Coalition details at a glance: What you need to know
Coalition details at a glance: What you need to know
National's foreign buyers tax will not go ahead, NZ First has secured a $1.2 billion regional infrastructure fund, and the new government will support a Treaty Principles bill to Select Committee.
There are some... interesting things in this list.
Bitter, nasty, regressive. Not a single positive thing on that list unless you're a landlord, millionaire or a bigot.
This goverment will be a complete disaster for thousands upon thousands.
An email from NZ First also says they have got agreement to repeal the Therapeutic Products Act 2023, which seems to require marketing of medicine/health stuff to only make claims that are real (i.e. it's anti-homeopathy, etc).
Does NZ first want only 'real' info or the current act wants 'real' claims?
The current law requires no false claims be made. NZF want to repeal that, and allow dubious claims
It's quite amazing how much from the last 6 years is getting undone. I don't think that's really happened for a long time from an incoming govt (maybe 1984 was the last time?). Generally governments might repeal 1 or 2 high profile things, and then just water down everything else they don't like. Some of it seems to be nonsensical from an economic point of view (e.g. removing Māori names from ministries, legislating English as an official language). Allowing oil & gas exploration has very little economic basis, since there's not really much in the way of viable oil & gas fields left.
The COVID related stuff could be worrying (at least the direction it's coming from), but I doubt it'll have much impact unless they really fuck with the review process. So long as it's mostly experts involved, I'm sure sanity will prevail. Let's just hope there's not a major COVID outbreak while this government is in power.
Let's Get Wellington Moving cancelled... I guess Act wants Wellington to stand still?
Overall, it's mostly stuff we'd expect, or it's things that are not really going to have much impact (i.e. reviews, etc that'll probably go nowhere). I doubt National will support a referendum on the Treaty. It also looks like the housing/cost of living crisis will get worse, at least in the long run.
A lot of virtue signaling and dog whistling in the list as well. For example:
• As a matter of urgency, issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government's expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race.
This isn't a thing that happens, but it's playing up to the whole 'hospitals use race when determining surgery' misinformation bullshit. It will have zero impact in how care is given.
What are you talking about, an entire duplicate Maori health authority was formed to prioritise the needs of Maori first, instead of New Zealanders in general.
Not to mention the duplicate Maori versions of other things due to co-governance, and things like Maori wards which put council seats aside just for Maori and no-one else.
We are a multicultural country with far more than two cultures, it can't be Maori vs everyone else. We need to be united as New Zealanders
There's a fair amount of anti-"woke" and and anti-environment stuff though, although I'm not familiar enough with NZ politics to know how impactful these will be. But they look pretty fucked on the face of it:
- All references to gender, sexuality and "relationship-based education guidelines" will be removed and replaced from curriculums
- Concurrent sentences would come to an end, prisoners would be required to work, and Corrections officers would get body cameras
- Hate speech law would also be ruled out, with work on it stopped
- Fair pay agreements and Labour's replacements for the RMA will be repealed by Christmas. New resource management laws will be "premised on the enjoyment of property rights as a guiding principle"
- Ban on offshore oil and gas exploration to be repealed.
So much of it just seems like petty idealogical change just for the sake of it.
LGWM has been dragging on for almost a decade now, Wellington council were given a clear mandate to build new tunnels, bypass the basin, build trams, and in general get shit done.
Instead, we have a handful of bike lanes, and Wellington is as painful to get around in as it ever has been.
It's about the only item on that list I wholeheartedly agree with.
Seems like it's very heavy on things they are going to destroy/undo and very light on things they are going to create/construct.
Conservatism at its core: they want to go back to "the good old days" is just a shame that they never existed.
It's a viewpoint. National and especially Act are big believers in the idea the the government should be involved as little as possible, and "the market" will sort it out. Of course the MPs and their donors own the companies that make up "the market", so they financially benefit as well.
However, they are not bad guys. They, for the most part, truly believe that this system of government makes for a better country.
It just seems way more about defining themselves via negatives than we saw each time the Key govt was incoming (or even the Bolger government, to really dredge up the past...) Compare this with stuff like Bill English's obsession with social investment.
However, they are not bad guys
Hmmm. I think their supporters are not bad guys. When I've discussed politics - I lived in the Epson electorate for a long time - most everyone wants what's best for New Zealand as a whole, and in cases where they do specifically want bad outcomes for certain groups it's usually because they think the groups deserve bad outcomes. For which I blame cognitive biases like the Just World hypothesis, bigotry, or a misunderstanding of finance.
But when it comes to policy-making, I think there's a level at which it's your ethical responsibility to actually assimilate all the facts and look at international best practice and long term outcomes instead of just going by what you think "feels like" the truth. And I think over the years, along with the well-meaning people you describe, we have also had a number of intellectually lazy/dishonest types who don't do that - and a few cynical people who are in politics simply to benefit their in-group.
How fucked is the country ?
Not sure on the scale to use
Nationals ability to publish a coherent budget to Winston peters in charge and deciding the gate of kiwis
How fucked is the country ?
Um, yes?
Yup, Act has got this one in: "Explore allowing home builders to opt out of requiring a building consent provided they have long-term insurance for their work"
And for schools, NZ First: "Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines". What does the last bit mean? Remove and then replace? You can't remove something and then replace it. No more sex education?
A very depressing list of changes, nothing positive. I still don't understand why anyone would vote for one of these parties.
Yup, Act has got this one in: “Explore allowing home builders to opt out of requiring a building consent provided they have long-term insurance for their work”
Hopefully this is just in name. They probably got told no, and they said can we at least look into it?
And for schools, NZ First: “Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines”. What does the last bit mean? Remove and then replace? You can’t remove something and then replace it. No more sex education?
I think this is not related to the kind of sex education we had as kids, I think this is basically banning schools from discussing bi/homosexuality, trans, an non-binary genders. It's pandering to the "anti-woke" crowd who don't even understand what that stuff is but definitely don't want their kids learning about it. Because the youth suicide rate isn't high enough, we need some policies that aim to take it higher.
Yeah makes sense re the woke part. Guess we'll have to educate our kids ourselves.
A very depressing government. Seems they only have reverted changes without any positive new changes.
Well there's my daily dose of depression
Ok reddit-esque echo chamber, here's a hot take - most of its pretty good and reverses several backwards trends.
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Nationals tax cuts are random and don't really do much. However reinstating deductibility on mortgage interest is a no brainer, since it's removing an arbitrary exception that makes tax law more complicated than it should be
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Treaty Principles Bill that everyone is complaining about - it's about clarifying things that are currently grey areas so there is certainty. We can't keep paying out for historical injustices forever. Besides, it's a bill that can still get shot down at select committee, not the referendum that ACT wanted
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Regional Infrastructure Fund aka Shane Jones slush fund - don't see anyone complaining about this. Last time they used it to upgrade and fix marae around the country, a good thing imo
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Removing the last of the covid BS - good. Throwing money at an inquiry about if the BS was justified - just move on already...
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ACT stopping large projects - some of those projects have been dragging on for too long and achieve very little (such as Let's Get Wellington Moving). Some are unnecessary (such as Three Waters). Not sure about the others but probably costing too much for what they're delivering. The need for some of the projects still exists, most likely those ones will be re-assessed, scope modified and relaunched under a new name
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Fees Free final year instead of first year - this would save a lot of money while also rewarding those who stick it out and finish instead of dropping out after a year. Maybe will result in more people actually graduating
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Retirement staying at 65 is just unsustainable, but this would have been Winston's doing. Thanks to the medical system people live longer and drag their lives out longer when they get terminally ill. Easy for Luxon to kick this can down the road though to get Winston onside
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Fair Pay agreements scrapped - good. These are compulsory unionism agreements. If you want to form a union then form a union, but don't make it compulsory for your entire industry to join...
...etc
Ok reddit-esque echo chamber
Not really necessary to start with a pejorative, is it?
It is when one wants to silence criticism out of the gate and avoid actually having to argue one's position.
E.g.
We can’t keep paying out for historical injustices forever.
Translation: the savages need to know their place as a conquered people.
There's a lot to unpack here, but I want to focus on the Treaty principles, because it's not about simplifying things, it's about taking away rights that were promised to people.
There are existing Treaty principles which are quite simple to understand, and these are commreferenced in legislation.
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