ITEM ONE:
New Zealand has been ranked the second least corrupt country in the world in the 2014 rankings, according to the global NGO, Transparency International. Last year NZ topped the rankings at number one least corrupt country, tied with Denmark.
This year, Denmark nudged ahead of NZ as the world’s least corrupt country.
Australia is back in 11th place, ahead of Germany (12 equal with Iceland), and United Kingdom (14).
But after revelations in the investigative book Dirty Politics, that the New Zealand National-led Government has been involved with black operations designed to destroy its opponents and advance the reputations and opportunities of its allies… it raises questions on whether New Zealanders should be crowing about how squeaky clean its government and political representatives really are.
Certainly this is the basis of an analysis report by popular political scientist Bryce Edwards in the NZ Herald.)
Bryce Edwards evaluates how the corruption report measures how transparent government departments are, how transparent are a country’s databases, for example how open and transparent are the companies register, listing who is a director and shareholder of what. It also looks at other corruption indexes to evaluate how straight up or dodgy a country is.
But Edwards argues that the Transparency methodology does not factor specifically how politicians may use underhand and dodgy methods to ruin their opponents.
Edwards also describes other research that shows significant proportions of Kiwis believe New Zealand politicians and political parties are corrupt.
Here’s an example of his analysis:
… last year’s Global Corruption Barometre showed a very different picture of public life in New Zealand. Based on surveys of public opinion, it showed that there is a crisis of confidence in many public institutions.
The results for this country show that political parties in particular are perceived as being corrupt, along with institutions such as Parliament and the media. For example, according to the survey, 75% of New Zealanders believe that political parties are affected by corruption. 12% believe the parties are ‘extremely corrupt’. (Ref. NZ Herald.)
And Kiwis have good reason to point the bone at the politicians. In recent years we saw a former Labour Party cabinet minister Taito Phillip Field sent to prison on corruption charges. We discovered how another former Labour Party minister was using his Government credit card to watch porn in hotels he was staying at (that politician is now an Ambassador for New Zealand working in the Pacific).
Only this week the NZ Police’s former head of Northland’s organised crime unit, was sent to prison for four years after being found guilty of Methamphetamine charges.
We have seen the Prime Minister John Key justifying telling political journalists an untruth because he was in a hurry and didn’t want to be held up explaining in detail a potentially damaging revelation. And the revelations in the book Dirty Politics, and the findings of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security’s report last week, certainly, in part, show how deep and dirty black operations based in the Prime Minister’s office had become.
So if our Aussie friends feel a little deflated at only making 11th place on the least corrupt country list… Spare a thought for your Kiwi cousins who are right up at the top on the squeaky clean rankings, but are up to their necks in the political swill.
ITEM TWO:
Auckland’s hot housing market is continuing to climb, hitting another all time high with Barfoot and Thompson real estate recording an average house sale price of $756,909 in October. That is up $20,000 on the average sale price for September.
And last month, the Bank of New Zealand’s chief economist Tony Alexander predicted the Auckland market will continue to rise with demand from purchasers originating from China expected to increase.
The BNZ gave considerable attention to trends across the ditch in Australia, where, it said, governments are clamping down on foreign investment in residential homes. Tony Alexander reasoned that with conditions becoming tougher for offshore investors to purchase property in Australia… New Zealand, and in particular, Auckland, will become the destination of choice.
The fact remains, that thousands of Auckland homes are going up in value faster than the salaries of the people who own them. Problems flow on. Inflationary pressures intensify in the real estate sector, the Reserve Bank cannot continue to take money out of the pockets of mortgagees through hiking up base interest rates as this impacts on other sectors of the domestic economy, land banking by investors in the Greater Auckland Region is locking up land that could otherwise be used for new houses, and other fertile productive greenfield land is being developed for new suburbs faster than many in the region can tolerate.
Prior to the election, opposition parties, mainly Labour, came up with a solution in part by restricting the ability of offshore investors to buy up homes and drive up prices beyond the limits of what Kiwis can afford.
But debate on solutions was stifled after the National-led Government ruled out such policies, referring to them as Xenophobic.
However, over night New Zealand’s deputy prime minister and finance minister Bill English indicated the National-led Government is reconsidering its long-held position of doing nothing to ease foreign investment in residential housing.
Bill English told the New Zealand Herald: “Apparently Australia is looking at putting in some kind of scheme, we’re open minded about whatever gives you more information.
“I’m sure if the Australians are doing it we can look at what they’re doing, we’re quite open minded about that.”
Across The Ditch broadcasts live weekly on Five AA Australia and webcasts on LiveNews.co.nz.
Transparency International is a business friendly NGO who has a close relationship past with commercial interests.
The Chair was a past World Bank member, and his committee is stacked full of mathematics, Accountants, and other folk close to business interests.
Who knows they may be heavily investing in NZ property also, so if we finally get a registry we may find several of the board members have bought property here?
It appears this group who praises NZ as one of the least corrupt, simply has an agenda we should be weary of not to give oxygen towards.
If the UN human rights operated this anti corruption think tank we would be much more confident, but as usual the corporate global elite runs the media such as this NGO of this we have no doubt, so ignore the results they don’t represent the real story.
It’s relatively easy to appear to be free from corruption when only certain types of corruption are considered. Corruption of information can have significant reprecussions, especially when the information concerns law and sovereignty.
You could argue that NZ is one of the least corrupt countries in the world . But that just means it’s very , very good at hiding its dirt .
Until now .
The Great New Zealand institutionalised Lie is gonna blow . Any day now .
138 years ago NZ’s first refrigerated ship load of our finest farmer product set sail .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_%28ship%29
138 years later , we endure one of the most sophisticated swindles ever to have stood the test of time .
It’s such a great , great swindle it even has those who are being swindled protecting and feeding those who are doing the swindling .
Sounds like an abusive and dysfunctional relationship doesn’t it ?
Deviancy + secrecy + trauma = dysfunction .
Housing is a mess. With Auckland been a major source of jobs and speculaters given a free ride a clash of those looking for accommodation and those buying it up as fast as they can must be reaching a breaking point.
Hidden in all of this is Nationals immigration policy, over 140000 non or semi skilled migrants per annum are coming in on work visas, at a time when unemployment is 5-8% depending on who you believe. They tend to come from countries with great poverty and are supremely exploitable as a result and whose precise reason for entry is to provide an ongoing supply of unquestioning cheap labour to keep the lid firmly on wages especially in the stage of the economic cycle where employees would rightly expect more money. They and their families have to live somewhere but with unliveable wages and increasing rents things are getting difficult.
Add to this the foreign investor now being advertised as wanting to buy in NZ, you know the ones who didnt really exist according to National, lies of course, and prices will continue to blow up until the bubble burst. Most of the speculatoers are playing the market here owing to the tax free gains.
Aucklands housing market is out of control and government inaction and voters voting with their greedy little pockets will have a lot to answer for.
I might just add the very good article in the NZ Herald by Brian Rudman 05/12/14, where he exposed Nick Smith misleading the public on the amount of houses being built in Auckland. He writes;
“Says Dr Smith: “11,060 new sections and dwellings have been achieved in the first year – more than 20 per cent above the target of 9000.”
“Of the 5523 new sections created in the year to September, only 617 were in SHAs. And of the 7366 new dwellings approved in the year, only 354 (4.8 per cent) would, if they go ahead, be built in an SHA”. He goes on;
“Of those 354, at least 247 were in areas under development before they were designated SHAs, such as Flat Bush, Northern Tamaki and Hobsonville”.
“In other words, the vast majority of the 11,060 new sections and dwellings Dr Smith is bragging about were planned before the Government rushed to Auckland with its housing accord. As for claiming 11,060 new sections and dwellings have been “achieved”, that’s just fairy tale territory. Only a handful of new dwellings have been “achieved”. Well research Mr Rudman!
Is Dr Smith so arrogant and so deluded after 6 years of the John Key government that he thinks use of this sort of misleading information is tenable? One realises that most of the voting public only hear this sort of headline and I will assume that is precisely why this sort of claim is made! However at what point does deception like this, on this grand scale, become a criminal offence? He is telling the public National are doing all they can to bring on more supply but they simply are not, they’ve done next to nothing! They have simply converted statistics wrap the lie in. What an absolute disgrace!
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