NZs international report card is out, and it shows a hollowed out egalitarian pretension strangled for corporate interests…
NZ report card 2024: how we fared in 25 key global and domestic rankings
Press freedom: it was a terrible year for media companies, with closures and layoffs all year, and this is reflected in the Press Freedom Indexshowing another drop, down from 13th last year to 19th now.
Competitiveness and innovation: the country also continues to drop in the Global Competitiveness Report, now in 32nd position (an ongoing slide from 20th in 2021). But New Zealand did jump a couple of places in the Global Innovation index, to 25th position overall.
Environment: the Yale Environmental Performance Index continues to record a slow decline, with New Zealand falling from 19th in 2020 to 33rd now (based on data from 58 performance indicators for conservation and pollution).
Climate: on the largest environmental problem of all, the Climate Change Performance Index recorded a fall for New Zealand of seven places to rank 41st, remaining an overall “low performer”.
Terrorism: the official national terror threat level has remained “low”, defined as a terror attack being a “ realistic possibility”. And the Global Terrorism Index ranked New Zealand 50th worst in the world (up slightly from 46th worst last year) – at lower risk than the United States and United Kingdom, but higher than both Australia and Canada.
Employment: unemployment is creeping up, with the latest quarterly figure at 4.8%, but this is still just beneath the OECD average.
Personal income: median weekly earnings from wages and salaries increased by NZ$70 (5.5%) to $1,343 in the year to June.
Inflation: the rate of inflation has more than halved since last year, now down to an annual rate of 2.2%. Relatedly, and good or bad news according to your perspective, the average house price is$902,231, down considerably from its peak at the turn of 2022.
Immigration and emigration: migration remains a high-speed merry-go-round, with a net migration gain to October 2024 of 53,800, based on 188,100 arrivals and 134,300 departures (the highest annual departure numbers on record).
Suicide: in the 2023–24 financial year, there were 617 suspected self-inflicted deaths, an age-adjusted rate of 11.2 per 100,000 people, minimally lower than the average rate over the past 15 years.
Prisons: incarceration rates are growing fast. As of the end of September, there were 9,924 people in full-time custody (up from a low of 7,500 in 2022).
Child poverty: figures from the beginning of the year show the percentage of children living in households with less than 50% of the median household income (before housing costs are taken into account) stable on 12.6%. But with housing costs included, it rose to 17.5% – up from 14.4% the previous year.
Housing: the stock of public housing continues to increase. As of October, there were 84,834 dwellings, an increase of 5,324 from July 2023.
The neoliberal experiment in NZ has left us with hollowed out egalitarian pretensions, not meaningful progress on the issues in front of us.
The game being played by the political Right is to sell the economic damage caused by Covid to be the radical new agenda for austerity in NZ.
Hooton is calling for us to follow Argentina’s extreme example…
Inflation down, poverty up as Milei takes chainsaw to Argentina’s economy
…while Damien Grant warns of economic doom because of too much public spending.
Because the Left are only focused on Identity Politics, it has no response to the economic pain people are facing.
Because the Left are only focused on pronouns, it has no response to the economic pain people are facing.
Because the Left are only focused on telling people what to think and how to feel and what to say, they have no response to the economic pain people are facing.
The Right are the ones who are conquering the issues by playing to peoples fear and bigotry using culture war ammunition that the middle class woke keep handing them while social media hate algorithms do the rest.
Watch as National lean into Austerity with budget larger than Labour to pay for the tax cuts we can’t afford, while public services are decimated.
It’s difficult not to gloat at the position the woke have got us into, especially as I’ve been warning of this exact outcome since 2016, but the damage the backlash against the extremes of the woke has generated will swamp us all.
Happy New Year.
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The only spending the government needs to cut is tax cuts for people earning over 100k per year and land lords .The top tax rate needs to rise to pay for health and education .We also need to stop the obsession of building new roads ,that money should be spent on up grading the existing roads before we even think of building 1 more km of new road .The 20 billion that Brown wants to spend on the road to Whangarei would go along way to making existing roads safer .
We could axe half the Ministries and no one would notice. Apart from the fat cats in Wellington and well, fuck them.
We need a Javier Milei stat!
seymour’s a rogernome. And that rogernome is an agent of today’s national party which formed in 1936 to exclusively exploit our agrarian economy, our only primary-industry economy. The elements within the national party and now the ACT party were then ordered to focus on our taxes paid for, first world social and economic infrastructure which was built almost exclusively from sequestered exports earned farmer money, which [they] duly privatised ( Stole) then sold off to private wealth. ( Pimped to the criminally inclined.)
The national party is a confederacy of the criminally inclined who figured out ways to commit crimes and get completely away with [it]. The results of those crimes is Auckland and the denizens of Remuera, and other assets and places too of course but Auckland specifically.
ACT, and specifically laughable little seymour, is a self winding mechanism designed to deliberately and selectively exploit our primary-industry, in our case it’s agrarian, to feed free money to a rapaciously greedy, soulless, artless, loveless select few psychopathic narcissists who were clearly weaned far too early and were bullied by daddy.
I argue, as a white farmer, that the troubles, the problems, the tangled webs of deceit dropped on us are so ingrained, so entwined into the finest fabric of our society that there’s no curative action that could ever take place which could ever see the light of day by any conventional political or legal mechanism because they’re already being used by our abusers. We need outside help. In our case, we need crown help. That’s all we’ve got and it is quite something and we should think ourselves lucky that we have such a spectacular marketing tool at our disposal.
We have The Treaty and just look at what seymour’s trying to do to that. We have the crown and look at what the MSM’s trying to do to that.
We have lobbyists writhing about in OUR government and we have atlas corp up and inside every crack and crevice of OUR parliament while sundry other parasites come and go into and out of the lobby of OUR parliament buildings and even here we have the lessor fleas on our backs to bite us in the form of commenters like im right, bob the first, nathan, andrew etc. They’re the agents of our abusers, let’s not forget that.
Luxons in costly pyjamas do not display “egalitarian pretensions.” They display a total lack of empathy for those being whacked by the impact of austerity and the dumb arrogance of “the entitled.”
The Left’s economic response is also not helped by a Labour Party that is National lite.
Well the Labour Party look positively stellar compared to this gutless, listless iteration of National. All this bullshit about we have no money, and this all has to happen. Absolute crap. They have to tell Seymour to F off. The attack on regulation is just a free for all for every dodgy wanker to rip people off. I guess that’s ok when you are funded by said dodgy wankers.
“Positively stellar” you say
Well that’s another problem.
Putting Labour on a pedestal won’t encourage them to change.
Rather than getting all defensive and tribal, the Left need to own the fact that Labour suck and act accordingly.
Demand better or find a new home for our vote.
But you are right about funding. Political donations need to end.
Funding may explain why Labour continue to act like National lite.
And acting like National lite won’t get us out of this mess.
Here is a tip for Labour. You don’t need to act like National lite to win-over Right wing voters.
And here is one example how, lowering the cost of power will win-over both Left and Right wing voters.
It’s got nothing to do with being defensive at all. Labour got a lot wrong and I agree we should expect more, but they didn’t trash the economy because they were paid to do it. Now we also have an even less democratic government with the added bonus that they have pushed unsolved issues back on to councils and given some bullshit about the councils shouldn’t have built a cycle way or other such rubbish. Gee that’s helpful.
Re the economy, apart from removing interest deductibility, Labour failed to further assist the central bank (via setting targeted tax increases to take money out of the economy) resulting in the central bank having to set interest rates higher as a consequence (a shotgun approach) to take the heat out of the economy.
No CGT. No wealth tax No inheritance tax. No income tax hike for high income earners.
And no tax cut for low to middle income earners without dependent children
Further, that additional tax revenue would have also helped strengthen the balance sheet thus the Government’s resilience to the downturn.
I never said Labour were paid to trash the economy. I was merely suggesting one has to wonder how much influence their donors have on them continuing to act like National lite?
“…188,100 arrivals and 134,300 departures… ”
“As of October, there were 84,834 dwellings, an increase of 5,324 from July 2023.”
So, the population increased by 53,800, but the housing stock increased by only 5,324, or a ratio of 1 house for every 10 new arrivals (notwithstanding that not every new arrival requires 1 house each). But you get the idea.
Given the Left’s often professed concern with both increasing emissions and with higher costs of living and higher asset prices, you’d expect them to be anti-immigration as a first principle.
Can a Leftist explain why this is apparently not the case, but the opposite.
this must be your first time here. TDB has been very vocal on immigration since it started
A lot of citizen’s came back during and after covid.They all wanted to come home as fast as they wanted to leave, remember all the crying and complaining to the press because some chose to leave and couldn’t get back even though they were warned. Remember when the opposition parties and the press of the time were berating the government to let in nurses, doctors etc.etc. because of worker shortages well the now government of the day is sending the same workers home because the government of the day has stopped the economy dead. There are now cuts in health and social services ,no construction no more state houses we are in a state of crisis and 2025 looks a lot like the depression for a lot of people without jobs when there are no jobs to start with.
As a righty can you explain why National has stopped building and upgrading social housing and continued to export our recently train trades people to the rest of the world along with police doctors teachers and massive numbers of nurses ?.I know one of there goals was to double exports but the only export to double is trained people .The rest of the economy is going to hell in a hand basket and we are one of the few countries that failed to grow last year .
Fuck, I’m sick of that image.
Those ares holes are there because neo-liberal mmp put them there.
They’re not elected political representation, they’re minions to the undeserved riche.
We really need a royal commission of inquiry starting from about 1936.
Your ‘banksters’ is beyond my ken, but MMP stopped neoliberalism in its tracks — why we voted for it.
MMP stopped nothing except political dialogue. It was a brain fart of jim bolger’s natzo gubbimint and all MMP’s done is diffuse and confuse to fractionate and rule. Let’s also be clear on one thing. Neoliberalism WASN’T an experiment. It was a master plan to steal our taxes paid for stuff and things and now we have 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each worth $50 mil + net and four banks anz, asb, bnz and westpac now owned by our primary exports competitors, the australians, making those banks, their banks, the second most profitable in the world only to Canada. That! Is not an experiment. That! Is a fucking crime wave. Remember the kiwi pervert ron brierly? He got busted at the airport for little kid-porn on his computer. Brierly Investments NZ? Remember that? That perverted scum bag was one of the few who was around to heralded in MMP, GST and ‘neoliberalism’ and he’d have been one of the select few who formed a gangster clan to sell our taxes paid for assets and infrastructure which was specifically designed to benefit us all. And now the filthy old weasel lives as a prison dodging multi-millionaire in australia. Do you really think he’s the only dirty, slimy kiwi sunning their withered old arse holes on Bondi Beach?
I remember all that, great prose poet. ‘Brain fart’ is right about both Lange and Bolger — neither of their 2 neoliberal parties wanted MMP. The businessmen who benefited from freemarketism fought it tooth and nail — remember the ghastly Shirtcliffe? A good case to be made MMP stopped all major changes but it was brought about by NZ’s rejection of the neoliberal programme, always done without a mandate. More democracy is always better — do you recommend the FPP Anglosphere countries instead? How is Britain and America’s political dialogue better — well, the dialogue that delivers change.
I’m open to different PR systems but our current one is infinitely superior to the old FPP.
It seems you’re right with a small ‘r’ Martyn. We need to formulate a new view of what we are and how we can be going into the future and very fast. Those who are thinkers, doers, and enjoy knowing others similar (many of whom visit this blog) who want a fair-do for all, plus a laugh mixed with hope and resignation sometimes. can find a plateau of happiness to live on. Or exist in sadness and anger.
I see no hope of returning to what we used to envisage; we need a new visage. Let’s work on that or we will be the grifters* suckers and endlessly wanting more which is unattainable and not valuing what we have now, and making the best of it. If we are to Live on the smell of an Oily Rag** let’s have options as to whether it shall be olive or hempseed oil. We can confound all the smart arses that use Bob the First as their endpiece for making sounding points.
**https://biblio.co.nz/book/how-live-off-smell-oily-rag/d/1626062050?aid=frg&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAst67BhCEARIsAKKdWOkrIhbd5S1gSbA7nx6iM0x1yiCPKDhLpq_Ujsez2RJlZs08lGI0_6caAmklEALw_wcB
* Have a laugh at this dictionary quote you flim-flam types-
A grifter is a con artist: someone who swindles people out of money through fraud. If there’s one type of person you don’t want to trust, it’s a grifter: someone who cheats others out of money. Grifters are also known as chiselers, defrauders, gougers, scammers, swindlers, and flim-flam men.
Grifter – Definition, Meaning & Synonyms – Vocabulary.com
Vocabulary.com
https://www.vocabulary.com
Snake-oil salesmen, bullshitters, fraudsters. I didn’t like the over-reliance on ‘grifter’ re Trump and his fellow scumbags. My thesaurus is 2 feet away but I haven’t resorted to it, ‘cos that’s cheating.
Mr Bradbury, “the economic damage caused by Covid”. Continuing to wilfully ignore the truth: “the economic damage caused by the Ardern government’s reckless spending and borrowing”. FIFY.
How come it’s all Ardern’s fault – she wasn’t finance minister? Now it’s Willis’ fault when everything goes wrong, but she hasn’t been CEO of a major company in worldwide dealings. Slightly squiffy aren’t you? Stick to tea with less sugar.
The ghastly Arden did exactly what the equally awful Luxon is doing; create a crisis to push an agenda. Sweden coped without lockdowns.
What a f’ing ridiculous statement. COVID was an invented crisis? Who was Ardern taking money from to invent a global pandemic?
The second lockdown occurred because Chippy didn’t order vaccines. The whole world was making fun of Ardern’s response (she was even in Spitting Image).
Anus wouldn’t know his arsehole from his elbow
Sweden had nearly 27 and a half thousand deaths in a population of 10 million.
Not really ‘coping’.
I assume you know what our population is.
correct Derek ,people like Wiremu above dont realise how lucky we were to have a caring PM at that time .
Ghostly correct it appears
Wiremu for goodness sake take a couple of minutes and google death rates from covid in Spain ,France,Italy UK and USA and see the magnitude of the carnage we avoided .Not only would we have had way more deaths but our health system would have collapsed .See if you can find the UK doco film BREATHLESS which is based on a book of the same name written by a front line Doctor in the NHS in The UK .You will come across her working out in the Ambulance bay writing death certificates for the people who died on the way to hospital or while waiting to be admitted .While all that was happening we were protected until vaccines were developed and a large portion of the population was vaccinated which the protected people like your self that actually dont give a fuck for the rest of society .
You are 100% correct Wiremu.
Horseshit as usual from Roberto Numero Uno
Egalitarianism over the decades is worth an op/ed by a talented writer. It could be a dagger at the heart of the ’84 regime on the right forum.
What is it at this minute? Social manners like riding in the front seat of the taxi. Its real last actual high point was Ardern’s, unfortunately performative, care for the needy, which all us oldies were momentarily willing to go along with because our mortgages or other shit wasn’t at our necks. But the moment passed and our selfishness reasserted itself. So, now, it’s a social nicety for another 40 (hahaha, like the species will last that long with us selfish fuckers) years.
Your usual guff about the woke as so that is the main reason the Left loses. Rather than Labour still in their marrow believing the rich should rule. As per the main Left in all the Anglosphere.
You should get Dame Claudia Orange on your site. She and all her friends at dinner parties are appalled by the coalition government. She lectures them, but they just won’t listen, so rude!
Jacinda Ardern from Socialist to Socialite sums her up.
You sound like one of those f’ing idiots from Groundswell. What was Socialist about Ardern? Do you even know what socialism means Bob?
BTF is David Seymour
Luxon from wannabe to has been