Home ownership a national obsession
In New Zealand we have a broken attitude to renting and an unhealthy obsession with property ownership. According to IMF statistics, NZ has the fastest increasing house-price-to-income ratio in the world.
Setting the Agenda
Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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Israel’s founding ideology
On 4 May, the eve of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, delivered a public address at the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies, comparing the political situation in Israel and the events that led to the ending of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi takeover of power.
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Budget entrenches society’s pathologies
This budget and this government were never going to provide the structural tools and address the structural challenges of a deregulated, speculative, unequal society. Addressing the chasm of income disparity would require the removal of privileges, the redistribution of advantage.
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MUST READ: Budget 2016: What Bill English Didn’t Say In His Speech.
BILL ENGLISH’S LATEST BUDGET is a masterful exercise in deception. He has done everything he can to mask the effects of the most rapid expansion in New Zealand’s population since the 1970s. The monies allocated to the core centres of state expenditure – Welfare, Health and Education – barely match the rising numbers they are expected to serve.
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Urge Iran to Free Nazanin
I am writing this knowing full well that, one day, it might land me in an Iranian jail where Nazanin is at the moment.
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EXCLUSIVE: State house sell-off in Tauranga unravelling?
In none of the Minister’s correspondence was he able to provide specifics as to where State houses were in the “wrong place”. The ‘best’ he could do was list five regions; Auckland East & South; Auckland North West & Central; South Island, Central North Island, and Lower North Island.
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Smoking Tax Hike Is Shortsighted Smoke And Mirrors – Budget 2016
The increase in price for a packet of cigarettes to around thirty dollars apiece is projected to generate about 425 million dollars worth of taxation revenue.
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pre-Budget blog – Prioritising Public Debt?
Bill English has said that his fiscal policy priority is to reduce gross public debt to 20 percent of GDP. Is public debt really our number one economic problem?
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Winston Was Right: Australian Media Backs Peters On Budget & Immigration
Well this is interesting, isn’t it. The Australian media’s managed to join the same dots Winston has in the run-up to today’s Budget – yet which mysteriously appear to elude the general comprehension of our National party.
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The slow dismantling of a Prime Minister – downward slide continues
National now finds itself trapped by it’s own free-market dogma. Historically, only Labour governments have built housing, whilst National busied itself selling off state houses; implementing market rentals for Housing NZ tenants (in the past); and otherwise leaving it to the free market to meet demand.