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.
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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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.
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Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine: On Internal Changes Within NZ First And What It Might Mean For 2017
To quote Galadriel, the world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.
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Andrew Little’s “dangerous” speech – a cunning plan for the Middle and the Left
Speaking to a fully packed downtown conference centre in Wellington, on a cold, gloomy rainy afternoon, Labour-leader, Andrew Little launched into a fiery attack on the current National Government focusing on it’s inarguably lack-lustre track record for the past eight years.
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Why NZ should leave the Five Power Defence Arrangement
New Zealand’s involvement in the Five Power Defence Arrangement is not well known, but it’s now getting us in a lot of trouble.
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Foot in Mouth award – another former ACT MP plumbs new depths of dumbness
“Nuclear war is not the end of the world.” – Heather Roy, Q+A Panel, 22 May 2016
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Left Unsaid: What Andrew Little Didn’t Say In His Pre-Budget Speech
READING ANDREW LITTLE’S pre-Budget speech, one could almost be forgiven for thinking he was the leader of a socialist party. Almost.
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Council tenants face eviction as government cons City Councils
Tenants of council-provided social housing face the risk of eviction after the government misled councils into putting council housing into private housing trusts believing this would give them access to the government’s IRRS (Income Related Rental Subsidy).