Reuters reports:

A majority of Americans support military action against North Korea if economic and diplomatic efforts fail, according to a Gallup poll released on Friday amid rising tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and recent missile launches.

The survey of 1,022 U.S. adults last week found that 58 percent said they would favor military action against North Korea if the United States cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.

If a conflict does eventuate between Japan, the US, South Korea and North Korea, it is likely to send the global economy into a recession. I suspect the NZ economy would follow. All those parties’ spending plans based on surpluses may find the world has changed.

John Armstrong writes:

Like the sands through the hourglass – it has taken just four short weeks for Jacinda Ardern’s “campaign of our lives” to become more akin to the The Days of Our Lives.

Labour’s Wonder Woman has found herself cast in a long-running soap opera – but not as a super hero. …

The tax was the early product of Ardern’s Brave New World – a world where she intends demonstrating Labour can make the hard decisions.

It took precious little time for Labour to back off the idea as fast as decency allowed. “Let’s do this” became “Let’s not do that”.

Let’s tax this – but later!

Of particular note has been her declaration that she will not shy away from tackling the “big generational issues”.

When it comes to such issues, they do not come any bigger or more vexed than the fairness of the country’s tax system and the affordability of current state-funded pension entitlements. With regard to the latter, she has gone Awol.

She has adopted John Key’s pledge to resign as prime minister were the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation to be raised under her watch. Likewise were there to be any reduction in current entitlements enjoyed by those who qualify for the state pension.

For someone portraying themselves as giving voice to younger voters, such a stance is an absolute cop-out. It is little short of betrayal.

What is strange about Ardern’s pledge is that there was absolutely no pressure for her to do so. Key’s equally bad pledge was made because Labour had made it clear they would run a fear campaign on superannuation, and his “I’ll resign” pledge was a necessary evil to prevent that.

But there was absolutely no pressure on Ardern to do the same. National had said it would slowly raise the retirement age. All Ardern had to say is that they planned no changes in the next term, kicking it for touch. But instead she stuffed up and said she’ll resign rather than ever let the age of superannuation increase. And as Armstrong says, this is a betrayl of future generations who will have to have taxes massively increased on them to fund keeping the age at 65.

NBR reports:

Labour has left the door open to its tax plans being fiscally neutral, with its finance spokesman Grant Robertson saying this outcome is “quite likely” if Labour wants to rebalance the tax system.

This comes as a Taxpayers’ Union petition calling on Labour to make any new taxes fiscally neutral gains traction.

This is excellent news. If Labour don’t use their proposed Tax Working Group as a way to soak New Zealanders out of more tax, but simply to broaden the base – that is commendable

After Labour’s shift, the Taxpayers’ Union started a petition calling on Labour to make any new taxes fiscally neutral – when taxes and government spending are neutral (also referred to as revenue neutrality).

The lobby group’s executive director, Jordan Williams, says the petition has already received 5000 signatures.

“New Zealand’s government books are in a healthy shape, with enormous surpluses projected forward. What Labour needs to do to inoculate any criticism around its tax plans is say they will be fiscally neutral.”

He is calling on Labour to reduce income tax and GST to compensate households for the new taxes – “the problem with our economy definitely isn’t that households aren’t being taxed enough.”

Addressing media yesterday, Mr Robertson was keeping the door open to that possibility.

He says fiscal neutrality will “certainly” be one of the areas the tax working group will be looking at.

“It is quite clear that, if we are rebalancing the tax system, a revenue neutral outcome is one of the outcomes that is quite likely.”

Having Grant say a revenue neutral option is quite likely is highly encouraging. And this is one of the reasons I co-founded the NZTU. Without a lobby group out there pushing the message that we don’t need to increase the tax burden on New Zealanders, then politicians would not be getting asked about this.

I actually favour a capital gains tax and a land tax, so long as income and company taxes are reduced to compensate (and they have minimal exemptions).

Matthew Hooton writes at NBR:

In 2008, Republican Party operatives discovered when preparing vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for her debate with Democrat Joe Biden that “she doesn’t know anything”. In 2017, New Zealand Labour may have similarly landed itself with a prime ministerial candidate without the basic background knowledge to be a credible candidate for high office.

Is this a fair comparison? I don’t think it is. I think Arden is more substantive than Palin.

Ms Ardern’s most obvious weakness is tax policy. …

What has really damaged Ms Ardern is that it has become clear she has never given tax policy any thought even in the broadest brushstrokes.

  Initially, she ring-fenced increasing GST and income tax from the TWG’s work, except for promising to reverse the $1000-a-year cuts to income tax that National legislated for next year.  When asked by the Australian Financial Review, Ms Ardern later extended her commitment to company tax.

  On the proposed capital gains tax (CGT), Ms Ardern ruled out including the “family home” – whatever that means in contemporary New Zealand – but was unable to answer whether the “family home” exemption would also extend to a land tax, seemingly not understanding the difference between the two. After a painful few hours, Labour moved to rule out all taxes on the “family home”, but that raises all sorts of questions about where the “family home” ends and the shop, farm or other business begins – or when a big urban backyard stops being a place for kids to run around and becomes land-banking. Maori might argue with some legitimacy that their marae is in some sense more the “family home” than where the whanau happens to live now.

  The surprising thing is not that these can be difficult questions – exactly the sort of thing a TWG might be best to resolve – but that Ms Ardern seems never to have contemplated that they might even arise.

Everyday she had to make up more tax policy on the hoof.

Tax could perhaps just be dismissed as not Ms Ardern’s thing, but there is a wider pattern of flakery.

  The still-likely next prime minister has declared climate change “my generation’s nuclear-free moment” but her actual policy appears to extend no further than implementing the Emissions Trading Scheme as legislated and setting up a new Climate Commission.

  Ms Ardern has said her “entire reason for being in politics is to rid this country of child poverty” but in nine years in parliament she has proposed not a single meaningful initiative to do so, other than launching a Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill which would have established a new Child Poverty Reduction Board.

The bill is here in case you don’t believe Matthew. It solves child poverty by setting up a board. Just as you solve climate change with a commission and solve tax with a working group.

None of this suggests the prime minister-assumptive is the policy wonk she claims. The inadequacy of Labour’s policy positions is more indicative of a person whose experience is limited to moving from school, to a Bachelor in Communications Studies at the University of Waikato, to being a parliamentary staffer, and then a list MP.

And the Morrinsville Fish & Chip shop.

After six weeks, even the daily left-wing media has now woken up to the fact Ms Ardern is indeed a flake. But the polls have already been open for five days as part of the Electoral Commission’s effort to attract the left-leaning “missing million” to vote, including by dropping in to gang headquarters.

  In fact, by the time you read this, more than 200,000 people will already have cast their votes. By the time the final leaders’ debate is held on Wednesday night, the number may be over one million. It will hardly matter how badly Ms Ardern performs that night – with the help of the Electoral Commission, she may already have wrapped this one up.

I already know of people who have advance voted and now want to change their vote!

Stuff reports:

National will direct Landcorp to offer farms to young farmers because “there is no clear public good coming from Crown ownership and little financial return to taxpayers”.

Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said the young farmers would have to “work the land” for five to 10 years, after which they could lease the farms before buying them.

It was envisaged about 100 young farming families would benefit from the programme.

A great policy. It is nuts that a Government company owns over 100 farms up and down New Zealand.

“Not all of Landcorp’s around 140 farms will be sold. Many are subject to Treaty claims and others have a right-of-first-refusal for Iwi – and these rights will of course be respected. Some of Landcorp’s larger farms will be divided into smaller units more appropriate for first-time owners,” Guy said.

Federated Farmers president Katie Milne said it was an “exciting prospect” for young farmers.

Yep great to be creating opportunities for young farmers, rather than trying to tax them to death.

Labour will make Te Reo part of all students’ learning in school up until high school.

‘Will not rule out’ fiscal neutrality for any new taxes introduced – Robertson.

Big push for Bishop in Hutt South. $72m to upgrade the motorway intersection at Melling.

Labour still promising more taxes (view tax ad 2.0 here).

Polls are still crap.

Last night’s poll means a truly progressive government is within reach.

We will bolster public transport in Christchurch, and make it a cycle-friendly city.

Under Act victims of crime will get reparation paid immediately and in full, with the cost recouped from criminals by docking their pay or even selling their property.

Last nights’ Colmar Brunton: Labour (44%) and Greens (7%) can form a Government. NZF (6%) no longer kingmaker. National up one to 40%.

RNZ poll of the two main polls: Labour (41.6%) and National (41.9%) neck and neck. NZF 6.8%; Greens 5.5%. Neither Labour or National could form a government with NZF alone.

The flip-flopping of the two main television polls. Also, the confirmation that Murray McCully misled the public and Parliament on Saudi Sheep legal advice.

Latest update as of 9am Tuesday:

National Party $8.17b; Labour Party $22.91b; Green Party $13.28b; NZ First $27.53b; Maori Party $12.17b; ACT -$2.43b; TOP $13.69b. Full details here.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has clashed with RNZ host Guyon Espiner in a testy – and at some times bizarre – interview.

The 25-minute interview on Morning Report on Thursday was fiery throughout, with Espiner trying to establish early on how much NZ First’s policies were expected to cost.

After some back and forth. Peters put it at $10 billion over 7-8 years “if you’re talking about investment and borrowings”.

Actually it is more like $15 billion just in the next three years.

Espiner asked about NZ First’s policy of taking GST off food. Peters corrected him: “No, off basic food”.

“It’s a huge difference. You see, off food you get a huge bill. Off basic food you’re talking somewhere in the zone of about $6-700 million,” Peters said.

Espiner said NZ First’s website had it as a $3b policy.

“It might say it on the website. It should have been corrected,” Peters said.

“Oh come on, come on mate,” Espiner said. “How are voters supposed to know when they look at your website and they see it there, and you’re saying it’s wrong?”

“I admit it’s a mistake. In fact I had a discussion with my team just about two days ago about correcting that because they said, ‘is it on food, and I said no, it’s on basic food’,” Peters said.

We now get a glimpse into the NZF policy making process. The staff ask Winston and he decides unilaterally.

Incidentially it is a terrible moronic policy. We have such a clean effective GST and Peters would bastardise it by having a plethora of bureaucrats going through every food item sold in New Zealand and deciding if it is “basic” food or not.

Colby cheese won’t have GST on it but Gruyeye cheese will have GST.

Apples won’t have GST on it but Mangoes will have GST.

Lamb won’t have GST on it but Duck will have GST.

Bread won’t have GST on it but bread rolls will have GST.

Plain yoghurt won’t have GST on it but strawberry yoghurt will have GST.

This is your future people if you vote for it!

The Wash Post reports:

President Trump and top Democratic leaders late Wednesday agreed to work out an agreement that would protect the nation’s “dreamers” from deportation and enact border security measures that don’t include building a physical wall, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The president discussed the deal during a dinner at the White House with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

So Trump’s voters thought he was a Republican who would build a wall and deport illegal immigrants and he’s cutting a deal with Democrats to protect children of illegal immigrants and no wall.

At what stage will they realise they got conned?

A guest post by David Garrett:

I recently stumbled across the update of a series called “The Prize”, about the history of the international oil business. The series first came out in 1988, and was updated in  the mid 90’s. Now, 25 years on from the update, it is fascinating to see how much has changed – and how much has stayed the same. The original  doco called the 20^th century “the oil century” – it is quite clear that the 21^st will be an oil century also, albeit in a somewhat different way.

The oil business has, since at least the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement, been inextricably entangled with international geopolitics. World War II was an “oil war” in the sense that both sides depended on it as a transport and aviation  fuel. The North African campaign was all about trying to gain control of first the oilfields of the Middle East, and then the Caucasus. A case can easily be made that Hitler’s obsession with capturing the oilfields of the Caucasus was, along with “General Winter”, a major reason for his failure to take Russia.

There is no doubt that the way oil is used this century will be very different from the last – but in my view Green fantasies that all presently undiscovered oil  must and will remain in the ground are just that – fantasy. Here’s why:

Oil as transport fuel

It has long been argued that oil is far too valuable a commodity to burn  to propel cars. It is not widely known that at the beginning of the 20^th century, electric cars – along with steam powered ones – vied with the internal combustion engine as the mode of transport of the future. By the end of the 1920’s the internal combustion engine had won: its fuel was just too efficient for electricity to compete.

It is interesting that in the 1993 update of “The Prize”, several Japanese car companies were  then testing electric cars. Prescient oil men acknowledged even then that one day – perhaps in 25 or 50 years hence, electric cars could take over – but only if there were significant advances in battery technology to give performance and range. It is probably well arguable that  we have now reached the point where, for cars at least, electricity will become the propulsion of the future – probably the near future.

But what of heavy trucks, locomotives and heavy earth moving machinery? I believe there are experimental electric powered trucks – but D9 bulldozers and other earth moving machinery? I stand to be corrected, but I think it will be a long time – perhaps never – before such machinery will be even mostly electric. Especially those  used for civil engineering far from charging stations.

Jet aircraft are powered by kerosene, a petroleum product.   Since “The Prize” was first made in the 80’s, jet engines are hugely quieter and more fuel efficient than they were.  The supersonic passenger aircraft experiment came and went, but to the best of my knowledge there is currently no alternative to kerosene powered jet engines  for the ever bigger passenger planes moving an ever more mobile international population around the globe. While I suppose battery powered propeller aircraft might be theoretically possible, I think  the Greenies will be planting trees to assuage their guilt every time they fly  for a long time yet.

Fertilizers and chemicals

As I have noted, far sighted oil men have seen the end of petrol driven cars for at least the last 25 years, and that time is now upon us. But what of the bewildering array  of pesticides fertilizers and other chemicals upon which our very lives now depend?

Crude oil is an incredibly versatile molecule which can be endlessly rearranged to make plastics, paints, fertilizers, pesticides and a bewildering array of other chemicals.  Down in Taranaki, one of the lesser known and arguably the  only successful “Thing Big” project from the 1980’s is the Ammonia-Urea plant. This plant converts what was then seen as surplus gas – the government was tied in to so called “take or pay” contracts which meant they paid for it even if they didn’t take it – first to  ammonia and then into urea, a versatile fertilizer for the grass land farmer.

It is  fair to say that today the world is fed on food grown with the assistance of artificial fertilizers – and protected by pesticides – all made in some way from petroleum.  One of the policies Green parties world wide don’t like to emphasize is the perceived  need to radically reduce the world’s population. This is not just to protect Gaia; they know that if fertilizers and pesticides derived from oil are unavailable, because oil production is eliminated or drastically reduced,  there simply won’t be enough food to feed anything like the current world population. In short, we would be returned to pre oil age agricultural techniques – and the consequent much smaller yields – attempting to feed a world population  many times what it  was before the oil age began. At the very least, that would lead to mass starvation.

I could in my lifetime be proved wrong, but based on current trends the nutty Greens won’t be actually calling the shots; already it is argued both here and in other countries that Green parties’ work is done – everyone is now fully aware of both the challenges of climate change and the need to  protect the planet from pollution. Just as cutting the New Zealand dairy herd by 2/3 is both utterly impractical and not likely to happen any time soon, humankind is  in my view unlikely to ever accept that we also  must be culled by a similar margin.

That being the case, we will need to go on using oil based fertilizers and pesticides until some unspecified time in the future –  a time which I don’t believe is even yet on the far horizon – when some alternatives are available to oil based chemicals.

Plastics

The oil age is also the plastics age. I am writing this on a computer – every home has at least one – with a plastic case. My printer has a plastic case. Our milk comes in plastic bottles – granted they could probably be replaced with much more environmentally friendly glass – at a greater cost of course. Look around your home or workplace. Can you imagine either without plastics?

Our electric cars will have a large percentage of their components made of plastics – computers in their plastic cases,  fans, belts, gears, dashboards, body panels – what isn’t made of metal  will for the foreseeable future be made of plastic or fibreglass. Unless I am much mistaken, to make plastics and fibreglass, you need petroleum. There simply is no alternative.

War

I am prepared to accept the terrifying possibility that humanity may cease to exist as we know it due to a nuclear conflagration breaking out – although the chances of that are very much less that they were a generation ago. The cold war has been over since about the time  “The Prize” was last updated – and the former Soviet Union has since, with western  technology and capital, once more become the major oil producer it was at the beginning of the oil age.

But sadly I think war will, in some form or another, always be with us. Perhaps the most “successful” war  in a generation was the 90 day long  first Gulf War in 1990. The machines used to fight it were not  so very different from those in WW II – diesel propelled tanks, trucks, armoured personal carriers and the like.

Can anyone imagine a battery powered tank?  Let us imagine such a thing exists, and has a battery which lasts twice as long as any battery which exists now. But as gas tanks eventually empty, batteries eventually go flat. In a conflict situation, possibly in enemy territory,  how would be they be recharged?  With diesel powered generators perhaps, transported to the battlefield by electric powered trucks, which it turn depend on the generators they carry?

Again, as throughout this piece, I stand to be corrected by someone with greater knowledge. I suppose there might already be a battle tank powered by electricity, but I certainly have never heard of such a thing.

So, the oil age is not over, and it won’t be over for a long time,  if ever. The stuff is just too valuable, and too versatile. At least with current knowledge, our lives would simply be unimaginable without it. But we certainly need to stop burning it in cars, and the sooner the better.

Newshub reports:

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern cancelled her planned visit to Canterbury’s Selwyn River on Thursday because it was “flooding” – but problem was, it wasn’t flooding at all.

She intended to use Coe’s Ford to highlight the party’s pledge to clean up rivers. This part of the Selwyn River is often used as an example of how farm runoff is affecting the health of waterways.

Ms Ardern’s office pulled the plug on the visit, with a message to media saying: “With regret we have had to cancel the Coe’s Ford media event with Jacinda Ardern, due to flooding”.

However when Newshub arrived, the river wasn’t flooded or flooding at all.

Whoops. Misled the media.

A Labour Party spokesman says another reason for the cancellation was because the party was told the gates to the reserve were locked. However, a local says the gates are always locked through the winter months.

Whoops didn’t check in advance.

There was ample parking on the side of the road and full access to the river. Cars and trucks were driving across the ford.

Whoops no one with local knowledge.

A number of local farmers had gathered at the site too, after hearing on the radio Ms Ardern would visit. One of them was David Birkett.

“It’s a little bit disappointing. It would have been a good opportunity to talk to her about some of her policies,” he says.

Whoops avoiding the locals.

“Labour has made a big hoo-rah about the Selwyn River, and one of the reasons she’s not here is probably because it’s looking really good at the moment.”

Whoops, the photo op would have backfired.

Mr Birkett claimed the water was so clean that he’d drink it. Newshub asked him to prove it, and he did.

Whoops, that became the photo op!

The data is from the OECD. Doesn’t it tell a story. Now I tell you what will change that story – Labour’s policies. More taxes, more protectionism, a less competitive export sector.

And if you look at how much each economy has grown in real per capita terms in US$ PPP, NZ economy is 7.8% larger and Australia just 2.0% bigger.

Economic growth is what allows us to produce more jobs, pay people more wages, produce the taxation that funds public services.

Labour has almost no policies on growing the economy. Their policies will increase taxes, increase debt, impose massive costs on exporters and cripple provincial employers through the imposition of national awards.

On September 6^th in The Spinoff (https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/06-09-2017/what-life-looks-like-at-nzs-largest-decile-one-high-school/) a Manurewa teacher write a rather depressing and society blaming piece re teaching in schools in the suburb. As Natasha Miller, an English teacher at South Auckland Middle School, points out – there is another way of looking at things:

Like Sam Oldham, I also drive down Manurewa streets to work, clustered with election hoardings. It all blurs together as background noise, Black, Green, Red vs. Blue – under National it feels unlikely as a single mother that I will ever be able to afford my own home. Labour makes threats to get rid of a job in which I feel, for the first time, that I actually have the chance to make significant change in the life of my students. Having made my own policy-based choice on who to vote for already, I choose to focus on the day ahead.

I park my car in the staff car park. A student sprints through the school gates, calling my name. “I finished my business pitch! Can I email it through to you for feedback?” We walk the rest of the way into school together discussing their current phase of production for the products they are developing for our Year 10 Market Evening. Another student approaches me to check out one of the classic novels that I have stored in my office; a passion recently spurred off by our study of The Great Gatsby. I walk past a miniature-scale colosseum built by a student in response to a Math task into a buzzing office that I share with a Technology teacher and Science teacher. We’re not the tidiest people. Paper-mache urns from the archaeology unit await painting, print outs of art-inspired student poetry need to be filed in the student anthology and there’s straws and strawberries for something I’m told has to do with teaching the students about DNA.

Our students come from a similar catchment to Mr. Oldham’s; it would be worse than naïve to claim that they don’t have significant barriers in front of them when it comes to achievement. We know what we’re facing, and for middle New Zealand, it’s not pretty. In the one and a half years that I’ve been working at South Auckland Middle School we’ve dealt with abuse disclosures, CYFS referrals of students who are no longer welcome anywhere else and the widespread grief that occurs with the death of parents. That doesn’t even touch on the students in that cycle of intergenerational poverty who we regularly support with dry shoes, food to eat or transport to and from their homes in neighbourhoods where walking alone may feel unsafe. While students in higher socio-economic areas start their academic races with a sprint, with some of our students we have to acknowledge the exhaustion that they face in just getting to the starting line.
But we still expect them to finish. Every last one of them.

The sign in the foyer reads “Every student can develop exceptional skills and knowledge sets with expert teaching, coaching and mentoring, significant purposeful practice and opportunities to express themselves”. It’s not just a slogan – it’s something you need to believe if you are ever going to thrive as a student or a teacher in South Auckland. We believe in a growth mindset – deficit theorizing does nothing to enhance a student’s ability to succeed.

I work in a charter school, it’s true. We’re a school full of fully registered teachers (contrary to popular opinion) who have chosen to buy into the philosophy that each and every one of our students can do exceptional things. For some of our students it is a matter of making the appropriate referrals to external agencies and working alongside them so that they can make extraordinary leaps in their literacy and numeracy. For others it is achieving academic excellence, or learning how to run businesses and events; giving them skills to thrive in the modern world.

How we do it is not a matter of funding. I’d argue that our ability to ensure student success is our integrated approach – our project based curriculum ensures that we, as teachers, have a necessity to work in a cross-curricular nature. I’m not sure of any other school where I’d be able to equally utilise my tertiary qualifications in business, the arts and education. Perhaps it’s that so many of us had real world experience in our fields before we came into the teaching profession and have the passion to think laterally about our subjects, while still keeping a professional toe in our former employment fields. The accessibility of senior management also helps; both our principal and academic director are easily approached if we’re wishing to differentiate our approach to the New Zealand curriculum (another non-negotiable) to capture the engagement of our students. We are repeatedly used as a political hot potato and it can be confronting at times to have people prod at the work that you do, searching for reasons to disparage the job that you love – why aren’t all schools able to produce the results that you do? I think the answer to that lies in educational policy far beyond my scope of understanding as a classroom teacher. What I do know, though, is that I’ve never worked at a school where kids are quite as passionate about knowledge.
It’s hard to feel negative about the future of our children (and we all consider them our children) when your classroom is literally buzzing with the excitement of students who are learning to code their own computer games using our school laptops and fantastic free resources. It’s hard to feel negative when you hear them reciting Othello as they perch in the plum trees on our grounds. It’s hard to feel negative when you’re engaging with students about market analysis, the Jazz Age, the Russian Revolution or having existential conversations about the nature of reality – all conversations I have had this year with our Year 10 students, students of fourteen and fifteen.
I have no qualms that I’m raising these students with big dreams. A former principal I worked under called me “subversive, in the best way” with a sparkle in his eye. I will tell them that I expect their very best, and that to get there, we will support them every step of the way. Stories about the negative side of South Auckland are a dime a dozen… I choose to tell my students that no matter how their story starts, they get to write themselves a better ending.

The Herald reports:

Police believe around 20 people may have died from synthetic drugs.

Police and the Chief Coroner have today reinforced their previous warning to communities about the dangerous consequences of using synthetic drugs.

It comes following the recent deaths of two men aged 22 and 37, and a 26-year-old woman, all from West Auckland who died in separate incidents and where the Coroner is investigating whether synthetic drugs were a possible cause of death.

Police say it is a nationwide problem and are also looking at the recent death of a 21-year-old Feilding man where synthetic drugs may have been involved.

These are basically preventable deaths. People are accessing synthetic cannabis and other drugs because actual cannabis is illegal.

The death toll from cannabis is zero and the death toll from synthetic drugs is 20 dead in just a few weeks. It’s appalling and whomever is Government after the election needs to change our laws.

Tonight’s One News Colmar Brunton poll is very different to the recent Newshub Reid Research poll. We seem to be seeing a significant divergence between the two polling companies as it is not just two polls that are different about all of their recent polls.

The five recent polls from the two companies are:

• 30 August Colmar Brunton Nat 41%, Lab 43% = Lab +2%
• 30 August Reid Research Nat 43% Lab 39% = Nat +4%
• 6 Sep Colmar Brunton Nat 39% Lab 43% = Lab +4%
• 11 Sep Reid Research Nat 47% Lab 38% = Nat +9%
• 13 Sep Colmar Brunton Nat 40%, Lab 44% = Lab +4%

The differences between the results for National and Labour are outside the sampling margin of error. Now both companies are very good companies that I often recommend to clients I can’t work for (I recommend UMR also). So it is puzzling that they have diverged not once (which can happen randomly), but consistently in the last few weeks.

Next week will be fascinating as either the two companies will converge with their polls (I expect one more poll from both of them), or they will remain divergent – in which case the election results will be good for one of them and bad for the other.

I will say that at this stage Colmar Brunton seems to be in a lonlier position. If UMR were showing Labour ahead by 4% I’m sure we would have heard all about it (Labour consistently reveal their internals when they are doing relatively well). And while historically Curia’s polls have aligned very closely to Colmar Brunton’s, I have found significant divergence in the last few weeks also. It is puzzling as there has been no methodological changes by either of us.

Now being in the minority doesn’t mean you are wrong. We saw that with the UK elections. So I guess we’ll see next week what the final pre-election polls say, and of course the result. Plus of course a lot can change in the last nine days. Worth noting the CB poll is done half over the weekend and half Monday to Wednesday so may not have captured the last two to three days fully, and their next one could be different.

In the meantime people will be saying, well what do we believe? My consistent advice is not to cherry pick the poll you like but look at the average of the polls. And taking this latest poll into account the size and time weighted average of the polls is:

1. National 42.3% 52 seats
2. Labour 41.1% 51 seats
3. NZ First 7.2% 9 seats
4. Greens 5.6% 7 seats

I expect a Roy Morgan poll out next week also. That is done over a two weeks period so will not be as up to date as the others which are done over four to five days.

No one will be affected by any tax changes arising from the outcomes of the Working Group until 2021 (just don’t mention the water, regional fuel or carbon taxes!).

Sources (unnamed) suggest National is considering a secret fuel tax to fund its controversial Roads of National Significance (RONS) programme.

On Labour: two taxes down, five to go.A re-elected National Government will strengthen biosecurity rules, toughen penalties for stock rustling and help exporters add value.

National Government will help young families into their first farms by allowing young farmers to buy state owned farms after they’ve worked the land for five to ten years.

Labour are terrified of their official position on charter schools. It’s not what their MPs really believe – it’s the teacher unions’ position, pushed by Hipkins as their primary parliamentary shill.

Today’s performance by Grant Robertson isn’t just incompetent, it’s dishonest. The backdown is a smokescreen – Robertson wants the headlines to read ‘no new taxes’, when Labour’s policy is still to bleed New Zealanders dry with a water tax, higher income tax, regional fuel tax, and more.

There must be proof Dr Yang is not a risk. National must act now and a full inquiry is required.  Meanwhile, Dr Yang must step aside.

Winston Peters should not be held to what is on the NZ First website [Radio NZ interview].

We will build teacher capacity and through a staggered approach implement universal te reo Māori learning for all students from Year 1 to Year 10 over a period of 10 years.

No Iron Lady: turns out Jacinda is for turning!

One News Colmar Brunton poll out at 6pm.

*Update* Labour (44%) and Greens (7%) can form a Government. NZF (6%) no longer kingmaker. National up one to 40%.

Latest update as of 9am Tuesday:

National Party $8.17b; Labour Party $22.91b; Green Party $13.28b; NZ First $27.53b; Maori Party $12.17b; ACT -$2.43b; TOP $13.69b. Full details here.

The latest spending update from the Taxpayers Union:

• National has promised $8.2 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $4,736 per household.Transparency rating: 5/5
• Labour has promised $22.9 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $13,287 per household. Transparency rating: 4/5
• The Green Party has promised $13.3 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $7,703 per household. Transparency rating: 4/5
• NZ First has promised $27.5 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $15,967 per household. Transparency rating: 0/5
• ACT has promised $2.4 billion in savings over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $1,407 in savings per household. Transparency rating: 3/5
• The Māori Party has promised $12.2 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $7,060 per household. Transparency rating: 1/5
• The Opportunities Party has promised $13.7 billion in new spending over the next parliamentary term. This equates to $7,939 per household. Transparency rating: 4/5

Think what you could do with that money if politicians were saying that rather than spend more and more on your behalf, they’d give it back to you.

An extra $15,000 for the average household would go a long way.

Vanguard Letters by Stacey Kirk on Scribd

Stuff reports:

A visibly emotional Bill English has laid a direct challenge to Labour politicians; tell the students of Vanguard Military Academy to their face, that they would shut their school. 

On his first visit to a charter school – set up by the National-led Government as part of a promise to ACT under their support deal – English was welcomed by a stirring full-school haka; the All Black’s Kapa o Pango with a military flair and additional verses telling the school’s story. 

He was then handed a stack of letters – many handwritten – by each of the students, detailing how the academy had changed their lives. 

It is shameful that Labour will force charter schools like Vanguard to close, when so many students from massively disadvantaged backgrounds are having their lives changed for the better there.

Why is Labour putting placating the teacher unions ahead of giving these students the opportunity to turn their lives around and succeed?

English spoke to the school but had to steel himself partway through his speech – choking back emotion while he talked about Opposition parties wanting to shut charter schools down. 

“You know what changes individual lives, what changes a country, is trying something different if what we’re already doing doesn’t work,” he said. 

“That is why we’re campaigning hard for the ability to continue to with what’s lit your eyes up… what’s re-motivated you, what’s making fine young New Zealanders. 

“My challenge to the other political parties is this; I dare them to come down here, look you in the eye and tell you they’re going to take away your opportunity. 

“Not just say it in the media, or in the Parliament, or in their party meetings – but come here and say it to you. 

“Because I can’t see any reason why any adult would want to take away what’s created this family – what’s fired up your aspiration. because that’s what we’re here for you, each one of you matters.”

Schools like Vanguard could not operate under the state school system. It is the charter school model that has allowed them to be more flexible and make such a huge difference in their student’s lives.

Labour’s attempt to get a blank cheque for their tax policies has failed, and the inevitable u-turn was done this morning as poll panic sets in.

Labour are now saying that any CGT or land tax will not be implemented until 2021, so after the next election.

This is of course the policy they had up until six weeks ago, under Andrew Little.

The decision to change it and campaign on introducing new taxes without an election mandate was Jacinda’s Captain’s Call. And it has been just as big a disaster as Tony Abbott’s calls.

So if this is Jacinda’s one and only Captain’s Call to date, you have to look forward to her next one. And imagine her judgement if she is Prime Minister.

The urban dictionary defines a Captain’s Call as:

A decision made unilaterally by a team leader without consulting colleagues, often a massive clusterfuck.

And who labelled it a Captain’s Call? The media? National? Jacinda herself used the term. Why would you?

It is worth noting that Labour are merely saying that a CGT and/or Land Tax won’t happen in their first term. The water tax, tourist tax, fart tax and regional petrol tax are still all on, along with hiking the tax thresholds so that someone on $50,000 has a marginal tax rate of 30% instead of 17.5% and someone on $20,000 has a marginal tax rate of 17.5% instead of 10.5%. So they’re still going ahead with five tax hikes.

Duncan Grieve writes:

“There’s been about a trillion dollars that has left China in the last year or so,” intones the voiceover ominously, over flowing strings while spreadsheets roll past. We see images of hanzi characters flash up in cutaways to real estate signs, to bank signs, to shopping districts. There’s talk of “Chinese investors”, “trade missions to China”, “Chinese buyers”, “multi-millionaires” from China.

All in service to a question: Who owns New Zealand now? The hour-long documentary, which screened on Three last night, positions itself as a sober attempt to find an answer, to have a “grown-up” conversation about our housing crisis.

This is clearly a laudable goal, and one many journalists have been grappling with these past few years: The Nation’s reporting on families living in cars. The Hui on the work of Te Puea marae. The Spinoff’s own Unsettled.

Unfortunately, along with neoliberalism, which functions as origin story, the answer to the titular question appears to be China and the Chinese. This would be tense enough even if he had perfect data, able to prove convincingly that our rampant house price inflation was unequivocally attributable to Chinese capital.

 

Only, as Bryan Bruce rightly points out, our data collection has long been awful. One of this Government’s many failings on housing has been a stunning lack of curiosity – we know far too little about what has been driving the precipitous inflation of house prices.

Yet, absent knowledge, Bruce persistently infers that it is speculative Chinese money. This makes Who Owns New Zealand Now? functionally a deeply unpleasant echo of Labour’s “Chinese-sounding names” fiasco of 2015.

What a surprise. Bryan Bruce makes another documentary that gets run just before the election.

Who Owns New Zealand Now? was written, directed, produced and line-edited by one man: Bryan Bruce – whose production company Red Sky has been NZ on Air-funded 18 times in 18 years, totalling just shy of $4.5m.

Railing against neoliberalism pays well. What else could earn you almost $5 million?

Among those have been titles of merit and importance – but this is not one of them. Instead it’s an indulgent, cheaply-made and presented travelogue with through lines of old-fashioned nostalgia and scaremongering. It should not have been made.

Yet NZ on Air keep funneling our taxes towards them.

Richard Prebble writes:

What has happened to the Jacinda tidal wave? Jacinda who started the wave is the person who stopped it.

Labour’s policy under Andrew Little was to have a tax review. Labour would take any recommendations to the voters at the next election. Kelvin Davies set out the policy on TV only to be publicly slapped down by Jacinda.

In a “captain’s call” Jacinda changed the tax policy to say that a Labour victory was a mandate for Labour to introduce any new tax and at any rate that a nameless committee of “tax experts” recommended, just the family home is off limits.

Any tax? What about land tax? Yes. Tax on the family bach and boat? Yes. Water? Petrol? Nothing is off the table. Will the capital gains tax be 33 per cent? Maybe. The petrol tax 10 cents a litre? Probably. Water tax. Guess a figure. “Trust us” says Jacinda.

No party has ever asked for so much power.

 

It is too much power for any government to have.

What was Jacinda thinking?

It is and was arrogance of Labour. They thought that the public would give them a blank cheque and allow them to introduce whatever taxes they wanted.

A Capital Gains Tax is not a minor tweaking of the tax system or a relatively insignificant tax (like the tourist tax). It is as fundamental and major a change to the the tax system as you can get.

New Zealanders deserve to know in advance whether voting for a party will lead to such a fundamental change in the tax system.

They also deserve to know how much extra tax they would pay under a Labour-led Government. Would a Capital Gains Tax be at 15% (bringing in $3.7 billion a year more) or at 33% (bringing in $8.1 billion a year more).

Will your parents family home have the Capital Gains Tax applied to it when they die?

Will your start up small business be whacked with CGT when it has an initial growth spurt.

New Zealanders deserve and need to know this stuff when they vote. Otherwise they can’t make informed choices.

A guest post from Nick Kearney who is an Auckland property lawyer and holds a Masters degree in law from Auckland University.  He is also a candidate for the Act Party in this year’s election:

After a bit of a kerfuffle, Jacinda Ardern has strongly stated that her government’s land tax will not include “the family home or the land that a family home sits on”.

Voters might rest assured.  Certainly a further tax on mums and dads who own a home to raise their family is difficult to sell.  But we have no detail.  None whatsoever.  And the statement by Ardern about the family home not being taxed seems fine, but there are still problems. 

Last week I looked at a leasehold unit title in Auckland for a client.  The land was owned by Ngati Whatua, and leased for 150 years to the body corporate.  Many of the apartments were Labour’s so-called family homes.  They were ideal first homes for those unable to afford soaring Auckland land prices, as the entry level for leasehold units is much less.  The very nice apartment I saw was only $325,000.  It had two bedrooms, a nice pool and gym complex, tennis court, air conditioning, sauna, spa and security CCTV.  It is modern and spacious.  It is a great first home option for a young family or a young couple starting out.  Indeed, it is exactly the type of first home that those on the left of politics have been championing for a while.

I read the lease.  It contains a provision requiring the lessee (the unit owners) to pay the ground rent, but also any “rates, taxes…paid or payable, or otherwise incurred in respect of the Land…”. 

If Labour’s land tax was in place, it would be levied against Ngati Whatua as the landowner, but under the lease it is charged to the unit owners.  Is Labour going to demand Ngati Whatua not to on-charge the land tax to the unit owners that are family homes?  Or will Labour’s desire not to penalise family homeowners not be realised with leasehold units? 

Many of these units in this complex are investment properties.  Is Labour proposing that only those properties pay the land tax, and not the family units?  If so, how does Ngati Whatua recover all its costs under the tax it is charged as it is entitled to do under the lease?

When I started thinking about this more deeply, I then thought of a good friend’s situation. 

She has a small retail shop on the North Shore held under a commercial lease.  It is her first venture of this type, and it is going really well.  I am proud of what my friend has done.  But as with all start-ups, the first couple of years are tough.  You have to get yourself known.  And to maintain a strict budget your costs must be kept to a minimum.  It’s very tough in fashion retail, with the internet providing stiff competition.  My friend’s lease doesn’t require her to pay the landlord’s land tax, but that’s only because there isn’t currently one.  It does require her to pay all rates, which of course she does.  Naturally any landlord is going to recover a land tax from the tenant, which will undoubtedly add a cost to my friend’s business.  That cost will have to be passed on to her customers – the consumers in our society.

I also act for a very successful retail chain tenant.  They have purchasing power and brand recognition.  Building owners are pleased to have them as tenants.  Because of its name, this client manages to negotiate much more favourable lease terms.  On many occasions, it doesn’t pay a lot of the usual outgoings payable under a commercial lease.  I am certain this client, and other large retail tenants, will negotiate out of paying any land tax under any lease, but the same almost certainly won’t be available to my friend’s very small business.

In 2009, a tax working group put together by John Key’s government assessed the taxable land base at $460 billion.  If the land tax was 1% of this, it would raise $4.6 billion in revenue.  That sounds a lot, and it is to a government keen to spend it.  But if one excludes Labour’s exemptions, it’s possible that only half of that amount is available.  Although a land tax is very efficient, as land cannot be moved, it would also be highly disproportionate because of highly inflated Auckland land values when compared to land values in other parts of the country.  It would hit Aucklanders hard.  Using my examples in this article, the family that owns the unit on the leasehold Ngati Whatua land will pay about $700 per year in land tax, based on that unit’s share of the land value of $7,000,000.00.  Yet, my friend’s small retail shop would face a tax of $4,000.00 per annum, based on an underlying land value of her leased building of $400,000.00.  My friend doesn’t yet earn $4,000.00 per annum.  She’s also the sort of person who votes Labour.

I started off this article by repeating what Jacinda Ardern said last week.  Ardern also said that she wanted the country’s tax system to be “fair”.  For my friend’s sake, and for the sake of the young family in the leasehold apartment, I hope she follows through on this promise.

Nick  offered this op ed to the Herald which decided not to publish it. A pity as I think it makes excellent points, regardless of Nick’s background.