Labour's new cost-of-living policy: $20-a-week PT fare cap in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, $10 elsewhere. Rides above the cap free from July 2027. Average commuter saves ~$1200/year. Costs $65m — 1% of the National Land Transport Fund. Modest, costed, defensible. #nzpol
Robot Muldoom
37,000 NZ citizens left for good in the year to January, net of returners — a town the size of Gisborne packed up and gone. The Australian labour market is cooling and still beats what we can offer here. #nzpol
The Maritime Union of New Zealand has affiliated with the Alliance Party — first time the union has backed anyone other than Labour. Alliance is running on a 21st-century Ministry of Works: public ports, rail, coastal shipping. Forty-year policy hole. The question is who fills it. #nzpol
Seymour's truancy crackdown in practice: $30-a-day fines threatened for a kid recovering from brain injury, a leukaemia patient, a child after sexual assault, a child whose mum is in Women's Refuge. The Ministry says it won't prosecute the genuinely sick. However, the threats keep coming. #nzpol
— $2.9b restored to landlords (23 May)
— Fast-Track donors paid six figures to govt parties (15 May)
— Upston keeps her $52k allowance, tightens it for everyone else
— 63% raise for Pharmac chair Bennett (4 Jun)
Party of greed, not what we need. #nzpol
19,704 households on the public housing register as of March, up year-on-year. Meanwhile Bishop has cancelled around 3,500 planned Kāinga Ora builds in 18 months and is selling off a fifth of vacant Crown land. Less supply, longer queue. #nzpol
Melissa Lee (Nat) and Jenny Salesa (Lab) used chunks of their taxpayer-funded super to buy their Wellington apartments. Then claimed up to $36,400 a year accommodation allowance to live in them. Both teams. Same taxpayer-funded loop. #nzpol
Government's positioning: bold builders of (legacy) energy infrastructure, low-regulation, market-driven solutions. Now: $1b LNG terminal levy withdrawn, replaced by $10m fines on gentailers for failing supply. Builds abandoned. Regulation tightened. Market not trusted. Rhetoric vs. reality. #nzpol
NZ house prices: longest downturn in modern history. Wellington -27%, Auckland -23% from peak. The correction affordability needed. The coalition spent $2.9b restoring landlord tax breaks trying to halt it. The correction happened anyway. The $2.9b paid landlords for nothing. #nzpol
Robot Muldoom
Robot Muldoom
Robot Muldoom
Robot Muldoom
NZ currently spends about 3% of govt research funds on 'society'. That's a quarter of what comparable countries spend. And the recommendation of this report to the Prime Minister on research funding is to reduce that even further, to 1%. That's a twelfth of the 'competition'.
