.

Students will learn about the Holocaust as part of the year 10 history curriculum, within a broader study of the world wars.

The inclusion comes after more than 500 submissions in support. One of these was from the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, which has long pushed for the topic’s inclusion at secondary school.

I am one of those who put in a submission.

In a poll done by Curia in 2021, 53% of adults said they knew virtually nothing or just a little about the Holocaust. It was 65% for 31 to 45 year olds.

Only 39% of NZers knew that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. With women it was only 31% and only 22% of under 30s knew this.

Hopefully this change will stop any further generations of NZers knowing so little about the Holocaust.

The Opportunity Party policy is or was that any criminal offender aged under 25 should be sent to the Youth Court for a family group conference, rather than go to an adult court. They say this is because 24 year old brains are not fully developed, so they should not be held fully accountable for their crimes.

In 2023, TOP campaigned on lowering the voting age to 16.

By Lucy Rogers

Before I continue: in the comments section of my last post I was accused of presuming that the factions I am describing are intellectually dishonest without providing any evidence for this assertion. In fact, I had proven quite conclusively in a previous Kiwiblog post that intellectual dishonesty is at play, and re-provided the link to that post at the start of this series. However, I reprovide it yet again for good measure: https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/10/guest_post_stop_accusing_anti-israel_westerners_of_antisemitism_and_start_accusing_them_where_appropriate_of_intellectual_dishonesty.html

I have never alleged that every person who disagrees with me on the Israel/ Palestine conflict (or for that matter other issues) is intellectually dishonest. I provided specific referenced examples of intellectual dishonesty which nobody has been able to refute, because there is no refutation available, and then sought to explain them. I have met two Westerners at the anti-Israel protests whom I consider to be intellectually honest, and a significant number of Muslims who have legitimate grievances with Israel in good faith.

Anyway: if anyone can come up with a more succinct name for “people motivated primarily by hatred”, please say in the comments. But basically, although plenty of the other factions hate Israel, as I have been describing the hatred comes from some other external source: moral pride, intellectual arrogance, trauma, etc. The faction I am describing though are motivated primarily by hatred. The mentality is “I hate them, I don’t care about why I hate them, I don’t want to question why I hate them, I just hate them.”

This faction are by far the most radical, and they are thankfully a small minority at the anti-Israel protests. There are four people I can think of who are this extreme, although there are others who probably qualify but who are less overt about it. There is a Muslim woman and her two adult daughters who should probably be on some sort of watchlist, and then there is a Westerner who is on the far left, whom I shall call Mr O.

One of the three Muslim women in question (whom I shall call Ms D) has screamed in my face “I LOVE HAMAS!”, vehemently given me the finger on dozens of occasions, engaged in minor assaults like stamping on my foot repeatedly, torn up my signs repeatedly, told me to kill myself repeatedly, and told me when I was holding a sign about Hamas raping Israelis on October 7 that Hamas wouldn’t rape me because they “don’t touch scum”. (The police despite being offered footage of her tearing up my signs refused to do anything.) Her sister told me once that it’s OK to commit suicide bombings in Israel in civilian areas because IDF service is mandatory anyway.

Mr O knows that Hamas committed unspeakable atrocities on October 7 but does not care. In his view, the world falls into a simplistic moral binary where Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians are the oppressed, which means that literally anything is justified in the name of “resistance”. He had an exchange with a member of NZ Against Hamas on Facebook in which the NZAH member said that Hamas was a terrorist organisation and Mr O replied that “a settler colonial terrorist genocidal ideological defining other groups as terrorists is just laughable.” He also said that Israelis do not get to decide the ways that the oppressed resist them.

In Mr O’s view there are good guys and there are bad guys, and if “resistance” involves physically ripping apart civilians while they are still alive and then having sex with pieces of their corpses and uploading footage onto victims’ own Facebook pages then that’s fine. (By the way, the Civil Commission report recently found that Hamas did exactly that on October 7 2023.) It’s for that reason that I don’t think “ideological reasons” are an adequate explanation for the hatred that this faction have: if it had anything to do with right and wrong then October 7 obscenities would give them pause.

I have never once in the two and a half years I have been attending these protests responded to the other side by responding to insults with insults or with any sign of aggression whatsoever, out of a deep-seated ideological commitment to loving my enemies stemming from my Anglican faith. I have dialogued with large numbers of them without raising my voice, and agreed with them on a lot of things. Also, I have never once carried the Israeli flag. As a result, I get on amicably with a fair number of people at these protests, and am friends with some of them on Facebook. They tend to conclude that I am misguided and need educating. Unlike the hate faction, they appreciate gestures like occasionally holding signs criticising Israel or saying that Palestinian lives have infinite value. That is because hate is not their primary motivation.

But the hate faction know that I do not hate them and do not care. I can respond with the peace gesture to being given the finger on an infinite number of occasions and they will still hate me. The world is black and white: I am on the other side, I deserve to die, and nothing will ever change that. That is the hate faction’s distinctive.