We need to face facts – Jacinda is our Obama. Welcome to NeoKindness

1. So Right and a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT to those screaming for help.
   The abuse I am getting of sorts when on post your posts in to so called left political pages on Facebook I am on re beneficiaries getting a rise is disgusting.
   The left in NZ is no more left Than the National party centrist is.
   So long as I am okay everyone else can go to hell reigns supreme.
   The old Go Get A Job is the standard answer when a huge chunk of people on benefits are not able to work or can’t get jobs for various reasons like ageism racism or whatever .
   So the bottom 25% of NZ is screwed whichever way they look.

2. A number of the over 50 NGOs who wrote that ‘letter to Jacinda’ last week suggesting an increase in benefits, have been dealing with the increasingly nasty practical fallout of Jacinda’s “NeoKindness” for three years. Neo liberalism as the prevailing state and 1%ers system, has been driving down working class New Zealanders share of wealth, and home ownership rates, and real wages for over 35 years.

   So what the PM and Robbo are doing is not new–but it is way past time to firstly disrupt, then organise a political movement, for retiring Neo liberalism in 2023. All those NGOs should be co-opted to play an ongoing co-ordinated role in that. Even the NZCTU, Labours most faithful cheerleader, may get the point when Fair Pay Agreements are either not enacted, or enacted as a shadow of the original intent of forming a nationwide wage floor in various industries.

   It is just not good enough to have a shower of shit such as two tier benefit systems and blatant speculator assistance from this large majority Labour Govt. Fight back–strikes, and regular public action–wherever Labour MPs turn up, has to be the rule now. If the Labour Māori Caucus can be an internal opposition, all the better. We have to act directly, or be reduced to lamenting “Blairism NZ style” for three years.

   • TM. The Guardian reports that Jacinda Ardern laughed when told of the letter penned by the whose who of NGO’s requesting an increase in benefits. That is not what I would call the politics of kindness.

     At the very least Helen or Heather or somebody should have told Ardern the appropriate response to be making in such circumstances.

     I’m thinking that Ardern was a socialist when she saw that other people had things which she didn’t have. Then she got them herself and was a socialist no more.

     • It is not what I would call the politics of kindness believing the Guardian saying that Jacinda Ardern laughed when told of the letter requesting an increase in benefits.

       Is it a second hand hearsay out-of-context bit turned into a narrative? You know, somewhere in the same half hour she laughed about something and forever that will be superglued to her and any discussion about benefits?

       You know, how “There will be ever ever ever ever ever be any strikes while I’m. Prime Minister?” was scumbaggingly created out of a comment in a debate.

       “Hello Prime Minister, there’s a letter from the heads of a whole lot of NGO heads asking for a rise in benefits.”

       Ardern laughs, laughs so much she falls from her chair. “Tell them to fuck off and stop being silly,” she says. That’s the depiction.

     • I would take some of what Tova O’Brian wrote in that article with a grain of salt.

   • @ Tiger Mountain, The clue, is your point about “real wages for over 35 years.” In short there is a problem, when the government raises benefits, the benefits are increasingly becoming the same or in some cases less than wages, showing how poor NZ wages really are.

     This is because increasingly there are new ways to avoid paying wages and ‘minimum’ standards under employment law. Some examples are the Chorus workers who more than 90% of those checked by the Labour inspectorate were falling below basic employment standards aka minimum wages. Likewise horticulture, where people are paid per amount of product picked, rather than hourly. Soon it hollows out the industry where normal workers will not work there due to the unfair wages and conditions

     … the neoliberal solution (backed by woke and some unions) is to increase immigration to fill the below NZ standard jobs, this has been increasing 18% year on year under labour and National …. now NZ visas/jobs/degrees are becoming a Ponzi where industry in NZ are now making money from work permits around labour, free interns, contract workers, paying back wages, company structures to avoid paying for labour, and then due to the increase in population more jobs are needed, like aged care for people’s aged parents and nurses, teachers, support workers, social workers, prison officers, justice workers, construction and thus bringing in even more people. Every person coming to NZ to full a ‘skill shortage’ for a low wage, low skilled job like a support nurse worker, can have an unemployed spouse, aged parents and multiple children who need to be supported in NZ too.

     Going forward there are a huge amount of problems under the conditions, from the basic, (not getting real income taxes and housing shortages) to the point where NZ qualifications become meaningless and domestic youth/middle aged/elderly in NZ decide not to go into the workforce at all (especially with the ease of redundancy) as it’s not worth it.

     In the case of supermarkets many workers have been shut out from basic jobs in the past decade as more and more people come into NZ to compete for them aka in 2010 people were queuing for jobs but supermarket type jobs were on the ‘work shortages’ list and one of the top ways to get NZ residency. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/thousands-queue-for-150-jobs/ZIUZ4L45IDQ2M2XPBFE23KMHDE/.

     It is now easier to go on a benefit, than naviagate unfair wages and conditions and heavy competition for jobs in NZ. Covid has slowed it for now, but you can see government lobbyists are champing at the bit to get the slave fishers and other workers back as soon as they can, even if it is at huge cost to society.

     • The other side of the coin there is that many of us small business owners (who are also working class) have slowly been seen as more and more as capitalist ‘rich pricks’ by the unemployed. As a small business owner I earn less than minimum wage, no way I can afford employees. Compliance costs and middle men take all the profits. If I did employ someone, I would have to put my prices up to make up the loss. When everyone does this the prices of everything goes up, inflation means any increase in benefits or minimum wage just disappears in increased cost. One thing I hate about modern NZ is that SME business owners are pushed to the right of politics when they should be firmly embraced by the left. We are not the big time capitalists… Air NZ CEO getting $2million bonus in shares is an example of where the issue really is, the battle between minimum wage earners and beneficiaries on the one side against small business owners and mum-and-dad landlord investors on the other is only serving the interests of big capital.

       • I agree with you Ben Waimata, small business is being picked off between large chains (supermarkets for example) and Ponzi schemes for NZ visa businesses for residency, like cafes, restaurants, labour hire and cleaning firms, all now used for residency purposes but paying terrible wages and conditions and thus competing against genuine small business…

       • It’s a fundamentally different inflationary environment to the one that produced hyperinflation leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Back then interest rates was high so the cost of borrowing was high and the government couldn’t do anything but cut government services. Now that interest rates are low, borrowing is cheap so by all rights the government should be building pyramids.

       • But a lot of workers who were traditionally employees are forced into being employed as independent contractors, i.e. people running their own businesses -as business owners – even the kids delivering junk mail, thanks to Peter Dunne.

         I took a case of this to the ERA about ten years ago. Won. Got a job about five years ago with quite a professionally well known NZ’er, and was told I was self-employed at the end of the first day – I declined to be self-employed because of previous experiences, so was paid off in cash, and I never heard back again about further work – I think I was offered the option to keep working for cash, but didn’t hide the fact that I was taken aback about the way it played out.

         One of the problems with WINZ keeping their stats looking good, is their setting
         people up as self-employed – without spelling out the implications or the facts – when they are are not really running a business; two I noted in basic domestic jobs, didn’t know they were until they were contacted by ACC or the IRD, because they’d not had to think about such matters before. One was
         employed by a Palmerston North business which was under contract to provide home help services to Capital Coast Health, who were likely unaware what they were complicit in. She assumed her taxes were being paid. There’s a lot of murky stuff going on, and some tradies have little choice but to be business owners if they want to get work; not everyone wants that stress or responsibility.

         The model labelling people “capitalists” is too glib and not necessarily accurate when they are traditional artisans/professionals earning a living – minus the exploitive aspects associated with capitalism.

3. Bloody good Post @ MB.
   I do have one small point to make.
   You write:
   “…paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage ….”
   But how were the Left to know any different?
   While I’m no political scientist I really thought mj savage was a straight up guy. Not a mealy mouthed little weasel playing The Game.
   The other thing I should point out is that while it’s all lovely and everything to want to rid us of the scourge of manufactured poverty etc we have the other side of the coin which is how do you plan to pay for that?
   We are an agrarian, export oriented economy. We have nothing else. We had a false-narrative, logical fallacy tourism scam but that’s now fucked. And can I say ” Who cares and good riddance to the wandering mopes.”
   What we DID have, thanks to agriculture, was impressive infrastructure the envy of the world at the time. And that is what the crooks politely titled ‘neoliberals’ stole from us.
   You’re right. We do need a revolution to scrape the ticks off our flanks and I’d like a Tesla and a mansion in the country and a wattle reduction job and I’d quite like to see a proper UFO.
   It’ll be a slow and stealthy business but one day we’re all going to wake up to find that we have new Masters. And not the pomp and pageantry of the dear old British Royals either. Our new masters will be trumpites. Rich trumpites not afraid to put the boot in.
   NB:
   How to avoid the trumpite take over?
   Easy.
   No one trades in currency here unless they’re 100% AO/NZ owned who must be subjected to OUR ministerial oversight.
   We write off all mortgage debt and smack on a 100% capital gains tax effective immediately.
   Purge the scum bags out of our regional councils to enable young blood to pump into the regions unfettered by bullies, liars, swindlers, cheats and greedy old-boy crooks sucking on the rate payer tit.
   Create a task force to fund and encourage AO/NZ people to become regenerative in their food production and help those who wish to do so to grow their own food on any available land. Allotments? Heard of them? They’re a British tradition I think.

   • Because NZ is so rugged and infertile relative to its outline size on the map, our farm exports from the land are actually only about the same as those of Denmark, which has a far larger manufacturing / tech sector. To say that we are an agrarian nation risks a mindset that locks us into underdevelopment. To say that we live off the sheep’s back or that of the cow was valid in the fifties when there were two million of us. But not now that we are 5 million, more than 1.6 million in Auckland alone.

     • That doesn’t mean that we are not still all living ultimately off the agrarian sector. It just means that more and more are driving their livelihood off a smaller and smaller productive sector. A lot of so called jobs do not produce anything that anyone needs.
       D J S

4. Speaking of echo chamber on race and identity…

   Interesting article about the US elections, voting and identity.

   Minorities and women – the very people who are supposed to be central to the Democratic coalition – seem to have shifted in Trump’s direction this year

   “The prevailing narrative of the last five years has been that Trump seized and maintains power by appealing to the desires of white voters and men (and especially, white men) to preserve the patriarchy and white supremacy. However, it seems difficult to square these talking points with the preliminary exit poll data from this year’s presidential race.”

   Let’s start with gender: across racial and ethnic groups, women shifted towards Trump this cycle.
   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/14/joe-biden-trump-black-latino-republicans

   • And apparently the one proportion of white males voting for Trump actually went down.

5. Yes, O’Bomber was far worse than Bush. And that’s saying something. Not only did O’Bomber ramp up the attacks on overseas nations and individuals, but he also trashed numerous aspects of civil society. But that’s history, as is Trump; after the orange madman gets removed America faces the prospect of corporate criminal and close-to-demented Biden.

   Dmitri Orlov has composed a hilarious piece on the moribund state of American politics, which full of geriatric criminals.

   ‘Within the sweeping panoramic tableau of the 2020 election, Trump (our hero) appears bathed in a golden sunset glow of nostalgia for lost American greatness which he forever promises to rekindle. Rest assured, Trump or no Trump, America will never be great again. But Trump’s magic halo extends out from his resplendent orange cranial plumage and enfolds all those who pine for the lost Pax Americana and fear and loathe what America is fast becoming—which is, to put it bluntly, a holding tank for degenerates of every stripe presided over by a freak show. They pine for a time when men were manly and women womanly, when secretaries were flattered when their bosses took time away from their busy schedules to rub up against them, and when everyone was either a WASP, or worked hard on trying to look and act like one, or kept to their assigned station in life and knew better than to get too uppity. They want to believe that the ethnic melting pot can still produce noble alloys, preferably Corinthian bronze, and certainly not clinker or slag.

   Arrayed against our fearless orange-hued leader, who at 74 is no spring chicken himself, is a ghoulish gaggle of geriatric gerontocrats. There is Joe Biden, 77, whose brain ran away and joined a circus some years ago but who imagines himself to be president-elect, or senator, or vice-president, or something. Having spent eight years lurking in the shadows as Obama’s VP, Biden is as fit to lead as a pig is kosher after rubbing its side against a corner of a synagogue. To assist Biden in his dodderings there is his party-appointed nanny, Kamala Harris, a mere slip of a girl at 56.

   Also haunting the balcony of the American mausoleum is Nancy Pelosi, 80, who still runs the House of Representatives even though proper employment for her at this point would be up on a pole keeping the birds off the corn. There is also Bernie Sanders, 79, a sad pagliaccio whose permanent role in the political Commedia dell’Arte that the Democratic Party stages every four years is to simulate democracy by cheerleading crowds of young imbeciles in Act I, to feign death after falling off his pogo stick in Act II, and to stagger to his feet, wave and smile for the curtain call.

   Last but not least, there is the horrid harpy Hillary Clinton, who is relatively young at 73 but whose putrid smell and cadaverous, ghastly visage are not longer fit for public display except in most delicately contrived circumstances. Hidden even further backstage is the suppurating cadaver of George Soros who, at 90, is still pulling the strings and wreaking havoc in the US and around the world. (His minions had recently spread color revolution to Armenia, in turn causing it to “elect” Pashinyan, a choice imbecile and a traitor, who then lost a big chunk of Armenian territory to Azerbaijan.) I could mention quite a few other financial corpses and oligarchic cadavers, but will refrain, to avoid giving you nightmares. Nobody lives forever, not even Henry Kissinger, 97, and so all we have to do is wait.

   In healthy societies, older leaders age out and make room for younger leaders who take over for them after a lengthy period of study and apprenticeship. In sick societies, older leaders cling to power with no one competent there to replace them and once they die are replaced by traitors and criminals. The USSR and the USA are two such examples. The late Soviet serial gerontocracy of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, who for a time haunted the balcony of the Lenin mausoleum and, once dispatched to the netherworld, were swiftly replaced by the traitorous duo of blabbermouth Mikhail Gorbachëv and Drunk President Boris Yeltsin, was a tragedy for Russia. The resulting die-off was of the same order of magnitude as the losses incurred during World War II. In accordance with the worn-out cliché about history repeating, the current American gerontocracy is more of a farce than a tragedy, but its results are likely to be no less lethal for the population.

   To complete this ghastly tableau, in the ongoing US presidential election, an almost-dead candidate and his charming assistant have been voted for by an army of the undead: voters that have mailed in their ballots in spite of being deceased. I have spot-checked a bit of the incriminating evidence myself, and I am pretty sure that there were over 11,000 such voters in a single Michigan county alone. But this is by no means a local scam: among many other vote-counting shenanigans, it appears that there was a nationwide effort to order mail-in ballots for dead people, fill them out for Biden, and mail them in. You might say that this is a human rights issue: why deprive dead people of their right to vote? Isn’t it about time to stop discriminating against the dead? Perhaps LGBTQ should be amended to LGBTQD for “Dead.” But why stop there? Why not also add a “U” for the unborn and stop this unpardonable discrimination against abortions?

   In any case, dead voters for Biden turn out to be just the tip of an entire iceberg of election fraud. There are also the over 1.8 million nonexistent yet registered voters discovered by Judicial Watch back in September. Add to that the faulty voting system, creepily named “Dominion,” which miscounted votes to favor Biden. Add to that the undeservedly kid-gloved and fawning press coverage afforded to Biden and the US mass media’s overwhelmingly hostile attitude toward Trump. Add to that the fraudulent poll data which, just as prior to the 2016 election, was contrived to make a fraudulent Biden victory seem plausible. Add to that the amply funded organizations such as BLM and Antifa (in which the “Anti-” prefix is gratuitous, this organization in fact being very much “Fa…”) which have been ordered to protest, loot and riot in many major US cities, moving their mercenaries from location to location, where they then recruit useful idiots among the locals. What this adds up to is a vast, brazen, carelessly self-incriminating conspiracy to overthrow a sitting president through election fraud.

   If you believe even for a moment that I am scandalized, disgusted and outraged by this trampling of the sacred principles of democracy, then pardon me while I shake my head sardonically while quietly chuckling to myself. No, I am not the least bit upset. In fact, this development fills me with optimism for the future. I believe that this ghastly institutional failure is a wonderful development that offers great hope to the rest of the world, and perhaps even to the US itself, although the political environment in the US appears to be rather hopeless irrespective of how horribly or wonderfully its ridiculous electoral system can be made to function.

   In any case, it would be futile to try to give the US some semblance of a democratic election system. It would be like trying to clean up a beach by picking up empty beer cans around a beached whale. The presidency, after four years of ham-handed efforts to unseat a president using false evidence, is a failed institution. Congress, which now nonchalantly overspends federal revenue by a factor of three, is a fiscal zombie. The Federal Reserve, which is now a pure pyramid scheme, is a financial zombie. And then there is the rest of the ridiculously bloated US economy, which is waiting for a stiff gust of wind to cause ephemeral wealth to flood out of stocks and bonds and into cash, much of it evaporating in the process and the rest causing a tsunami of consumer price inflation.

   In the course of this spectacle, the false image of the US as a shining city on a hill, a beacon for huddled masses yearning to breathe free and a beneficent global policeman safeguarding “universal human rights,” enforcing “universal human values” and spreading “freedom and democracy” around the world is being stomped into the dirt, having excrement poured all over it, and being stomped into the dirt some more. As the curtain descends on this final act of Pax Americana, the image of the orange enfant terrible and the senile puppet with his child-nurse in tow playing on the teeter-totter of electoral dysfunction on the playground of second childhood will forever remain etched into the retinas of the whole world. The whole world will then be able to move on and look for worthier role models and for less corrupt policemen. And that’s progress!

   The collapse of the USA will make the collapse of the USSR look like a stroll through a leafy park and a boat ride on a placid pond. I’ve been saying this for 15 years now. My message is still there, for all those who wish to understand what’s been happening and to keep their sanity.’

   https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2020/11/watch-this.html

   As for Jacinda, well sure, she was definitely con-artist of the decade, smiling incessantly as she lied to the masses about everything from climate change to housing.

   The trouble is, all other major parties put up worse candidates.

   Jacinda or no Jacinda, NZ is going to be one of the better places on the planet to survive the first few phases of the gathering shit-storm. Despite the best efforts of politicians to wreck everything via rampant consumerism, there are still some things in NZ worth having.

6. Not sure if what is occurring in NZ under Ardern can be called neokindness, seems more like getting around NZ’s labour laws to lower employment standards and racist to boot.

   If analysed what is going on, rather than profiting from it or politicising it, then NZ would not be having as many problems with poverty and lack of innovation and low domestic uptake into the NZ workforce, which has a follow on effect to benefits.

   The welfare system in NZ is something to keep, but keep pushing demand onto it from increasing poverty, then it will become dysfunctional like our housing situation.

   Thoughts from those who need foreign labour and also want to pick the Nationality of the foreign labour too… opinion from our NZ courgette grower championed by the pro immigration lobby..

   “Heap is a long-standing and vocal supporter of the RSE scheme. In 2017 he told The Northland Age he considered quitting the business because the government wouldn’t let him bring in more than nine workers from Thailand “with the skills and stamina” to pick his crop.

   He also told the paper he had been told he “would have to take Pacific Islanders.” but he wasn’t keen citing “a potential clash of cultures.” He had “given up all hope of employing locals” because they weren’t reliable.”

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018772730/slim-pickings-reporting-the-shortage-of-labour-for-fruit-and-veges

7. A degree in communications isn’t qualification in making anyone’s lives better, it’s learning how to sell a message.
   The country has been sold the smiley head nodding kindness brand.
   Just like in real life, when it’s all marketing and a shabby over hyped product, the reaction will be negative.

   Slick non event Obama gave us Trump, I wonder what Jacindas legacy for the disillusioned will be.

8. You lot here probably all mostly voted for Jacinda, ‘cos Jacinda is the “bestest evar”. I, however, recognised a long time ago that Jacinda was merely a populist, so instead voted for the great Rimmer.
   Rimmer: I’m a competitive man, Kryten. Always have been. That’s what makes me what I am.
   Kryten: We’re all perfectly well aware of what you are.

9. I am confused about who,is to blame for the inaction of this government to solve the problems of the poor and disposest.
   In other posts MB has called for more public servants but this post seems to be saying they are at the heart of the problem .
   In Chch these public servants went against expert advice and tried to repair a school hall but after spending $7 million have excepted they were wrong. We have a new road that was built on a swamp and surprise it has sunk causing delay and huge cost overrun . We have the ongoing problems with CDHB and other government run agencies.
   The main problem seems to be a total lack of accountability and butt covering which goes uncovered due to a lack of a proper public news investigation.

10. Jacinda is the leader now those of us on the centre right wish we had. Not me of course but the luvvies with property are worshipping at her feet.

    Newsflash – she IS the leader we actually have on the centre right.

    If she is not going to transform to your beloved left I have to ask why she’s there at all? There’s zero difference between her and Saint John Key. Well she’s made rich people richer on paper than he ever did!

    The comparisons with Obama are excellent. Obama campaigned the third time for President, Biden wins an impotent presidency and Obama book sales (due out this week conveniently) will hit record levels.

    Obama is a true capitalist. He used Biden and this election as the most cunning and cost efficient book tour in history!

    • Schooled by the office of Tony Blair. With no ideological or political roadblocks now she can revert to globalist form. The Blairite has the Labour party over a barrel and they know it. Look at how she has locked up Angry’s balls in her purse over the dope vote.

      The most fascinating part of the whole thing is how brazen Robbo and her are. The political equivalent of shitting in the left’s cornflakes.

11. No one been able to answer why they expected Jacinda to head a transformational government. Their opinions based on what evidence, political manifesto.
    Come on Jacindafan, Bert the rest of the JA cultists, what were you all seeing that I was missing.

    • Well I didn’t see her pulling any ponytails, sending 400 texts at 2.00am in the morning, bulldozing through Christchurch airport or finding any imaginary homeless people. How is that for a start Pedro?
      Can I suggest opening at least one eye Pedro, then you wont miss anything.
      As for the evidence, ask the nurses and teachers how they are now closer to what they are worth compared to under National?

      • Compared to Key, akin to a neoliberal lying pycho, Jacinda has inched closer to being a saint.

      • Is this the Daily blog or Kiwiblog? Has Farrar or Slater bought out Bradbury?

        • It certainly seems like a few escapees from Farrar’s noxious playpen have found their way to TDB, and are busy sharing their public self pleasuring skills and general insanity with us.

          For the record, I have been a regular critic of Jacinda and Robbo’s Govt. since 2017.
          And, the Parliamentary neo liberal consensus for way longer. But, Labor and Greens have at least kept the dirty, filthy Nats out of office for another 3 years!

          • All those new Labour MPs should have their Electorate Offices regularly picketed and visited. No Labour Minister should appear anywhere without placards and a group, large or small, reminding them of what they have not done for the NZ working class and underclass, and what they have done for corporates, SMEs, tin pot small business operators, rentiers, speculators, landlords, and property owning middle classes.

            Is this you from, The Standard TM?
            My question was simple, what convinced people that Jacinda and Co were ever going to be a transformational force and roll back neo liberal economics,based on what?
            I couldn’t give 2 fucks about the Nats

12. Blaming the bureaucrats is letting this and previous governments off the hook. From NZ’s dumbest PM (Bolger) on successive governments have had the ability to restructure the bureaucracy and haven’t. NZ’s public service have taken the worst of the left with the turds of the right and created a megaclusterfuck that no government nor minister nor parliamentarian wants to confront. This is weak and pisspoor.

    • I must agree with you on that. We have had shockingly bad bureaucrats for decades, and the politicians have been (are) too cowardly to do anything about it.

13. …Obama was a reminder that no matter how kind the individual, the American President sits on a throne built by the Military Industrial Complex and as such, you are its servant, not the other way around.

    Eisenhower Farewell Address
    https://youtu.be/OyBNmecVtdU?t=4

    If we evaluate the first month of Jacinda’s second term it is glaringly apparent that while she is personally kind, she sits on a throne built by the neoliberal State, and as such they rule her, she doesn’t rule them.

    Well said.

14. Obummer

15. Empty hand wringing !!!

    This morning, we learned that house prices have risen nearly 20% in the past year, locking more people out of the housing market and further entrenching the growing class divide between those with wealthy parents and those without. And of course, Jacinda Ardern is deeply concerned:

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she wants to ensure first home buyers can get into the market after it was revealed this morning that house prices have increased nearly 20 percent.
    House prices have increased 19.8 percent year-on-year with the median now at $725,000.

    Ardern this afternoon said figures show an increase in first-time buyers in the market since 2017, but that investors in the market had remained the same.

    “Obviously we want to ensure our first home buyers can get into the market that is something that is top of mind for us…”

    If only there were some policy levers she could pull that would discourage hoarders and speculators from flooding the property market and crowding out actual people. Oh wait, that’s right – they’ve all ready been taken off the table by… Jacinda Ardern.
    Ardern caused this problem. And we deserve more from her on it than empty hand-wringing and sympathetic noises. The problem is that she’s deeply invested in it: her Auckland home – worth $1.7 million in mid-2017 – is now likely worth over $2 million, and producing more than a backbench MP’s salary in tax-free capital gains every year. Which looks like one hell of a conflict of interest, and perhaps explains her lack of interest in finding any solution.
    Posted by idiot savant.
    http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2020/11/empty-hand-wringing.html

16. Whilst there is one comment above re the farcical USA presidential election, how come there’s not a word about on RNZ “national news”? I don’t read the NZ MSM (so-called) as it only disinforms readers. Who wishes to “read” such tripe?!

    Well, for decades I’ve said to some others that we don’t get “news” in this country; we get disinformation & lies!

17. Jacinda is NOTHING like Obama.
    Obama is confident without a script and doesn’t deflect or duck for cover. Jacinda can’t do any of that.

    • And you’re all words and no intelligence so commenting on what Jacinda can and can’t do is like saying Trump is bright!

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