The order paper is here.
Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm
National: Four questions on interest rates, primary heath care, transport funding and small business
Labour: Four questions on social bonds, the economy, charter schools and raw swamp kauri
Greens: Two questions on world affairs and transport funding
NZ First: One question on grain dumping
Maori Party: One question on TPPA
Government Bills 3.00 pm to 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm to 10.00 pm
Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill – committee stage continued
The bill makes a number of changes to the status of parcels of land, land titles, and previous Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Acts.
The committee has dealt with Part 1 and is now debating Part 2.
Standards and Accreditation Bill – committee stage
The bill amends and consolidates the law relating to standards and conformity assessment bodies “to ensure the New Zealand Standards and conformance system is viable, well-functioning, and meets the needs of business, regulators, and consumers into the foreseeable future.”
There is no set time limit for the committee stage. The bill has two parts so debate is likely to last at least two hours. There is a minor SOP from Minister Goldsmith.
Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill – committee stage
The bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995 to implement a new Radio New Zealand Charter
There is no set time limit for the committee stage. The bill has six clauses but is supported by all parties so unlikely to have a lengthy debate. so debate is likely to last at least two hours. There is an SOP from Minister Adams defining what commercial-free means.
USA Today reports on a poll in the wake of the Charleston shooting:
Stuff reports:
The father of murdered Ashburton teenager Kirsty Bentley has died, still denying any involvement in her death.
Sid Bentley, 64, who died on Monday after a battle with cancer, was a suspect in his daughter’s 1998 disappearance and murder, along with Kirsty’s older brother, John.
Both denied their involvement.
Interviewed recently, Sid Bentley’s wish was for his ashes to be buried with his daughter’s.
Last year, Sid Bentley said it was his dying wish to see his daughter’s killers caught and that his “conscience is clear”.
If he was the killer, the mystery will probably never be solved. A very sad case.
The Herald reports:
Their city’s share of the overall “partnership” pot from the national programme will include $1.175 billion for public transport, $960 million to maintain highways and local roads, and $91 million to improve cycling and walking.
That is additional to $24.75m the Government said last week it would contribute to Auckland from its $100m urban cycleways fund.
Again this is what you call a balanced approach to transport. It is not a choice of roading or rail. They are complementary, not substitutes. However some (not all) public transport advocates won’t be happy until it is zero dollars for roads. Proof in point:
Almost $2b has been earmarked for public transport nationally, a 21 per cent increase, and investment in cycling will more than triple – to $251m.
But the Green Party says the programme is focussed too heavily on “carbon-polluting transport infrastructure, rather than building a clean, balanced and efficient system for the 21st Century.”
Transport spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter said National had chosen to continue spending more than $1b a year “on a few carbon-polluting motorways that haven’t even passed a business test.”
The Greens are basically against all spending on roads.
News.com.au reports:
TREASURER Joe Hockey has won $200,000 in a defamation case against Fairfax Media.
The Federal Court today decided Fairfax had defamed Mr Hockey with a newsstand poster and two tweets relating to a story it published on May 5, 2014, with the headline ‘Treasurer for Sale’.
They will need to pay Mr Hockey $120,000 in damages for the poster and $80,000 for the tweets.
I’m glad Hockey won. I thought that way Fairfax framed their story was reprehensible.
Normally coup and NZ first do not go together as we all know Winston is Leader for life. But it seems there was an attempted coup for Deputy Leader reports the Herald:
New Zealand First members including leader Winston Peters have refused to comment on whether deputy leader Tracey Martin faced a challenge for her position.
Ron Mark was rumoured to be making a bid for the party’s deputy leader position, but this afternoon it was confirmed that – if any challenge was in fact made – it was unsuccessful.
Mr Peters has left it to his party members to shed some light on the situation.
He was asked repeatedly by media who his deputy leader is and whether he could confirm Ms Martin would remain in that position.
“I cannot discuss caucus business, that’s confidential. I am restricted by that. We do not discuss caucus business outside of caucus,” Mr Peters said.
During question time he faced jeers of “who’s deputy”. Ms Martin sat in the party’s deputy chair.
Afterwards, most NZ First MPs refused to comment, but Denis O’Rourke confirmed that Ms Martin remained deputy leader.
Mr Mark also said he was not the new NZ First deputy leader, but would not comment on whether he had made or planned a challenge.
Which strongly suggests he did, or tried to.
Wait until Shane Jones is parachuted in as the Deputy Leader. That will really upset both Ron and Tracey!
The Herald reports:
A talkback host’s comments describing award-winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton as an “ungrateful hua” and a “traitor” were not in breach of broadcasting standards.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has declined to uphold two complaints about RadioLive host Sean Plunket’s comments about Catton speaking critically about the National government at a literary festival in India earlier this year.
Plunket called Catton an ‘ungrateful hua’ and a ‘traitor’, amongst other things.
The BSA received complaints that Plunket’s comments constituted “bullying” and a personal attack on Catton.
The authority’s decision said that “the severity of [Plunket’s] attack and the hostility and aggression of the language used? raised the question of whether this attack went too far”.
However, Plunket’s comments did not breach broadcasting standards, it ruled.
Catton was “powerfully exercising her right to freedom of expression and has had to suffer the responses including those from the broadcaster”, the BSA said.
“Conversely, the broadcaster has exercised its right to freedom of expression and it will have suffered consequences from those who objected to what Mr Plunket said and the way in which he said it.”
The decision from the authority considered that “?different views have been expressed and have been evaluated and those who have expressed or broadcast these views have been judged accordingly”.
“This is how we think things are meant to work in a liberal democracy.
“We do not think that our society would be better off if views such as those of the radio host were staunched.”
Another defeat for the opponents of free speech.
This afternoon Parliament will pass into law the Harmful Digital Communications Act. If I was an MP, I’d vote against the bill.
In saying that I recognise a significant amount of good will come from this bill. I also recognise that Amy Adams has made improvements to it, which have mollified some of the concerns people have had with the bill, which is why Labour and NZ First are now supporting it. In fact ACT is the only party against – David Seymour explains why here.
Here’s the good aspects to the new law:
The bad aspects include:
The Press editorial is opposed:
The purpose of the statute is high-minded enough. It is designed to deter, prevent and mitigate harm to individuals by digital communications. But the thresholds set by the new statute are perilously low and potentially pose a threat to freedom of speech. …
Both the agency and the District Court must decide matters according to “communication principles” contained in the new statute. Some of these are ludicrously wide. One, for example, prohibits digital communications that make a false allegation. As those with experience of defamation law know, that can be an area of endless argument, and the new statute has none of the safeguards provided by two centuries of development of defamation law. A similar risk arises from the prohibition on a communication that may be “grossly offensive to a reasonable person in the position of the affected individual”. It does not take much imagination to see how that provision could be used by a deeply religious person to resurrect blasphemy laws that have largely (and properly in a secular society) fallen into disuse.
A complainant will not be able to obtain any redress unless he or she can show that the offending digital communication has caused harm. But harm has also been given an alarmingly expansive definition by the statute. It is defined as anything that causes a complainant “serious emotional distress”, a disconcertingly subjective notion.
The statute requires any decisions to be consistent with rights and freedoms contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It is odd the new statute should state this explicitly because those provisions should apply anyway. Presumably it was in recognition of the fact that the new statute potentially threatens those rights and freedoms.
The BORA reference should mean that the court only orders material to be removed in extreme circumstances. But until we have several cases go through the system, we don’t know what sort of approach will be taken.
As I said, there are good aspects to this law. It will help a number of people considerably. But as with The Press I fear the communication principles are too wide, and it will result in people ironically being bullied by others using the law for exercising their free speech online.
There’s been outrage over people scalping Super 15 tickets on Trade Me. No practical way to stop this unless you require photo ID with tickets to get into events. Also making tickets non transferable means if you get sick or injured or the like, then your tickets are wasted and your seats go empty.
The basic “problem” is that there is a fixed supply, and high demand. The secondary market allows those who want to pay a premium to get to go, after missing out due to the vagaries of online booking systems.
Now one may say it is unfair that the scalpers make the money, rather than the sports code. This is true. So why not have the sporting code itself auction off some tickets?
Sell half the tickets at a fixed rate (so some fans can get to got for an affordable price), and auction off the remaining half with the top say 4,000 bids getting four tickets each?
The order paper is here.
Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm
National: Five questions on Budget, paid parental leave, cycleways, property tax rules and tobacco duty
Labour: Four questions on state houses x 2, milk prices and ACC levies
Greens: Two questions on state houses and does PM stand bu statements
NZ First: One question on Minister of Building standing by his statements
Government Bills 3.00 pm to 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm to 10.00 pm
Harmful Digital Communications Bill – third reading continued
The Bill aims to “mitigate the harm caused to individuals by digital communications and to provide victims of harmful digital communications with a quick and efficient means of redress.” by creating a new civil enforcement regime to quickly and effectively deal with harmful digital communications; creating new criminal offences to deal with the most serious harmful digital communications and making some small amendments to existing legislation to clarify their application to digital communications and cover technological advances.
There are nine speeches of up to 10 minutes remaining for a maximum of 90 minutes.
Environmental Reporting Bill – committee stage continued
The bill provides for independent environmental reports in the areas of air, climate and atmosphere, freshwater, marine and land.
There is no time limit for the committee stage. It has two parts so is likely to last for at least two hours. There is one SOP from Eugenie Sage.
New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill – committee stage
The bill amends the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2011 to facilitate the efficient and effective investment of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund by allowing the Guardians to control entities formed for the purpose of holding, facilitating, or managing the investments of the Fund.
There is no time limit for the committee stage. It has two parts so is likely to last for at least two hours. There are two SOPs from Bill English.
Stuff reports:
Two New Zealanders have reportedly been detained by the Israeli military after the ship they were on attempted to break a blockade on Gaza.
Maori Television reporter Ruwani Perera and cameraman Jacob Bryant were aboard one of the ships in the Freedom Flotilla III, when it was boarded by Israeli forces, One News reported.
It’s understood the ships are carrying solar panels, medical supplies and other aid items.
The flotilla was trying to breach Israel’s exclusion zone on Gaza, and take supplies to residents on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli blockade has been in force since 2007.
What has this got to do with Maori TV? Shouldn’t they be spending their money on shows like Native Affairs, not being activists in the Middle East?
Maori TV is funded by the taxpayer. They risk a backlash if they spend their funding on stunts like this.
A reader has sent me a summary of what no less a person that Sir Geoffrey Palmer found over the Gaza blockade:
The UN-commissioned ‘[Sir Geoffrey] Palmer Report’ regarding the Gaza Flotilla Incident of 2010 deemed the naval blockade by Israel to be a legitimate security measure to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and to protect the Israeli population. The report stated that “people may, of course, freely express their views by peaceful protest. But to deliberately seek to breach a blockade in a convoy with a large number of passengers is in the view of the Panel a dangerous and reckless act. It involves exposing a large number of individuals to the risk that force will be used to stop the blockade and people will be hurt.”
The Palmer Report goes on to recommend that “Attempts to breach a lawfully imposed naval blockade place the vessel and those on board at risk. Where a State becomes aware that its citizens or flag vessels intend to breach a naval blockade, it has a responsibility to take pro-active steps compatible with democratic rights and freedoms to warn them of the risks involved and to endeavour to dissuade them from doing so.”
So a state owned television station is sending its staff into a highly dangerous situation.
Some issues for Maori TV:
Māori TV has put its staff’s lives in imminent danger. Māori TV staff are on-board the Marianne av Göteborg on official Māori TV business. Deliberate attempts to breach a lawful blockade represent dangerous and reckless acts that could result in people being hurt. A previous attempt to breach the naval blockade of Gaza resulted in nine deaths;
Māori TV’s participation in the flotilla likely breaches its obligations under both the current Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and the proposed Health & Safety Reform Bill exposing its directors and the company to unnecessary risk and exposure;
Māori TV’s participation in the flotilla is inconsistent with Māori TV’s stated purpose. There is no clear link between the flotilla and Māori language or culture.
Māori TV staff risk breaking international law through its willing participation in an illegal act. The United Nations has declared the naval blockade of Gaza as being legal and legitimate. Under international law, violation of a lawful blockade constitutes unlawful activity.
I’be long been a supporter of Maori TV and their funding. If they keep doing stuff like this, I’ll be joining the ranks calling for their funding to be diverted elsewhere for public broadcasting.
Stuff reports:
New Zealanders are paying over-the-top prices for milk, with Coca-Cola now more affordable, the Labour Party says.
Figures from Statistics New Zealand showed the average price of two litres of milk was $3.19 in May 2013, which had jumped to $3.45 in May this year.
The milk price index has actually dropped 4% in the last 12 months, so Labour are complaining at the time milk prices are dropping.
The index was 1204 in May 2015, 1254 in May 2014 and yes 1129 in May 2013. So by going back two years Labour makes it look like prices are currently increasing.
What do they look like over the last 15 years?
So milk prices in NZ are quite volatile, with some big increases some years and big decreases in other years. That suggests a competitive market.
In the six years and five months since 2008, milk prices have increased just 8.5% overall. That’s an average of 1.3% a year – so below the mid-point of the inflation target range.
Now let’s go back to the comparison with Coke
Shearer said Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy had some explaining to do, as it was “all looking a bit too cosy”.
It was “perverse” that Coca-Cola was more affordable than fresh milk, at a time when child obesity and diabetes were causing major problems in the health system, he said.
First of all the Government does not set the prices of goods. It is no surprise that something which is basically water with some mass produced syrup costs less than milk which has to be produced on a farm and transported.
But even putting aside the stupidity of the comparison, let’s like at the price increases of soft drinks and milk since December 2008.
Milk inflation has been 8.5% while inflation for “soft drinks, waters and juices” has been 21.7%. So under Labour coke was even cheaper than milk!
Now Stats NZ also has the specific average price for a 2 litre container of milk and a 1.5 litre soft drink. If we make this a cost per litre what does it show?
Now you may understand how truly stupid Labour is being. They managed to pick the exact month where in fact milk is slightly cheaper than coke (by 1 cent) – $1.73 vs $1.74. And of course if we go back to 2008, milk was $1.67 a litre and coke $1.31.
But we should not just blame Labour for not doing their homework. They were counting on media who would not fact check them. This took me around 30 minutes with the Stats NZ database. Wouldn’t it be great if a journalist actually did this and when Labour spout off crap like this, ask them questions such as:
The only way Labour will learn not to shoot off stupid inaccurate crap, is when people call them on it.
UPDATE: Kudos to Claire Trevett who in this article did look beyond the spin from Labour, and point out prices had dropped in the last year.
Stuff reports:
In many ways, Tsipras’ administration is caught in a bind of its own making. He swept to power after elections in January on the strength of campaign promises that many critics warned were irreconcilable.
“They’ve developed a narrative of ‘We can have our cake and eat it. We can be in the Eurozone and end austerity,’ ” said Kevin Featherstone, an expert on Greece at the London School of Economics.
They put power ahead of their country. They knew they couldn’t deliver.
They also know that expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone would call into question the whole idea of the EU. The euro is intended to serve as perhaps the most potent symbol of European amity and unity after a century of war and division; indeed, nations wishing to join the EU must commit to adopting the currency. Eurozone membership is supposed to be irreversible.
A Greek exit from the euro would explode that idea, and could start unravelling the project of greater European integration.
And investors would have grounds to fear that other, larger countries could also abandon the euro in tough times. Trust in the common currency could evaporate.
The lesson here is monetary policy and fiscal policy have to work together. You can have common currency, if you have a common fiscal policy. But you can not have a common monetary policy, if countries such as Greece just continually spend more than they earn.
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
– Robert Heinlein
The quote of the week is brought to you by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. To support the Union’s campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, click here.
Stuff reports:
Phil Goff criticises Auckland ‘presidential’ leadership | Stuff.co.nz
Auckland mayoral prospect Phil Goff says he would run the city differently from the current “presidential” style of leadership.
In a local television interview the Mt Roskill Labour MP has reiterated that he’s seriously considering standing for mayor, but claims he still hasn’t made the final decision.
Translation: I’m definitely running
“If I ran for mayor, that’s the reason I’d run as an independent.
“I think a mayor needs not to be partisan, but to be inclusive to look after the whole of the city and to try and work with the whole of the council.
News.com.au reports:
ANGER against ride-booking app Uber continues to escalate with taxi drivers and even a former cop in Australia taking matters into their own hands.
Taxi drivers set fire to cars and blocked major roads in France overnight as protests exploded into violence against the illegal service.
One private chauffeur was pulled from his van by angry cab drivers who shouted “why did you come to work, you know we’re on strike today,” according to AFP. Meanwhile in Strasbourg taxi drivers posed as customers to lure Uber drivers and assault them.
American rocker Courtney Love was caught up in the demonstrations when a vehicle she was travelling in outside Paris was attacked.
She tweeted that protesters “ambushed” her vehicle and “were holding our driver hostage”.
In the most serious incident in Paris, one private chauffeur, who said he did not work for Uber “or any other app” was dragged from his van when he reached a blockade in the west of Paris.
Angry taxi drivers slashed the tyres of his vehicle, smashed a window and then set it and a chauffeur-driven van on fire.
On at least two occasions in Strasbourg in eastern France last week, taxi drivers posed as customers in order to lure Uber drivers to isolated spots where they were assaulted by cab drivers and their vehicles damaged.
If you don’t want people choosing Uber over your own taxis, then makes taxis better service, safer, better quality and cheaper.
News.com.au reports:
BELLE Gibson’s interview with Tara Brown took a tense turn tonight, as the hard-hitting reporter confronted the disgraced wellness blogger with fresh evidence suggesting she knew all along that she didn’t have a brain tumour.
Brown hammered the 26-year-old shamed health guru, asking, “Do you accept that you’re a pathological liar?”Gibson replied: “No.”
As she is a pathological liar,the answer really means yes.
Gibson, who, in April, was forced to admit that she lied about having brain cancer and curing it through natural means, was offered no reprieve from Brown, who was clearly fed up with her storytelling.
“You don’t have a good record on telling the truth, do you?” Brown put to her.
Sitting face-to-face with Brown, Gibson teared up as she told how she “lost everything” after her cancer confession came to light.
But Gibson maintained that she didn’t deceive her followers or the public. She argued that she had been deceived. Gibson said she was told by an immunologist and neurologist, ‘Mark Johns’, that she had terminal brain cancer after he diagnosed her using a ‘frequency’ machine in her home several years ago.
“He went to my home and did a series of tests. There was a machine with lights on the front. There are two metal pads, one below the chair and one behind your back, measuring frequencies and then he said to me that I had a stage four brain tumour and that I had four months to live.
Yes neurologists of course do home visits, and bring big machines with flashing lights to detect if you have cancer!
60 Minutes has not been able to find any record of a ‘Mark Johns’.
No??? Surprise.
After the interview, Gibson handed over her medical records to 60 Minutes which showed that she had a brain scan at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in 2011, two years before she started to market her sob story to the public for profit and adulation.
Gibson said that she had that brain scan because she started to doubt the diagnosis ‘Johns’ had given her but that the scans had been directly sent to ‘Johns’ from the hospital. Johns then showed her a scan with brain cancer.
However, her medical records from the Alfred stated that she a 40-minute consultation with a neurologist there who told her that her brain scans were clear. But the reason she went to the Alfred for scans was not because of her brain cancer but because she believed she might have multiple sclerosis.
Brown put to Gibson that she had a history of claiming dramatic health problems and pointed out to her that she had previously said that in one year, 2009, she had three heart operations, two cardiac arrests, that she had died on the operating table and a stroke.
Good to see the journalist nail her on her lies so well.
She maintained that she is a victim and that she didn’t intentionally deceive anyone.
She really needs psychiatric help.
Brian Fallow writes in the NZ Herald:
The net inflow of migrants hit a new high in the year ended May, eliciting ritual denunciation from Winston Peters.
“The Government is condemning more Kiwis to the dole queue and to a life in rental houses,” he said. “Soon there will be anger as so many miss out on the Kiwi dream of home ownership, especially in Auckland, where over half the record net 57,800 migrants are settling.”
The first point to make in response to this is that the statisticians’ definition of permanent and long-term migrants includes Kiwis.
Indeed. In the last 12 months 29,510 New Zealanders “migrated” home.
In the latest year there was a net loss of 5800 New Zealand citizens, compared with an average net loss of 26,600 a year over the previous 10 years, and 13,200 in the year to May 2014. Harder times across the Tasman explain a lot of that.
In 2012, the net outflow of New Zealanders was 38,910, so it is now one sixth of that.
So who are the immigrants Peters is keen to scapegoat?
A breakdown of visa types gives us a clue. Of the 80,000 visas issued in the past year, 35,100 – 44 per cent – were work visas. That is 13,800, or 65 per cent, more than four years ago, before the need to rebuild our second-largest city boosted demand for people in the building trades. By all accounts Auckland could do with some of them too.
There are definite areas where not enough Kiwis are available for work.
Student visas are the second-largest category, representing 32 per cent of all visas issued in the past year. The total of 25,600 issued in the past year is up from 17,600 in the previous year and 9500 10 years ago.
“Indian student arrivals of 12,100 are double the previous year and Chinese student arrivals were up 22 per cent to over 7000 in the past year,” Peters said.
Whatever his source for these numbers was, it was not Statistics NZ, which put the number of student visas issued to Indians at 10,100 and to Chinese at 4800.
“Young Kiwi workers are also missing out on low-skilled jobs as foreign students, most of whom want permanent residence, take over in supermarkets, service stations and hotels,” Peters said. “Why should foreign students be allowed to work at all? Our supposed export education industry is supposed to be bringing in foreign exchange.”
Well, it is. A report by Infometrics on the economic impact of the international education industry estimates that gross spending, including tuition fees, rose 10.4 per cent last year to $2.75 billion, the majority of it in Auckland.
“About 14,500 full-time-equivalent jobs are directly attributable to international education delivered within New Zealand, with another 15,700 jobs being indirectly supported through the industry’s upstream and downstream multiplier effects,” it said.
We make a substantial profit from offering international education. A great income earner.
Stuff reports:
Tackling obesity tops the Government’s priority list – but it says punishing sugar lovers with a tax is not the answer.
Health Minister Jonathan Coleman saidon Sunday there was no evidence a sugar tax worked and further regulation was not the answer to New Zealand’s obesity problem. He conceded, however, that action was needed on the way sugar-loaded products were marketed to consumers but the Government believed voluntary action by the food industry was the answer.
“Marketing is an issue but we’ve got to work with the industry to turn that around and if you look at the Advertising Standards Authority guidelines, which the industry has signed up to, there’s been major changes over time,” Coleman told TVNZ’s Q+A programme.
But the Government’s major focus was on exercise, portion control and the diets of pregnant women. The Prime Minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman was at the forefront of some of that work.
“All my discussions with Sir Peter have been around the intervention around the perinatal period (the period immediately before and after birth) … and that’s what the medical evidence is starting to show is very important. That and exercise and education,” Coleman said.
“Not this fixation with advertising and sugar taxes.”
Good. The activists want a sugar tax, a fat tax, a soda drink tax etc etc. No end to what they want to tax.
Stuff reports:
Labour is accusing the Government of rewarding those with “flash” cars at the expense of older and poorer owners, with ACC levies tied to vehicles safety ratings.
The new risk-rating ACC regime, which kicks in next month, means some owners of older cars will pay $158.46 annually – 52 per cent more than the $104.09 they would have paid without the differentiated system
Labour ACC spokeswoman Sue Moroney said more than a million owners would pay more than necessary.
Labour once again being silly. First of all the differentiated system collects the same amount of money in total. If you charge older less safe cars the same as newer more safe cars, then the fee for newer cars would be more.
ACC Minister Nikki Kaye said the purpose was to improve safety and the regime gave incentives to have safer vehicles.
About 50 per cent of older vehicles were in the safest band.
“There is a bit of a myth out there you have to have the flashest car to have the safest vehicle – that’s not correct.”
She said she understood many people did not have the choice to buy another car, but if they were choosing between two cars they could choose the safer one.
But Moroney questioned whether targeting the cost of registering a car was the best way to improve safety.
She asked if the system meant “the superannuant who’s never had an accident in her life, who happens to drive an older car because she’s on a fixed income is less safe than the corporate executive who’s just been to the long boozy lunch and gets in his Merc to drive away?”
Now Sue Moroney is basically arguing to abolish ACC as a no faults scheme!
Tying premiums to risk is sensible and what happens with other levies such as the employer levy.
Stuff reports:
New Zealand needs to “change its tune” on inequality, think tank The New Zealand institute says.
The group, which is supported by many leading business people, made the call following the publication of a Treasury paper which found inequality in this country has, with some variability, largely remained constant for the past 20 years. …
The new Treasury report acknowledged inequality in this country did rise from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. But it said that since then inequality had – with some variability – remained either constant or had fallen slightly. (Read the report in full here)
In a statement on Friday, NZ Initiative head of research Eric Crampton said “New Zealand simply has no problem of rising inequality”.
In contrast, income inequality had risen in may parts of the world and New Zealand seemed to have imported the narrative that the gap between rich and poor in this country had been widening to the same degree.
“The most striking finding in the latest Treasury work is that inequality in consumption is lower than it was before the reforms of the 1980s. While salary-based measures of income inequality have not declined as dramatically, a lot of work ignore the fact that the tax and transfer system already works to equalise incomes,” Crampton said.
“In the end, it’s consumption-based measures that give us a better picture of real differences in how people live.”
So when you take account of the tax and welfare system, there is less inequality in NZ than the early 1980s when for some bizarre reason socialists hark back to as a golden era.
John Milford writes in Stuff:
On Wednesday, the Wellington City Council will vote to votes on adopting the Long Term Plan (LTP) and the numbers tell a story that every Wellington ratepayer should be worried about.
It projects that in the next 10 years total rates will jump by 62 per cent – from a total rate take of $241.4 million to $393.4 million.
That’s an increase of $152 million in 10 years, and that’s massive in anyone’s language, but especially for those who have to pay it. Add to this the increase in the council’s total borrowings, projected to grow from $404.1 million to $806.5 million.
This is nearly a 100 per cent increase in debt.
The chamber’s members are concerned at what they are seeing in these numbers.
Let’s not forget that Wellington’s business community pays 46 per cent of the rates while only making up just 21 per cent of the rateable property.
Our business rates differential is higher than both Auckland and Christchurch.
While the LTP proposes to increase rates by an ‘average’ of 3.1 per cent a year over the 10 years, it also proposes a further 0.8 per cent for an invest-to-grow programme, taking rates rises to an ‘average’ of 3.9 per cent. The council justifies this as a trade-off because it will invest in projects to expand the city’s economy and grow the rating base. We note that the 3.9 per cent is the ‘average’ increase, the actual increase being considerably higher. For next year the total rate take will jump
11.86.6 per cent – around an additional 5 per cent for the owner of a house at the median value, and around 6.7 per cent for a suburban commercial property.
With inflation at 0.1% this is way too big an increase.
I think we should have a law that requires a referendum to approve any rates increase which is greater than say the increase in population and inflation.
Chris Trotter is excited that Pope Benedict has attack capitalism:
Pope Francis, like his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, is challenging the powerful to see the world through new eyes. The question, now, is whether the powerful will embrace this radical pope, or destroy him?
The fate of St Francis would have been grim, had the then occupant of the papal throne, Innocent III, not recognised in his charismatic power a force of huge potential benefit to the Catholic Church.
By extending his protection to Francis and his followers, Innocent allowed them to open a new pathway for the faithful. Pope Francis, in his first encyclical, Laudato Si (Praise Be), presents global capitalism with a similar choice. Either, brand this radical pope a heretic and destroy him, or, embrace his radical Christian ecologism as a uniquely effective way of re-presenting capitalism to an increasingly hostile world.
Almost every senior religious figure is anti-capitalism. That is why they are in religion, not business.
While Popes have differed in their views on social issues, on economic issues they have all denounced unfettered capitalism regularly.
Pope John Paul II spoke of capitalism having viruses of consumerism and materalism.
The arch conservative Pope Benedict spoke of the failures of capitalism.
So basically a Pope attacking capitalism is about as news worthy as a public health activist promoting a new tax. Not much.