The majority of the “Fair Pay Agreements” Working Group have proposed a system that is terrific for unions and terrible for New Zealand. It is a de facto return to national awards and compulsory unionism, but even worse than in the 1970s.

Employers will be stripped of their ability to say no. If they don’t agree to union demands, then a Government appointed arbitrator will decide for an entire industry what their pay and conditions will be – binding on every employer from Bluff to Auckland.

The threshold for an industry wide agreement is so low, as to be non-existent. A union only needs the lower of 10% of workers in a sector or 1,000 workers.

So an industry may have 200,000 workers. Just 1,000 can demand an industry wide aware that will bind the other 199,000. It’s not a 10% threshold, or even a 1% threshold.

Now you can bet any industry wide agreement will have a requirement that every worker must pay a fee to the union, regardless of whether or not they are a member. It will be the greatest revenue gain for unions in their history.

And they will repay Labour by donating much more money to the, and running third party campaigns for them.

Business owners up and down New Zealand should be very worried. This proposal will see them forced into national awards against their will, and a small business in Gore will face the same demands as a multi-national in Auckland.

The Herald reports:

Any minister who wants more money to spend in their portfolio will have to prove it will improve intergenerational wellbeing.
That was the message Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered to her Cabinet from Davos last night (NZ Time.)
Speaking on a panel discussing the role of GDP as a measure of wellbeing at the World Economic Forum, Ardern challenged her ministers to put wellbeing at the heart of their budget bids.
“If you’re a minister and you want to spend money, you have to prove that you’re going to improve intergenerational wellbeing.”

Ardern spent much of her time explaining why her Government was introducing a wellbeing budget this year – a world first.

Doesn’t this sound a lot like social investment? Far from being something new, it is what National did for many years (and Labour was luke warm on). And the Living Standards Framework which sits behind the wellbeing budget was started by Treasury in 2011 under National.

Andrew Dickens writes:

So has anyone seen the Prime Minister lately? If anyone sees Jacinda Ardern in the flesh, could you please contact authorities so we can return her to the people.
This is an observation that has been brewing for a while. In fact Chris Trotter, a lefty, first wrote about it in the middle of December.
But it wasn’t until today that I finally thought this is getting weird.
Every Tuesday since Helen Clark’s day the Prime Minister has done the rounds of media in the morning. On ZB that means 7.35am for 10 minutes and we have a quick recap of the issues of the week and where the government is at.
But we haven’t had one this year. Firstly she was on holiday for ages, which I didn’t resent because she does have a child under one who hasn’t seen a lot of her Mum. Then last week the PM was in Davos Switzerland but apparently was unable to use a phone.
The suspicion is rising that Jacinda Ardern likes to be a spokesperson for a government and a figurehead for the world but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of being a leader the job is a little difficult.

Well 18 months in and they’re built 33 houses out of the 100,000 they’ve promised over 120 months.

Chris Trotter last December noted the number of times that Jacinda Ardern seemed to be sidelined by her ministers seemingly making decisions without her knowing. Phil Twyford in particular seemed to change policies at a whim and when the Prime Minister was asked she seemed often unaware.
Looking back at the last three Prime Ministers we’ve had; Clark, Key and English, none would ever tolerate finding out about policy from the news media. And if they did butts would be kicked.

None of them would be finding out major policy changes via the media. Clark would kill you her death stare. Key would just get that frozen look in his eyes and you’d crap yourself and English would bollock you.

One News reports:

Jacinda Ardern and Phil Twyford say that KiwiBuild is going through a “recalibration” and interim targets have been dropped.
The Prime Minister addressed media with the Housing Minister at a Labour retreat in Martinborough today, where MPs gathered to discuss the upcoming year.
When asked if the Government’s KiwiBuild targets were still tenable after the announcement that only 300 homes will be complete in the first year of the programme instead of the 1000 stated, Ms Ardern announced that all interim targets have now been dropped.
“Our 100,000 over 10 years hasn’t changed, our interim targets haven’t been a useful way to demonstrate our delivery programme that’s why the minister is looking at that again.

Wow they really think the public are stupid.

The policy is a disaster, but rather than dump the policy they’re dumping the targets!

Of course the public and media won’t buy it. We know what they were, and will still measure them against them.

Ardern seems to be saying their only target now is 100,000 in ten years and its unfair to count progress until the ten years is up. So she may want us to believe that they’ll do 300 houses a year for nine years and 97,000 in the final year!

Such a contrast for how the year is starting. National is announcing a bold new tax policy to prevent people being taxed for inflation, and Labour is dumping their Kiwibuild targets.

A major announcement by Simon Bridges:

A National Government would link income tax brackets to inflation, ensuring income taxes  are adjusted every three years in line with the cost of living and allowing New Zealanders to keep more of what they earn, National Leader Simon Bridges says.

“New Zealanders’ incomes are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living because this Government is imposing more red tape and taxes,” Mr Bridges said in his State of the Nation speech in Christchurch today.
 
“Over the next four years, New Zealanders will be paying almost $10,000 more per household in tax than they would have been under National. The Government is taking more than it needs, only to waste billions on bad spending.
 

“On top of that, by 2022 New Zealanders on the average wage will move into the top tax bracket. That’s not right or fair. So in our first term National will fix that by indexing tax thresholds to inflation.
 
“We will amend the Income Tax Act so tax thresholds are adjusted every three years in line with the cost of living. That will mean that within a year after every election, Treasury will advise the Government on how much the thresholds should be adjusted for inflation.

This is a huge and great announcement.

For decades Governments have benefited from bracket creep, where inflation pushes people into higher and higher tax brackets. It means the amount of tax you pay increases every year, even if your income is just keeping pace with inflation.

National’s pledge to prevent bracket creep via automatic threshold adjustments is huge, because if they get to implement it, no future Government would dare to reverse it.

“The changes would make a real difference. Assuming inflation of 2 per cent, someone on the average wage would be $430 a year better off after the first adjustment, $900 after the second and $1,400 after the third.
 
“A family with two earners – for example, one earning $80,000 and the other $40,000 – would be $600 better off a year after the first adjustment, about $1,300 after the second and $1,900 by the third.
 
“That’s more of their own money in their own bank accounts.
 
“The first adjustment would prevent Kiwis from paying an extra $650 million a year in tax based on today’s estimates. We can afford that by managing the books prudently and spending wisely.

This shouldn’t be thought of as a tax cut. It is more saying the Government will no longer do a stealth tax increase due to inflation.

An excellent announcement by National to start the year off. They’re talking how to stop New Zealanders being taxed more, while the Government is focused on how many new taxes can they introduce.

Chris Trotter writes:

WHAT’S HAPPENED to Jacinda? What’s become of the young woman who captivated the electorate sixteen short months ago? The Jacinda who promised New Zealanders a “transformational” government inspired by the politics of kindness. Where has she gone?


Surely the New Zealand Prime Minister who earlier this week pledged to stand by Britain: “Whatever you decide about your place in the global community”; cannot be the same woman who turned up to Buckingham Palace proudly wearing a Maori cloak? That Prime Minister would never have boasted (in the right-wing Daily Telegraph of all places!) that “around four in every five New Zealanders still claims British heritage”. She would have left that sort of racially-charged rhetoric to Donald Trump.


Except, of course, it was New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who said those things. The very same Jacinda Ardern who’s been guilessly decorating the “loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires” who gather every year at the exclusive ski resort of Davos in the Swiss Alps.


It would seem that we misunderstood the Labour leader when she promised us a transformational government. Our naïve assumption was that she intended to transform New Zealand society when, clearly, it was herself she was determined to transform.

Ouch. He seems disillusioned.

The Herald reports:

Massey University received multiple complaints about former journalism professor Grant Hannis in the months after his arrest for sexually assaulting an elderly woman but did not act on them.
Hannis was sentenced to eight months home detention on Friday for an indecent act against an 82-year-old dementia sufferer in her rest home.
After news of his offending broke, Massey initially said there had been no issues with his behaviour aside from an incident of ‘rudeness in the classroom’ in October.
But the Herald can reveal that several complaints were made by female students alleging intimidation, aggression and inappropriate jokes about sexual assault by Hannis.

Maybe if Massey University hadn’t been so focused on trying to protect students from hearing from Don Brash, they might have been more responsive to complaints about Mr Hannis.

It really is quite sickening when you think about it. The rationale in the e-mails between the senior leaders of Massey about Don Brash were all about how allowing students to hear from him could be a safety issue – that some staff and students would feel unsafe, if he was allowed to speak.

So Massey claimed to be so focused ion safety of staff and students that they did everything they could to stop Brash speaking, while ignoring actual complaints from female students about one their senior staff members.

It seems the complaints were just ignored. There was no system to record them, pass them on, detect a pattern etc. Just ignored them – and then claimed there had been no complaints.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s tax brackets don’t accurately reflect what counts as “high earning” in this country, critics say.
Since 2008, the highest personal income tax rate has kicked in on earnings over $70,000 a year.  …

In 2008, there were 335,000 people paying the top tax rate. By the 2016-2017 tax year, that number had risen to 665,000 people. People earning over $70,000 pay 63 per cent of all income tax.

The average (mean) FT salary is now $63,000 so we have a top tax rate that is barely above the average wage.

Craig Howarth tax partner Craig Macalister said there should be a mechanism that triggered a review when inflation reached a certain level.
“If you hold tax brackets in place, every year you increase your tax take as people’s incomes creep up with inflation. But the Government knows if it’s holding them in place they’re getting an increase without telling anyone.”
The Tax Working Group has acknowledged concerns about “bracket creep” and the suggestion they should be indexed to inflation but said that would increase compliance costs
“The group believes that bracket creep is best dealt with through the periodic review of the rates and thresholds of income tax to ensure they remain appropriate rather than some form of indexation assessment.”

With respect to the TWG, but that is naive crap. It simply doesn’t happen as Government’s like getting the extra tax revenue through bracket creep.

How often has the threshold for the top tax rate been changed since 2000?

In 2008 it went from $60,000 to $70,000. That’s it. In 19 years it has increased $10,000.

If the threshold for the top rate was keeping pace with inflation, it should be $90,000 by now – not $70,000

Stuff reports:

A pair of dusty villages in the Syrian desert are all that remain of the vast expanse of territory the Islamic State once called its caliphate, and the complete territorial defeat of the militant group appears to be imminent, according to US and Kurdish officials.
A few hundred of some of the most die-hard Islamic State fighters are making their last stand in the villages of Marashida and Baghuz Fawqani on the banks of the Euphrates River, a few kilometres from the Iraqi border in southeastern Syria.
With the Syrian Army on the other side of the river, a group that once controlled an area the size of Britain is pinned down by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in a dot of land measuring 15 square kilometres.

This is a significant victory. Their territory has shrunk from 250,000 square kms to just 15.

Of course the defeat of ISIL does not mean the end of Islamist terrorism. Absolutely not. But perfect is the enemy of good.

ISIS was a dangerous rogue state that was barbaric and run along 9th century theocratic lines. It had its own Government, and oil, and army and was a major beacon and safe haven for terrorists. It is now basically gone.

Terrorists will still hide in caves, and plan and plot via the Internet. But they won’t have 250,000 square kms of territory to give them impunity to hide behind any more.

Stuff reports:

Wellington City councillor Chris Calvi-Freeman wants drivers to stop tooting in the Mt Victoria tunnel because it annoys pedestrians.
He is writing to the New Zealand Transport Agency asking for signs to be put at the ends of the tunnel, which is part of State Highway 1, suggesting people don’t sound their horns while driving through, NZME reported.
“Most people don’t realise when they are driving through that it is not really one of these victimless things,” said Calvi-Freeman, who holds the council’s transport strategy and operations portfolio.

Oh no, I was walking through a tunnel and someone hooted. Quick call the fun police. I’m a victim of tooting!

If you are a fan of mocking humour, then the roast of Chris Finlayson on the 5th of March should be an event not to be missed, especially for fans of politics or the law.

If you don’t know what a roast is, the dictionary definition is “to humorously criticize and make jokes about a famous person at a public event honouring that person, as a part of the event“.

The most vicious roasts you can see on Comedy Central. The one of Pamela Anderson is probably the most searing. William Shatner’s was also very good.

What should make this a great night is that Chris gets a right of reply. So the more Key, Brownlee and Willis mock Chris, the more cutting his response may be. And Chris can be very cutting.

I have the best job as MC. I get to mock all the speakers while introducing them! And I have plenty of material!

Should be a great fun night. I’m hugely looking forward to it.

Stuff reports:

First it was sugary drinks – now experts are calling for red meat to be taxed. 
A report by The Lancet Commission on Obesity, released on Monday, said a tax on red meat was an example of the urgent action needed to address the greatest threats “to human and planetary health” – obesity, under-nutrition and climate change. 
University of Auckland population health professor and commission co-chair professor Boyd Swinburn said national and international responses to all three problems had been “unacceptably slow”.

There really is no end to the stuff the activists want to tax or ban or both.

Today it is a tax on red meat. Tomorrow they’ll want plain packaging for red meat, and then they’ll want it banned or a government mandated maximum amount you can eat.

A report published in The Lancetearlier this month recommended a reduction of red meat to 7 grams a day, or about one hamburger patty a week, was best for health and the environment. 

And that’s the limit they want – seven grams a day!

Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter​ said the Government did not plan to tax red meat “at this stage”, but an increase in awareness about climate change was affecting people’s behaviour. 

At this stage is code for, we want to do it but am waiting for the right time.

The commission called for a global treaty, like those established for climate change and tobacco, to help governments restrict the influence of the food industry on policy and the establishment of a global philanthropic fund of US$1 billion (NZ$1.46b) “to support social movements demanding policy action”. 

Wow this is nutty stuff. Basically they want to ban the food industry from advocacy, and they want to steal $1 billion a year from global taxpayers and give it to themselves.

Joe Ascroft from the Taxpayers Union writes:

The working group is expected to recommend that the capital gains tax simply extends the current income tax regime; capital gains will be treated as income, so the tax rate will be the income-earner’s marginal tax rate.
Given how low our top tax-rate kicks in at $70,000 per year, the vast majority of income earners paying capital gains tax will therefore pay 33 per cent tax on any capital gains.
This is an extraordinarily high capital gains tax rate. In 2011 and 2014, the Labour Party campaigned on a capital gains tax with a rate of 15 per cent – and arguably lost both elections on the policy’s unpopularity.
Now the working group is literally doubling-down with a tax rate more than twice that of those proposals.

And people will pay that 33% tax on nominal, not real gains. If your asset merely increases in line with inflation, you’ll still get taxed 33% on it. Basically the higher inflation is, the more tax you pay.

In Australia, for example, long-term capital gains (capital gains on assets held for longer than a year) receive a 50 per cent discount – so taxpayers pay half their marginal tax rate on any capital gains.
The result is that their top capital gains tax rate on assets held for longer than a year is 22.5 per cent – approximately a third lower than our proposed 33 per cent rate.
Canada has a similar policy of only half-taxing capital gains. While the United Kingdom and the United States don’t apply a discount multiplier to capital gains, they simply pay less tax on capital gains compared to regular income.
The top tax rate in the United Kingdom is 45 per cent, but taxpayers only pay 28 per cent on capital gains from property, and 20 per cent on capital gains from all other assets.
Taxpayers in Britain also receive a capital gains allowance; they only pay tax on capital gains exceeding approximately $22,000.
In the United States, the top capital gains tax rate is 20 per cent – and that only kicks in if you earn more than $625,000 per year. If you earn less than that, you’d probably pay 15 per cent – less than half the Tax Working Group’s proposal.
Why do each of these countries tax capital gains at a reduced rate?
They acknowledge the risk to investment posed by a punitive tax on capital. More investment in small businesses, new farm equipment, larger buildings and innovative technology is the pathway to stronger economic growth and higher wages.

So is Labour going to try and pass a Capital Gains Tax that would be possibly the highest in the developed word?

Radio NZ report:

The United States is calling on the international community to pick a side in the dispute over who should be recognised as Venezuela’s leader.
President Nicolás Maduro is under pressure after his rival Juan Guaidó declared himself “acting president” on Wednesday.
Several countries, including the US, the UK, Canada and some Latin American nations, already back Mr Guaidó as president.
But Russia, China and Syria are still recognising the socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, who also appears to have the backing of the military.

Russia, China and Syria on one side – I would have thought be pretty easy to choose a side. But alas no.

New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters, said it’s not New Zealand’s practice to make statements recognising governments.

Which is de facto support for the status quo.

So Syria, China and Russia back the socialist regime that has destroyed the country’s economy. Who is on the other side. So far I make it:

• US
• France
• UK
• Germany
• Spain
• EU
• Canada
• Brazil
• Peru
• Chile
• Argentina
• Organisation of American States
• Australia

I would have thought it would be pretty simple to work out which side one should be on.

Marc Thiessen writes:

If Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were a conservative, all anyone would be talking about is how uninformed she is. She would be facing trick questions from reporters designed to expose her lack of knowledge, and brutal sketches on “Saturday Night Live” mocking her intelligence and fitness for office. Instead, SNL fawns over her, while CBS’s “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert — far from making jokes at her expense – eats ice cream with her and asks how many and “f—s” she gives about her critics.
Boy, it’s good to be a socialist.

Yes she is the darling of the entertainment elite. But should she be?

This week, for example, Ocasio-Cortez declared that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” She has said that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could pay for most of her massive $32 trillion Medicare-for-all plan — as if there were $21 trillion in unspent tax dollars sitting around in a Pentagon vault. She opined that “just last year we gave the military a $700 billion dollar budget increase, which they didn’t even ask for” — unaware, apparently, that the entire Pentagon budget is $716 billion. She wrongly claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is required to fill 34,000 beds with detainees every single night and that number has only been increasing since 2009” — when ICE is required only to have that number of beds available and that number has remained flat. She has declared that “unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs” — which is flat untrue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only 6 million to 7 million Americans with two jobs and 148 million with just one.

That’s a lot of inaccuracies in less than a month.

But she also appears dishonest. This week, she told Colbert that she has not been able to open a district office yet to handle constituent casework because of the federal government shutdown. “There’s a lot of things we can’t do as freshman members,” she said. “We can’t properly set up our district offices. We can’t get laptops delivered. We can’t start doing the work that we were elected here to do. . . . It takes the green stuff. And those workers are furloughed.” That’s wrong. Last September, Congress passed the 2019 Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, which funds congressional salaries and offices for the coming year. Ocasio-Cortez should know this because, unlike furloughed workers, she is getting paid. (If she doesn’t know this, what does that say about her?) The New York Times reports that the three other first-term members from New York have managed to open offices in their districts. A more likely explanation is that Ocasio-Cortez is spending her time building her national media profile instead of taking care of the constituents who sent her to Washington in the first place.

Too busy on TV to have an office for constituents.

Vox recently added up the cost of all her proposals — from Medicare-for-all, to free college, guaranteed jobs and the “Green New Deal.” The price tag was $42.5 trillion over the next decade — more than twice the current national debt. 

Just print more money!

It is a tremendous testament to America that someone who was working as a bartender in a Mexican restaurant a year ago can throw their hat into the ring, unseat a 10-term member of Congress and be elected to the House of Representatives. It’s what makes this such an exceptional nation. And it is obvious that she has political talent. But that doesn’t excuse her from the responsibilities as a legislator to learn the facts and serve her constituents. Even Whoopi Goldberg, an Ocasio-Cortez supporter, warned her on “The View,” “I would encourage you to sit still for a minute and learn the job.”
That’s good advice. Once people decide you are ignorant, it’s hard to recover — just ask Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle. Of course, they were conservatives, so the standards are different.

Very much double standards.

Stuff reports five ideas on electoral reform from Nick Smith. They are:

1. Entrench the entire Electoral Act so any change would require a 75 per cent majority in Parliament or a referendum.
2. Ban all foreign donations to parties and candidates
3. Defer the re-drawing of electoral boundaries due to the failed census
4. Extend the Electoral Commission’s role to local elections
5. A referendum on a four-year term.

I’m reasonably supportive of all five proposals. I think for foreign donations you need a de minimis threshold, but that could be lower than the current $1,500.

I really like the idea of entrenching the entire Electoral Act. That would incentivise the parties to propose changes that don’t favour one party over another.

I’ve long advocated that the Electoral Commission should run local body elections. It would be cheaper, and more consistent.

And also a long-term advocate of a four year term. That is the most important change.

I hope National adopt these ideas as policies.

Radio NZ report:

New Zealand drivers are crashing at higher rates than drivers visiting this country, Ministry of Transport data shows.

While exact information about the number of foreign drivers on New Zealand roads is not available, it provides enough information to suggest visitors to the country are less likely to crash.
And despite tourist visitor numbers continuing to rise, the number of crashes involving foreign drivers has not risen to match.
The data dispels the myth that overseas tourists are an increased danger on New Zealand roads.

The data, while not perfect, is quite compelling.

Their first graph shows the number of fatal crashes involving an international rental use has stayed around 20 for the last 20 years. But in that time the number of international rental users has gone from 400,000 to 1.5 million.

The data also shows the fatal crash rate of NZ drivers is 14.97 and overseas drivers is 1.61.

Now that second load of data is somewhat flawed as the ideal comparison would be crashes per million kms travelled. But we don’t have that. However the huge difference between 14.97 and 1.61 makes it safe to conclude there is no evidence foreign drivers cause more crashes – quite the opposite.

And the fact the number of crashes has remained constant while the number of foreign drivers has quadrupled is very strong.

Stuff reports:

Two-term Labour MP, former talkback host, and social agency leader John Tamihere has launched his bid for the Auckland mayoralty.
Tamihere has teamed up with former National MP and Auckland City Mayor, and current councillor, Christine Fletcher, in an unusual move to campaign with a ready-made deputy-mayor.
The pair launched their campaign, and its slogan “Shake it up and sort it out”, in Henderson in West Auckland on Saturday morning.

That’s a smart team up. Tamihere is popular in West and South Auckland. Fletcher in the eastern suburbs. Goff will dominate central Auckland, so Goff will need to do well in the northern suburbs to hold on.

Tamihere pledged to “open the books and clean the house”, and said it’s not clear how ratepayers money is being spent.
He promised to reduce the power of “faceless” centre city bureaucrats, and return more decision-making to communities.
Tamihere has called for more democratic control over public assets and wants to appoint councillors to the boards of all council-controlled-organisations such as Auckland Transport. That would require a law change.

His pledges included a “crackdown on waste and incompetence” with the establishment of an Integrity Unit that could investigate public complaints.
Tamihere has called for a “proper partnership” with central government, especially in housing and transport, and questioned the need for a regional fuel tax.

They all sound good, but not specific enough. Voters should demand an explicit commitment on maximum rates increases.

Fletcher took other swipes at current Mayor Phil Goff during the campaign launch.
“The ribbons Goff has been cutting are all the work of other people,” she told assembled media.
“I voted for Goff (in 2016) – but today council is divided, there’s paralysis on key strategic issues and the bureaucrats are running the ship. There’s a failure of leadership,” said Fletcher.

Goff appears to have alienated Crs on both the right and the left. This is not a good idea.

The Washington Post reports:

The Drudge Report, in big red letters, summed up President Trump’s announcement of a temporary end to the shutdown with three words: “NO WALL FUNDS.” Ann Coulter tweeted, “Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.”

Ouch, Coulter knows how to burn.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who described himself as an “an animated, energetic supporter of this president,” conceded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “has just whipped the president of the United States.”

Yep Nancy kicked his arse.