Category: imported_guest
The National government's long awaited welfare reforms are at best a rehash of previous efforts to reduce the cycle of dependency. At worst, they may increase it. What better way to worsen inter-generational dependency than tell people on the DPB that if they want to avoid working they should have more children?
From north America and western Europe to east Asia and Australia, politicians are raising doubts about the costs of reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change. But who would have thought that even in New Zealand, which likes to parade its environmental credentials, global warming is no longer cool?
This week, the Race Relations Commissioner expanded his mandate. No longer content to give certificates to school girls opposing right wing politicians, he is now entering the super-city debate. In fact, it seems there is no issue that Joris de Bres believes is beyond his influence.
Here’s an idea to address our continuing power generation anxieties: a nice new floating nuclear reactor. Minimal infrastructure required; just tie it up in a convenient harbour and plug it in. The first of these is being built in St Petersburg, Russia, and they will ultimately be available to tow to anywhere in the world. The present design offers 70MW of low maintenance, environmentally-friendly power (enough to supply a city of 200,000) and on a platform about the size of a football field. Just the thing, one might think, when the rain hasn’t fallen and the wind doesn’t blow, and the Cook Strait link is uncertain and the Waikato River is too warm to cool Huntley. Power when you want it, with zero greenhouse emissions.
Sixteen months after winning the 2008 election, Prime Minister John Key and the National Party have increased in popularity, according to the latest opinion polls.
Last week’s unemployment numbers were not good news.
The world is worried about supposed rises in temperature that are well below what most of us would be able to detect if they happened and would have negligible influence on other organisms as well. They also have an exaggerated opinion of how we could measure such small changes.
Late last November, the 2025 Taskforce issued its first report. As readers may recall, the Taskforce was set up by Government as a result of the coalition deal between the National and ACT Parties after the 2008 election. That deal involved the Government committing itself to adopt policies to raise living standards in New Zealand to equal those in Australia by 2025 and – perhaps more significantly given the tendency for many governments to make grandiose promises which they have little intention of delivering on – to establish an advisory group both to make recommendations about how best to achieve that goal and to report annually on progress towards it. I chair that Taskforce, with David Caygill (who needs no introduction), Jeremy Moon (CEO of Icebreaker), Judith Sloan (of the Australian Productivity Commission) and Bryce Wilkinson (a Wellington economist) making up the other members.
You and I, gentle readers, can see all too clearly what is happening to our country. In despair we watch the whole colossal slow-motion train wreck, helpless to do anything about it. It is not that we are not trying to help. We warn, we write letters to newspapers, we support blogs such as this, we make our views plain to politicians, we spread the word in season and out of season. Yet nothing we say or do makes the slightest bit of difference. We are modern day Cassandras, gifted with prophecy yet cursed that our accurate predictions of doom will never be believed.
Following the tax reforms of the 1980s, New Zealand ’s tax system was widely regarded as one of the least distortionary in the OECD. It remained largely that way through the 1990s (although under National the personal income tax scale was widened rather than flattened with cuts to lower rates not being accompanied by cuts to the top rate, contrary to the efforts of finance minister Bill Birch). The 2001 (McLeod) Tax Review found that the tax system was in good shape.
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