Jacinda Ardern

[rdytdy 5,343]

38 minutes ago, bloke said:

Have you "Poor loser Tories"  started many rumours  lately? 

Keep up Bloke. 

Soper on the politicisation of the police

by CS

 

Barry Soper writes about the obvious inference that our police have just been politicized:

There is nothing more distressing for politicians than for their families to be dragged into scuttlebutt – but unfortunately it’s been done all too often.

Jacinda Ardern’s partner Clarke Gayford was a ripe target for trolls. He was in the social pages long before he’d ever hooked up with Ardern, he was a man about town.

The false rumours surrounding Gayford were widespread and persistent over a number of months. They were being talked about the length and breadth of the country – and had reached a frenzy when Ardern returned last week from rubbing shoulders with royalty at Buckingham Palace with Gayford at her side.

 

I sent Ardern a text last Thursday outlining what was being said (as if she needed to be told) and suggested she or her partner should address them and offered her a media platform to do it. The only reply came from her chief press secretary, insisting that the rumours were false and saying she wouldn’t be commenting on them. He appeared convinced they’d go away.

That was a mistake, as was Ardern’s refusal to confront the false rumours head on, as unpalatable as that may be, to identify them for what they are, which would have put paid to them for once and for all. That may yet happen because the way it stands at the moment, the rumour mill will continue to churn.

The second mistake was for our top cop Mike Bush to become involved, approving today’s statement denying Gayford had been the subject of a police inquiry and saying he’d never been charged in relation to any matter.

That simply stokes the rumour mill and opens up the suggestion that the police have become politicised. It’s unprecedented for the cops to become involved in what are unsubstantiated rumours.

The question’s already been asked: Who requested the Police Commissioner’s involvement?

The poacher turned gamekeeper Linda Clark, former journalist now lawyer, has put media “on notice” that any substance of the allegations regarding Gayford, which he denies and are untrue, “will be actionable”.

Again that’ll do nothing but keep the rumour-mongers active. Which is a pity. End quote.

I too received a bullying letter from Linda Clark. I am on notice that if anyone mentioned things that can’t be mentioned, even by my commenters, then I am in the gun.

The most egregious part of all this is the very people who are sanctimoniously tut-tutting and writing column miles on this issue are the very ones who were feeding the gossip in the background. It is despicable behaviour and even more so when the NZ Herald is now trying to lay the blame on people other than themselves.

But Barry Soper has a point. Labour, the prime minister and her bloke have handled this in a ham-fisted, bully manner, especially letters to media outlets… the very outlets who were spreading the rumours… hoping that someone would publish something specific so that they could claim public interest and rush to press.

I am seeking legal advice for the inferences made in the media and public statements outside of the protection of parliamentary privilege by politicians who have made similar inferences. Those statements are, in my view, defamatory, including one cartoon published yesterday.

The way this was handled, with all the convenient timing of letters and other websites launching posts, smacks of a political hit job, aimed and targeted at innocent people, and smearing them. The fact that David Fisher was used to start it all off, and the fact that he quoted Nicky Hager, his pal on the same reference group the government appointed him to, also lends credence to that belief. Politically, it looks sloppy. You give someone an appointment and the first thing he writes after that is an attack job on the wrong people. Hmmm.

Most media sniff a coordinated and planned response here, handled in a ham-fisted manner by Labour and Gayford’s politically connected rottweiler of a lawyer. My belief is this will backfire on them. Instead of front footing the issue they’ve taken a broad-brush approach, smeared innocent people themselves and attempted to cover themselves with the shield of their last hit job against those people.

[rdytdy 5,343]

 

 

Credit: Rr

[bloke 1,232]

I am up with the play. We have poor loser Tory supporters like you spreading false stories.

 

You are stupid Ted the GST tax is putting everything on an even playing field and this should have been passed by National who should be supporting small retailers as they say they support private enterprise. 

Go back to racing Ted at least you know about that  rather than being a copy and paster

 

.

 

 

[tonkatime 323]

23 minutes ago, bloke said:

I am up with the play. We have poor loser Tory supporters like you spreading false stories.

 

You are stupid Ted the GST tax is putting everything on an even playing field and this should have been passed by National who should be supporting small retailers as they say they support private enterprise. 

Go back to racing Ted at least you know about that  rather than being a copy and paster

 

.

 

 

It may well be levelling the playing field and maybe National should have passed it but the facts are prior to the election we were told no news taxes.

[rdytdy 5,343]

You brought up the rumours Bloke. 

Your favourite person responds:

Mike Hosking: Life in the public eye - hey Clarke Gayford, you should hear the ridiculous rumours about me

Well how about Clarke Gayford eh? If it's not Deborah Hill Cone, it's the Police Commissioner who's not investigating him.

Who else isn't he investigating? I think he's not investigating me. Mind you, he hasn't said so, maybe he is.

And that's the madness of what can only be described as one of modern politics' more haphazard campaigns to close down gossip. It's fatally flawed in a couple of key areas.

Whoever dreamed up such a harebrained scheme - they often make the error of believing their world is the real world. In other words, the bubble they live in, filled with rumour, innuendo, intrigue, scandal and gossip somehow permeates to the rest of us.

It doesn't.

So in alerting us all to the rumours, most of the country said "what rumours?" And all of a sudden they're talking about something, speculating on something they had no idea existed until the spin doctors told them it did.

Then you have the group who had heard the rumours and believe them to have some truth. This group is now busy saying told you so, what are they hiding, this is a pre-emptive strike, it's all going to come out now. Blah blah blah.

It's a crappy business being in the public eye. But it's life and you need to harden up.

My favourite rumour about me was when my marriage fell apart almost a couple of decades back. The rumour was I was gay, and I was running off with a well-known male real estate agent. It was everywhere; well, everywhere in the media bubble.

So much so that one day the publicity department at TVNZ called and said the Dominion Post newspaper has copies of the airline tickets for the real estate agent and myself and our romantic jaunt to Fiji and if I wasn't going to comment they were going to publish them.

That rumour was about as real as I assume Clarke and co think this current one is. I knew they didn't have copies because there were no tickets, no trip and no relationship. It was crap.

I suppose I could've folded under the pressure or speculation. I suppose i could have done a Gayford and fired off a pre-emptive strike. But for what purpose?

And this is the madness of what the Prime Minister's office and her partner have done.

They've created a circus out of a minor street corner act.

Yes I've heard the rumours, but I hear hundreds of rumours. The world is full of stories. It's sad and often pathetic.

It's peddled often by time wasters, losers and people with axes to grind. But that's life.
And by coming out all heavy-handed you do exactly the opposite of what you're setting out to do.

And that's why I can't understand why someone with just an ounce of experience or common sense didn't forcefully enough say. This. Is. A. Dumb. Idea.

Same question also applies to the Police Commissioner, Mike Bush.

Is he now going to comment on everyone he's not investigating? That is a shocking precedent for a body that is independent of the government. Or can we now ask - are they?

Anyway the upshot is this exercise in naivety, if not stupidity, stands no chance of winning the PR campaign of the year award.

They've taken their molehill and made one hell of a mountain.

 

[bloke 1,232]

Oh Ted here we go again with wanker Hoskings.  The fact remains that false stories have been made up about The Prime Minister and her partner. Hoskings is a clown who conservative fools over 65 like you listen to every day so that you can get your fix of Jacinda hate.

There is 2 years 6 months until the next election Ted. keep up the hate which is burning you up and no doubt your health will suffer. Is it worth it Ted?

 

[bloke 1,232]

2 hours ago, tonkatime said:

It may well be levelling the playing field and maybe National should have passed it but the facts are prior to the election we were told no news taxes.

Well its a bloody good tax. 

[tonkatime 323]

47 minutes ago, bloke said:

Well its a bloody good tax. 

Irrelevant, it’s another broken promise. 

[tonkatime 323]

50 minutes ago, bloke said:

Oh Ted here we go again with wanker Hoskings.  The fact remains that false stories have been made up about The Prime Minister and her partner. 

 

The irony is Hosking is correct they have made a mountain out of a mole hill for themselves . What happens next time there’s a rumour, will the police commissioner be required to comment on its validity? If they don’t comment on it will it be perceived as being true? Will the police be required to comment every time someone in the public eye has a rumour spread about them?

 

[Memphis2 1,078]

1 hour ago, bloke said:

Oh Ted here we go again with wanker Hoskings.  The fact remains that false stories have been made up about The Prime Minister and her partner. Hoskings is a clown who conservative fools over 65 like you listen to every day so that you can get your fix of Jacinda hate.

There is 2 years 6 months until the next election Ted. keep up the hate which is burning you up and no doubt your health will suffer. Is it worth it Ted?

 

It's just a women's thing.Same thing happened in Ozi.Perfectly capable woman hassled out of it.

By her own party to book to boot with help from the total cock Abbott.Now he's after his own boss.

Politics what a sport.

 

[rdytdy 5,343]

2 hours ago, bloke said:

Oh Ted here we go again with wanker Hoskings.  The fact remains that false stories have been made up about The Prime Minister and her partner. Hoskings is a clown who conservative fools over 65 like you listen to every day so that you can get your fix of Jacinda hate.

There is 2 years 6 months until the next election Ted. keep up the hate which is burning you up and no doubt your health will suffer. Is it worth it Ted?

 

Two and half years at the most Bloke. What fun!!!

Laughter is the best medicine so they say.  

You must be the one stressing not me.  

[bloke 1,232]

1 hour ago, tonkatime said:

The irony is Hosking is correct they have made a mountain out of a mole hill for themselves . What happens next time there’s a rumour, will the police commissioner be required to comment on its validity? If they don’t comment on it will it be perceived as being true? Will the police be required to comment every time someone in the public eye has a rumour spread about them?

 

This is the Prime Minister of our Country and here we have bitter people (no doubt broken down Tories) attacking The Prime Minister and her spouse with false stories for political gain. Attack The Prime Minister on policy not making up false stories and leave her family out of it.  

[rdytdy 5,343]

 

[tonkatime 323]

8 hours ago, bloke said:

This is the Prime Minister of our Country and here we have bitter people (no doubt broken down Tories) attacking The Prime Minister and her spouse with false stories for political gain. Attack The Prime Minister on policy not making up false stories and leave her family out of it.  

While I don’t condone it I think they both need thicker skin and have handled this poorly. Gayford is fast becoming a liability for her. A level of criticism and nonsense stories comes with the territory.

[rdytdy 5,343]

There is nothing liberal about Labour

by SB 

 

After reading the above quote from Winston Churchill I immediately thought that there is nothing at all liberal about the New Zealand Labour party. The first line that jumped out at me was, “Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve them.”

Since coming to power Jacinda Ardern’s government have drawn a big target on anything with the word private in its title. They want to terminate privately run partnership schools, not because they are not successful but because they colour outside the lines. They are against private prisons regardless of whether they are more efficient and save the taxpayer money.

Basically, if something isn’t run inefficiently by the state then they don’t want it to exist. Now they are preventing a Dunedin hospital from going ahead for the same ideological reasons.

 

ACT leader David Seymour has said, “The decision of the government to dismiss without consideration the option of delivering the new Dunedin Hospital by public-private partnership is purely ideological.” He says that it has “disregarded the advice of treasury who said that ‘a PPP should remain under active consideration’ because it ‘enforces best practice’ provides ‘opportunities for innovation’ and ‘limits the risk of construction cost overruns’.”

He also said that while we hear constantly from government ministers that they don’t believe that the private sector should be involved in health or education they fail to produce any evidence for their ideological belief.

The other line from the Winston Churchill quote that immediately made me think there is nothing liberal about the New Zealand Labour party is the line stating that socialism attacks capitalism. Right from day one in office, we were told ad nauseam by Jacinda Ardern that ‘capitalism has failed.’ Since then her government has struck a severe body blow to the New Zealand oil and gas industry causing the loss to New Zealand of millions in revenue as well as the loss of thousands of jobs in Taranaki.

 

[rdytdy 5,343]

Sneaky government break another promise

by CS

 

The government have been sneaky over an election promise for pensioners. In fact, so sneaky that the promise may actually have been a lie: Quote:

 Brrrrr. It’s rather autumnal out there and the chill winds of government are blowing golden promises away with the leaves.

If you’re feeling the temperature drop, you might be one of a million New Zealanders who qualify for the new $700 Winter Energy Payment ($700 for couples, $450 for singles).

It’s an amount of money you can spend on anything – if you fancy some firewood, feel free.

Alternatively if you desire more biscuits and a new woolly jumper, don’t worry as no one is looking.

The million lucky winners of the Government’s Winter Energy lottery are those on benefits and our large population of retirees on superannuation.

For the beneficiaries, the payment will be welcome and warmly received.

For the retired, I’m not so sure. This payment grates – a fiddled promise right from the start.

Here we are at the beginning of May shivering and expecting this Winter Energy Payment to begin. It was promised to run from May to October. Well, layer up. It’s not arriving until July, but the delay is the least of your problems.

Here’s the bad news for the nation’s pensioners. You were all expecting a $700 increase to your pension this year (couples). You’re not getting it. It has been reduced to $413. Singles now only get $265.98.

How can this be possible? End quote.

Because they lied? Politicians do that to get you to vote for them. Quote:

National’s pre-election promise was a $680 increase to your Superannuation. Labour marginally trumped it, but dressed it up as a $700 Winter Energy Payment (no means-testing or monitoring, but the label was good PR).

Both sides in the election wooed you and that’s why a haircut of almost $300 is worth hollering about.

The fiddling started right from the beginning. Labour made the $700 promise in July 2017. Originally, they stuck in a little proviso that you’d have to apply for it. They were upfront with the reason. It would save them money, as only 80 per cent of people would bother.

In November 2017, I encouraged retirees to put out their hand and claim the $700 Winter Energy Payment as soon as Work and Income allowed you to. After all, it was an election promise and the out-going government intended to pay the money without an application or a cold-granny label.

December 2017 arrived and the new government had its ears on. You no longer needed to apply and rich people could pay it back if they objected (high-five, both points were mentioned in this newspaper).

In the announcement on the Beehive website, it was noted that payments would be made over 13 weeks in 2018 (a late start in July), whereas in 2019 it would begin in May for 22 weeks.

Innocently, I figured this was a systems issue. New Government, new payment and Winz needed time to get it up and running. Surely they’d just divide $700 by 13 weeks. It was a gold-plated election promise and Winnie would surely be a guard-dog on this one.

Errr no. In all that innocence I missed the words “When fully implemented, the annual payment will be…”

They’re talking about 2019 being the full implementation date.

The election promise was clearly a 2018 winter warmer. Can you imagine Labour going head-to-head with National’s $680 increase and proudly parading a $413 kilowatt floppy carrot?

A financial haircut of $287 is a substantial amount in kilowatts hours – 1190 kWh to be exact (going by my own anytime-rate). It’s at least a month’s power in winter to most pensioners.

I didn’t discover this until I had a chat with a disgruntled firewood collector who looked more closely at the Winz website. Let’s just say my father is most displeased and dismayed I hadn’t informed him of this “diddling” (his words not mine).

I might have been slow on the literacy test, but not on the maths. The financial cynic in me quickly saw the calculation.

Over the next two years Labour’s energy payment will remain fiscally neutral. They wanted to pay 80 per cent of couples $1400 over two years.

Making you apply for this winter treat would see a fifth of people fail to claim it. The July manoeuvre means they’re now paying you $1113 over two years.

Voila, the new payment is 79.5 per cent of the promised payment. Well done, bang on budget boys and girls.

What happens in the winter of 2020? Who cares, it’s pensioners promise time again on the eve of a new election.

On a final note, watch out for the winter holiday clause. Those of you travelling overseas with your hard-earned savings are going to get pinged.

Stay away more than four weeks and your Winter Energy Payment stops.

You need to apply for reinstatement if you get home before October. End quote.

Liars, thieves and ratbags, that’s our government for you… but hey, didn’t Jacinda do a good job in that viral video, and wasn’t she pretty in that Vogue feature? #Winning, one soft interview at a time.

Just remember, Jacinda Ardern says she doesn’t lie… which was a lie.

[rdytdy 5,343]

Judith Collins calls out Jacinda for causing the latest people smuggling case

by CS

 

Judith Collins calls out Jacinda for causing the latest people smuggling case, and uses a nice, subtle sledge, mimicking Jacinda’s own turn of phrase to start with: Quote:

Let’s be clear.

When Jacinda Ardern and her Labour/NZF/Greens alliance thought it was a brilliant idea to try to embarrass Australia over Manus Island and The Australian Liberal/National Government stemming the tide of people smuggling by taking and following through on a strong stance unlike the weak response from previous Australian Labor Governments, this is what she and her follow-travellers were playing with.

New Zealand has been hugely helped by Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia over the years in helping to keep these people smugglers out of New Zealand waters.
For those who think that these ships can’t cross the Tasman, here’s an example of one that could and would have.

Before criticising the Australian Government, Prime Minister Ardern should have remembered that refrain that includes… ‘walk a mile in my shoes’. She’s lucky Malcolm Turnbull gives her the time of day. End quote.

 

She is talking about the news of a major interception of a people smuggling operation heading to NZ: Quote:

Malaysian police have intercepted human traffickers they say modified a tanker to smuggle undocumented migrants to New Zealand and Australia.

Authorities said the tanker was carrying 131 Sri Lankans when it was intercepted on Tuesday.

There were 98 men, 24 women, four boys and five girls.

The Singapore-based ChannelNewsAsia reports the tanker had the name Etra painted on its side.

Three Indonesians and four Malaysians on a fishing boat used to transport the migrants to the vessel were also arrested.

Malaysia’s national police chief Mohamad Fuzi Harun said the large-scale and cunning human smuggling syndicate had been operating for a year and had connections in New Zealand, as well as in Sri Lanka, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Immigration Minister Ian Lees-Galloway has thanked Malaysian authorities for their work, saying the interception sent a clear message to people smugglers.

Mr Lees-Galloway said lives had been put at extreme risk in the most vast and treacherous ocean in the world.

He said the act was not tolerated by New Zealand and the exploitation of the individuals on board was repugnant. End quote.

Iain Lees-Galloway might like to go tell his boss to shut her gob on illegal immigrants now. Labour get this issue wrong every single time.

[rdytdy 5,343]

Not content with wrecking the oil industry, now Labour set their sights on dairy

By CS

 

 

Now that Labour have successfully wrecked the oil and gas industry in New Zealand, they have turned their economic wrecking ball to the dairy industry. Another kick in the guts for Taranaki: Quote:

The Government could be buying itself a fight with the farming lobby after suggesting there needs to be fewer cows.

Environment Minister David Parker told TVNZ’s Q+A programme there would not be a direct cap on the number of cattle but there may be limits on the amount of nutrients lost from a farm into a waterway.

“Cow numbers have already peaked and are going down, but yes, in some areas, the number of cows per hectare is higher than the environment can sustain. That won’t be done through a raw cap on cow numbers; it will be done on nutrient limits, the amount of nutrient that can be lost from a farm to a waterway, because it’s not just a dairy cow issue.”

Asked about the economic impact, particularly dairying regions, Parker said there had been no analysis yet.

“But it’s very, very difficult to model, because second-best from the farmer perspective may still be very close to the same outcome profit-wise. Can I go back to what I was saying that I think one of the answers to this in south Canterbury, for example, lies in land use change towards more cropping, more horticulture, which are high-value land uses.’ End quote.

No analysis is just code for ‘let’s do this’. It certainly didn’t stop them wrecking oil and gas. Taranaki’s biggest industry is, of course, dairying, and now they get another kick in the guts from a government hell bent on wrecking the economy.

It is almost like Labour are wrecking the regions so they can wreck their coalition partner NZ First.

On top of that they will gut the export sector at the same time. It is quite incredible how they are just lurching from one ideological burp to the next.

 

[eljay 1,720]

Don't worry rdytdy - when there is no more food grown here we will be able to get what we need in pills - subsidised by Pharmac!!

[rdytdy 5,343]

Go JC.

Sledge of the week

by CS

 

 

 

Judith Collins seems to be the only opposition MP holding the prime minister and the government to account: Quote:

I spoke in the General Debate today in Parliament. The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern displayed increasing arrogance today in Question Time. It’s as if she really can’t be bothered having to turn up and answer those pesky questions from the Opposition. I’ve always respected Helen Clark for her attention to detail and her grasp of the issues. What you saw, was what you got.

What I’m seeing from Jacinda Ardern is that if there’s not some smiley photo involved – preferably with a child or a ‘World Leader’, then we see an entirely different and arrogant side to her.

Her promise of a Government of ‘relentless positivity’ is just one of many broken promises. Stand-by for more. End quote.

 

That mention of Helen Clark will hurt Jacinda. She’s certainly hurty at the moment. Judith just smashed the government in her allotted time: Quote:

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does anyone remember that promise of the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, that she was going to lead a Government of relentless positivity? Does anyone remember that? Because what we saw today in Parliament was petulance—petulance—a refusal to answer a very decent question from David Seymour, a refusal to engage on the issues, a petulance that we were wasting her time having to come to Parliament. That’s the message that a lot of New Zealanders who watch Parliament question time would have got from a Prime Minister who is too busy remixing music to go and visit the people in Taranaki and explain to them why she has completely stuffed up their industry, too busy going to have dinner with the journalist on Friday night, which was very inappropriate, I would have thought, because she’s too busy doing that to go and visit the people of Taranaki either. Her job is for the people of New Zealand not for her own gratification to tell everyone in the world that she’s virtue signalling more than them.

Let’s have a look at some of the broken promises. Another broken promise: oil and gas. Did she ever tell us in the election campaign that the oil and gas industry would be destroyed by her Government? Never, not once. Did she say she was going to be for the regions? Oh, yes, she did. And is she? No. Did she tell us that there would be no new taxes until the Tax Working Group came back? Oh, yes she did. And what has happened? Tax after tax after tax. Fuel tax: 25c a litre is more tax on people who pay for petrol. Why has she done that? Because she hasn’t had to pay for it. She’s got an electric vehicle at her place. She gets to use the roads for nothing. She’s after attacking every single group that she wants to do. She’s never promised that. She said no new taxes.

Let’s have a look at the KiwiBuild numbers. That’s always a good one. We were promised 100,000 new KiwiBuild houses, built by this Government. So far we’re down to 8,000 in the three-year term that they might actually get through to—8,000—and of those they’re all going to be bought off developers. So they’re going to pay more—this is how KiwiBuild works. They pay more money for houses than what they’re worth and then they sell them to people at less than what they’re worth. So that’s a brilliant scheme if you are a developer and if you happen to be one of the people who is going to—

Winston Peters: No—that’s not true.

JUDITH COLLINS: Now, the Rt Hon Winston Peters has raised his voice, and good for him, because he can say he’s got $1 billion off New Zealand taxpayers for embassies. It’s great. He’s now going to go to Stockholm. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that repairing the carpet in New Zealand embassies around the world is more important to New Zealand—$1 billion worth—to New Zealand taxpayers than are the doctors visits for New Zealanders, free dental health for over 65s, and every other promise that they promised. So $1 billion on foreign aid and also in embassies—because clearly we need an embassy in Stockholm!

I heard the Prime Minister today arrogantly tell the House in answer to the Leader of the Opposition as to why we had to have an embassy in Stockholm, and the answer was, essentially, “because you lot closed it”. So that’s the answer. So she needs to learn something from the Rt Hon Helen Clark. Helen Clark went after and helped and targeted particular groups in the community who needed help. This Prime Minister that we’ve got at the moment, she targets people she’s going to do over. Whether it’s the farmers, the oil and gas workers, the 8,000 people whose jobs will be lost because of her, the people in the regions—she’s after the people who buy petrol, the people who pay for the roads. She’s after everybody who actually helps make this economy work. And where is she for the farmers? Oh, don’t worry about that. She’s too busy mixing music and working out her next trip to Stockholm, because the Rt Hon Winston Peters—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. End quote.

Jacinda Ardern doesn’t do hard questions. She is shirking from them She won’t go to Taranaki, but she will go to Buckingham Palace. She is hopelessly out of her depth and getting nastier by the day.

Judith Collins should keep holding her feet to the fire.

[rdytdy 5,343]

Kiwibuild is turning into a disaster for the government that no amount of spin will get them out of their promises.

by CS

 

No amount of spin is going to get the government out of their promises on Kiwibuild, which are collapsing under the weight of Phil Twyford’s hubris: Quote:

Housing Minister Phil Twyford says an official document saying the Government could not fund KiwiBuild themselves was simply poorly-worded.

Twyford has repeatedly promised that the $2b allocated for KiwiBuild by the Government would be enough to fund the scheme to build 100,000 affordable houses over ten years – with the money being recycled over and over again through sale of the houses.

But a document surrounding the Government’s plans to buy over 7000 of those houses “off the plan” from private developers contains the line: “there is insufficient funding for the Crown to deliver all 100,000 KiwiBuild dwellings by itself.”

National’s Housing spokeswoman Judith Collins has seized on this, describing it as “yet another broken promise” and “proof that its budget was always unrealistic and bad news for the other priority areas which will lose funding thanks to Mr Twyford’s failure to deliver on his ill-thought out pipe dream.”

“From a cast-iron election pledge to build 100,000 additional houses itself, the Government’s KiwiBuild plan has contorted into nothing more than going to private developers with a subsidy and a plea for help.”

Twyford said the document was poorly worded and $2b was still enough to build the 100,000 homes. End quote.

 

I think Phil Twyford is going to get a call from Darryl Kerrigan shortly to tell him to get his hand off it and to stop dreamin’.  Quote:

“This comment, although could be better worded, merely indicates the Government will partner with Iwi, developers and builders to build affordable homes. This was always our intention,” Twyford said. End quote.

Liar, liar, shiny pants on fire. The policy was for the government to build new houses, on top of those already being built by the private sector.  Quote:

Labour’s election policy on the promise does note that “Labour will partner with the private sector to build 100,000 homes”. And Twyford has talked about buyings homes off the plan for months.

But Collins has other arrows in her quiver from the document – noting that it says the Government will “facilitate” rather than “build” the 100,000 homes.

Twyford said this was a meaningless wording change.

“We are building 100,000 affordable homes for Kiwi families. It’s the nature of tender documents for the language to be opaque. There is no significance in the use of the different terms,” he said.

The wider critique Collins made surrounds whether or not KiwiBuild homes will be ones that would not have been built by the private sector anyway.

Twyford is adamant that the homes he will buy off the plan are ones that wouldn’t exist – at least in an affordable form – without the Government.

“The buying off the plans initiative does three things. It enables developments that otherwise would not have been undertaken to be completed, it speeds up developments that otherwise would have been completed more slowly and ensures the construction of affordable homes, rather than McMansions that young Kiwi families cannot afford,” Twyford said.

One part of KiwiBuild has definitely changed since the election, and is noted within the planning document – the promise that the most expensive homes built under the scheme would be $600,000 or under.

The KiwiBuild document notes that homes in Auckland or Queenstown with three or more bedrooms would be capped at $650,000 instead of $600,000.

This will be a small slice of the total build – but plenty enough to give Twyford a headache. End quote.

Twyford’s own hubris is going to give more than him a  headache. If the private sector is now getting a subsidy to build the homes they won’t be building homes for private sale. The government, it seems, are intent on buying the houses for more than they are worth, creating a subsidy to the builder. Then, selling them for less than they are worth giving a double whammy to the poor taxpayer. If this is the case he won’t have any money left from his $2 billion slush fund due to being tucked on both sides of the house build.

Twyford is getting close to having to ride a unicycle and wear clown shoes, clown pants and clown make-up.

[rdytdy 5,343]

Media are starting to cotton on to Twyford’s trickery

By CS

 

Duncan Garner calls Phil Twyford’s Kiwibuild scam for what it is, a hoax: Qu

Seriously, what has Labour and its MPs been doing these last nine years? Eating their lunch?

We’d been led to believe its flagship Kiwibuild idea was this amazing, smart and innovative housing policy.

We’d been told it was an answer to the housing crisis for those who couldn’t get into their first home.

I was thinking wow, our best architects and planners had come up with something very new and impressive and all on a large scale. I was thinking, think big, but 2018 style.

And I assumed KiwiBuild meant just that;  as Housing Minister Phil Twyford said, 100,000 homes would be built.

Now we learn, um no, that’s not the case. It’s Kiwibuy, that house, your house, any house will do. End quote.

 

Labour promised additional houses on top of what the private sector was producing. Now they are buying up private sector developments and not adding a single extra house. Quote:

Labour has simply thrown its arms up in the air and put up a classified advertisement the size of a house that calls for all houses to be bought and sold as Kiwibuild dwellings. Labour wants the biggest shortcut to success possible.

It wants to buy current homes under construction or off the plans and call them Kiwibuild’s own. It’s a total hoax.

And what, Labour suddenly wants to partner up with the private sector? How convenient. End quote.

Private sector partnerships for schools are evil, but not for building affordable homes? Quote:

What happened to development on a genuine scale and with true Government buying power. End quote.

Another slogan with no substance behind it. Quote:

Sure, Labour and the 100,000 homes promise was impressive and is ambitious, but just how many new homes will it really provide on top of what was being built anyway.

It may be just marketing and a bit of spit and polish when someone else did the hard work.

To me, it looks like Labour and Twyford have made this all up on the back of a moving envelope.

It is underwhelming nonsense from a party that looks bewildered and blinded by the size of the challenge. It lacks detail. End quote.

The answer as to how many new homes it will provide is none. This is a zero-sum game. For every house that Twyford’s billions buy is a private sector dwelling taken by the government. Not a single new house is going to be built this way and the deficit between what was promised and what is actually delivered growing by the day. They are already more than 5,400 houses behind schedule. Quote:

Maybe we trusted them too much in the face of the National government that had buried its head in the hands of the brutal market and the forces that come with that.

Perhaps Labour was just lazily waiting its turn to govern, but this week’s revealed no-one anywhere did the hard work. It’s a public downtrou. End quote.

Nine years in opposition, just waiting to govern again, with no work or effort. Think about the arrogance behind that. Quote:

What sort of grip does Twyford have on his own beast of a policy when he doesn’t even know the entry price point of a one-bedroom place? It’s worse, actually: he wrongly hiked prices by 10 per cent. Hardly good enough.

I’ve been told three figures: under $500k, $500k and closer to $550k.

Twyford told me on The AM Show yesterday that it’s just gone up to $550k because, blah blah, National didn’t do anything.

Where did that come from? He later said sorry, he misspoke, but I wonder if he’s simply spoken too soon. You have to know the price when it’s your own policy you’re trying to sell. 

When Labour said it would build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 years, I got excited and thought, great, why can’t our best brains build this?

But it appears no-one even asked them which makes the build or buy Kiwi thing a big fat zero. One hundred thousand to go …   End quote.

Yep, the whole scam is a hoax; a fraud on the voters all sold by Phil Twyford. It will be his head that rolls, if Jacinda Ardern can find the courage to hold an inept minister to account.

 

[rdytdy 5,343]

Labour’s economic wrecking ball continues

by CS

 

Iain Lees-Galloway is the latest government minister to care not a jot for Kiwi businesses as he pursues a union-driven industrial relations platform: Quote:

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says New Zealand needs a high-skill, high-wage economy and accepts that some businesses will not survive some of its policy changes.

Speaking on TVNZ 1’s Q+A this morning, Mr Lees-Galloway told Corin Dann he wanted to see union membership among workers increase, but the government would not opt for compulsory membership in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.

“The evidence is very, very strong from around the world that where industries have high union density, where people are covered by collective agreements, their wages rise much faster than the rate of inflation,” said Mr Lees-Galloway.

He accepted that some businesses would not be able to operate under its plans and he said the change would be implemented with enough time for businesses to choose whether they could continue.

“Operating in a global market means that businesses need to be resilient. They need to be able to work with the different market forces,” he said.

“What we as a government have to do is make sure there is an environment in which new businesses can develop; new jobs can be created; and as thing change for people, new opportunities become available for them.”

Mr Lees-Galloway also argued that planned changes to the minimum wage in New Zealand should not be a detriment to strong Kiwi businesses, and if they are then the businesses aren’t resilient enough.

“If a small change to the minimum wage is going to be that detrimental to them then they don’t sound resilient,” Iain Lees-Galloway said. End quote.

What an idiot. It doesn’t mean that at all. It means that the job is no longer the mandated minimum wage. Businesses that can will automate. Those that can’t will ratchet up prices until the market tells them that the price is too high and then they close. Either way people will lose jobs, but it seems Iain Lees-Galloway is OK with that. Quote:

National spokesperson for workplace relations Scott Simpson issued a statement in response to Mr Lees-Galloway’s comments on Q+A today. “Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees Galloway’s gob-smacking high-handed attitude to small and medium sized Kiwi businesses on TVNZ’s Q&A this morning will do nothing to boost sagging business confidence or employment and wage growth,” Mr Simpson said.

“It’s the height of arrogance to say that Kiwi businesses don’t know what they are doing if they struggle to cope with some of the highest minimum pay rates in the world. Mr Lees Galloway writes them off by saying businesses ‘come and go’.” End quote.

What an appalling policy outline from Lees-Galloway. My longest-standing friend in caucus, Scott Simpson, is right to call him out. Like all typical unionists he looks at businesses and all he sees are fat cigar-smoking bosses, and therefore he doesn’t care if the companies disappear. But each one of those companies has employees and if their business disappears then so do their jobs. All around the world the evidence of stroppy unions destroying businesses is before us. In Australia, unions destroyed their car industry. In the US, unions have destroyed massive companies through their never-ending demands for increased entitlements. I bet there is one group of workers who will feel very safe for their future employment… parliament’s stenographers.

Moreover, Iain Lees-Galloway needs to remember what Princess Cindy-pants had to say about these changes last year: Quote:

Prime Minister-designate Jacinda Ardern says she will ease the pressure of higher wages on small- to medium-business owners, including looking at a lower company tax rate.

As part of its deal with New Zealand First, the incoming Government will raise the minimum wage from $15.75 an hour $16.50 next year, and then to $20 by April 2021.

The increase is raising concerns in the business community and among farmers about meeting higher costs.

Speaking to Radio NZ’s Morning Report, Ardern said she wanted a tax working group to look at how Australia’s stepped tax regime operates.

“They have a slightly lower corporate tax rate for companies and businesses that have lower turnover. I’m interested in how we can ease the burden on small businesses in particular.“

In Australia, companies with turnover of less than $10 million a year pay a lower company tax rate.

“This is me foreshadowing that I do have a genuine interest in how we can support those who create jobs in New Zealand,” Ardern said.

“In large part, our small and medium enterprises – well over 40 per cent of our new jobs – are coming from our SMEs. I want to do all I can to work in partnership with them.“ EEEnd quote.

So, it seems either Jacinda Ardern was telling fibs back them, or they’ve decided to throw small business under the bus.

My pick is the second option. So much for working in partnership with them.

[rdytdy 5,343]

Inconvenient chart of the day

by CS

 

Labour are busily trying to blame the so-called housing crisis on National, but a left-winger posted that image on Twitter on Saturday night.

It seems to me that the government that arrested the decline in consents was the former National government and the government that started the decline was Helen Clark’s Labour government. In 2004 they brought in the Building Act (2004). Look at the chart and wonder no more who actually caused the housing crisis, and it was National who reversed it.  

Judith Collins tweeted: Quote:

And more bad news for Labour and Phil Twyford. Can’t legally build houses in NZ without consents. He’s now claiming houses when consents issued under @NZNationalParty Looks like Twyford Trickery IMHO. E

 

All the houses that Phil Twyford is claiming as Labour’s Kiwibuild right now were all consented under National. Without any fixes to the Resource Management Act, which Labour voted against whilst in opposition, or bringing the council processes under control just means that the real first Kiwibuild houses to be built are probably five years away. Thankfully, Phil Twyford will be long gone from the mess he is making of his portfolio and it will be up to a National minister to fix it all… again.

It looks like Phil Twyford is all spin and no substance. His spin cycle isn’t working any longer.

nd quote.

[chevy86 2,710]

On 5/11/2018 at 9:58 AM, rdytdy said:

Go JC.

Sledge of the week

by CS

 

 

 

Judith Collins seems to be the only opposition MP holding the prime minister and the government to account: 

Judith Collins should keep holding her feet to the fire.

And unfortunately National has totally failed in confirming Simon Bridges as leader and Paula Bennet as deputy--neither has voter appeal, lest of all the diction for policy delivery.