The government’s flagship policy, Kiwibuild is more laughing stock than housing stock. First, after 18 months, only 80 houses have been completed, after promises that 1,000 would be built by July 2019. It is fair to say that this target is not going to be met, and the government has given up on its targets anyway, citing them as ‘unhelpful’.

As if that isn’t bad enough, the government underwrote the building of Kiwibuild houses, meaning that it would buy the houses off developers in the unlikely event of them not being sold. With a housing crisis, and so many first time buyers ‘locked out’ of the housing market, this would never happen, but just in case, the guarantee was there.

Well, guess what? quote.

The Crown underwrite for unsold Kiwibuild homes has been triggered for a second time.
The first was in April for five homes in Wanaka’s Northlake development.

Canterbury and Auckland are both areas where you might well expect there to be a significant demand for housing, particularly Auckland. quote.

As a way to encourage developers to work with the government to build Kiwibuild homes, the Crown provides an underwrite.

If the houses remain unsold after 60 days, the developer can trigger the underwrite and require the government to buy them back at a discounted price. end quote.

So, 80 houses have been built, and so far the government has had to buy back 12.

Not exactly a roaring success, is it? quote.

Four are in Auckland, and three in Canterbury.

A Kiwibuild spokesperson said the programme should be looked at in its entirety, for example strong sales in Tauranga.

RNZ. end quote.

Maybe, but nothing alters the fact that 15% of the Kiwibuild houses built so far have fallen under the government guarantee. If the project was ever successful enough to build its promised 100,000 houses, that would be potentially 15,000 that the government would have to buy back.

Fortunately, the project will never get anywhere near building 100,000 houses, so the losses to the taxpayer are mitigated purely by the government’s incompetence.

That is really scary when you think about it.

The problem was that the government campaigned on private housing during the election, and completely forgot that the housing market is cyclical. High demand means high prices, but that demand always tails off at some point. By the time the fanfare had died after the announcement of the grand scheme of Kiwibuild, the market had already begun to soften. Some of this was due to projects started by the previous government coming to completion, during their ‘nine years of neglect’. Some of it was due to softening of prices and demand in key residential areas. For all that we heard of the myriad of people ‘locked out’ of the housing market, just about everyone I knew who wanted to buy a house managed to do it, and not one of them bought a Kiwibuild house. The market took care of itself, as markets always do.

The government sailed ahead with its interventionist policies, convincing themselves, and anyone else who would listen, that they were the saviours of the downtrodden. The fact that the downtrodden have turned up their noses at Kiwibuild properties in Wanaka, Canterbury, Auckland and by all accounts, New Plymouth is unfortunate.

I have always said that the government should stick to funding state housing, and leave the private housing market to it own devices. Instead, they blundered ahead blindly, at what will obviously be a considerable cost to the taxpayer. There does look to be one silver lining though. With over 11,000 people on the waiting list for state houses, there will probably be a few more available than the government was expecting… thanks to Kiwibuild. That is all very well, but this was never the government’s intention. What a bunch of incompetent fools they really are.

Du Plessis-Allan:

Okay, the Paris summit, the prime minister’s plan is to crack down on social media. I’m a little bit cynical about this, don’t think it’s going to work – what are your thoughts?

Soper:

Well I’m totally cynical I must say. It’s incredible when you consider that her mate ol’ Emmanuel Macron obviously got on the blower and said to her “Look, we’re having a ‘tech for humanity’ meeting of G7 digital ministers” which are fairly low ranked ministers, Claire Curran, don’t forget, used to be ours, and France is the chair and they’re having a separate ‘tech for good’ summit on the same day, May 15^th, and he would have said to Jacinda Ardern “Why don’t you come along?” This man’s not the most popular person in France at the moment, Jacinda Ardern – she’s internationally popular – who better to have at a summit talking about these sorts of matters?

Ardern talked to journos earlier today Heather, and I think she started off anyway with a fair point.

Played recording. Ardern: I don’t think anyone would argue that the terrorists on the 15 March had a right to live stream the murder of 50 people and that is what this call is very specifically focused on. What happened on the 15 March in NZ was unprecedented in the way that it used the internet. Ah, and so with that does come a responsibility, ah, to try and make change. What it isn’t, however, is a draft set of regulation or a proposal um… in that sense because actually some of it comes down to the day to day practices that we see online. Ah, again highlighting that the reason we believe we’ll get um… ah… good collaboration is because this is very specific about terrorist activity.

Soper:

Yeah but therein lies the problem in my view Heather, that pledges are just that… ah, taking a position of honour… and there’s little honourable about the internet. Ardern went on to talk about what she is now referring to as the “Christchurch Summit” in Paris. Listen carefully to this.

Played recording. Ardern: This is not about apportioning blame to any one element… ah…ah… for instance or claiming, for instance that we can resolve these issues simply by addressing ah… what’s happening on…ah… online platforms. Absolutely not. Our role of course is around social cohesion and around ah… what we are… what we are doing to promote diversity and inclusion so we can’t ah… I think, step away from that responsibility but nor can… ah… internet companies step away from theirs as well.

Soper:

Now I don’t know about you Heather, but I didn’t quite understand what that was all about.

Du Plessis-Allan:

Ah, look nor did I. (Soper laughs). Not… honestly, nor did I really. I wondered why you were playing it for a second. (Both laugh). If I can be completely honest.

Um, look, I… I asked the prime minister’s office today for… um, the pledge, right? This is the big document, the pledge, can we have a look at what the pledge is about and they said to me, look, we’ve got nothing to add beyond the prime minister’s statement that was put out. Which says to me actually, that they haven’t got the pledge… I’m reading between the lines…  the pledge isn’t ready, it’s…

Soper:

No, they haven’t, I can tell you they haven’t.

Du Plessis-Allan:

This is just kind of happened accidentally, has it?

Soper:

Well, no. The text is being worked on and don’t forget this story was broken by Macron himself. Ah, I don’t think the prime minister’s office was in any way prepared ah… for the story coming out first thing this morning. And the supreme irony in all of this Heather, is that this is the only country ah… that has carried out an international ah… act of terrorism on NZ soil and now we’re joining hands at a summit in Paris! I mean, there’s an irony in that.

Our PM has told us that the reason why her government wants controls on social media and the Mainstream media is because Kiwis don’t want to live in a country where it’s possible to live broadcast a massacre. The State she argues should have the power to prevent that.

There are many problems with that justification.

By focussing on the video of the attack and the manifesto Jacinda Ardern is not following the rules of Triage which is the process of determining the priority of patients’ treatments based on the severity of their condition.

Videos and manifestos do not kill people. The imminent physical danger to New Zealanders is from the terrorists and their enablers. That is where the focus of the government’s efforts should be. There has been ZERO action to show Kiwis that we will be better protected in the future. What have we been told about the GCSB? Why didn’t they see the terrorist coming? What about the way in which the terrorist obtained his weapons? Who is being held accountable for the failures there?

Instead of the actual important issues being addressed Ardern is distracting the public with shiny baubles…oh look I am banning guns…oh look I will protect you from seeing disturbing things on the internet…oh look I will protect you from reading information in the Mainstream media that I think will be bad for you. quote.

The unspoken agenda is about much more than controlling terrorism on the internet. It’s about controlling access to information. The globalist elite are totalitarian by instinct and are discomfited by the fact they can no longer determine what their subjects are able to read and hear. end quote.

Archilochus

We live in a country where it has been possible to watch ISIS videos of people being brutally murdered on the internet for many, many years now. Nothing has changed. I have never watched those videos but they exist. There are thousands of such videos available online.

People are more likely to seek them out and watch them if their attention is brought to them. By singling out one video and one terror manifesto and using it to push hate speech laws and more Ardern has pointed a neon sign in the direction of the video and the manifesto and has made people who otherwise would never have thought about them go looking for them.

It is virtue signalling non-action that will only be used to take away our free speech and to silence her critics.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is paid handsomely by the taxpayer to essentially work part-time. The left used to mock John Key for his holidays, but they never seem to mock Ardern for all her time off.

Not only is our ‘part-time’ PM paid handsomely; she is the seventh highest-paid leader in the world! In first place earning NZ$2,407,255 is Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore. Hard working and high achieving Donald Trump is in fourth place earning NZ$598,000 a year. He is followed by the Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison, and Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany.

[…] In 2017, Statistics New Zealand reported New Zealanders were earning an average of $50,000 in salaries and wages, meaning the Prime Minister earns nearly 10 times as much as the average Kiwi.

Newshub

Imagine a job where you get to waste time doing magazine shoots and visiting schools and resthomes for photo opportunities rather than concentrating on running the country and going to important political meetings.

Imagine a job where you hand over all the policy-making to working groups at a cost of millions of dollars because you and your party didn’t manage to come up with any policies while you spent 9 years in opposition.

Imagine leaving your deputy leader to all the real work in your absence while you swan around getting all the glory and having play dates with your favourite singers.

Now imagine pulling in $471,049 a year. Nice work if you can get it huh.

If you don’t know what we have protecting our freedom of speech you won’t know when it has been taken away. Andrew Little is on a mission to bring in hate speech legislation which will be in direct contravention of the New Zealand bill of rights.

It is important that New Zealanders know what their rights are so that they can counter Andrew Little’s attempts to take them away or to punish them for their opinions. quote.

A pamphlet that references Don Brash has been labelled racist by Justice Minister Andrew Little, who wants the current review of hate speech laws to examine whether better avenues of complaint are needed. end quote.

A newspaper

Here are two of the most important extracts from the Bill that most New Zealanders probably do not even know about. quote.

Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.

Freedom of expression

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form. end quote.

In the media question time following Ardern’s humiliating back-down over her favourite campaign plank, Capital Gains Tax, Ardern explained it away by claiming that she was a “pragmatic idealist”.

One would expect that someone with a communications degree would understand that such a statement is an oxymoron, but no, that is what Ardern said.

Pragmatic. adjective: – dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

Idealist. noun: – a visionary or impractical person.

So we have a self-confessed impractical person who claims to deal with things in a practical way. So glad that the country is in such capable hands.

Audrey Young picked up on Ardern’s pragmatic idealist statement. (As did Soper.) Quote.

[CGT] was [Ardern’s] first captain’s call that she was later forced to reverse when it became too damaging during the election campaign.

Today, she explained her third position on capital gains by saying while she supported it in principle, she was a pragmatic idealist.

Another way to explain it is to imagine the counter-factual.

Pragmatically speaking, if Ardern had not ruled it out, three things would have happened which she has now stopped by refusing to campaign on it again.

National would have hounded Labour about it week in and week out.

Even a diluted capital gains tax would have presented opportunities for National to portray it as a Trojan Horse for further expansion.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters would have continued to campaign to voters as the ultimate insurance policy against any further expansion of capital gains tax to farms and other businesses.

The only way he could do that now would be to suggest that Labour and Jacinda Ardern might not keep her word on a capital gains tax – and that is not something a Deputy Prime Minister would say about a Prime Minister.

The third reason, and not least, for Ardern’s decision to rule out a future capital gains tax is that the Labour Party base would have expended a lot of energy about whether it should go into its fourth consecutive campaign in 2020 supporting such a contentious tax.

It would have been a distracting and possibly divisive debate.

Ardern has decided it is not worth it. She has built up political capital in her 18 months as Prime Minister and she has decided to cash it in.

This may be her second captain’s call on capital gains tax but this time it is a sensible one, based on pragmatism and her party’s interests rather than idealism. End quote.

 

A newspaper

I doubt anyone believes that Ardern made a captain’s call to cancel the CGT. She was told what to do by her puppet master. The one who keeps her high salary coming in, Winston Peters.

An almost dead Capital Gains Tax.

A completely flawed and failing Kiwibuild.

A Zero Carbon Act that is unlikely to survive..

A Wellbeing Budget next month that will focus less on economic and financial measures and more on unicorn words like ‘human, social and natural capital’ In other words, a PR triumph of style over substance .

When asked how a hate speech law change in New Zealand would affect freedom of religion, Green list MP Golriz Ghahraman, like many campaigners against hate speech, did not want to discuss it. When asked directly if she would condemn Islamic Brunei’s strict religious laws that prescribe death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers Ghahraman refused to answer the question.

There is a very good reason why Golriz Ghahraman has avoided discussing this particular problem with the proposed hate speech laws. That is because anyone with half a brain can see that they are religious blasphemy laws brought in through the back door. Marama, in her hurry to score points against Israel Folau, has exposed this issue for all to see.

Christian bashing has always been a favourite pastime of the Left and if they are fundamentalists who follow the old testament rather than the new testament then they are an even bigger target.

If the old testament part of the Bible is full of hate speech and needs to be banned then so is the Koran and all the Hadiths which are full of calls to action that are hateful and violent.

The Green party can’t have it both ways and, by unleashing on Israel Folau, Marama Davidson has opened up a massive can of worms that exposes very clearly why we cannot allow hate speech laws to go through.

Marama seems too thick to realise that by bashing fundamentalist Christians she is bashing fundamentalist Muslims. If she takes away freedom of religion for Christians she is also taking away freedom of religion for Muslims and indeed every other religion.

As the arguments for and against Capital Gains Tax go back and forth, an inevitable question rears its very ugly head. What about Maori land? Will that be subject to CGT? On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why not. All land sales are to be subject to CGT. Yet even before the government has come out and signalled its intentions regarding the treatment of the sale of Maori land, we already have those campaigning in favour of a special exemption for iwi. This could make the whole issue, complex as it already is, completely divisive.

First of all, I would like to say that the issue will probably not become a major one, because not much Maori land is ever sold. With the Maori attitude being that they see themselves as tied to their land, it goes without saying that they will not part with it easily. However, there will be times when land is sold, possibly to free up capital for other projects. This will particularly apply to those iwi that have used their settlement funds to set up in business.

While I’m prepared to consider any arguments put forward that suggest exemptions should apply for Maori land, the first of such arguments falls flat on its face straight away. See what you think of this. quote.

Naturally, no-one enjoys parting with their hard-earned cash – which is why the proposed capital gains tax is such a great idea. It fairly taxes cash which is not hard-earned. It taxes money you make from sitting on land and doing nothing. Money you make because you already have enough cash to invest would be taxed under this scheme. It stops double dipping, and closes a loophole which lets investors pay less tax than the rest of us. end quote.

All of that is rubbish, of course. Most people paid for their assets with ‘hard earned’ (and already taxed) money. It doesn’t stop double dipping in any way. It merely taxes the profit made on the sale of an asset. quote.

One possibility is to exempt the “family home” from the tax – this is mostly just a crowd-pleasing idea, which will almost certainly be exploited. end quote.

Yes, the exemption of the family home is definitely being exploited, but not in the way Glenn McConnell thinks. So many family homes have been specifically excluded from the exemption, (lifestyle blocks, homes with a room used as an office, homes that have rented out rooms) that it is almost pointless. quote.

While business people across the nation scramble for excuses about why they shouldn’t pay this very fair tax, iwi leaders have found a reason which actually stacks up: They’ve already had their land “taxed” numerous times. end quote.

Er… what? quote.

The original price paid, whenever it was, is irrelevant to capital gains tax. The land will be valued at the date of the implementation of the tax, and any capital gains made on sale after that will be taxed. Same rules apply to everyone. If there was a loss of capital at some point in the past, it is irrelevant. All that matters is the value of the land now. quote.

By 1975, Māori had about 3 per cent of their land. The other 97 per cent certainly wasn’t sold for a capital gain.

When the Treaty claims settlements came along, Iwi Chairs Forum spokesman Ngahiwi Tomoana said Māori settled for about 2 per cent of the value of their claims.

“We already think we have been taxed 98 per cent of our Treaty settlement,” he told RNZ‘s Te Manu Korihi. end quote.

I repeat, CGT has nothing to do with former values or settlements for less than (what is perceived by the parties to be) fair value. It is a tax on sale price less the value of the asset on the day the tax was introduced. What McConnell is talking about happened decades ago. It is nonsense.

McConnell’s argument seems to be, because Maori have not had all the lands they previously ‘owned’ returned to them, they should be exempt from the application of CGT, because, somehow, he views the fact that 97% of the land was not returned to Maori as a form of taxation. This is nonsense. He is applying one issue – the ‘return’ of Maori land – to another where there is no nexus whatsoever. If only 97% of Maori land was ‘returned’ to Maori, that does not provide an exemption from paying tax. The two issues are poles apart. quote.

Desperate as ever, it appeared the National Party was willing to forgo important facts and histories to make it seem like Māori would be granted some sort of unfair advantage.

Stuff. end quote.

It would be an unfair advantage, and if the government adopts this policy, it could blow the whole issue wide apart. Many groups think themselves to be unfairly disadvantaged by the tax, such as those who have rented out rooms in their homes to make ends meet, or such as people with Kiwisaver funds. If an iwi opts to sell land, it should be treated in the same way as everyone, and it would be an unfair advantage if that were not the case.

Prepare yourselves for more of these arguments though. This one can be batted away easily for the pure idiocy that it is. The next argument may not be quite so ridiculous.

We have all observed how, after the Christchurch massacre, both Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman have used their platform of love and inclusion to incite hatred, particularly towards those of European descent. It is a huge paradox, of course. In an attempt to eliminate ‘hate’, they incite hate against a different racial group.

If there really is a strong movement of white supremacy in New Zealand (and I can honestly say I am not aware of it at all), then it is fair enough to condemn the attitude that prevails. While Brenton Tarrant was clearly of that type of thinking, he was an Australian and he does not totally fit the definition of a ‘white supremacist’. Remember, he called himself an ‘eco-fascist’ and, until now, we had no idea that such thinking existed.

You could put the current anti-white rhetoric down to an emotional reaction to a terrible massacre but we should always reject condemning a whole group because of the actions of one madman. This is what we are always told when an Islamic terrorist goes on the rampage and it is fair enough too. Most Muslims are peaceful people who just want to get on with their lives. But then so are most Europeans and, for some reason, this is not a tenable view any more.

Here is Golriz’s latest, extremely offensive tweet.

First of all, I am honestly not aware of any kind of ‘mass murder’ of the Rainbow community by Europeans anywhere. Golriz was, of course, replying to justified questions about Brunei’s decision to reintroduce the practice of stoning gay people to death. It is a barbaric practice that just about everyone in New Zealand will find horrific, but Golriz cannot condemn it. Instead, she has to deepen her anti-white rhetoric, basically by simply making stuff up.

I am not saying that no gay or trans people have ever suffered any kind of discrimination in New Zealand but, by and large, most people accept them as part of the community. While it is always unusual to come across a trans person, mainly because the numbers are so small, nevertheless, most of them are able to live in their communities with at least a modicum of peace and tolerance. Gay people are mainstream these days. No one cares. Here, they have equal rights unlike for gay or trans people in the Islamic world, as Brunei is illustrating. Golriz should have the decency to acknowledge that.

Instead, she simply fabricates events to pour forth more and more bile onto people of European descent, the vast majority of whom tolerate gay and trans people with a live-and-let-live attitude.

This person has no place in the parliament of a country that is generally peaceful and tolerant. Most European New Zealanders, horrified by the Christchurch massacre, are actually making an effort to reach out to members of other ethnic communities, feeling a small amount of guilt, not about the shootings themselves, but about the fact that people from other ethnic groups feel marginalised, and that is not the New Zealand we want to live in.

Nobody wanted the Christchurch shootings to happen.

She is the loudest promoter of hate in our parliament, and it has to stop. Now.