Our problem is that the most talented leaders in NZ don’t want to be politicians. Unfortunately those same leaders have tried to provide advice to Jacinda but she has refused to listen to them. She’s a disgrace.
Miket12
When in opposition, you can promise the world but, as this government has found out, delivering on those promises is another thing.
At the moment, Luxon (along with the Nats bean counters) will be looking at the polling numbers and thinking they don't really need to do much, the current Government is repeatedly shooting itself in the foot without much input from National.
Fonzie
Yes, that 0-2% band is foolish and unprincipled.Will, NZ must be heading to the crapper then considering one of the new fiscal rule from this year's budget is for government's to try and have a maximum 2% surplus of GDP each year once the current debt has been paid back. But then doing so hasn't damaged the economy of Norway who, despite having some largest social expenditure per capita in the world, still run their economy in a surplus the majority of the time.
Budget 22: New fiscal rules to be put in place
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has unveiled new fiscal rules to ensure New Zealand continues to maintain a world-leading Government financial position.www.beehive.govt.nz
As for Norway, if you read the Wikipedia link I posted you would understand why it is a special case. It has one of the biggest trade surplus’ per capita in the world.
Miket12
Yes, Norway's surplus is based mostly from oil from the North Sea and minerals from the ground. But the fact is, it can be done. But government's actually controlling their expenses and not being addicted to borrowing doesn't win votes when the people are receiving their "gifts from above".
Fonzie
It can be done if (and only if) you run a massive trade surplus due to having massive oil reserves or something else, which NZ does not have
Miket12
One of the most stupid things NZ did was during Muldoon's Think Big era when it was decided we should become self sufficient and refine oil here. But, instead of building a refinery which could process the oil we were getting out of the ground/sea in Taranaki, they decided to build a refinery that would process a different grade of crude oil.
NZ does have large oil and coal reserves, we've just decided to leave it in the ground.
PullinTeeth
What's there to stop nurses and midwives moveing straight overseas after gaining residency after 3 months? Because Luxon has made it clear hes not raising nurses wages if he gets in.This will surprise some of you, my new BFF
Bruce --
Thank you for signing our petition.
Labour’s immigration “green list” puts skilled migrants on a fast-track to New Zealand residency - but this list does not include nurses and midwives! Astoundingly, the new fast-track settings don’t come into effect until September (just in time for our winter flu season to be over).
We’re calling for Labour to protect Kiwis and our healthcare system in time for winter by:
1. Immediately adding nurses and midwives to the fast-track, straight-to-residence list
2. Starting the fast-track process immediately
3. Ensuring the process of gaining residency is complete within three months of application
Help us send a message to Labour by asking your friends and family to add their name to our petition.
Regards
Christopher Luxon
National Party Leader
You can sign the petition here: https://www.national.org.nz/fast-track-more-nurses-and-midwives
Labour fastracts their residency if they stay in their jobs for 2 years.
wizards rage
Every year we debate the minimum wage going up. Is it inflationary and should it be tied to productivity?
5 years of massive minimum wage rises under labour. An extra $218 earned per week! They must be so much better off? So are all those minim wage earners now living comfortably? Has poverty gone down? They all have their own homes?
there’s a lesson there for some Labour voters if they are wanting to see the light…
Some people want the shortcuts and vote themselves rich. It doesn’t work!
How we really get ahead? Increase productivity - make greater use of our natural resources (mining, agriculture, etc); remove red tape and burdens on compliance; spend government money on R&D instead of vanity projects; upgrade highways to allow higher speed limits safely; etc.
Then we will all benefit from higher GDP and lower prices and most of the current social issues will self correct. Real wealth/ income building progress.
5 years of massive minimum wage rises under labour. An extra $218 earned per week! They must be so much better off? So are all those minim wage earners now living comfortably? Has poverty gone down? They all have their own homes?
there’s a lesson there for some Labour voters if they are wanting to see the light…Some people want the shortcuts and vote themselves rich. It doesn’t work!
How we really get ahead? Increase productivity - make greater use of our natural resources (mining, agriculture, etc); remove red tape and burdens on compliance; spend government money on R&D instead of vanity projects; upgrade highways to allow higher speed limits safely; etc.
Then we will all benefit from higher GDP and lower prices and most of the current social issues will self correct. Real wealth/ income building progress.
bruce
Contributor
Would you sign that if you had cancer and were waiting for long delayed surgery. Just asking like.
I take your statement.. but according to whom? The biased media whose CEOs want the Nats in to get personal tax cuts. Or because maybe some troll starts a rumor on social media and everyone says shit yeah
If its just opinion then I believe NZ media might have a job for ya..
To be honest It looks like according to the opposition and it's allies, they want people to con other people to vote against their best interests... just can't understand how dumb people listen to the opinionated media and co .. who arent in govt to make policy.. doh..
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wizards rage
Last winter we discussed the countries electricity supply and I said plans needed to be made with our ageing infrastructure, increasing demand and reliance on coal. Surprise… Nothings been done.
This morning, the electricity system operator declared a "grid emergency" when there was an unexpected loss of electricity generation. Another winter living close to our limits and hoping (as opposed to planning ahead) that their are no blackouts…
Minister Woods said Thursday morning's situation showed coal and gas aren't as "fail-safe" as some people assume. "What this actually shows me is that there are fragilities in the system”
So do something about it then! That’s what you said last winter as well…
This morning, the electricity system operator declared a "grid emergency" when there was an unexpected loss of electricity generation. Another winter living close to our limits and hoping (as opposed to planning ahead) that their are no blackouts…
Minister Woods said Thursday morning's situation showed coal and gas aren't as "fail-safe" as some people assume. "What this actually shows me is that there are fragilities in the system”
So do something about it then! That’s what you said last winter as well…
Mr Dragon
Calm down!Every year we debate the minimum wage going up. Is it inflationary and should it be tied to productivity?
View attachment 47461
5 years of massive minimum wage rises under labour. An extra $218 earned per week! They must be so much better off? So are all those minim wage earners now living comfortably? Has poverty gone down? They all have their own homes?
Some people want the shortcuts and vote themselves rich. It doesn’t work!
How we really get ahead? Increase productivity - make greater use of our natural resources (mining, agriculture, etc); remove red tape and burdens on compliance; spend government money on R&D instead of vanity projects; upgrade highways to allow higher speed limits safely; etc.
Then we will all benefit from higher GDP and lower prices and most of the current social issues will self correct. Real wealth/ income building progress.
It's the same rate Australia payIt’s funny the perspectives of everyone, I could have sworn that the NZ media are mostly left leaning. Not dissimilar to us all thinking the refs have it in for the Warriors… when in reality the Warriors are just plain shit hopeless.
wizards rage
I would say the media was very pro government for the first 4 years of this government. Over the past year there has been a noticeable shift against the government which coincided with a lot of mis-steps and a big swing in the polls.
Seperately my 15 year old kids last year started saying on social media everyone hates Jacinda now after thinking she was great. They asked what happened? This was just through tic tok.
It shouldn’t be underestimated the real world hatred of a vocal minority about essentially forced vaccination; the 4 month Auckland lockdown; business owners who lost their businesses; mandating people out of jobs; effects from MIQ; etc. Yes they are a minority but very motivated and active due to the massive effect that covid decisions being made had on peoples lives.
To the average voter there has been a slight shift to the right in the polls but to a smaller vocal group, across the political spectrum, this would be the most hated government ever, who’s decisions around covid have had the biggest personal impacts on peoples lives that any government recently has had to make. That group is active on social media and have friends and family so their reach and anger has a disproportionate influence.
The Wellington protests shouldn’t have been a surprise. Even now everywhere Jacinda goes there are protests to the point she isn’t seen in public anymore.
I don’t think for Labours sake Jacinda can be leader at the next election. She was loved and won the last election on the first lockdown response. She is badly tainted by the last year of impacts on peoples lives.
Dixpat
In Stacey we (have to) trust
Contributor
Yet in every poll I have seen recently Ardern polls the highest as preferred PM
Rick O'Shay
Very smart thinking by the Noggies to nationalise their O&G industry under Statoil.
Would have been interesting to see what the UK could have been like if they had done the same thing at the time with their reserves
wizards rage
If you read my post, the vast majority shift their views only slightly and are reasonable. She governs to the majority.
But there is real hatred out there from the fringe people affected the worst by covid. It’s not all her fault, being the leader during covid, where massive life changing decisions had to be made. It’s similar around the world.
But she’s tainted by it and those highly motivated disenfranchised have her as the focal point for their issues.
wizards rage
Defend this scathing attack lefties!
In 2014 it was revealed that, three years earlier, the Beehive had used secret SIS material to smear then Opposition leader Phil Goff through the Whaleoil blog.
The Ardern Government's smearing of Charlotte Bellis, the pregnant New Zealander stuck in Afghanistan after the Government denied her permission to return home to give birth, is in a similar category.
In mitigation, then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins at least did his smearing transparently rather than anonymously through social media.
But aggravating his offence is that the Ardern Government knew that what Hipkins was saying about Bellis was not true.
Hipkins has now apologised to Bellis, but only after threats of defamation proceedings.
Making his words even more hollow, the public apology comes five months after Hipkins must have been advised that his smear was untrue and more than three months after he apologised to Bellis privately.
For five months, Hipkins has allowed the public to believe that Bellis had twice been offered government assistance to return home from Afghanistan but had turned it down — implying she was some kind of drama queen making a political point, rather than a mum-to-be wanting to give birth in her hometown of Christchurch rather than Kabul.
For her part, Jacinda Ardern says the main thing is that an apology has now been given.
I believe the sequence of events smells of the public apology being cynically delayed until the Government was required to release official information revealing its lie and after Hipkins had been relieved of his Covid responsibilities in last week's Cabinet reshuffle.
Were Hipkins still Covid-19 Response Minister when it all became public on Wednesday, Ardern would have had to sack him. He still remains Minister of Education, Minister of Police, Leader of the House, fifth-ranked in Cabinet and Minister for the Public Service, making him head of the entire Wellington bureaucracy.
Once, Hipkins remaining in Cabinet at all would have been untenable. But standards have progressively fallen, first under John Key's Government and further under Ardern.
Those who still think ministers should meet previous standards of integrity might celebrate that at least one brave woman has squeezed an apology out of the Beehive.
But the Government this week wouldn't apologise to the hundreds of other pregnant New Zealanders who were blocked from returning home by Hipkins' MIQ lottery and emergency allocation system, which the courts have found operated after September 1, 2021 as a legally unjustified limit on the right of New Zealand citizens to enter their own country. By October, 229 New Zealanders had applied for emergency MIQ allocation to return home pregnant, but only 23 were allowed in.
Advised that the system was of dubious legality, the Government's practice seems to have been to take seriously only those applicants with the means to sue — and even then to wait just before an actual hearing to back down.
The priority was not helping desperate New Zealand citizens return home. It was avoiding embarrassing Ardern and Hipkins by preventing court judgments that might find the system unlawful.
The Government is not appealing these High Court judgments. Yet it has also made clear that it will not be apologising to anyone.
To do so, it fears, would provide grounds for more New Zealanders to ask the courts to examine the way they were treated by Ardern's Government and perhaps seek damages. That would never do, since it could hurt the Prime Minister's global brand, set to be on display at the Nato summit next week in Madrid, EU headquarters in Brussels and at a photo op with embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London.
Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark is among those concerned about Ardern's tilt towards the US and Nato and away from the "independent foreign policy" pursued by Bill English, Key, Clark herself, Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger for three decades.
God only knows what David Lange would think of Ardern addressing the annual summit of a US-led military alliance based on nuclear deterrence.
On her visit to Brussels and London, the Prime Minister will be accompanied mainly for illustrative purposes by a carefully vetted "business" delegation to present her as pro-business to New Zealand voters worried about economic security.
In truth, real New Zealand businesspeople are gearing up to fight the Government's ongoing attacks on their viability with bans on immigration, constant minimum wage increases and the return of 1970s-style national awards and stagflation.
If more were needed to reveal the Government as a mere focus-group-driven PR charade, five years since the Prime Minister appointed herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and declared that her Government would build 100,000 new homes, KidsCan founder Julie Chapman reports that "poverty is the worst it's been for families", mainly because of housing.
The State of Child Health Report from Cure Kids, in partnership with the Paediatric Society, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Otago University's Child and Youth Epidemiology Service, found that New Zealand's rates of dental disease, respiratory conditions, skin infections, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are too high relative to other resource-rich countries. For dental disease and respiratory conditions, hospitalisation rates continue to worsen.
According to the Government's Children's Commissioner, Frances Eivers, "on many measures, New Zealand is currently one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child."
There comes a time when governments simply must be thrown out. It's bad enough that the Ardern Government has proven incompetent at delivering any of the things it was elected to do. Its performance over Bellis shows it has now joined some of its most infamous predecessors in the slime.
www.nzherald.co.nz
In 2014 it was revealed that, three years earlier, the Beehive had used secret SIS material to smear then Opposition leader Phil Goff through the Whaleoil blog.
The Ardern Government's smearing of Charlotte Bellis, the pregnant New Zealander stuck in Afghanistan after the Government denied her permission to return home to give birth, is in a similar category.
In mitigation, then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins at least did his smearing transparently rather than anonymously through social media.
But aggravating his offence is that the Ardern Government knew that what Hipkins was saying about Bellis was not true.
Hipkins has now apologised to Bellis, but only after threats of defamation proceedings.
Making his words even more hollow, the public apology comes five months after Hipkins must have been advised that his smear was untrue and more than three months after he apologised to Bellis privately.
For five months, Hipkins has allowed the public to believe that Bellis had twice been offered government assistance to return home from Afghanistan but had turned it down — implying she was some kind of drama queen making a political point, rather than a mum-to-be wanting to give birth in her hometown of Christchurch rather than Kabul.
For her part, Jacinda Ardern says the main thing is that an apology has now been given.
I believe the sequence of events smells of the public apology being cynically delayed until the Government was required to release official information revealing its lie and after Hipkins had been relieved of his Covid responsibilities in last week's Cabinet reshuffle.
Were Hipkins still Covid-19 Response Minister when it all became public on Wednesday, Ardern would have had to sack him. He still remains Minister of Education, Minister of Police, Leader of the House, fifth-ranked in Cabinet and Minister for the Public Service, making him head of the entire Wellington bureaucracy.
Once, Hipkins remaining in Cabinet at all would have been untenable. But standards have progressively fallen, first under John Key's Government and further under Ardern.
Those who still think ministers should meet previous standards of integrity might celebrate that at least one brave woman has squeezed an apology out of the Beehive.
But the Government this week wouldn't apologise to the hundreds of other pregnant New Zealanders who were blocked from returning home by Hipkins' MIQ lottery and emergency allocation system, which the courts have found operated after September 1, 2021 as a legally unjustified limit on the right of New Zealand citizens to enter their own country. By October, 229 New Zealanders had applied for emergency MIQ allocation to return home pregnant, but only 23 were allowed in.
Advised that the system was of dubious legality, the Government's practice seems to have been to take seriously only those applicants with the means to sue — and even then to wait just before an actual hearing to back down.
The priority was not helping desperate New Zealand citizens return home. It was avoiding embarrassing Ardern and Hipkins by preventing court judgments that might find the system unlawful.
The Government is not appealing these High Court judgments. Yet it has also made clear that it will not be apologising to anyone.
To do so, it fears, would provide grounds for more New Zealanders to ask the courts to examine the way they were treated by Ardern's Government and perhaps seek damages. That would never do, since it could hurt the Prime Minister's global brand, set to be on display at the Nato summit next week in Madrid, EU headquarters in Brussels and at a photo op with embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London.
Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark is among those concerned about Ardern's tilt towards the US and Nato and away from the "independent foreign policy" pursued by Bill English, Key, Clark herself, Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger for three decades.
God only knows what David Lange would think of Ardern addressing the annual summit of a US-led military alliance based on nuclear deterrence.
On her visit to Brussels and London, the Prime Minister will be accompanied mainly for illustrative purposes by a carefully vetted "business" delegation to present her as pro-business to New Zealand voters worried about economic security.
In truth, real New Zealand businesspeople are gearing up to fight the Government's ongoing attacks on their viability with bans on immigration, constant minimum wage increases and the return of 1970s-style national awards and stagflation.
If more were needed to reveal the Government as a mere focus-group-driven PR charade, five years since the Prime Minister appointed herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and declared that her Government would build 100,000 new homes, KidsCan founder Julie Chapman reports that "poverty is the worst it's been for families", mainly because of housing.
The State of Child Health Report from Cure Kids, in partnership with the Paediatric Society, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Otago University's Child and Youth Epidemiology Service, found that New Zealand's rates of dental disease, respiratory conditions, skin infections, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are too high relative to other resource-rich countries. For dental disease and respiratory conditions, hospitalisation rates continue to worsen.
According to the Government's Children's Commissioner, Frances Eivers, "on many measures, New Zealand is currently one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child."
There comes a time when governments simply must be thrown out. It's bad enough that the Ardern Government has proven incompetent at delivering any of the things it was elected to do. Its performance over Bellis shows it has now joined some of its most infamous predecessors in the slime.
Matthew Hooton: Chris Hipkins' Bellis apology rings hollow
At one time, a Cabinet Minister's head would have rolled over MIQ debacle.
wizards rage
5 years after the Prime Minister appointed herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and made child poverty her priority, New Zealand is now “one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child” according to the governments own child commissionerDefend this scathing attack lefties!
In 2014 it was revealed that, three years earlier, the Beehive had used secret SIS material to smear then Opposition leader Phil Goff through the Whaleoil blog.
The Ardern Government's smearing of Charlotte Bellis, the pregnant New Zealander stuck in Afghanistan after the Government denied her permission to return home to give birth, is in a similar category.
In mitigation, then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins at least did his smearing transparently rather than anonymously through social media.
But aggravating his offence is that the Ardern Government knew that what Hipkins was saying about Bellis was not true.
Hipkins has now apologised to Bellis, but only after threats of defamation proceedings.
Making his words even more hollow, the public apology comes five months after Hipkins must have been advised that his smear was untrue and more than three months after he apologised to Bellis privately.
For five months, Hipkins has allowed the public to believe that Bellis had twice been offered government assistance to return home from Afghanistan but had turned it down — implying she was some kind of drama queen making a political point, rather than a mum-to-be wanting to give birth in her hometown of Christchurch rather than Kabul.
For her part, Jacinda Ardern says the main thing is that an apology has now been given.
I believe the sequence of events smells of the public apology being cynically delayed until the Government was required to release official information revealing its lie and after Hipkins had been relieved of his Covid responsibilities in last week's Cabinet reshuffle.
Were Hipkins still Covid-19 Response Minister when it all became public on Wednesday, Ardern would have had to sack him. He still remains Minister of Education, Minister of Police, Leader of the House, fifth-ranked in Cabinet and Minister for the Public Service, making him head of the entire Wellington bureaucracy.
Once, Hipkins remaining in Cabinet at all would have been untenable. But standards have progressively fallen, first under John Key's Government and further under Ardern.
Those who still think ministers should meet previous standards of integrity might celebrate that at least one brave woman has squeezed an apology out of the Beehive.
But the Government this week wouldn't apologise to the hundreds of other pregnant New Zealanders who were blocked from returning home by Hipkins' MIQ lottery and emergency allocation system, which the courts have found operated after September 1, 2021 as a legally unjustified limit on the right of New Zealand citizens to enter their own country. By October, 229 New Zealanders had applied for emergency MIQ allocation to return home pregnant, but only 23 were allowed in.
Advised that the system was of dubious legality, the Government's practice seems to have been to take seriously only those applicants with the means to sue — and even then to wait just before an actual hearing to back down.
The priority was not helping desperate New Zealand citizens return home. It was avoiding embarrassing Ardern and Hipkins by preventing court judgments that might find the system unlawful.
The Government is not appealing these High Court judgments. Yet it has also made clear that it will not be apologising to anyone.
To do so, it fears, would provide grounds for more New Zealanders to ask the courts to examine the way they were treated by Ardern's Government and perhaps seek damages. That would never do, since it could hurt the Prime Minister's global brand, set to be on display at the Nato summit next week in Madrid, EU headquarters in Brussels and at a photo op with embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London.
Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark is among those concerned about Ardern's tilt towards the US and Nato and away from the "independent foreign policy" pursued by Bill English, Key, Clark herself, Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger for three decades.
God only knows what David Lange would think of Ardern addressing the annual summit of a US-led military alliance based on nuclear deterrence.
On her visit to Brussels and London, the Prime Minister will be accompanied mainly for illustrative purposes by a carefully vetted "business" delegation to present her as pro-business to New Zealand voters worried about economic security.
In truth, real New Zealand businesspeople are gearing up to fight the Government's ongoing attacks on their viability with bans on immigration, constant minimum wage increases and the return of 1970s-style national awards and stagflation.
If more were needed to reveal the Government as a mere focus-group-driven PR charade, five years since the Prime Minister appointed herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and declared that her Government would build 100,000 new homes, KidsCan founder Julie Chapman reports that "poverty is the worst it's been for families", mainly because of housing.
The State of Child Health Report from Cure Kids, in partnership with the Paediatric Society, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Otago University's Child and Youth Epidemiology Service, found that New Zealand's rates of dental disease, respiratory conditions, skin infections, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are too high relative to other resource-rich countries. For dental disease and respiratory conditions, hospitalisation rates continue to worsen.
According to the Government's Children's Commissioner, Frances Eivers, "on many measures, New Zealand is currently one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child."
There comes a time when governments simply must be thrown out. It's bad enough that the Ardern Government has proven incompetent at delivering any of the things it was elected to do. Its performance over Bellis shows it has now joined some of its most infamous predecessors in the slime.
Matthew Hooton: Chris Hipkins' Bellis apology rings hollow
At one time, a Cabinet Minister's head would have rolled over MIQ debacle.
Unbelievable people still support our most incompetent government ever…
Noitall
I think most realistic people regard this as a generational issue since basically you’re trying to reprioritise children in the eyes of their parents as they are often the ones spending money in areas that the children don’t receive the basics of life, and at a time where inflation levels are as they are it’s no real surprise. Out of interest, what has Luxon said how he will get children out of this. I know he’s criticised it and offered a tax reform that will benefit the highest earners but I’m not sure that will make any difference, in fact I know it won’t along with the poor gang policies that even ex party members know aren’t enforceable. The thing with politics is it’s the art of words, never will you hear a politician answer a question with a simple yes or no answer and labour gave no indication of what term they would be able to fix the issues they ran their election on, but thankfully they were addressed as the previous government gave no indication of setting their sights on housing and under privileged children as was hugely necessary at the time and still is. I find it interesting that nobody seems to think Luxon is the person to change these issues and yet he’s enough for many. In a country that has lost so much to covid with the likes of our tourism sector we are basically solely reliant on dairy again, it seems hugely short sighted that we don’t recognise that we have a massive draw card on the world stage in Ardern. All she has to do is sip from a glass and has the crowd in hysterics.5 years after the Prime Minister appointed herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and made child poverty her priority, New Zealand is now “one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child” according to the governments own child commissioner
Unbelievable people still support our most incompetent government ever…
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