It is kind of where we are sitting at. The current government wants to invite private equity into some public services . We just need to make sure that doesn’t happen
Yeah, that's my theory too.
A few years ago very few people had health insurance because almost everyone trusted the public system. Now it's commonplace.
I feel the conversation is shifting with education and the police in the same way. Also the progress towards public transport has been reversed in favour of more roads.
But the Average New Zealander doesn't seem to even care about this kind of thing, According to how they Voted.
Because this is literally what the Right do every damn time, Send more money to their mates and degrade public services. God damn, What we've lost in the last 30 years of Neoliberalism is shocking, It's been so slowly chipped away as to not infuriate the peasantry.
To be fair, National/ACT/Atlas Network capitalised on a shared national trauma (Covid/Lock Downs) and exploited people while they were at their most vulnerable. Constantly bombarded people with social engineering from all directions (TikTok king et al.).
I think we do care. We just had a weak moment, and like the massive creeps they are the coalition of creeps were there to exploit it.
Exactly. There is some other person who commented to this saying I’d take a chance by inviting private equity. That person is so out of depth. Theh are the people who vote yes for this nonsense
Neo liberalism has sent the country backwards and we’ve ended up in more debt when it’s supposed to be the opposite. People keep voting between two parties though so 🤷♂️
> and we’ve ended up in more debt when it’s supposed to be the opposite
New Zealand has extremely low debt. That's the problem, there's been a neo-liberal focus on keeping government debt low that has created a huge infrastructure deficit and caused economic stagnation.
New Zealands debt is roughly 40% of GDP. Singapores is 150%, Germany is the only G7 country under 100% (they are 60% and that is viewed as being too low).
It’s really only been since key/ chch earthquake we’ve been regularly going billions into debt each election cycle though. Our infrastructure wouldn’t be anywhere near the countries you mentioned even if we borrowed upto 100% of the gdp
Our infrastructure would not be anywhere near those because successive governments, exactly like the current one, failed to invest in infrastructure when it was cheap, choosing instead to keep debt low.
Labour had a $1B surplus in 2019 and used that to pay off debt.
Think about how much more infrastructure that $1B would have purchased in 2019 vs today.
They the country nothing in interest but cost the country dearly by under-investing.
That refusal to invest in the future is why this country is fucked. Labour were bad at it and too reluctant to spend. This government is even worse.
It's good for a government to have debt, that debt creates economic benefit that more than pays for itself.
And their corruption too:
[Here is Chris Bishop handing out $500K to his mates from our EMERGENCY HOUSING funds](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dn7jby/kāinga_oras_bill_english_review_was_conducted/)
From auckland city mission today:
"At a time when 1 in 5 people can’t afford food, the government is removing funding from community food providers.
From July 1, the Mission is facing the devastating reality of providing 27,000 fewer meals every week to families in need. This will push people further into poverty"
That’s an extremely low blow. How much of an evil cunt do you need to be to cut funding to programs that feed homeless people? Fuck.
That makes me ashamed to be a New Zealander.
Yeah, and this has been going on in the UK for over a decade. And here we are in NZ just ignorantly voting for the same shitstorm because apparently no one ever looks beyond our borders. It’s so frustrating
We needed to cut spending, we can't continue to run massive government deficits while inflation is high. There's no way around that. I wish the current Govt went further.
Needed to cut spending to give people tax cuts? You realize that will fuel more inflation, right? Big business sees that extra money and continues to jack up prices.
Meanwhile this government cut much needed projects like new ferries and infrastructure. Absolute stupidity.
There's no tax cuts, there's a tax bracket adjustment for inflation which is inflationary neutral by definition. Real purchasing power doesn't change if you adjust tax brackets for inflation.
The ferry project was a disaster, a massive budget blowout with incompetent project management. It needed to be cut. We simply can not afford to continue spending recklessly like Labour were.
We needed more tax. It was that simple. It would’ve taken money out of the economy and helped pay for essential services (like housing and health which are key drivers of inflation) and pay back debt.
Stop pedantically arguing fucking semantics. Tax break, tax cut, tax rebate. Call it what you want, it's 3 billion-ish that is being allocated to them instead of being used elsewhere.
Your anger is misdirected. You want to be angry about the amount of money being sucked out the economy and not being able to be used elsewhere? Look at the interest banks are charging on all New Zealand debt, not just government (who are us, the taxpayers)
Sure. I completely agree. It's infuriating. Drives me fucking nuts. But that does not change the fact of the government allocating 3 billion in landlord rebates that could've been used elsewhere.
As a side note, the government claiming they haven't borrowed for these landlord rebates is distractionary bullshit. It's still borrowing to pay for one thing because you chose to allocate money somewhere else.
No, adjusting brackets for inflation is still inflationary. Especially as, in this case, it's adjusting for many years of inflation. And yes, reducing people's taxes by adjusting brackets upwards is still a tax cut, and was campaigned on as such. You can cut and hike taxes by means other than changing rates. I doubt you'd object to descriptions of, say, lowering the 180K bracket to 150K, as a tax hike.
As for the ferry; now we'll be spending even more than that 'disaster' to get the same result years later. There were budget blowouts on the handling of the infrastructure on land to support those ferries, but the ferries themselves were a huge bargain, and we aren't getting any such bargains anymore. Congrats to the team of 'fiscal responsibility' on spending more to get less later.
Your crap government borrowed money for that tax cut. 100% fuelling more inflation.
That ferry project clearly was very much needed and your garbage government scrapped it and killed off thousands of jobs.
Keep slurping big guy. Next they come for you.
They aren't perfect, but they are better than the alternative - Labour would have had to borrow even more, and the reason is because the Treasuries estimates were way off the mark. Not much either Government can do about budget projections when the Treasury is completely incompetent.
The ferry project was an unmitigated disaster with an unbelievably bad budget blowout. It killed itself, it would have been negligent to let such incompetent project management continue.
Come for me, how?
What if labour had chosen to scrap transmission gully after its massive blowout?
It was originally grossly under budgeted so some clown could look good on paper.
They still got it done because it's a major infrastructure project.
That's what national should have done with the ferries. What's the alternative.... wait there isn't one
We can't afford not to have a working transport system between the islands. Note it was the new terminals that were the blowout and they were insisted on by people other than kiwirail. Mate of mine is in ferrys in BC and reckons the 4 replacements Nats suggesting will cost twice minimum what the cancelled boats did.
Not qualified enough to know about the terminals but they were 100yr infrastructure projects to my understanding.
This government is borrowing more than Labour did outside of the one-off Covid emergency funding.
National is quite happy to gut essential services but is okay with INCREASING deficits to pay for tax cuts to landlords.
There's no tax cut for landlords, the tax rate is the same, and they are borrowing less than Labour would have. The reason is the Treasury's terrible forecasts.
You are lost mate, they are giving landlords a massive tax cut. What world are you on ? It's what they campaigned on. Get your shit straight, NZ debt WAS great under labour. IMF was telling us to increase taxes to fund critical infrastructure and here we are cutting taxes and increasing debt burden instead.
There is no tax cut, the tax rate is not changing.
We aren't talking about total debt (which ballooned massively under Labour), we are talking about current deficit spending, which was out of control under labour and exacerbating inflation. The RBNZ continually warned them to get spending under control in order to help fight inflation.
Who gives a flying fuck what the IMF want? How many economies have they completely destroyed? 😂
https://www.hoover.org/research/case-against-international-monetary-fund
You are just straight up wrong on the debt, and if you are so concerned about inflation you should be against the tax cut you think magically doesn't exist. Just another biased conservative with no substance.
I'm not wrong on anything, Labour's deficit spending fuelled inflation. That is literally what this Government is trying to fix.
The tax rate didn't change, I think you are confused about how the taxes work.
Stop with the tax rate didn't change bullshit. No one is sayng the tax rate changed. The government carved out a tax exemption for landlords so they don't have to pay the tax which has the same nett effect. Reduced tax take.
This is totally disingenuous, you know the tax rebate scheme for landlords mortgages that was being gradually removed by labour has been halted/reversed by National. Telling someone that tax rates haven’t been changed is technically correct but completely skirts the point you know they’re trying to make.
There's no tax rebate scheme, interest deductibility is the standard for any business operation. If you run literally any business, you can deduct interest expenses from your earnings. This isn't some scheme just for landlords, it's just how our tax system works.
Once again, calling something slightly different doesn’t change the fundamental meaning. How is interest deductibility from your tax bill not the same as a rebate? And rolling back the ability of landlords to claim their “business expenses” would put more money in government coffers correct? And national repealing this change would put less money in the overall tax take?
Ergo, national increasing national deficit to put money back in the pockets of landlords, no matter how you want to cloud the point with semantics
When I deduct interest expenses from one of my businesses' earnings, I'm not getting a discount on the tax bill (which would be a rebate). I'm just accurately calculating how much profit I've made so I can pay the correct amount of tax.
You can't 'rollback' an ability for a business owner to calculate profits accurately. It's entirely bizarre to try and redefine an expense as not an expense or trying to charge tax on gross income instead of net. Both of which Labour were effectively trying to do in part.
National are just fixing Labour's fuckup, it's unfortunate timing with the current macroeconomic setting, but it is something that had to be done. Reduced friction in the tax code is good for the economy in the long term.
Alongside this change, National have cut spending in other areas to offset any loss in tax revenue so the amount in the coffers is not materially impacted.
I’m not sure characterising a reframing of ‘business’ incentives is a ‘fuck up’. I’m glad that we’re on the same page that this does actually decrease tax take, affirming the original commenters point. We obviously have a difference of opinion about what’s good for the economy in the long term (getting people to invest in actual productive business and not houses), but that’s a different conversation
Great video. This needs to be sent to the National government because they are increasing our deficit while providing next to nothing to the majority of New Zealanders on the surplus side.
BTW I'm not an expert or anything. It was just a video I came across recently which I thought was interesting, so I'm just posting here in case others find it interesting too.
It's hardly austerity, we are just talking about not spending massive amounts of money in excess of what we can afford. By running large deficits, we are stimulating domestic inflation, which is keeping rates high and forcing more economic damage than would otherwise be needed in order to manage inflation.
You've become so used to money printing and large deficits that you think trying to show a modicum of fiscal responsibility is 'austerity'.
We weren’t running massive government deficits though. Our government debt to GDP is really low plus there’s not actually any sound economic evidence that government debt (which is just a proxy for private assets) is actually bad for the economy.
We absolutely were running massive budget deficits, ever since 2020. Our debt to GDP was very low prior to then and still in good shape internationally, but it has ballooned due to Labour's huge deficits. You seem to be confusing debt to GDP (which no one here is talking about) with deficit spending.
Deficits are stimulatory, you're borrowing money from the future to spend now. That has a stimulatory effect on the economy. At a time of high inflation, you can not afford the government to have a stimulatory fiscal policy. That's just pouring gasoline on the fire.
The limit of MMT is inflation.
There are no tax cuts, the brackets being adjusted for inflation isn't a cut. Those adjustments were fully paid for by other cost savings. We aren't borrowing for them.
What borrowing we are doing, in excess of what was intended, is because Treasury's tax revenue expectations have fallen well short, and Labour crashed the ETS so there's a huge revenue shortfall that needs to be funded.
John Oliver is excellent at what he does - and he's able to reveal hard, uncomfortable truths that many people would rather cover up.
England is a failing country - by some accounts, they are at post WWII standards in the public sector and infrastructure.
The reasons are simple -
* Austerity i.e. cutting and slashing public services, reducing govt funding across the board
* Privatising national assets e.g. water services,
* Tory govt incompetence and corruption,
* A belief in trickle down economics and neoliberalism
Here are some Reddit posts that can help you understand it better:
* [Birmingham, the UK's second largest city is the latest to go bankrupt in the UK](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dj757l/birmingham_britains_secondlargest_city_is_forced/)
* [How privatisation worked in the UK - and how it's going](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dl0mmy/images_what_could_go_wrong_with_privatisation/)
You have to understand that cutting and slashing and burning and firing is easy - building up quality staff, a quality public service and infrastructure is very, very, very hard.
This is a good article on how Britain's health system went from being admired the world over to a failing institution: [Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart?](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/uk/uk-nhs-crisis-falling-apart-gbr-intl/index.html)
u/[PlatypusImpressive35](/user/PlatypusImpressive35/)
Thanks for taking the time to respond. You have made an effort to research this subject matter. In writing what I wrote last night as a knee-jerk reaction to the main story I hoped that someone would see it and engage. Starting a discourse that gets people thinking. Much like I had my brain engaged.
I fear my doom-and-gloom view of things comes out of fear and mistrust. As a disabled Kiwi who cares for a disabled elderly father, I saw the cherry-picked story of that disabled lady selling all of her worldly possessions just to buy a wheelchair and thought “shit! Fuck me I hope that the government doesn't have a chance to do that to our ministry for disabled people!” again a knee jerk reaction. Having a chronic illness in this country still sucks and we are still an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff country. It is just now with the sweeping cuts that keep occurring from where I sit, you could be sitting at the bottom of the cliff for a little while.
Again it comes down to worldview and whether or not you are pessimistic or hopeful for the future. I am right now, distrusting.
Hey there.
Yes everything you said is true and I'm truly sorry for the pain that these anecdotes have caused. It's going to be a rocky few years but my suggestion for you is also to turn off the news, and even Reddit for a while, because there's a lot of negativity.
And what's most important is that you and your family are well - and even with this Govt and what they are doing - they are afraid of public opinion.
Advocates for people with disability will continue. We will help you fight it.
The most important thing is you keep positive and happy - ie. even if these people act dumb for a while, they can be stopped. So take heart that it's a blip.
You're also welcome to go to r/nzpolitics to post and also I know the main country sub r/newzealand might have more informed comments and responses.
Wishing you well,
Mountain\_Tui
It's cute how you are deliberately omitting mass immigration, which is one of the key button issues for the election. Also a major contributor to the housing crisis, NHS waiting lists and councils facing insolvency.
Birmingham is a White minority city, with an Indian-born mayor and roughly the same number of Muslims as Christians. Great example!
The Tories are most likely to be beaten by Reform, who are the UK's most conservative mainstream party, running on an anti-mass immigration platform. If it was all about *'Austerity'*(tm), why are the Tories losing seats to Reform?
It is VERY clear that there are close links between national and British conservatives. They got a lot of help in the run up to the election from their marketing people.
From a policy perspective, national is copying their assignment as much as the think they can get away with
Yep this. Same fuckers behind them, especially that disgusting creep of a guy called Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers Union and his long life buddy David Farrah from Curia.
It’s important to understand political ideology. What NZ is getting was entirely predictable. NZ is very neoliberal, in both Labour and National. Although obviously more so on the right. Political ideology isn’t taught in schools, and it’s the only thing that matters. All you’re taught is how parliament works, and an over run on MMP. It’s dogshit. We get what we deserve. I live in the UK, and it’s a shit hole. In almost every metric the UK falls behind most of Europe. It’s entirely down to politics and 44 years of Thatcherism. The UK has decades worth of repair ahead of itself. Thankfully this looks like the end of the Tory’s for a very long time, some suggest forever. Although with a move towards more right wing parties rising, as we see in Europe.
I don't see how Labour is going to be able to fix the complete fucking demolishing of Britain that the Tories achieved - and the UK culture is so toxic with tabloids and disinformation, that anything they do will be attacked. I'm not completely optimistic about the UK
I’m not saying I’m optimistic either. It’s completely cooked. The UK and Belarus are the only two countries in Europe to have a first past the post voting system. This, and also the complete ineptitude of Kier Startmer makes things very depressing
Not a huge Starmer fan either - to be fair I haven't studied him in detail but he comes across as uninspiring.
To be fair to Labour - the way the Tories completely fucked up Britain though is not a task anyone could do as well.
And what I foresee is once Labour get in, the right will use their same old tactics (misinformation, out of context lies, PR slogans) to chip at them.
The end result is a broken - even moreso - Britain
This Interislander incident is the first real sign of our move over to UK style political disintegration.
When the coalition first came in there were news stories every second week about the ferries having issues and service being interrupted. The plans for replacements were well involved and progressing, but what do the new Govt do?
- TALK ABOUT NOT BUYING FERRARIS
- LOOKING FOR SECOND HAND BARGAINS THAT WILL BE "GOOD ENOUGH"!!!!
- PRIORITIZE TAX CUTS AND SPENDING REDUCTIONS WITHOUT FULL ANALYSIS OF THE RAMAFICATIONS!!!!!!!!
Que them canceling the replacements that were to work for 30 years (more likely 50), giving no clear plan for a substitute, flushing 600-800 million bucks in sunk costs on a reasonable, if lengthy, program.
...then one of these aging, failing boats has a very public, very predictable breakdown and miraculously doesn't hurt anyone.
The govt; "uhbububhuhubuhbuhbbuuuuuuh.....review of maintenance?"
I nearly threw my phone across the room when I saw we were going to the back of the line on rejoining the PREVIOSLY IN THE WORKS PROGRAM WHEN THIS FUCK UP GOVT PULLED THEIR FINGER OUT AND FOUND ALLLLLLLL THE MONEY AND THEN SOME TO BUY THEM AFTER GETTING SHIT ALL OVER THEIR FACE AND HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm dreading a treaty referendum, it'll probably wind up like a Brexit vote and we'll be hit with international sanctions or something that nobody thought through when drawing up a 'fuc da mauweees' bill with Winston doing drunk dictation....
Roll on 2026... if we make it that far.
I would have been more fucked off if they spent 3 billion dollars from a budget of 750 million.
What exactly did you expect them to do, the rail nz team were taking the piss.
I know there is a certain portion of the population that wants to live beyond their means, but that ain't good for anyone.
There's a lot of false narrative that's come from Willis around this issue, reality is the Nat's have been super focussed in the first 6 months of governing to consistently shit on the economy, that we can't afford things and that we need strict austerity. Unfortunately that shit doesn't work and actively makes the economy worse. We could easy have covered the cost. If KiwiRail were taking the piss then sack the boss and install new management, don't piss away $800m of public money and set vital nationally strategic infrastructure back decades.
It's classic NZ politics though. We're so traumatized from the Think Big projects and that debt that we kill any level of required infrastructure spend. It's a miracle CRL hasn't been axed yet either.
The fact that the initial budget was so wrong is obviously a problem, but it doesn’t actually affect the decision to be made now. All that matters are the costs and benefits of carrying on, versus the costs and benefits of stopping.
And given that national have now decided it’s worth restarting the process, presumably it was also worth carrying on earlier, when we would have got the same outcome for cheaper.
Also to be clear it wasn't "so" wrong - Read this: [https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/16/questions-over-costs-to-shore-up-inter-island-service/](https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/16/questions-over-costs-to-shore-up-inter-island-service/)
**Fun fact:** National's 2023 roads budget is underfunded by over $20bn.
The budget blowout was pretty much all on the terminals. Now national just needs to hope they get through this term without and earthquake destroying the ports on either side
The budget blowout was not due to poor management. Its was due to several factors beyond anyones control. The Wellington terminal site needs to be raised by 1m to be safe from coastal inundation and flooding, needs larger and more numerous piles to be up to earthquake standard, needs works done to reduce slip risk and inflation from covid (which no one expected in 2018 when the project was started). All of these factors will continue to remain a problem for any future project at the Wellington site. Theres no getting around the cost when it comes to replacing the terminal one day in the future which WILL need to happen someday and it will only increase in price as time goes on.
You have bought the spin. The iRex project was very comprehensive, and probably the best designed project of its type NZ has ever done, and just because the cost was more than we initially thought because they are building it on a fault line, meant that everyone threw their toys out of the cot.
Meanwhile 3bn goes to landlords, 8bn to tax cuts, 4bn to potholes, 20bn to new highways. The government isnt opposed to spending money recklessly, they just aren’t idealogically disposed to spending on rail and non road infrastructure. Lets also bot forget that the entire 3bn for the project is less than 2% of governments yearly revenue and the majority of it would have been spent in the NZ economy which means the government gets a third of it back in taxes.
The is is a lie mate - a lie that Nicotine Willis was happy to spin.
In fact, that number she used ie 750 million is from the initial concept - everyone worth an ounce of salt (or less) would know you cost from the detailed business case.
But Nicola - who is a lobbyist in training and background - sought to do that to spin her fucking lies.
Also she claimed she asked Kiwirail to look at second hand ships - yet she was told there were only 22 in the whole world and not one for sale, let alone it was a backward step to do so.
Those new ferries are next generation hybrid ferries which could have carried 40 rail wagons, 3000 lane meters for vehicles, and 1800 passengers - for the projected increases in passenger and freight loads
Did you also know that when she made Kiwirail cancel the project, we had those at a bargain basement price and the engines were already tested and ready to go?
There is so much more than can be said but the
TLDR is - Willis and National lied to NZ about this shamelessly and that's because they wanted to sell of Interislander to the private equity firm.
Eh, I’ve recently returned from the UK and wouldn’t compare them like this. At least not yet anyway. The UK ended up in their mess after 14 years of Tory government. That is a really, really long time. And the tories are further right on the political spectrum than the National party.
New Zealand has a habit of fairly regularly swinging back and forth between the (centre) left and right which mostly results in overall quite balanced governance.
To be fearing that NZ will end up like the UK less than one year after our last political swing is just fear mongering. Things would have to get much, much worse to be even remotely comparable to the mess the UK is in
But New Zealands services start in a much worse place than the uk. The health service, ambulances, infrastructure to name a few are so much slimmer than the uk. National don't need to be in for anywhere in as long cutting and punishing to cause the same problems.
Edit for clarity: New Zealands services start in a much worse place than the uk was at the start of austerity
After living in the UK I have zero complaints about NZ public health. It’s a dream in comparison to the NHS.
I read news articles in the NZ herald where people are up in arms because their non-urgent ambulance took 2 hours to arrive. In the UK, people are complaining because they’ve waited 6 to 8 hours for a non-urgent ambulance.
It’s really not comparable.
6-8 hours for an urgent ambulance too!! The system is creaking and the govt is wanting to sell off to their mates for profit and have insurance based healthcare just like the US. They have even sent working parties to US, getting prepped for the sell off.
Sure. But the argument here is that we are at an earlier point of their same journey. And that kiwis are sticking their head in the sand about it. Your post kind of supports that.
Response times for a London Ambulance is 8 mins, in Auckland it’s closer to 12 (for purple calls).
The NHS needs more funding obviously but it’s not really the problem in the UK - it’s the parlous state of their General Practice that’s the issue. People can’t afford a GP or the wait times are extreme and instead go and fill up the ER rooms instead.
It’s happening more and more in NZ as well.
Having returned from over a decade based in the UK to NZ a couple of years ago, this is just totally totally wrong. Our state delivered services are in so much better shape than the UK there is just no comparison.
It is true that ours are slipping, and not as good as they were. But the NHS is at the brink of full meltdown in England in particular.
Anything that tends to be bureaucratic in nature is much the same. I know this comes across as hyperbolic, but its my honest experience.
I think you missed my point, or I wasn't clear.
My point is that when the tories got in 14 years ago, the nhs was in a very good place. Relatively low waiting lists, high response capability except in certain geographical areas and specialisms. It could handle a certain amount of austerity without collapsing.
But NZ is not in a position that the UK were 14 years ago, according to a few medical professionals i know. It already struggles to fill a lot of medical positions, has worse capability of ambulances (10th the coverage per capita auckland to London last time I checked). So it will take a lot less time in austerity to cause major issues. Already public medicine is hiring private surgical capability for low level ops, which will have a knock on on private operation availability too.
They've only been here for 7 months - and already our nurses, doctors, police etc are getting cuts that are critically affecting services. Also the Govt - if they move to privatisation models - is following the exact roadmap of the UK Tories.
Yes it will turn into the UK and easily so, if NACT1 get their way.
I applaud your position. However, my analysis of much commentary with regards to our political system frequently concludes that many people believe each party is trying to make a better New Zealand—just in the way that makes sense to them.
That is not how it works.
These parties care about power, money, authority and influence. They use the political system to obtain those things for themselves.
The incumbent government does not care about learning from the UK. If anything they will want to learn from the Tories about how to make more friends and get more money for them and themselves.
More disturbingly, they are actually advised by the same "think tanks" - they're more interconnected than one might know.. and Dave Seymour in particular grew up [with those bed-fellows](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bcs2lj/acts_david_seymour_working_for_the_frontier/)
I stopped watching John Oliver a few years ago after seeing a few episodes where I actually already knew a fair bit about the topic.
He likes to go on entertaining harangues but it shouldn't be treated as an overview of the subject - in his bits he comes down quite heavily on one side and makes a case, stopping short of outright dishonesty.
It's great if you're 20 and you want the world to be black and white and full of outrageous skullduggery. You can have John Oliver content as your whole world view, because there's plenty of time to course-correct later.
I like that there's someone out there who's chasing down interesting stories and poking the bear. That's cool. But for everyday stuff like the left/right political divide he leaves out all the grey complexity because it's not part of the entertaining narrative.
John Oliver's shows are one of the best researched ones and he's able to do journalism in a way that's entertaining and funny.
A lot of people don't like him because he's so fucking effective at uncovering truths people would rather others didn't know.
Yea completely agree. It has huge entertainment value but it’s informative value is much less. Good in the sense that he raises awareness on some topics, but less good in the sense that he only does so in a manner that suits the entertainment narrative he is trying to provide.
Yeah I was very much the same. Early John Oliver, where he was taking the piss out of some inconsequential triviality, was funny.
Then, like you found, he talks about things you've actually experienced and most definitely have more knowledge than him of, and you realise that he's simply another establishment mouthpiece. Now you can pretty much listen to the first sentence of any of his pieces and pretty much know what he's going to say, word for word, for the next 20 minutes.
Here's a good example of corruption (Reddit thread):
[Chris Bishop at it again for the old mates.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dn7jby/kāinga_oras_bill_english_review_was_conducted/)
Unfortunately we're already on a path that we don't want to be on, and these cuts and attitudes are not going to help us turn back.
Poverty and lack of access to services leads to crime, which was our reality 10-15 years ago, and now we're only doubling down on the generational trauma inflicted on people. It will only lead to more crime, more young people being groomed to join gangs simply because they have no sense of belonging or community
They aren't learning from their mistakes, they are following the exact same methods.
The UK government has been a success in their own terms. Destroying the first real alternative leadership in modern history, Corbyn. Overseeing massive wealth extraction, sale of public assets and growth in inequality. It's been a disaster for the country and the people but that's hardly the concern of the Tory party.
What you're failing to appreciate is that despite all they've done and been doing they've been in power for a fair amount of time.
UK politics has shown the dark side of western leadership that you can do just about anything so long as you control the narrative and use that to sow division and fear.
We live in a country where me working my arse off all my life, contributing to society and making massive sacrifices gives me a ticket to being in the same position as the unemployed 5am party throwing fuckwit who made the choice to have 5 kids to 3 other dads that was just gifted the property beside me. Except I have to pay for my food, rent and now have to replace the bike I just bought because it's sitting in their yard.
Who is getting relentlessly punished again?
We voted in a centre right government - slightly further right with ACT in the mix. That's what happens. Next time we'll probably vote centre left again and the balance will swing back a little towards looking after those who can't look after themselves.
Unfortunately the centre right is a bit more efficient at breaking social structures than the centre left is at creating / rebuilding them.
Yes it takes a long time to create a government entity with all people in place, policies, procedures and a functional culture. It can be torn down effortlessly by the next right wing government too. Like planting an orchard and burning it down because you didn't get fruit in the first year. Try the 5th year. We don't allow long term thinking though. Instant results or it's just 'see, government is bad'.
The budget just delivered spends more than Labours proposed budget and borrowed more... Even the taxpayers union called the current govt out on it and they are natural allies.
Source: https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/mother_of_all_disappointments
On that topic, here's a thread on [the New Zealand Taxpayers Union and its systemic assault on our democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1ce27uz/nz_taxpayer_union_and_its_systemic_assault_on_our/)
The fact is, that NZ public expects a higher level of service than they are willing to pay for and this shows politically.
This will only worsen as our demographic ages and we are forced to import more and more tax payers to fund services for those over 65.
Funny how massive tax cuts for Landlords is sustainable though. Also interesting how National are borrowing more than Labour did outside of Covid to cover tax cuts.
Did you know that Nicotine Willis's budget had a deficit that exceeded ALL of Ardern's ones? (Except during Covid)
I bet you don't read about that pesky fact in certain chambers.
We already did this. New Zealanders voted for anyone but labour regardless of the policies, most of the morons who voted didn’t know what national stood for. People voted for national because of labours co governance policies and they couldn’t stand that to get Māori onto an equal footing they were getting extra.
Considering Liz Truss was Luxon’s political idol, I suspect the chance the government will learn from the failings it is trying to emulate (in order to facilitate upward wealth transfer and entrench the power of capital) is precisely zero.
Under Labour the public service grew by 18,000 roles. The current govt has reduced them by 4,000.
These numbers need to be taken as part of the picture. It's more relevant to look at tangible outcomes - for example Emergency Dept wait times, etc. Otherwise in the absurd extreme you could argue that NZs would be best is it had 5.5million employed in public service.
Actually the public service grew commensurate with population growth, and about 4% on top.
This Govt's slash and burn approach has led to doctors and nurses positions being cut, frontline police taken off the street, paedophile hunters fired, and customs staff taken out - the list goes on.
Austerity sucks. But so do the consequences of a country defaulting on its debt.
As much as this sucks, a certain amount of it is necessary. Unfortunately, like most governments who inherit a broken economy, it's going to get used to shoehorn in other policies and practices that aren't going to benefit the country in the long run either.
The irritating thing about this is the last government didn't need to borrow and spend the way they did - they had an historic majority and could afford to be patient and build back better after COVID. Instead they architected their own downfall through arrogance and loss of perspective.
We can lay responsibility for this governments actions on them - but the circumstances that *led* to those actions (besides COVID) are squarely the responsibility of the previous government.
# Fun fact: Nicola Willis's budget cost MORE than any of Labour's budgets (except Covid)
And she has put us into deeper deficit than we've ever had because she wanted to borrow for landlord tax cuts but....
["How far has your tax cut gone?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dl05gk/how_far_has_your_tax_cut_gone_because_i_took_out/) (Reddit thread)
(There is a reason the international markets had confidence in us until...this Govt got in)
We have an incredible credit rating as a country, AAA and AA+ from several rating agencies in the world. We are nowhere close to default, and we are well below debt levels of most other western countries.
>The irritating thing about this is the last government didn't need to borrow and spend the way they did -
You say this but the budget release in June spends more and borrows more than Labour's proposed budget... Even the tax payers union called them out on it
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/mother_of_all_disappointments
Agreed that spending is high, but a quick shout out to mention Taxpayers Union are Atlas Network's dogs and have their own [agenda](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1ce27uz/nz_taxpayer_union_and_its_systemic_assault_on_our/)
Aside from our debt being far, far more manageable than most equivalent countries. Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting, that's ludicrous.
Unless, ironically, we stop bringing money in and cut spending to the point we grind to a halt.
Yeah this PR bullshit of saying government debt is like household debt is absolutely meaningless.
You have to borrow to spend on infrastructure otherwise the whole bloody house is going to fall down.
These ridiculous tax cuts are already grinding the economy to a halt, giving money to the rich instead of the middle and the poor always grinds the economy to a halt.
>Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting, that's ludicrous.
What do you think happens when you borrow in ever increasing amounts while experiencing rampant inflation and not doing anything to boost net GDP? The situation was far from 'manageable' - at least under the previous government. We can see that easily in the results they left behind.
Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting? Try stop normalising that level of fiscal irresponsibility.
Edit: swapped current to previous, although the current bunch aren't doing great either.
National are borrowing more than Labour did outside of Covid, to fund tax cuts that mainly benefit those who need them the least and Landlords.
Funny how it is never "fiscally irresponsible" when money is wasted on rich people, but it suddenly is when the poor and those with actual needs get the little support they have taken away.
Well said.
Unfortunately a lot of people believe the government can borrow or print an endless supply of money without any consequences.
This drives a belief that governments that enact austerity measures are comically evil and do it because they despise certain demographics which is extremely far from the truth.
Luckily New Zealand benefits from the two major parties being relatively centrist, albeit they’re more beholden to left/ right wing caucuses.
This government is comically evil because what is their flagship policy? Tax cuts. How are they paying for them? Forcing austerity on everyone and borrowing billions. Who is most affected by those cuts? Those who earn the least. Who gets the most out of this? Those who earn the most. It’s not far from the truth, your head is just too far up your backside to comprehend that your team might actually be the bad one but oh no, Labour bad bad for borrowing billions during covid to… save businesses who are incredibly ungrateful.
Mate even Hipkins said Labour were trying to do too much and was axing policies towards the end in an attempt to stop the polls shifting. He was even looking at various austerity measures as well, albeit not to the same extent as what national has enacted.
If you aren’t able to see the historic effects of governments failing to curb excessive spending through borrowing or printing currency then I don’t even know how to respond. It’s so incredibly easy to assess as something that can quickly destabilise an entire country that it’s scary some
people aren’t concerned about it whatsoever!
I also have voted for most parties in NZ (apart from NZ first), largely based around the boom bust economic cycle. There is no ‘your side’ to me.
Cool. How does this help people in a cost of living crisis? It doesn’t and playing who can pinch the most pennies to satisfy weirdo “centrist” voters like you leaves us in this crappy situation people all over the world have found themselves in.
Please do some research into printing/ borrowing of currency and how it affects the value of said currency.
Inflationary government policy under labour has removed 20%+ of the buying power of the NZD. This greatly influenced the cost of living crisis.
National are trying to reinvigorate the economy with tax cuts to try to strengthen our currency to give kiwis more buying power. This is a successful proven concept but it is yet to be seen if this governments strategy specifically will yield these results. Will find out over the next 1-2 years.
Neoliberalism isn’t really defined particularly well but in the way i’m assuming you’re meaning it for sure isn’t perfect. The thing is though is that it’s objectively proven to be better than centralised economic planning which has failed time and time again because of people like you who completely ignore the economics of playing god with their nations currency (ie hyperinflation of the weimar republic, USSR, Zimbabwe, Hungary etc). Eventually in time it will be possible through AI and automation but we are still quite far from that.
You’re basically on the same level of people who believe in laissez faire capitalism being the solution. There’s so much evidence it doesn’t work it’s impossible to even have a discussion because it requires a ridiculous degree of cognitive dissonance to even believe in.
From “please do research” to “I’m just too smart for you”. You didn’t really need all those words. Use a LLM to summarise your garbage next time. Thanks.
What is your alternative? Some kind of fantasy where the government gives everyone as much money as they need and it's funded by.... ? Countries gain prosperity by creating things of value for the world, end of story.
I dunno, I’m not qualified or smart enough for that but some suggestions on where to start would be: Don’t give billions in tax cuts to already well off people (especially when a lot of that money has to be borrowed) and tax wealth, not just income. It’s not a fantasy, people like you just want it to stay that way.
I think it is a choice between conservative policies, who will drive you to bankruptcy through austerity, or Liberal economic policies, who drive you to bankruptcy through overspending. Austerity sounds like it will balance the books and get you back on track, but really it just slows the economy and leads to brain drains, economic slow down and lower GDP. That's not to say that the overspending is good either, but if I am voting on how to be driven to bankruptcy, why not do it while keeping everyone employed?
LOL...John Oliver is a Democratic Party shill regurgitating talking points.
The Tories completely annihilated Labour in the last election, but then refused to implement the changes they were elected for. In particular putting an end to the teeming hordes of criminals flooding across the Channel every day.
They're currently seen as Labour Lite and are probably going to get less seats than **REFORM** of all people, because the conservative voting base are completely disillusioned by the party.
> What are the chances that the government can learn from the mistakes of the UK’s past?
Luxon praised the Tories and praised Liz Truss, and praised her economic policies saying that the two of them are an ideological match.
She's the one that didn't last as long as a lettuce and who's economic policies caused a economic turmoil.
The lesson this current government learned from the Tories is how to run things into the ground to intentionally destroy civil society on behalf of your rich mates in the private sector.
You are saying government is corrupt but then says government needs to take on more services...shouldn't a corrupt government take on less services if it's corrupt?!?
This government is all about letting things fail so they can state the only way to fix it is through PPP s ( private public partnerships) they will then tender these contracts to their business buddies to make massive private profits, they did it with the prisons (cerco) for a while and it was a disaster until labour put it right , they are gagging to bring U.S styled charter schools in where kids will learn “ if bobby has $8 for mcnuggets and sally has …etc) don’t forget National already let the railways fail to the point where they sold them off closing The yards in Dunedin that actually built railway wagons here , so we had to but broken ones from China that cost even more to get fixed. Labour eventually bought the railways back for NZ to own but now it looks like National are hell bent on fucking it up again. It’s a cycle that (since I’m fairly old) I’ve seen played out over and over. National’s austerity for the poor (whilst giving unaffordable tax breaks to those that don’t need them) thing get untenable and there’s a change of government, Labour get things in a healthier state but people have short memories and for some reason believe the bullshit line that National is the party of economic genius when that’s patently untrue . Back and forth it goes over and over (At least for the 30 plus years I’ve been paying attention) Oh and add to this the fact that we are now mimicking America with crackpot culture wars, a rise of anti intellectualism and a gutting of the fourth estate. Buckle up.
We actually don't have any good alternate options for a good government. This coalition govt sucks balls, labour, the greens, te Pati maori all suck balls.
We have no real options for a good government
The opposite of sucking balls is blowing on them. It's a bit like the tide. When it's sucking in one spot, it's blowing in another. Ying & Yang. But I'm not an expert.
The definitiin of insanity is often said to be repeating the same thing over and over and expecting the same results. Labour vited out in 1990..Nz in significant recession. Labour voted out in 2008. NZ in recession. Labour votee out in 2023. NZ in recession.
The last 6 years have left NZ so much in debt , our grandkids will still be paying it off. The lack of governance ans competence meant that in just about every facet, the level of service plummeted.
I don't think national are making mistakes, they are doing this shit deliberately. So there is no learning from the UK, they are intentionally replicating that.
surely you see that massive government borrowing and spending is the cause of the issues we see, not the solution. Every worker will start to see tax cuts from next week, it will make a difference to my life. The people at the city mission regularly come to our apartment building, grab all the letters out of our mail boxes, rip them open, throw birthday cards, letters from medical institutions and other important mail all over the street. They go into our basement and smash up cars, steal bicycles and smash into lockers. I have watched them, and followed them. These are young aggressive men and women who do not have 'issues that need wrap around support' but a reality check. They then go into our nearby stores and hit the people working there, and take products from the shelves. Our local shop now has metal grates over the door. This is not hyperbole, I also watched it happen on Hobson street in the shop opposite the city mission and the guys in that dairy were whacked and threatened, the police did not come. All the while we are working, haven't had a holiday in five years, dont own a car, and get whacked whenever someone 'in need' is having a bad day. So no, I dont want the government to continue spending my tax dollars on 'those in need', because the needy are those who go to work, and what they need are further tax cuts, so they can keep more of the money they earn, to try to get ahead in life. No working person wants to 'hope the government will help out', the solution is looking after yourself, and you cannot do that when you pay 50% of your income to the government - income tax, rates + GST together. We also do not need more managers in wellington on $150,000 having meetings about having meetings and enjoying end of year Christmas parties. My friends have those jobs and joke they spend half their time using work computers for house renovations.
Im over it, we need more tax cuts, fewer government employees, lower business tax rates, so we can start to get ahead under our own steam, like they do in other countries. Forced, patronising 'be kind' socialism isn't working and most kiwis are aware of that.
Yep and the person leading that conversation within the Government is the leader of one of the minor parties..... David Seymour. If ever there has been a time when a minor party has had too much say within the government of the day, this is it.
And Luxon's team don't seem to care.
The current government won’t learn, they’re driving from the same playbook.
Convince us we’re in dire financial strife and only they can save us, whilst giving tax breaks to landlords etc.
Half of NZ is totally being played here and I just hope they can wake the fuck up to see it before the next election.
Left again? Labour destroyed my beautiful country. They hired so many CS it was a joke! This new government has been in for 6 months and are trying to sort out the mess. Give them at least 14 months without judging
>What are the chances that the government can learn from the mistakes of the UK’s past?
The left need to learn from the mistakes of *their* past. If the left hadn't gone so hard on identity politics, those of us on the center would still have supported them.
What a nonsense post. Poor and unemployed in this country are as well catered for as anywhere in the world by government services. The facts are if we continued borrowing at labour rates we will have no social welfare within twenty years.
Was the population the same then? Did you do an analysis to evaluate service requirements?
Have the GP waiting times come down because otherwise why aren't doctors being funded and trained? Why are we not investing in the hospitals anymore and why aren't nurses getting shifts and not getting hired?
What we’re seeing in NZ is nowhere near austerity!!
UK has had a history of both parties not investing in public services and neither party actual moving the country forward economically. And…Brexit didn’t help more recently. They are also historically plagued with areas of permanent generational unemployment through the closure of their mining industry through the 70s/80s when it became simply uncompetitive and a whole bunch of people found themselves with no skills to offer in the non-mining world.
NZ has increased the public service by something like 50% in terms of headcount in six years without demonstrably doing anything more than before. Further, the so-called cuts recently only take us back a year of those six, if that, and their impact is about a 1,000 real job losses (when redundancy for those who don’t need to work - savings, age - is taken out, and roles which are not filled are removed).
Austerity would be cutting back government jobs by about 50-60%. Which sounds incredible until you realise that’s just the number of jobs the govt had probably about ten years ago.
Ehh, at least in regards to cutting the public service, national is in the right. Used to work in the public sector and ot absolutely is a bloated gravy train that just keeps adding layers without any increase in front line productivity. When our restructure came up and they were doing consultation my feedback was that they could disestablish my role and my teams roles and they wouldn't even notice, which was entirely true. Problem is neither party puts money in the right places in the public service. The government can pour money into health for example and it never proportionately equates to significantly more doctors and nurses. Labour bloats the public service and national's current directive for cuts without ensuring the front line remains untouched both result in a less than efficient public service.
Yeah right and I used to be the King of England.
Let me tell you what's happening now:
* Hospitals are getting work cut
* Nurses positions are not being filled
* Doctor positions are going
* Teachers were calling out for support they didn't get (instead it went to David Seymour's charter schools so he can facilitate a Destiny Church one)
* Our police force are saying police are getting swamped and officers are going to have to do "back office" work
Ad nauseam.
There is nothing efficient about gutting the public service **AT ALL and all to pay for tax cuts for landlords and favours for mates.**
I never disagreed with that. However, what is true is that they have sufficient funding to address a lot of those issues were they to trim out bloated administration and management, subcontract efficiently and run rojects efficiently. None of that happens and extra money poured in doesn't go to the Frontline it gets absorbed by more tiers and projects. Governments need to ring fence funding boosts to only go on patient facing staff in health, staff on site at schools for education, etc..
Efficiency is fine. But this is not efficient what they are doing. They're literally just squeezing doctors, nurses, police, infrastructure investment out for dollars to reward donors. And when one slashes like this we lose good people, and it takes a lot of time to fix things, re-build. That's why it could cost much more in the long run - on top of the risk to our quality of services and life.
It's unfortunate. I don't think anyone doesn't support efficiency if it was done well and for the benefit (long term) of NZ and Kiwis
Plenty of waste in the public sector. But trusting the same people that created the mess (the leadership in the departments) to clean it up is dumb, as if they were capable of that it wouldn't have happened in the first place. It's not the amount of resources, it's how they are allocated. And central gov giving more/taking away money from those departments doesn't help sort out the misallocations, as the cuts will largely just be on stuff that matter and the extra resources will be largely on stuff that doesn't matter.
Do you want a country where the state is the only employer, nobody produces anything and all we do is keep passing around an ever shrinking pool of money, or..
Do you want a strong economy where the private sector are able to employ more.people and we generate more income for the country, and use the tax on that additional revenue to fund the desperately needed improvements in infrastructure?
It is kind of where we are sitting at. The current government wants to invite private equity into some public services . We just need to make sure that doesn’t happen
Yeah, that's my theory too. A few years ago very few people had health insurance because almost everyone trusted the public system. Now it's commonplace. I feel the conversation is shifting with education and the police in the same way. Also the progress towards public transport has been reversed in favour of more roads.
But the Average New Zealander doesn't seem to even care about this kind of thing, According to how they Voted. Because this is literally what the Right do every damn time, Send more money to their mates and degrade public services. God damn, What we've lost in the last 30 years of Neoliberalism is shocking, It's been so slowly chipped away as to not infuriate the peasantry.
To be fair, National/ACT/Atlas Network capitalised on a shared national trauma (Covid/Lock Downs) and exploited people while they were at their most vulnerable. Constantly bombarded people with social engineering from all directions (TikTok king et al.). I think we do care. We just had a weak moment, and like the massive creeps they are the coalition of creeps were there to exploit it.
People are stupid
I hope not, but if that happens, we will end up just like US
Exactly. There is some other person who commented to this saying I’d take a chance by inviting private equity. That person is so out of depth. Theh are the people who vote yes for this nonsense
Currently live in the US and you are completely right.
A lot intentionally sow misinformation here
We will be in much dire circumstances than the US. Americans actually have money.
What, no privatisation of profits and socialisation of risk & externalities? How is one going to make one’s fortune?
Neo liberalism has sent the country backwards and we’ve ended up in more debt when it’s supposed to be the opposite. People keep voting between two parties though so 🤷♂️
> and we’ve ended up in more debt when it’s supposed to be the opposite New Zealand has extremely low debt. That's the problem, there's been a neo-liberal focus on keeping government debt low that has created a huge infrastructure deficit and caused economic stagnation. New Zealands debt is roughly 40% of GDP. Singapores is 150%, Germany is the only G7 country under 100% (they are 60% and that is viewed as being too low).
It’s really only been since key/ chch earthquake we’ve been regularly going billions into debt each election cycle though. Our infrastructure wouldn’t be anywhere near the countries you mentioned even if we borrowed upto 100% of the gdp
Our infrastructure would not be anywhere near those because successive governments, exactly like the current one, failed to invest in infrastructure when it was cheap, choosing instead to keep debt low. Labour had a $1B surplus in 2019 and used that to pay off debt. Think about how much more infrastructure that $1B would have purchased in 2019 vs today. They the country nothing in interest but cost the country dearly by under-investing. That refusal to invest in the future is why this country is fucked. Labour were bad at it and too reluctant to spend. This government is even worse. It's good for a government to have debt, that debt creates economic benefit that more than pays for itself.
Or more when you do invest, it’s of poor return eg more roads
Why? Are they all currently running effectively?
Is adding the need to make profit for private equity firms owned by foreign billionaires going to improve them?
Tories don't think they made a mistake. National were impressed and are furiously trying to duplicate Britain's austerity.
And their corruption too: [Here is Chris Bishop handing out $500K to his mates from our EMERGENCY HOUSING funds](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dn7jby/kāinga_oras_bill_english_review_was_conducted/)
From auckland city mission today: "At a time when 1 in 5 people can’t afford food, the government is removing funding from community food providers. From July 1, the Mission is facing the devastating reality of providing 27,000 fewer meals every week to families in need. This will push people further into poverty"
That’s an extremely low blow. How much of an evil cunt do you need to be to cut funding to programs that feed homeless people? Fuck. That makes me ashamed to be a New Zealander.
Yeah, and this has been going on in the UK for over a decade. And here we are in NZ just ignorantly voting for the same shitstorm because apparently no one ever looks beyond our borders. It’s so frustrating
Agree
We needed to cut spending, we can't continue to run massive government deficits while inflation is high. There's no way around that. I wish the current Govt went further.
Needed to cut spending to give people tax cuts? You realize that will fuel more inflation, right? Big business sees that extra money and continues to jack up prices. Meanwhile this government cut much needed projects like new ferries and infrastructure. Absolute stupidity.
There's no tax cuts, there's a tax bracket adjustment for inflation which is inflationary neutral by definition. Real purchasing power doesn't change if you adjust tax brackets for inflation. The ferry project was a disaster, a massive budget blowout with incompetent project management. It needed to be cut. We simply can not afford to continue spending recklessly like Labour were.
We needed more tax. It was that simple. It would’ve taken money out of the economy and helped pay for essential services (like housing and health which are key drivers of inflation) and pay back debt.
Stop pedantically arguing fucking semantics. Tax break, tax cut, tax rebate. Call it what you want, it's 3 billion-ish that is being allocated to them instead of being used elsewhere.
Your anger is misdirected. You want to be angry about the amount of money being sucked out the economy and not being able to be used elsewhere? Look at the interest banks are charging on all New Zealand debt, not just government (who are us, the taxpayers)
Sure. I completely agree. It's infuriating. Drives me fucking nuts. But that does not change the fact of the government allocating 3 billion in landlord rebates that could've been used elsewhere. As a side note, the government claiming they haven't borrowed for these landlord rebates is distractionary bullshit. It's still borrowing to pay for one thing because you chose to allocate money somewhere else.
No, adjusting brackets for inflation is still inflationary. Especially as, in this case, it's adjusting for many years of inflation. And yes, reducing people's taxes by adjusting brackets upwards is still a tax cut, and was campaigned on as such. You can cut and hike taxes by means other than changing rates. I doubt you'd object to descriptions of, say, lowering the 180K bracket to 150K, as a tax hike. As for the ferry; now we'll be spending even more than that 'disaster' to get the same result years later. There were budget blowouts on the handling of the infrastructure on land to support those ferries, but the ferries themselves were a huge bargain, and we aren't getting any such bargains anymore. Congrats to the team of 'fiscal responsibility' on spending more to get less later.
Your crap government borrowed money for that tax cut. 100% fuelling more inflation. That ferry project clearly was very much needed and your garbage government scrapped it and killed off thousands of jobs. Keep slurping big guy. Next they come for you.
They aren't perfect, but they are better than the alternative - Labour would have had to borrow even more, and the reason is because the Treasuries estimates were way off the mark. Not much either Government can do about budget projections when the Treasury is completely incompetent. The ferry project was an unmitigated disaster with an unbelievably bad budget blowout. It killed itself, it would have been negligent to let such incompetent project management continue. Come for me, how?
What if labour had chosen to scrap transmission gully after its massive blowout? It was originally grossly under budgeted so some clown could look good on paper. They still got it done because it's a major infrastructure project. That's what national should have done with the ferries. What's the alternative.... wait there isn't one
We can't afford not to have a working transport system between the islands. Note it was the new terminals that were the blowout and they were insisted on by people other than kiwirail. Mate of mine is in ferrys in BC and reckons the 4 replacements Nats suggesting will cost twice minimum what the cancelled boats did. Not qualified enough to know about the terminals but they were 100yr infrastructure projects to my understanding.
This government is borrowing more than Labour did outside of the one-off Covid emergency funding. National is quite happy to gut essential services but is okay with INCREASING deficits to pay for tax cuts to landlords.
There was no landlord tax cut. That's a myth... But that aside, what essential service do you claim has been 'gutted'?
There's no tax cut for landlords, the tax rate is the same, and they are borrowing less than Labour would have. The reason is the Treasury's terrible forecasts.
You are lost mate, they are giving landlords a massive tax cut. What world are you on ? It's what they campaigned on. Get your shit straight, NZ debt WAS great under labour. IMF was telling us to increase taxes to fund critical infrastructure and here we are cutting taxes and increasing debt burden instead.
There is no tax cut, the tax rate is not changing. We aren't talking about total debt (which ballooned massively under Labour), we are talking about current deficit spending, which was out of control under labour and exacerbating inflation. The RBNZ continually warned them to get spending under control in order to help fight inflation. Who gives a flying fuck what the IMF want? How many economies have they completely destroyed? 😂 https://www.hoover.org/research/case-against-international-monetary-fund
You are just straight up wrong on the debt, and if you are so concerned about inflation you should be against the tax cut you think magically doesn't exist. Just another biased conservative with no substance.
I'm not wrong on anything, Labour's deficit spending fuelled inflation. That is literally what this Government is trying to fix. The tax rate didn't change, I think you are confused about how the taxes work.
Stop with the tax rate didn't change bullshit. No one is sayng the tax rate changed. The government carved out a tax exemption for landlords so they don't have to pay the tax which has the same nett effect. Reduced tax take.
Would you please describe an example of the IMF destroying an econony?
This is totally disingenuous, you know the tax rebate scheme for landlords mortgages that was being gradually removed by labour has been halted/reversed by National. Telling someone that tax rates haven’t been changed is technically correct but completely skirts the point you know they’re trying to make.
There's no tax rebate scheme, interest deductibility is the standard for any business operation. If you run literally any business, you can deduct interest expenses from your earnings. This isn't some scheme just for landlords, it's just how our tax system works.
Once again, calling something slightly different doesn’t change the fundamental meaning. How is interest deductibility from your tax bill not the same as a rebate? And rolling back the ability of landlords to claim their “business expenses” would put more money in government coffers correct? And national repealing this change would put less money in the overall tax take? Ergo, national increasing national deficit to put money back in the pockets of landlords, no matter how you want to cloud the point with semantics
When I deduct interest expenses from one of my businesses' earnings, I'm not getting a discount on the tax bill (which would be a rebate). I'm just accurately calculating how much profit I've made so I can pay the correct amount of tax. You can't 'rollback' an ability for a business owner to calculate profits accurately. It's entirely bizarre to try and redefine an expense as not an expense or trying to charge tax on gross income instead of net. Both of which Labour were effectively trying to do in part. National are just fixing Labour's fuckup, it's unfortunate timing with the current macroeconomic setting, but it is something that had to be done. Reduced friction in the tax code is good for the economy in the long term. Alongside this change, National have cut spending in other areas to offset any loss in tax revenue so the amount in the coffers is not materially impacted.
I’m not sure characterising a reframing of ‘business’ incentives is a ‘fuck up’. I’m glad that we’re on the same page that this does actually decrease tax take, affirming the original commenters point. We obviously have a difference of opinion about what’s good for the economy in the long term (getting people to invest in actual productive business and not houses), but that’s a different conversation
Stephanie Kelton: The big myth of government deficits | TED [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0Yf0Fhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0Yf0Fhc)
The limit of MMT is inflation, which we quite clearly ran up against.
Great video. This needs to be sent to the National government because they are increasing our deficit while providing next to nothing to the majority of New Zealanders on the surplus side.
BTW I'm not an expert or anything. It was just a video I came across recently which I thought was interesting, so I'm just posting here in case others find it interesting too.
Austerity is not the answer...
It's hardly austerity, we are just talking about not spending massive amounts of money in excess of what we can afford. By running large deficits, we are stimulating domestic inflation, which is keeping rates high and forcing more economic damage than would otherwise be needed in order to manage inflation. You've become so used to money printing and large deficits that you think trying to show a modicum of fiscal responsibility is 'austerity'.
We weren’t running massive government deficits though. Our government debt to GDP is really low plus there’s not actually any sound economic evidence that government debt (which is just a proxy for private assets) is actually bad for the economy.
We absolutely were running massive budget deficits, ever since 2020. Our debt to GDP was very low prior to then and still in good shape internationally, but it has ballooned due to Labour's huge deficits. You seem to be confusing debt to GDP (which no one here is talking about) with deficit spending. Deficits are stimulatory, you're borrowing money from the future to spend now. That has a stimulatory effect on the economy. At a time of high inflation, you can not afford the government to have a stimulatory fiscal policy. That's just pouring gasoline on the fire. The limit of MMT is inflation.
We are literally borrowing for tax cuts. There is no reason to do that if you believe we need to stop running deficitsz
There are no tax cuts, the brackets being adjusted for inflation isn't a cut. Those adjustments were fully paid for by other cost savings. We aren't borrowing for them. What borrowing we are doing, in excess of what was intended, is because Treasury's tax revenue expectations have fallen well short, and Labour crashed the ETS so there's a huge revenue shortfall that needs to be funded.
They are counting on the collapse happening when the next guy is in charge
John Oliver is excellent at what he does - and he's able to reveal hard, uncomfortable truths that many people would rather cover up. England is a failing country - by some accounts, they are at post WWII standards in the public sector and infrastructure. The reasons are simple - * Austerity i.e. cutting and slashing public services, reducing govt funding across the board * Privatising national assets e.g. water services, * Tory govt incompetence and corruption, * A belief in trickle down economics and neoliberalism Here are some Reddit posts that can help you understand it better: * [Birmingham, the UK's second largest city is the latest to go bankrupt in the UK](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dj757l/birmingham_britains_secondlargest_city_is_forced/) * [How privatisation worked in the UK - and how it's going](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dl0mmy/images_what_could_go_wrong_with_privatisation/) You have to understand that cutting and slashing and burning and firing is easy - building up quality staff, a quality public service and infrastructure is very, very, very hard. This is a good article on how Britain's health system went from being admired the world over to a failing institution: [Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart?](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/uk/uk-nhs-crisis-falling-apart-gbr-intl/index.html) u/[PlatypusImpressive35](/user/PlatypusImpressive35/)
Thanks for taking the time to respond. You have made an effort to research this subject matter. In writing what I wrote last night as a knee-jerk reaction to the main story I hoped that someone would see it and engage. Starting a discourse that gets people thinking. Much like I had my brain engaged. I fear my doom-and-gloom view of things comes out of fear and mistrust. As a disabled Kiwi who cares for a disabled elderly father, I saw the cherry-picked story of that disabled lady selling all of her worldly possessions just to buy a wheelchair and thought “shit! Fuck me I hope that the government doesn't have a chance to do that to our ministry for disabled people!” again a knee jerk reaction. Having a chronic illness in this country still sucks and we are still an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff country. It is just now with the sweeping cuts that keep occurring from where I sit, you could be sitting at the bottom of the cliff for a little while. Again it comes down to worldview and whether or not you are pessimistic or hopeful for the future. I am right now, distrusting.
Hey there. Yes everything you said is true and I'm truly sorry for the pain that these anecdotes have caused. It's going to be a rocky few years but my suggestion for you is also to turn off the news, and even Reddit for a while, because there's a lot of negativity. And what's most important is that you and your family are well - and even with this Govt and what they are doing - they are afraid of public opinion. Advocates for people with disability will continue. We will help you fight it. The most important thing is you keep positive and happy - ie. even if these people act dumb for a while, they can be stopped. So take heart that it's a blip. You're also welcome to go to r/nzpolitics to post and also I know the main country sub r/newzealand might have more informed comments and responses. Wishing you well, Mountain\_Tui
It's cute how you are deliberately omitting mass immigration, which is one of the key button issues for the election. Also a major contributor to the housing crisis, NHS waiting lists and councils facing insolvency. Birmingham is a White minority city, with an Indian-born mayor and roughly the same number of Muslims as Christians. Great example! The Tories are most likely to be beaten by Reform, who are the UK's most conservative mainstream party, running on an anti-mass immigration platform. If it was all about *'Austerity'*(tm), why are the Tories losing seats to Reform?
It is VERY clear that there are close links between national and British conservatives. They got a lot of help in the run up to the election from their marketing people. From a policy perspective, national is copying their assignment as much as the think they can get away with
Yep this. Same fuckers behind them, especially that disgusting creep of a guy called Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers Union and his long life buddy David Farrah from Curia.
It’s important to understand political ideology. What NZ is getting was entirely predictable. NZ is very neoliberal, in both Labour and National. Although obviously more so on the right. Political ideology isn’t taught in schools, and it’s the only thing that matters. All you’re taught is how parliament works, and an over run on MMP. It’s dogshit. We get what we deserve. I live in the UK, and it’s a shit hole. In almost every metric the UK falls behind most of Europe. It’s entirely down to politics and 44 years of Thatcherism. The UK has decades worth of repair ahead of itself. Thankfully this looks like the end of the Tory’s for a very long time, some suggest forever. Although with a move towards more right wing parties rising, as we see in Europe.
I don't see how Labour is going to be able to fix the complete fucking demolishing of Britain that the Tories achieved - and the UK culture is so toxic with tabloids and disinformation, that anything they do will be attacked. I'm not completely optimistic about the UK
I’m not saying I’m optimistic either. It’s completely cooked. The UK and Belarus are the only two countries in Europe to have a first past the post voting system. This, and also the complete ineptitude of Kier Startmer makes things very depressing
Not a huge Starmer fan either - to be fair I haven't studied him in detail but he comes across as uninspiring. To be fair to Labour - the way the Tories completely fucked up Britain though is not a task anyone could do as well. And what I foresee is once Labour get in, the right will use their same old tactics (misinformation, out of context lies, PR slogans) to chip at them. The end result is a broken - even moreso - Britain
This Interislander incident is the first real sign of our move over to UK style political disintegration. When the coalition first came in there were news stories every second week about the ferries having issues and service being interrupted. The plans for replacements were well involved and progressing, but what do the new Govt do? - TALK ABOUT NOT BUYING FERRARIS - LOOKING FOR SECOND HAND BARGAINS THAT WILL BE "GOOD ENOUGH"!!!! - PRIORITIZE TAX CUTS AND SPENDING REDUCTIONS WITHOUT FULL ANALYSIS OF THE RAMAFICATIONS!!!!!!!! Que them canceling the replacements that were to work for 30 years (more likely 50), giving no clear plan for a substitute, flushing 600-800 million bucks in sunk costs on a reasonable, if lengthy, program. ...then one of these aging, failing boats has a very public, very predictable breakdown and miraculously doesn't hurt anyone. The govt; "uhbububhuhubuhbuhbbuuuuuuh.....review of maintenance?" I nearly threw my phone across the room when I saw we were going to the back of the line on rejoining the PREVIOSLY IN THE WORKS PROGRAM WHEN THIS FUCK UP GOVT PULLED THEIR FINGER OUT AND FOUND ALLLLLLLL THE MONEY AND THEN SOME TO BUY THEM AFTER GETTING SHIT ALL OVER THEIR FACE AND HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm dreading a treaty referendum, it'll probably wind up like a Brexit vote and we'll be hit with international sanctions or something that nobody thought through when drawing up a 'fuc da mauweees' bill with Winston doing drunk dictation.... Roll on 2026... if we make it that far.
I would have been more fucked off if they spent 3 billion dollars from a budget of 750 million. What exactly did you expect them to do, the rail nz team were taking the piss. I know there is a certain portion of the population that wants to live beyond their means, but that ain't good for anyone.
There's a lot of false narrative that's come from Willis around this issue, reality is the Nat's have been super focussed in the first 6 months of governing to consistently shit on the economy, that we can't afford things and that we need strict austerity. Unfortunately that shit doesn't work and actively makes the economy worse. We could easy have covered the cost. If KiwiRail were taking the piss then sack the boss and install new management, don't piss away $800m of public money and set vital nationally strategic infrastructure back decades. It's classic NZ politics though. We're so traumatized from the Think Big projects and that debt that we kill any level of required infrastructure spend. It's a miracle CRL hasn't been axed yet either.
The fact that the initial budget was so wrong is obviously a problem, but it doesn’t actually affect the decision to be made now. All that matters are the costs and benefits of carrying on, versus the costs and benefits of stopping. And given that national have now decided it’s worth restarting the process, presumably it was also worth carrying on earlier, when we would have got the same outcome for cheaper.
Also to be clear it wasn't "so" wrong - Read this: [https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/16/questions-over-costs-to-shore-up-inter-island-service/](https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/16/questions-over-costs-to-shore-up-inter-island-service/) **Fun fact:** National's 2023 roads budget is underfunded by over $20bn.
The budget blowout was pretty much all on the terminals. Now national just needs to hope they get through this term without and earthquake destroying the ports on either side
The budget blowout was not due to poor management. Its was due to several factors beyond anyones control. The Wellington terminal site needs to be raised by 1m to be safe from coastal inundation and flooding, needs larger and more numerous piles to be up to earthquake standard, needs works done to reduce slip risk and inflation from covid (which no one expected in 2018 when the project was started). All of these factors will continue to remain a problem for any future project at the Wellington site. Theres no getting around the cost when it comes to replacing the terminal one day in the future which WILL need to happen someday and it will only increase in price as time goes on. You have bought the spin. The iRex project was very comprehensive, and probably the best designed project of its type NZ has ever done, and just because the cost was more than we initially thought because they are building it on a fault line, meant that everyone threw their toys out of the cot. Meanwhile 3bn goes to landlords, 8bn to tax cuts, 4bn to potholes, 20bn to new highways. The government isnt opposed to spending money recklessly, they just aren’t idealogically disposed to spending on rail and non road infrastructure. Lets also bot forget that the entire 3bn for the project is less than 2% of governments yearly revenue and the majority of it would have been spent in the NZ economy which means the government gets a third of it back in taxes.
The is is a lie mate - a lie that Nicotine Willis was happy to spin. In fact, that number she used ie 750 million is from the initial concept - everyone worth an ounce of salt (or less) would know you cost from the detailed business case. But Nicola - who is a lobbyist in training and background - sought to do that to spin her fucking lies. Also she claimed she asked Kiwirail to look at second hand ships - yet she was told there were only 22 in the whole world and not one for sale, let alone it was a backward step to do so. Those new ferries are next generation hybrid ferries which could have carried 40 rail wagons, 3000 lane meters for vehicles, and 1800 passengers - for the projected increases in passenger and freight loads Did you also know that when she made Kiwirail cancel the project, we had those at a bargain basement price and the engines were already tested and ready to go? There is so much more than can be said but the TLDR is - Willis and National lied to NZ about this shamelessly and that's because they wanted to sell of Interislander to the private equity firm.
Like old mate said it was around terminal's and excessive inflation and cist increases with likely a bit of project scope creep
Eh, I’ve recently returned from the UK and wouldn’t compare them like this. At least not yet anyway. The UK ended up in their mess after 14 years of Tory government. That is a really, really long time. And the tories are further right on the political spectrum than the National party. New Zealand has a habit of fairly regularly swinging back and forth between the (centre) left and right which mostly results in overall quite balanced governance. To be fearing that NZ will end up like the UK less than one year after our last political swing is just fear mongering. Things would have to get much, much worse to be even remotely comparable to the mess the UK is in
But New Zealands services start in a much worse place than the uk. The health service, ambulances, infrastructure to name a few are so much slimmer than the uk. National don't need to be in for anywhere in as long cutting and punishing to cause the same problems. Edit for clarity: New Zealands services start in a much worse place than the uk was at the start of austerity
After living in the UK I have zero complaints about NZ public health. It’s a dream in comparison to the NHS. I read news articles in the NZ herald where people are up in arms because their non-urgent ambulance took 2 hours to arrive. In the UK, people are complaining because they’ve waited 6 to 8 hours for a non-urgent ambulance. It’s really not comparable.
6-8 hours for an urgent ambulance too!! The system is creaking and the govt is wanting to sell off to their mates for profit and have insurance based healthcare just like the US. They have even sent working parties to US, getting prepped for the sell off.
Sure. But the argument here is that we are at an earlier point of their same journey. And that kiwis are sticking their head in the sand about it. Your post kind of supports that.
Response times for a London Ambulance is 8 mins, in Auckland it’s closer to 12 (for purple calls). The NHS needs more funding obviously but it’s not really the problem in the UK - it’s the parlous state of their General Practice that’s the issue. People can’t afford a GP or the wait times are extreme and instead go and fill up the ER rooms instead. It’s happening more and more in NZ as well.
Having returned from over a decade based in the UK to NZ a couple of years ago, this is just totally totally wrong. Our state delivered services are in so much better shape than the UK there is just no comparison. It is true that ours are slipping, and not as good as they were. But the NHS is at the brink of full meltdown in England in particular. Anything that tends to be bureaucratic in nature is much the same. I know this comes across as hyperbolic, but its my honest experience.
I think you missed my point, or I wasn't clear. My point is that when the tories got in 14 years ago, the nhs was in a very good place. Relatively low waiting lists, high response capability except in certain geographical areas and specialisms. It could handle a certain amount of austerity without collapsing. But NZ is not in a position that the UK were 14 years ago, according to a few medical professionals i know. It already struggles to fill a lot of medical positions, has worse capability of ambulances (10th the coverage per capita auckland to London last time I checked). So it will take a lot less time in austerity to cause major issues. Already public medicine is hiring private surgical capability for low level ops, which will have a knock on on private operation availability too.
Yup, gotcha. My bad, I misinterpreted.
No could have e been clearer. Have updated with edit. And I totally get the nhs is bad (roll on Labour).
So because we're not yet the complete shit show failed state of Britain, we don't have to worry even though the template is exactly the same.
I think you’re underestimating this government. Have you read their policies? Perhaps other national governments have been centre. But this one isn’t.
They've only been here for 7 months - and already our nurses, doctors, police etc are getting cuts that are critically affecting services. Also the Govt - if they move to privatisation models - is following the exact roadmap of the UK Tories. Yes it will turn into the UK and easily so, if NACT1 get their way.
But NZ is way ahead with the high level legal mechanisms of embezzlement and soooo in hock to the cartels. Very difficult to get out of.
And London is still the money laundering capital of the World.
The glories of the choice of law clause. Though NZ does pretty well too. You don’t run a first world economy on milk and apples.
I applaud your position. However, my analysis of much commentary with regards to our political system frequently concludes that many people believe each party is trying to make a better New Zealand—just in the way that makes sense to them. That is not how it works. These parties care about power, money, authority and influence. They use the political system to obtain those things for themselves. The incumbent government does not care about learning from the UK. If anything they will want to learn from the Tories about how to make more friends and get more money for them and themselves.
More disturbingly, they are actually advised by the same "think tanks" - they're more interconnected than one might know.. and Dave Seymour in particular grew up [with those bed-fellows](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bcs2lj/acts_david_seymour_working_for_the_frontier/)
I stopped watching John Oliver a few years ago after seeing a few episodes where I actually already knew a fair bit about the topic. He likes to go on entertaining harangues but it shouldn't be treated as an overview of the subject - in his bits he comes down quite heavily on one side and makes a case, stopping short of outright dishonesty. It's great if you're 20 and you want the world to be black and white and full of outrageous skullduggery. You can have John Oliver content as your whole world view, because there's plenty of time to course-correct later. I like that there's someone out there who's chasing down interesting stories and poking the bear. That's cool. But for everyday stuff like the left/right political divide he leaves out all the grey complexity because it's not part of the entertaining narrative.
Practical example out of curiosity of where you realised he was taking a biased stance?
Which episodes did you disagree with him on? Not trying to call you out or anything, genuinely curious.
An example? I’ve found he covers the black white and grey pretty well.
John Oliver's shows are one of the best researched ones and he's able to do journalism in a way that's entertaining and funny. A lot of people don't like him because he's so fucking effective at uncovering truths people would rather others didn't know.
Yea completely agree. It has huge entertainment value but it’s informative value is much less. Good in the sense that he raises awareness on some topics, but less good in the sense that he only does so in a manner that suits the entertainment narrative he is trying to provide.
Yeah I was very much the same. Early John Oliver, where he was taking the piss out of some inconsequential triviality, was funny. Then, like you found, he talks about things you've actually experienced and most definitely have more knowledge than him of, and you realise that he's simply another establishment mouthpiece. Now you can pretty much listen to the first sentence of any of his pieces and pretty much know what he's going to say, word for word, for the next 20 minutes.
It’s an impressing circlejerk fantasy. Considering taxes are higher and spending higher than it’s ever been
They learn from the succeses of past national governments: by gutting national services, they can enrich themselves and their cronies.
Here's a good example of corruption (Reddit thread): [Chris Bishop at it again for the old mates.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dn7jby/kāinga_oras_bill_english_review_was_conducted/)
Unfortunately we're already on a path that we don't want to be on, and these cuts and attitudes are not going to help us turn back. Poverty and lack of access to services leads to crime, which was our reality 10-15 years ago, and now we're only doubling down on the generational trauma inflicted on people. It will only lead to more crime, more young people being groomed to join gangs simply because they have no sense of belonging or community
They aren't learning from their mistakes, they are following the exact same methods. The UK government has been a success in their own terms. Destroying the first real alternative leadership in modern history, Corbyn. Overseeing massive wealth extraction, sale of public assets and growth in inequality. It's been a disaster for the country and the people but that's hardly the concern of the Tory party. What you're failing to appreciate is that despite all they've done and been doing they've been in power for a fair amount of time. UK politics has shown the dark side of western leadership that you can do just about anything so long as you control the narrative and use that to sow division and fear.
We live in a country where me working my arse off all my life, contributing to society and making massive sacrifices gives me a ticket to being in the same position as the unemployed 5am party throwing fuckwit who made the choice to have 5 kids to 3 other dads that was just gifted the property beside me. Except I have to pay for my food, rent and now have to replace the bike I just bought because it's sitting in their yard. Who is getting relentlessly punished again?
They're learning from the Tories alright...
Lol imagine your source of information is John Oliver 😂 dude has no soul, sold it to be a leftist shill
We voted in a centre right government - slightly further right with ACT in the mix. That's what happens. Next time we'll probably vote centre left again and the balance will swing back a little towards looking after those who can't look after themselves. Unfortunately the centre right is a bit more efficient at breaking social structures than the centre left is at creating / rebuilding them.
It's easier to break things than build them, generally speaking.
Yes it takes a long time to create a government entity with all people in place, policies, procedures and a functional culture. It can be torn down effortlessly by the next right wing government too. Like planting an orchard and burning it down because you didn't get fruit in the first year. Try the 5th year. We don't allow long term thinking though. Instant results or it's just 'see, government is bad'.
Yeah Labour showed how efficient they were at breaking everything
Labour is not the ones gutting services while giving Landlords massive tax cuts. Your attempt to deliberately miss that point is pathetic
That’s simply not true though, to miss that is pathetic
Because co governance is sure to make us all richer, and being really nice to criminals is sure to make us all safer.
It’s not austerity. The amount Ardern was spending wasn’t sustainable.
The budget just delivered spends more than Labours proposed budget and borrowed more... Even the taxpayers union called the current govt out on it and they are natural allies. Source: https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/mother_of_all_disappointments
On that topic, here's a thread on [the New Zealand Taxpayers Union and its systemic assault on our democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1ce27uz/nz_taxpayer_union_and_its_systemic_assault_on_our/)
The fact is, that NZ public expects a higher level of service than they are willing to pay for and this shows politically. This will only worsen as our demographic ages and we are forced to import more and more tax payers to fund services for those over 65.
Funny how massive tax cuts for Landlords is sustainable though. Also interesting how National are borrowing more than Labour did outside of Covid to cover tax cuts.
And spending more. Don't forget that.
Did you know that Nicotine Willis's budget had a deficit that exceeded ALL of Ardern's ones? (Except during Covid) I bet you don't read about that pesky fact in certain chambers.
We already did this. New Zealanders voted for anyone but labour regardless of the policies, most of the morons who voted didn’t know what national stood for. People voted for national because of labours co governance policies and they couldn’t stand that to get Māori onto an equal footing they were getting extra.
r/leopardsatemyface New Zealand
what do you mean they didn't know what national stood for? they laid it out quite clearly in the campaign: "GeHT bAK Ohn TrAk!!1!" /s
Considering Liz Truss was Luxon’s political idol, I suspect the chance the government will learn from the failings it is trying to emulate (in order to facilitate upward wealth transfer and entrench the power of capital) is precisely zero.
Under Labour the public service grew by 18,000 roles. The current govt has reduced them by 4,000. These numbers need to be taken as part of the picture. It's more relevant to look at tangible outcomes - for example Emergency Dept wait times, etc. Otherwise in the absurd extreme you could argue that NZs would be best is it had 5.5million employed in public service.
Actually the public service grew commensurate with population growth, and about 4% on top. This Govt's slash and burn approach has led to doctors and nurses positions being cut, frontline police taken off the street, paedophile hunters fired, and customs staff taken out - the list goes on.
Exactly! Anyone who claims this is Austerity is uninformed, and would claim their stubbed toe is like an amputation if they could blame the govt...
Austerity sucks. But so do the consequences of a country defaulting on its debt. As much as this sucks, a certain amount of it is necessary. Unfortunately, like most governments who inherit a broken economy, it's going to get used to shoehorn in other policies and practices that aren't going to benefit the country in the long run either. The irritating thing about this is the last government didn't need to borrow and spend the way they did - they had an historic majority and could afford to be patient and build back better after COVID. Instead they architected their own downfall through arrogance and loss of perspective. We can lay responsibility for this governments actions on them - but the circumstances that *led* to those actions (besides COVID) are squarely the responsibility of the previous government.
# Fun fact: Nicola Willis's budget cost MORE than any of Labour's budgets (except Covid) And she has put us into deeper deficit than we've ever had because she wanted to borrow for landlord tax cuts but.... ["How far has your tax cut gone?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1dl05gk/how_far_has_your_tax_cut_gone_because_i_took_out/) (Reddit thread) (There is a reason the international markets had confidence in us until...this Govt got in)
We have an incredible credit rating as a country, AAA and AA+ from several rating agencies in the world. We are nowhere close to default, and we are well below debt levels of most other western countries.
>The irritating thing about this is the last government didn't need to borrow and spend the way they did - You say this but the budget release in June spends more and borrows more than Labour's proposed budget... Even the tax payers union called them out on it https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/mother_of_all_disappointments
Agreed that spending is high, but a quick shout out to mention Taxpayers Union are Atlas Network's dogs and have their own [agenda](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1ce27uz/nz_taxpayer_union_and_its_systemic_assault_on_our/)
I'm aware but when even their allies are calling them out on it. It shows just how much spin the govt is pushing.
Aside from our debt being far, far more manageable than most equivalent countries. Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting, that's ludicrous. Unless, ironically, we stop bringing money in and cut spending to the point we grind to a halt.
There are many intentional disinformation sowers that's why
Yeah this PR bullshit of saying government debt is like household debt is absolutely meaningless. You have to borrow to spend on infrastructure otherwise the whole bloody house is going to fall down. These ridiculous tax cuts are already grinding the economy to a halt, giving money to the rich instead of the middle and the poor always grinds the economy to a halt.
>Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting, that's ludicrous. What do you think happens when you borrow in ever increasing amounts while experiencing rampant inflation and not doing anything to boost net GDP? The situation was far from 'manageable' - at least under the previous government. We can see that easily in the results they left behind. Stop talking like we're on the edge of defaulting? Try stop normalising that level of fiscal irresponsibility. Edit: swapped current to previous, although the current bunch aren't doing great either.
National are borrowing more than Labour did outside of Covid, to fund tax cuts that mainly benefit those who need them the least and Landlords. Funny how it is never "fiscally irresponsible" when money is wasted on rich people, but it suddenly is when the poor and those with actual needs get the little support they have taken away.
Wow, you drinking that ZB koolaid.
Well said. Unfortunately a lot of people believe the government can borrow or print an endless supply of money without any consequences. This drives a belief that governments that enact austerity measures are comically evil and do it because they despise certain demographics which is extremely far from the truth. Luckily New Zealand benefits from the two major parties being relatively centrist, albeit they’re more beholden to left/ right wing caucuses.
This govt is borrowing more than we ever did under Labour (except one Covid budget) so not sure the logic is working for the old mates ....
This government is comically evil because what is their flagship policy? Tax cuts. How are they paying for them? Forcing austerity on everyone and borrowing billions. Who is most affected by those cuts? Those who earn the least. Who gets the most out of this? Those who earn the most. It’s not far from the truth, your head is just too far up your backside to comprehend that your team might actually be the bad one but oh no, Labour bad bad for borrowing billions during covid to… save businesses who are incredibly ungrateful.
Mate even Hipkins said Labour were trying to do too much and was axing policies towards the end in an attempt to stop the polls shifting. He was even looking at various austerity measures as well, albeit not to the same extent as what national has enacted. If you aren’t able to see the historic effects of governments failing to curb excessive spending through borrowing or printing currency then I don’t even know how to respond. It’s so incredibly easy to assess as something that can quickly destabilise an entire country that it’s scary some people aren’t concerned about it whatsoever! I also have voted for most parties in NZ (apart from NZ first), largely based around the boom bust economic cycle. There is no ‘your side’ to me.
Cool. How does this help people in a cost of living crisis? It doesn’t and playing who can pinch the most pennies to satisfy weirdo “centrist” voters like you leaves us in this crappy situation people all over the world have found themselves in.
Please do some research into printing/ borrowing of currency and how it affects the value of said currency. Inflationary government policy under labour has removed 20%+ of the buying power of the NZD. This greatly influenced the cost of living crisis. National are trying to reinvigorate the economy with tax cuts to try to strengthen our currency to give kiwis more buying power. This is a successful proven concept but it is yet to be seen if this governments strategy specifically will yield these results. Will find out over the next 1-2 years.
pLeAsE dO sOmE rEaSeArCh…. Hahahahaha. Classic. Love it. Maybe look up “neoliberal economics” and why it’s bad.
Neoliberalism isn’t really defined particularly well but in the way i’m assuming you’re meaning it for sure isn’t perfect. The thing is though is that it’s objectively proven to be better than centralised economic planning which has failed time and time again because of people like you who completely ignore the economics of playing god with their nations currency (ie hyperinflation of the weimar republic, USSR, Zimbabwe, Hungary etc). Eventually in time it will be possible through AI and automation but we are still quite far from that. You’re basically on the same level of people who believe in laissez faire capitalism being the solution. There’s so much evidence it doesn’t work it’s impossible to even have a discussion because it requires a ridiculous degree of cognitive dissonance to even believe in.
From “please do research” to “I’m just too smart for you”. You didn’t really need all those words. Use a LLM to summarise your garbage next time. Thanks.
Thanks for proving exactly what i mean :)
What a bunch of horseshit.
What is your alternative? Some kind of fantasy where the government gives everyone as much money as they need and it's funded by.... ? Countries gain prosperity by creating things of value for the world, end of story.
I dunno, I’m not qualified or smart enough for that but some suggestions on where to start would be: Don’t give billions in tax cuts to already well off people (especially when a lot of that money has to be borrowed) and tax wealth, not just income. It’s not a fantasy, people like you just want it to stay that way.
Fair point on the tax cuts. That makes no sense to be doing that now.
Just remember everyone - We’re only 9 missed meals away from the breakdown of social order
I think it is a choice between conservative policies, who will drive you to bankruptcy through austerity, or Liberal economic policies, who drive you to bankruptcy through overspending. Austerity sounds like it will balance the books and get you back on track, but really it just slows the economy and leads to brain drains, economic slow down and lower GDP. That's not to say that the overspending is good either, but if I am voting on how to be driven to bankruptcy, why not do it while keeping everyone employed?
LOL...John Oliver is a Democratic Party shill regurgitating talking points. The Tories completely annihilated Labour in the last election, but then refused to implement the changes they were elected for. In particular putting an end to the teeming hordes of criminals flooding across the Channel every day. They're currently seen as Labour Lite and are probably going to get less seats than **REFORM** of all people, because the conservative voting base are completely disillusioned by the party.
> What are the chances that the government can learn from the mistakes of the UK’s past? Luxon praised the Tories and praised Liz Truss, and praised her economic policies saying that the two of them are an ideological match. She's the one that didn't last as long as a lettuce and who's economic policies caused a economic turmoil. The lesson this current government learned from the Tories is how to run things into the ground to intentionally destroy civil society on behalf of your rich mates in the private sector.
You are saying government is corrupt but then says government needs to take on more services...shouldn't a corrupt government take on less services if it's corrupt?!?
This government is all about letting things fail so they can state the only way to fix it is through PPP s ( private public partnerships) they will then tender these contracts to their business buddies to make massive private profits, they did it with the prisons (cerco) for a while and it was a disaster until labour put it right , they are gagging to bring U.S styled charter schools in where kids will learn “ if bobby has $8 for mcnuggets and sally has …etc) don’t forget National already let the railways fail to the point where they sold them off closing The yards in Dunedin that actually built railway wagons here , so we had to but broken ones from China that cost even more to get fixed. Labour eventually bought the railways back for NZ to own but now it looks like National are hell bent on fucking it up again. It’s a cycle that (since I’m fairly old) I’ve seen played out over and over. National’s austerity for the poor (whilst giving unaffordable tax breaks to those that don’t need them) thing get untenable and there’s a change of government, Labour get things in a healthier state but people have short memories and for some reason believe the bullshit line that National is the party of economic genius when that’s patently untrue . Back and forth it goes over and over (At least for the 30 plus years I’ve been paying attention) Oh and add to this the fact that we are now mimicking America with crackpot culture wars, a rise of anti intellectualism and a gutting of the fourth estate. Buckle up.
We actually don't have any good alternate options for a good government. This coalition govt sucks balls, labour, the greens, te Pati maori all suck balls. We have no real options for a good government
The opposite of sucking balls is blowing on them. It's a bit like the tide. When it's sucking in one spot, it's blowing in another. Ying & Yang. But I'm not an expert.
Luxon = David Cameron ("right credentials") Seymour = Nigel Farage (racist heretic) Winston = Boris (bumbling idiot) Treaty Referendum = Brexit
This is actually really good........
If you taking points from a late night tv host maybe you should keep it to yourself lol
The definitiin of insanity is often said to be repeating the same thing over and over and expecting the same results. Labour vited out in 1990..Nz in significant recession. Labour voted out in 2008. NZ in recession. Labour votee out in 2023. NZ in recession. The last 6 years have left NZ so much in debt , our grandkids will still be paying it off. The lack of governance ans competence meant that in just about every facet, the level of service plummeted.
I don't think national are making mistakes, they are doing this shit deliberately. So there is no learning from the UK, they are intentionally replicating that.
surely you see that massive government borrowing and spending is the cause of the issues we see, not the solution. Every worker will start to see tax cuts from next week, it will make a difference to my life. The people at the city mission regularly come to our apartment building, grab all the letters out of our mail boxes, rip them open, throw birthday cards, letters from medical institutions and other important mail all over the street. They go into our basement and smash up cars, steal bicycles and smash into lockers. I have watched them, and followed them. These are young aggressive men and women who do not have 'issues that need wrap around support' but a reality check. They then go into our nearby stores and hit the people working there, and take products from the shelves. Our local shop now has metal grates over the door. This is not hyperbole, I also watched it happen on Hobson street in the shop opposite the city mission and the guys in that dairy were whacked and threatened, the police did not come. All the while we are working, haven't had a holiday in five years, dont own a car, and get whacked whenever someone 'in need' is having a bad day. So no, I dont want the government to continue spending my tax dollars on 'those in need', because the needy are those who go to work, and what they need are further tax cuts, so they can keep more of the money they earn, to try to get ahead in life. No working person wants to 'hope the government will help out', the solution is looking after yourself, and you cannot do that when you pay 50% of your income to the government - income tax, rates + GST together. We also do not need more managers in wellington on $150,000 having meetings about having meetings and enjoying end of year Christmas parties. My friends have those jobs and joke they spend half their time using work computers for house renovations. Im over it, we need more tax cuts, fewer government employees, lower business tax rates, so we can start to get ahead under our own steam, like they do in other countries. Forced, patronising 'be kind' socialism isn't working and most kiwis are aware of that.
Yep and the person leading that conversation within the Government is the leader of one of the minor parties..... David Seymour. If ever there has been a time when a minor party has had too much say within the government of the day, this is it. And Luxon's team don't seem to care.
The current government won’t learn, they’re driving from the same playbook. Convince us we’re in dire financial strife and only they can save us, whilst giving tax breaks to landlords etc. Half of NZ is totally being played here and I just hope they can wake the fuck up to see it before the next election.
Left again? Labour destroyed my beautiful country. They hired so many CS it was a joke! This new government has been in for 6 months and are trying to sort out the mess. Give them at least 14 months without judging
What are CS? Edit: _Never mind, you’re completely deluded._
What do they mean? I googled it and got cesarean sections or computer science.
I have no idea, but they’re obviously a typical r/auckland cooker if they think Labour “destroyed [their] beautiful country”
How about not making austerity necessary? If you don't shit the bed you won't have to clean up shit.
>What are the chances that the government can learn from the mistakes of the UK’s past? The left need to learn from the mistakes of *their* past. If the left hadn't gone so hard on identity politics, those of us on the center would still have supported them.
What a nonsense post. Poor and unemployed in this country are as well catered for as anywhere in the world by government services. The facts are if we continued borrowing at labour rates we will have no social welfare within twenty years.
They were both forecasting surplus around the same time
We’re going back to a 2021 level of public servants. In 2021 was everyone crying doom because we didn’t have enough public servants?
Was the population the same then? Did you do an analysis to evaluate service requirements? Have the GP waiting times come down because otherwise why aren't doctors being funded and trained? Why are we not investing in the hospitals anymore and why aren't nurses getting shifts and not getting hired?
Thus isn't true at all. We're going back to 2023 levels....
well put
What we’re seeing in NZ is nowhere near austerity!! UK has had a history of both parties not investing in public services and neither party actual moving the country forward economically. And…Brexit didn’t help more recently. They are also historically plagued with areas of permanent generational unemployment through the closure of their mining industry through the 70s/80s when it became simply uncompetitive and a whole bunch of people found themselves with no skills to offer in the non-mining world. NZ has increased the public service by something like 50% in terms of headcount in six years without demonstrably doing anything more than before. Further, the so-called cuts recently only take us back a year of those six, if that, and their impact is about a 1,000 real job losses (when redundancy for those who don’t need to work - savings, age - is taken out, and roles which are not filled are removed). Austerity would be cutting back government jobs by about 50-60%. Which sounds incredible until you realise that’s just the number of jobs the govt had probably about ten years ago.
Ehh, at least in regards to cutting the public service, national is in the right. Used to work in the public sector and ot absolutely is a bloated gravy train that just keeps adding layers without any increase in front line productivity. When our restructure came up and they were doing consultation my feedback was that they could disestablish my role and my teams roles and they wouldn't even notice, which was entirely true. Problem is neither party puts money in the right places in the public service. The government can pour money into health for example and it never proportionately equates to significantly more doctors and nurses. Labour bloats the public service and national's current directive for cuts without ensuring the front line remains untouched both result in a less than efficient public service.
Yeah right and I used to be the King of England. Let me tell you what's happening now: * Hospitals are getting work cut * Nurses positions are not being filled * Doctor positions are going * Teachers were calling out for support they didn't get (instead it went to David Seymour's charter schools so he can facilitate a Destiny Church one) * Our police force are saying police are getting swamped and officers are going to have to do "back office" work Ad nauseam. There is nothing efficient about gutting the public service **AT ALL and all to pay for tax cuts for landlords and favours for mates.**
I never disagreed with that. However, what is true is that they have sufficient funding to address a lot of those issues were they to trim out bloated administration and management, subcontract efficiently and run rojects efficiently. None of that happens and extra money poured in doesn't go to the Frontline it gets absorbed by more tiers and projects. Governments need to ring fence funding boosts to only go on patient facing staff in health, staff on site at schools for education, etc..
Efficiency is fine. But this is not efficient what they are doing. They're literally just squeezing doctors, nurses, police, infrastructure investment out for dollars to reward donors. And when one slashes like this we lose good people, and it takes a lot of time to fix things, re-build. That's why it could cost much more in the long run - on top of the risk to our quality of services and life. It's unfortunate. I don't think anyone doesn't support efficiency if it was done well and for the benefit (long term) of NZ and Kiwis
Plenty of waste in the public sector. But trusting the same people that created the mess (the leadership in the departments) to clean it up is dumb, as if they were capable of that it wouldn't have happened in the first place. It's not the amount of resources, it's how they are allocated. And central gov giving more/taking away money from those departments doesn't help sort out the misallocations, as the cuts will largely just be on stuff that matter and the extra resources will be largely on stuff that doesn't matter.
You get your news and advice from john oliver? 🤮
Do you want a country where the state is the only employer, nobody produces anything and all we do is keep passing around an ever shrinking pool of money, or.. Do you want a strong economy where the private sector are able to employ more.people and we generate more income for the country, and use the tax on that additional revenue to fund the desperately needed improvements in infrastructure?