If you thought compulsory insulation, compulsory kitchen and bathroom fans and compulsory fixed heaters were enough, you are going to be disappointed. More than a year ago, the government announced that rental losses were going to be ringfenced. This has now passed into law… not that you would know about it. I have looked everywhere and, unless you are used to reading legislation, or IRD policy (and the website has not yet been updated, even though the ringfence is already law), you wouldn’t know about it. Seriously. We are being kept in the dark.

The Allocation of Deductions for Excess Rental Land Expenditure was passed into law last week and applies to all rental properties with effect from 1st April 2019. Section 51C New Subpart EL deals with this. (Here is the reference if you want to read the legislation)

Here is what is happening. Owners of rental properties will not be able to claim rental losses in the year in which they are incurred. Instead, they will be carried forward (ringfenced) to be offset against future rental profits. You will not lose the rental losses altogether, but you will not be able to offset rental losses against other income,including tax paid salaries.

This is what they are getting at, of course. If you are a landlord, your rental losses cannot now give you a personal tax refund. This rule applies from this tax year -the year to 31 March 2020. Your losses will be carried forward to be offset against future rental profits… for as long as it takes.

While this rule has been in the pipeline since March 2018, it has only just passed into law, presumably last week, when the government was about to go on holiday. I can find nothing about this in the media, who obviously think that it is fair enough to beat landlords with yet another big stick. Nothing new there.

Here is what is really wrong about this legislation.

If you have a small business, on the side to your day job, you can claim any losses against your personal income. So let’s say you have a small digger business, which you operate in your spare time, mainly because you love driving your digger. You can claim all expenses on the digger, including maintenance and depreciation, and if you end up with a loss, as a result of excess expenses, you get a tax refund, no questions asked.

If you own a rental property, however, this is also viewed as a business by IRD… just like the digger business. However, landlords are not allowed to claim depreciation on their buildings, even though it is mostly the land that increases in value. Landlords are required to install loft and underfloor insulation, but the cost is not deductible… sorry, guys, but that is considered to be expenditure of a ‘capital’ nature, even though you are required by the government to do it.

Next year, landlords will be required by the government to fit kitchen and bathroom fans, and fixed heaters and these will also have to be capitalised unless you can get each one done for less than $500. (Don’t do them all at once either, otherwise, the ‘pooling’ rules regarding capital assets will apply.)

Just so you know, digger drivers are not required to install any insulation or extractor fans, but any maintenance they do is tax-deductible, including replacing the rock bucket or buying new tyres.

So landlords, who provide accommodation to people that the government simply cannot house, are beaten with yet another stick, and now are the only group of business owners who are not allowed to claim losses against other income, even though those losses are mostly revenue losses, and so should be subject to normal expenditure rules.

If you are a landlord and are hoping for a personal tax refund next year, be warned. If your property is owned in an LTC, you are still okay. Otherwise, you might want to consider selling up. Even though you are providing a social service, you are not wanted. The government would rather have people on the street than allow you to claim a tax refund. It really is that bad.

Sell up, landlords. At some point, the government is going to realise that subsidising private landlords is the only way to solve the short term housing problem. For those of you making rental profits, increase your rents. There are going to be fewer and fewer rentals available, and your properties are going to be like gold. You can thank this stupid, shortsighted government for giving you an income you would never have dreamed about.

Dear Readers

yesterday an e-mail was sent to Whaleoil, it read…

Dear Whale Oil,

It’s Whaleoil duh…

My name is Kieran Ford, and alongside Prof. Kevin Clements at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, we’re currently working on a research project exploring the role and significance of right-wing politics in 21st century New Zealand.

Hmm… the same university that contains a Professor who is currently waging a legal war conflict against Cameron Slater.

Sounds totally legit.

We’re writing to see whether you would be interested in taking part in the project. The project aims to explore the contributions right-wing politics and political activists make to political discourse and behaviour. Among other things we wish to explore right-wing political narratives, key issues, and the kind of New Zealand those on the right would like to see in the future.
We feel that your participation would make a fantastic contribution to the project.

Yeah, I just bet you both would be wetting your white Y fronts with excitement at the chance to unscrupulously ask leading questions while keeping your true agenda hidden until it came time to publish your “findings.”

While at some point, our research will involve interviewing participants, and learning about their experiences with politics, at this stage, we are keen to simply get an idea of whether you would be interested in participating in this project. With best wishes and thanks in advance,

Yours sincerely,
Kieran Ford

Awww how sweet and respectful. I am sure that the team at Whaleoil will totally be taken in… but wait… their research team AKA Sally has found something interesting… whatever could it be?

But wait… there’s more.

[…] From the manifesto of one of the attackers, it is clear that this attack was politically motivated […]
Countries such as the UK or France have focused their responses on security, actively ignoring the wider political issues that allow for political violence to occur.

[…] What this attack does demonstrate is the need for greater gun control in New Zealand, and in particular, of semi-automatic weapons, reducing the ability of potential attackers to carry out their plans.
Moreover, we must acknowledge that Islamophobia is rife within global society.
Racially motivated hate crimes, in New Zealand as well as further afield, are far more common than we would like to admit.

[…] In the UK, the Conservative Party is now embroiled in a scandal regarding the level of Islamophobia within the party. The vote for Brexit was motivated by anti-immigration rhetoric, with fear swept up regarding refugees from the Middle East. After the Brexit vote, hate crimes skyrocketed overnight. Yet, the UK Government continues to play down the threat of the far Right, focusing instead on the threat from militant Islamists.

In the US, Donald Trump recently drastically reduced the country’s counter-extremism programme, removing its responsibility to counter far-right extremism entirely. The programme now solely focuses on militant Islamism, with no measures in place to protect the country from the Right.

In Australia, the controversial politician Pauline Hanson ridicules Islamic dress in Parliament, while refugees suffer in barbaric conditions in island detention centres.

This accommodation of Islamophobia must stop. Here, too, New Zealand must acknowledge the ways in which Islamophobia and far-right extremism exist in our society. Search briefly online, and you will find an alarming number of online Kiwi extremists.

[…] Alongside policing approaches to identify far-right activists,

[…] The Government could also increase the refugee quota.

Kieran Ford is a PhD student at the University of Otago. His research concerns extremism and counter-extremism strategies.

odt.co.nz/opinion/comment-nz-response-violence-must-go-beyond-security

Hmm… Kieran neglected to mention that little bit of information. He is looking for right-wing “extremists” to help prove his theory that New Zealand has a right-wing extremist problem.

Maybe he should interview Patrick Gower. He has been unsuccessfully hunting for some all year.

Oh and one other thing…Kieran Ford thinks Islamophobia is terrible but he is quite comfortable spreading lies about Jews.

The Otago Daily Times published his opinion piece for free but he is most unhappy that the same newspaper published an ad that the Jewish Council paid for.

WHAT… A… WANKER

So yeah Kieran and Kevin, that is a no thanks from us.

In general terms, the Great Replacement theory relies on demographics to show that native populations in Europe are being replaced by migrants and minorities. It was the focus of a recent article in Stuff which reported that the Great Replacement was supported by the Christchurch terrorist in his banned manifesto. The article raised lots of connected ideas, but I will limit myself to its description of the Great Replacement as ‘an extreme-right genocide conspiracy theory’.

I don’t know about the ‘extreme-right genocide’ part, but I would like to take a closer look at the conspiracy theory part.

Is the Great Replacement idea a conspiracy theory? A good place to start is its disputed origins, some of which have French connections.

Firstly, around 2013, French Identitarian philosopher Renaud Camus coined the term, ‘The Great Replacement’ in his eulogy of Dominque Venner at Notre Dame Cathedral. Venner had shot himself at the Cathedral altar in rebellion against the crime of the replacement of the French people.

Secondly, promoters of the Great Replacement make a prophetic connection with Jean Raspail’s dystopian novel, The Camp of the Saints, written in 1973. It eerily recounts that Europe would be swamped by third-world migrants in the not too distant future.

So much for the French origins.

There is another view, that the idea of the Great Replacement has its origin in the United Nations and was considered by it to be a necessary reality.

In 2018, the academic Jose Zuquete writes in The Identitarians: The Movement Against Globalism and Islam in Europe, that the Identitarians find the Great Replacement to be a reality of UN policy. He writes:

“Throughout the years the UN series of reports about the need to facilitate human mobility and enhanced international cooperation for safe, orderly, and regular migration, and even a 2000 report by the UN Population Division about ‘replacement migration’ as a possible way to offset the population decline and aging in developed countries, have been taken as proof of such a UN-driven agenda.”

A commentary on the UN Report on Replacement Migration, 2000, will have to suffice for the original is not available online.

Issued by the UN population division, the commentary opens with:

“The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has released a new report titled Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? Replacement migration refers to the international migration that a country would need to prevent population decline and population ageing resulting from low fertility and mortality rates.”

Further, “Relative to their population size, Italy and Germany would need the largest number of migrants to maintain the size of their working-age populations. Italy would require 6,500 migrants per million inhabitants annually and Germany, 6,000.”

If I make a quick calculation, based on Germany’s 2000 population of 82 million people, replacement would necessitate just under 500,000 immigrants per year. That figure is unwieldy for the UN, for the commentary states:

“Maintaining potential support ratios would in all cases entail volumes of immigration entirely out of line with both past experience and reasonable expectations.”

un.org/press/en/2000

But note that since the beginning of the migrant crisis until 2018, 1.4 million refugees have arrived in Germany, which means that replacement levels are close to being met. Regardless, the Great Replacement idea for the media is just a conspiracy theory.

Consider further that media denial of replacement migration as a reality is challenged by Angela Merkle’s own justification for permitting the mass influx of migrants into Europe, a justification made on replacement grounds. According to Oliver Friendship, writing for the Australian Spectator in 2018:

 “Merkle’s German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, said, “We need people. We need young people. We need immigrants… All of you know that because we have too few children”.

Others also took replacement to be the reason for such unprecedented migration. Firstly, Oliver Friendship quotes Hans Kundani, a journalist working for a German American NGO.

“You can look at this as Germany pursuing a national interest in the sense that Germany has a long-term demographic problem”. Secondly, he writes that Douglas Murray called out Merkle’s failed immigration policy which she utilised in order to solve Germany’s demographic problem. Murray thinks Merkle incompetent for believing “mass immigration to be the solution to her demographic headaches.”

spectator.com.au

Finally, it’s up to you to decide. Is the Great Replacement a conspiracy theory or an idea with at least some basis in fact? If replacement migration has a real origin in the United Nations, how reasonable is it to describe it as ‘an extreme-right genocide conspiracy theory’?

I watched the first part of TVNZ’s series ‘That’s a Bit Racist’, and it was the most biased, one-sided and in itself racist programme that I had ever seen. It was brought about, of course, by the dreadful Christchurch massacre, but that was the first mistake. The mosque shootings were perpetrated by a non-New Zealander, who identified as an ‘eco-fascist’ and targeted Muslims because of their birth rate. Islam is a religion, not a race, and so the attacks, dreadful as they were, were not racially motivated.

The programme missed the point altogether that inherently, everyone is racist. I lived in Hong Kong for a while and the local Chinese, 98% of the population, clearly thought that they were the superior race. I didn’t blame them for thinking that because I thought I belonged to the superior race too. None of us is right or wrong. It is all just a matter of personal opinion.

This programme detailed a number of incidents where people felt they had been racially profiled, and they might be right, but they might equally be wrong.

Columnist and comedian Oscar Kightley – who, if we’re honest, is a national treasure – revealed the reason why his comedy troupe The Naked Samoans don’t go to Christchurch. You guessed it, racism.
Despite being a group of household names and national icons, Kightley says they were subjected to not one but two shocking instances of racist prejudice when performing there. They arrived to perform and the stage security wouldn’t let them into the dressing room in case they stole something, he recalls. After the show, a bartender refused to serve them unless they could prove they had money.

Stuff.

Oscar Kightley’s comedy troupe is called The Naked Samoans. He brings attention to their race right there, so can hardly then expect everyone to ignore it. If he really was treated the way he says, then that is a disgrace, but was this really true? Did the barman actually demand to see their money before he agreed to give them drinks? Most bar staff don’t hand over drinks until they are paid for, no matter what colour you are.

I know a very successful businessman who is a Maori. He told me once that he is often ignored in restaurants, as the waiting staff don’t want to serve him. This man is attractive, presentable and well dressed, so I believed that he was being racially profiled and was duly horrified.

A couple of weeks later, however, I had a similar experience in a restaurant. Nothing we did seemed to get the wait staff to take our order. The waitress was European, and so am I. Instead of thinking that she was racist, I just assumed she was inefficient. And then I wondered… are such things interpreted as racism sometimes when really it is just staff overwork or inefficiency? Maybe sometimes people are a little too sensitive?

Oscar Kightley may be right that the barman was being racist, but I have had a similar attitude to white people at times. Sometimes, you just know someone is not going to pay or behave in an acceptable way, and race has nothing to do with it.

If anything, I think most Kiwis have become much more multicultural in the last decade or so, and it is happening naturally. The professional office where I worked in the 1990s had less than 10% non-Europeans. That office now has over 30% non-Europeans. No one bats an eyelid, and nor should they.

I was in my local dairy a couple of weeks ago. It is run by an Indian family. The man behind the counter was watching the cricket. I made a racial assumption and commented that the Black Caps had dodged a bullet by having their game against India rained off. He was having none of it. “Nah,” he said. “We can beat India no trouble”. The British born woman hi-fived the man of Indian descent in a show of national support for ‘our’ cricket team. We are both New Zealanders and proud of it.

I liked that.

Hone Harawira is a racist. He said he would not allow his daughter to date a ‘mo fo’ white man. That wasn’t mentioned in TVNZ’s programme.

We are all racist, to some extent, because it is human nature. Upbraiding people constantly for being racist does nothing for racial harmony. It just reminds you that people are different from you when you might not have thought about it before. Programmes like this make racism worse, not better. Those of us who interact perfectly harmoniously with those of other races on a daily basis feel insulted by this patronising attitude.

It is like we are being told – you can judge white people by their manners, their attitudes and their honesty, but do that to a non-white person and you are a racist. Non-white people cannot be judged by the same standards as you judge other white people, and that is just wrong.

And yet, as I watched the Cricket World Cup final (yes… let’s not go there), I was struck by how multicultural we really have become. From Trent Boult of Ngati Tahu descent, to Ross Taylor who is part Samoan, to Ish Shodi who was born in India, to Colin de Grandhomme, who was born in Zimbabwe… to Jofra Archer, born in Barbados, Adil Raschid of Pakistani descent, to former England captain Nassar Hussein in the commentary box, and all those children of Indian descent in the Lord’s crowd with the English flag painted on their faces (not to mention those waving New Zealand flags)… it seems to me were are doing okay in the racial stakes. Not perfectly, maybe, but still okay.

If only these supposed do-gooders would just let us treat people with the respect they deserve… whatever colour they are.

The world is already a melting pot. Let’s let it melt naturally, without forcing anyone to behave in a way that they don’t like and won’t accept.

Christie