Stuff reports:

Five years of arrests and court proceedings have recovered less than $230,000 in overdue student loan debt.

Arrest warrants and Australian court cases pursued by Inland Revenue in the last five years have recovered a fraction of student debt, figures released under the Official Information Act show.

Of course few people actually get prosecuted. It would be a very inefficient way to recover debt.

Minister of Revenue Judith Collins said arrests at the border were a “strong deterrent” to anyone seeking to ignore their debt.

Compliance initiatives enacted in 2010 helped Inland Revenue recoup $400 million “it would not have otherwise collected”.

Exactly. It only takes a few arrests for many students who were non compliant to decide they don’t want to risk the same happening to them.

In fact the policy has been a huge success – $400 million for half a dozen prosecutions.

Stuff reports:

Uber’s relationship with New Zealand’s major airport appears to be deteriorating, making it harder for users to access the ride-sharing app.

Wellington Airport has blocked Uber from its wifi network while Christchurch Airport said the company had stopped communicating with it.

Disgraceful behaviour from Wellington Airport. If they had competition, they would be doing everything they can to provide a great experience to travellers. Instead they sabotage their own WIFI system to make it harder for travellers to use the transport mode they want.

While Uber drivers are still allowed to drop off passengers, Wellington Airport has threatened to trespass drivers who pick up passengers from the airport.

Passengers tend to walk to the nearby Z Energy station, however Wellington Airport has warned drivers the service station is also on land it owns.

So they will ban cars from even using the service station!

The Guardian reports:

The Labour party has hinted that it will pledge to abolish university tuition fees, with Jeremy Corbyn saying he has “some stuff in his pocket” for higher education, but that it would not be revealed before the manifesto launch next week.

Speaking at Leeds community college on Wednesday, the Labour leader and the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, refused to rule out honouring a commitment made by Corbyn in his 2015 leadership race to scrap tuition fees.

Asked about the party’s plans for university fees, the Labour leader said: “You’ll have to wait for the manifesto. I know you’re desperate for it and I’ve got some stuff in my pocket, but, sorry, I’m not allowed to give it to you. Is that alright? Do you mind? Can you cope with the excitement?”

His comments came as a recording emerged of the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, telling an audience in Mansfield that Labour would abolish university tuition fees. “[We] want to introduce – just as the Attlee government with Nye Bevan introduced the National Health Service – we want to introduce a national education service,” McDonnell said.

“Free at the point of need throughout life. And that means ending the cuts in the schools at primary and secondary level. It means free childcare. It means free school training when you need it throughout life. And yes it means scrapping tuition fees once and for all so we don’t burden our kids with debt for the future.”

When your policy is adopted by the far left mad Marxists of UK Labour, it is a good sign how daft it is.

Stuff reports:

The US is expected to broaden its ban on in-flight laptops and tablets to include planes from the European Union, a move that would create logistical chaos on the world’s busiest corridor of air travel.

Alarmed at the proposal, which airline officials say is merely a matter of timing, European governments held urgent talks on Friday with the US Department of Homeland Security.

The ban would affect trans-Atlantic routes that carry as many as 65 million people a year on over 400 daily flights, many of them business travellers who rely on their electronics to work during the flight.

Banning laptops and tables on flights is just insane. Will ensure that people avoid the US as much as possible.

The head of the International Air Transport Association said recently that the electronics ban was not an acceptable or effective long-term solution to security threats, and said the commercial impact was severe.

An industry-backed group, the Airline Passenger Experience Association, said the US government should consider alternatives. That could include routinely testing laptops for chemical residues associated with bombs, requiring owners to turn on their devices, and letting frequent travellers keep their electronics with them.

A ban should be the last last resort.

Stuff reports:

Labour is lining up property speculators by clamping down on tax loopholes to even the playing field in favour of first home buyers.

In a hard hitting speech to Labour’s election year congress, leader Andrew Little said the loophole that let property speculators offset losses from their rentals against other income for tax purposes would be closed.

“Labour will close the tax loophole that allows speculators to claim taxpayer subsidies for their property portfolio,” Little said.

This is not a loophole or a subsidy. It is standard taxation policy that a loss in one area can be offset against a profit in another area. What Little is proposing is that losses on property investment be treated differently to all other losses.

It will make little difference to house prices and will in fact increase rental prices. The profit from property investment comes from the increase in capital value.  Until land supply is increased dramatically, this will continue to fuel house prices.

If property owners faced effectively increased costs on a property, then rents are likely to increase. So Labour’s policy will increase rents and have almost no impact on house prices.

Under the proposed change so-called “mum and dad” investors who bought rentals as a long term investment would not be affected as most of them did not use the loophole, Little said.

To the contrary they are the ones who will be most affected. The professional investors will have companies that will offset profitable and unprofitable houses. The mum and dad investors will not.

And who are the most common owners. Jim Rose has an OIA on this:

So only around 3,500 landlords have more than five properties while 23,000 have two to five properties and a massive 105,000 have just one. They are the ones who will be most affected. If the interest on their mortgage is more than their rental income (always the case at first) then they are deducting the loss off their other income.

Those with six or more will run it all through companies and be unaffected.

The Herald reports:

A junior government minister has apologised to his senior colleagues for “crossing the line” after implying people who bagged the Government would lose their taxpayer funding.

Associate Housing Minister Alfred Ngaro reportedly told a National Party conference in Auckland Labour list candidate Willie Jackson could lose Government support for his charter school if he criticised National on the campaign trail.

“We are not happy about people taking with one hand and throwing with the other,” he told a National Party conference in Auckland, according to Newsroom.

“If you get up on the campaign trail and start bagging us, then all the things you are doing are off the table. They will not happen.”

National’s campaign manager and Finance Minister Steven Joyce said Ngaro realised he had crossed the line with his comments and apologised.

“He apologised to the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and myself as campaign chair. He got carried away…he crossed the line.”

Joyce said Ngaro’s comments were “not the way we operate”.

“We work with providers of all types all the time; people have their political views separate to work they do with the Government. The Government doesn’t take a view on people’s political views.”

If National stopped funding organisations that criticise them, then there would almost be funding at all. Ngaro was wrong to say what he said.

NGOs that provide valuable services such as the Salvation Army should be funded for those services, and that should not be impacted by the fact they sometimes criticise the Government.

However there is a breed of NGO that doesn’t provide valuable services. They are in fact just lobby groups for their points of view, and those lobby groups should not be funded by the taxpayer just so they can lobby Parliament and the Government. Funding should be reserved for the actual provision of useful services.

This is nuts. Already 45,000 ppl living in inner city Akl. Schools there will be needed soon. https://t.co/5k2nooHvQC

— Simon Wilson (@simonbwilson) May 13, 2017

Simon Wilson is referring to the news that Labour has opposed the idea of metro schools, being schools in built up areas that might use community playing grounds rather than have their own.

It shows how reflectively knee-jerk Labour is to any change from their 1970s views of schooling. They are against metro schools, against online teaching schools, they are against charter schools. If National proposed kura kaupapa schools they would probably be against those also.

As it happens we already have a couple of metro schools, and as Wilson points out it is nuts to oppose them with such huge population growth forecast in our CBDs. Sure not everyone will want to go to a metro schools, but it is about choice and having schools built near where people live.

Labour really are dismal when it comes to education. They have no vision for it beyond opposing change.

Curia’s monthly polling newsletter is out. The summary is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 108, April 2017

There was only one political voting poll in April – a Roy Morgan. Hence the average represents just that one poll.

The average of the public polls sees National 13% ahead of Labour in April, down 3% from March.

The current seat projection is centre-right 55 seats, centre-left 52 which would see NZ First hold the balance of power.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

In the United States with the House passing a healthcare bill, Trump’s approval rating rose in April.

 In the UK since calling a snap election the Conservatives have gone from a 18% lead to a 22% lead and are currently projected to win 413 out of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.

In Australia, the Coalition has closed the gap on Labor over the last two months.

In Canada Trudeau’s net approval is now at -5%, down from +19% a year ago.

We also carry details of polls on pornography and the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

 

The ODT reports:

Invercargill’s deputy Mayor Darren Ludlow has told the city council he will consider taking legal action if the reasons he stood down from the role are made public and are considered defamatory, Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt says.

His intention to take legal action was communicated to the council’s chief executive Richard King via email on Monday night.

Last week, the Southland Express reported Cr Ludlow had resigned from the position because he was overcommitted.

It has since been revealed all but one councillor had signed a requisition seeking his removal from the role. Mr Shadbolt said he initiated a ”round-table discussion” on April 21 to discuss ”issues” he had with Cr Ludlow, and nearly every councillor who spoke also raised concerns.

It’s pretty outrageous and contemptuous of the public to sack the Deputy Mayor in a secret meeting and refuse to give any reasons for doing so.

The Herald reports:

Seymour also slammed the $130 million taxpayer subsidies through NZ on Air for programmes such as The X Factor ($800,000), Mastermind ($685,000), Jono and Ben ($1.7 million) and Find me a Maori Bride ($590,000).

He said the $56 million-a-year Marsden Fund, which funds academic research, had even more ridiculous examples.

“What do taxpayers really gain from funding research on ‘Cultivating chamber music in Beethoven’s Vienna: a study in socio-musicology,’ ($580,000); or anti-trade activist Jane Kelsey’s ‘Transcending embedded neoliberalism in international economic regulation’ ($600,000); or ‘Missing narratives of modern Chinese intellectual history: modernity and writings on art, 1900-1930’ ($495,000)?”

All good examples of taxpayer funding spending we could do without.

Seymour said he had identified $1.1 billion in waste and corporate welfare that he would cut immediately to help fund his proposed tax cuts.

The current four tax rates (10.5 per cent, 17.5 per cent, 30 per cent and 33 per cent) would be simplified to three rates: 10 per cent, 15 per cent and 25 per cent.

That would mean a tax cut for every worker: $1516 more a year for the average wage earner on $59,920, $2020 a year for someone on $70,000 and $4124 a year from someone on $96,300.

I’d rather have the tax cut than be funding Jane Kelsey and The X Factor.

Stuff reports:

Labour has moved to distance its promise to slash immigration from any racist overtones, saying it is about the number of people coming in, not the migrants or their race.

Speaking at the party’s election-year congress in Wellington, finance spokesman Grant Robertson said the immigration debate “is a debate about policy. It is not a debate about immigrants”.

“And anyone who makes it about immigrants, or indeed about their race, must be called out for what they are doing as being wrong and against the values of Labour and of New Zealanders.”

What hypocrisy.

This is the party that basically said the reason house prices in Auckland were rising was because of people with Chinese sounding surnames.

The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Corbyn has said his top priority is to build more council houses and introduce tougher regulation of the private rental sector – and insisted he was not downhearted after difficult local election results for his party last week.

Speaking to the Guardian as he was campaigning in the West Midlands, the Labour leader said the UK needed a serious national initiative to tackle the housing crisis, aimed in particular at helping younger and less well-off voters.

The party wants at least a million new homes built over the next five years, with half of them council houses, as part of a programme of borrowing for public investment.

So Jeremy Corbyn is promising his Government will build one million houses in five years which is 550 houses a day while Andrew Little is promising 100,000 houses in ten years or 27 houses a day (including weekends).

I have not so fond memories of the bad old days of the Ministry of Works which would take years to do a project the private sector would do in a few months.

Corbyn also said that whatever happened in the 8 June vote he would be “carrying on” as Labour leader.

Oh excellent.

Stuff reports:

The Government has formally ratified the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade just days before Prime Minister Bill English heads to Japan for trade and business talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Japan is seen as key to a pared-down TPP being agreed, now that the United States has pulled out, with suggestions of either a TPP 11 or a TPP 5 – including New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Trade Minister Todd McClay said the Cabinet decision to ratify the TPP showed leadership with Japan, which has also ratified the agreement.

If TPP leads to an FTA with Japan, that will not be a bad outcome.

Stuff reports:

Two new Great Walks are part of a Government pledge to pour $178m into tourism infrastructure and the conservation estate.

Tourism Minister Paula Bennett and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry jointly announced the establishment of a $102m tourism infrastructure fund, alongside an extra $76m  for the Department of Conservation (DOC).

Barry said it had not yet been decided where the two new Great Walks would go.

“We’re going to do a really good job to ensure they’re in the right place, there’s a lot of conversations to be had yet …then we have to do a business plan”.

I suspect one will be in the Coromandel.

I’ve done seven of the nine existing Great Walks and was looking forward to completing them once Ben is a bit older. But the Government seems to be creating new ones faster than I can walk them, so not sure when I will get to finish all 12 of them.

Forest & Bird’s advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell is less impressed and raised concerns the new walks would lead to price increases for New Zealanders who would compete with tourists for access.

“Of particular concern is the idea to work with private partners to co-fund these Great Walks”.

“This is a significant step towards privatising the conservation estate. Essentially, it’s the unpopular charter school model, brought to conservation”, said Hackwell. 

Oh what absolute nonsense. It’s called sponsorship. Air New Zealand is already a major sponsor. They don’t own the Great Walks, they just help fund them.

Such a shame to see organisations that used to be devoted purely to conversation become just another left wing activist group.

Audrey Young writes:

But Little has made things difficult for himself as the next big test approaches.

The public debacle over Jackson’s candidacy and list ranking was one thing.
But the internal damage is where it must have dented Little’s confidence.

His decision to recruit Jackson was met with resistance in February, his advocacy for Jackson to be given a high list place was denied by the list ranking committee (effectively the party’s New Zealand Council) and then moves by Little to get the council to reconsider the ranking were abandoned when it became clear that Little was going to lose.

Party activists will defend their actions against Little’s project by claiming it was democracy at work and that the leader is just a member.

Little’s people say no one will remember come election time in September.

But every small blip makes it that much harder to make up ground.

The shemozzle over Jackson has undermined Little’s authority within the party as well as outside.

It seems it was Little who advised WIllie Jackson to appeal his place!

It would help Little’s cause if he had a refresher course on how to answer simple media questions with a simple answer.

Ninety per cent of the time he handles media perfectly well. But once in a while he swerves into a cul-de-sac and drives round and round in circles and frustration boils over.

Inexplicably on Tuesday, in interviews on RNZ and in pre-caucus standup with political reporters, he could not give a simple answer about what happens to the existing charter schools under a Labour Government.

And we still don’t know.

The party organisation is in much better shape than it was at the 2011 election and at the 2014 election, although its polling is stubbornly hovering about the 30 per cent mark (Colmar Brunton).

But a better comparison would be how it compares to Labour in 1999, after three terms of a National-led Government, and to National in 2008, after three terms of a Labour-led Government. And the comparisons are not favourable.

In 1999 Labour and the Alliance combined were almost 49 per cent to National in the low 30s a couple of months before tipping National out of office (DigiPoll).

In May 2008, National was over 50 per cent and Labour and the Greens combined were in the low 40s before National took office.

Labour have said that their ambition is to get 34% of the vote only. They have no plan to win with the Greens, just to give the balance of power to Winston.

Stuff reports:

US President Donald Trump, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director, has said James Comey had better hope there are no “tapes” of their conversations.

Trump’s tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn’t under FBI investigation.

So Trump fired the FBI Director because of the Russia investigation. He admitted this in an interview contradicting all his staff who had been told to blame it on the Clinton investigation.

Comey has been professional and discrete, refusing to comment. Yet Trump the despot now threatens him with secret tapes.

If Trump wasn’t so incompetent, he would be dangerous.

Trump told NBC he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

The White House initially cited a US Justice Department memo criticising Comey’s handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails as the impetus for Trump’s decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation – which he dismissed as a “made-up story” – was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a “showboat” and “grandstander”, added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even US Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

I don’t think Trump did collude with Russia. But having the President sack the FBI Director because he was sick of headlines about the investigation (ironically creating many mroe headlines) is an awful precedent.

Also reported:

US President Donald Trump has threatened to end White House press briefings, arguing that “it is not possible” for his staff to speak with “perfect accuracy” to the American public.

Trump’s comments come after his description of his decision to fire FBI director James B. Comey in an NBC News interview on Thursday [Friday NZ Time] flatly contradicted the accounts provided earlier by White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, exposing their explanations as misleading and in some cases false.

In a pair of tweets on Friday, Trump suggested he might do away with the daily press briefings at the White House and instead have his spokesmen communicate to the public only via “written responses”.

It certainly is not possible for his staff to speak with perfect accuracy when the President either lies to his staff or tells his staff to lie on his behalf.

The Telegraph reports on a leaked copy of UK Labour’s 43 page manifesto. It includes:

• Nationalising energy, rail and mail industries
• A 20:1 wage caps on businesses
• Increased unionisation across the workforce
• 250 billion pounds of borrowing
• Tax hikes for those earning over 80,000 pounds
• Inquiry into the 1984 miners’ strike
• Protect the right to “a nomadic way of life” and support gypsies, travellers and the Roma community.
• Ban internships

The Herald reports:

Shariah prosecutors in Indonesia’s Aceh province say two men accused of having gay sex should each receive 80 lashes, in another blow to the country’s moderate image after a top Christian official was imprisoned for blasphemy. …

Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia to practice Shariah law, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a years-long war with separatists.

Will the UN Human Rights Council be condemning this?

The Shariah code allows up to 100 lashes for morality offenses including gay sex. Caning is also a punishment for adultery, gambling, drinking alcohol, women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers.

So is it okay for men to wear tight clothes and women to skip prayers?

Stuff reports:

The debate is centred around whether New Zealand should shift to a “variable subsidies” model for tertiary education so taxpayers only end up paying for the number of students actually needed for jobs.

As Williamson explains, it could look something like this: The top students (who qualify by way of scholarships, bursary or something else) are given a “good subsidy” – potentially about 90 per cent.

The next block (perhaps the next 50 per cent of students) get the standard subsidy currently provided – roughly 75 per cent – and then anyone else wanting to study a particular course pays their own way, suggests Williamson.

The Commission looked at exactly that idea when it was picking fault with the country’s tertiary system after it was asked to look at barriers to new models of education.

Graham Scott, one of the commissioners tasked with fronting MPs about the report at select committee on Wednesday, said the approach Williamson was suggesting was one they’d recommended in their report.

But how would it work?

Put simply, the government would decide, for example, how many lawyers, vets, accountants or teachers it needed each year and subsidise accordingly.

Anyone falling outside of the “need” category would still have access to courses but would need to cough up the cash themselves.

Williamson broke down his argument by taking a look at art history.

His data suggests about 10,000 students took the subject at Auckland University, which he says he has no issue with but the question was whether taxpayers should fund it.

“Maybe we want 500 art historian graduates that we fund well, the next cohort moderately maybe and the last cohort is anyone who wants to can but they fund it themselves.”

There’s some merit to the suggestion, as taxpayers do fund a lot of degrees. But I would have qualms about the Government deciding how many art historians we need, how many lawyers we need etc etc. I prefer to leave it to the market.

But that argument doesn’t wash with everyone – take Labour’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins who questioned how many people go into a job directly connected to their field of study once they finish university.

“My pick is the art history graduates aren’t going off to be art historians, but they’ve all got jobs where they’re getting well paid and the stats would back that up.

Hipkins has a point. Plus degrees in areas such as philosophy or classics can be beneficial to society, without being linked to particular jobs.

Interesting data from MBIE.

First of all it shows high levels of unaffordability in all four cities since 2003 – well over 70%.

Nationally unaffordability increased the most from 2003 to 2008. It then declined for a couple of years and has been stable since.

In Christchurch and Wellington, unaffordability has been declining since 2008.

In Auckland it increased from 2003 to 2008, decreased from 2008 to 2012 and has increased since 2012.