One of the things we were promised by this government was an adherence to the fiscal responsibility rules, meaning that government spending would remain within certain parameters, to allow for reducing debt and paying for existing services. Socialist governments are famous for spending money like there is no tomorrow; after all, it is other people’s money. This government promised to be different. By promising to adhere to the rules around fiscal responsibility, they essentially claimed that they would be as responsible with taxpayers’ money as was the previous government.

Well, guess what? 18 months in, that promise just went out the window, along with just about everything else they ever promised. This government really is a joke. quote.

The Government this morning announced that it will shift its debt target from a single figure to a percentage range.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson explained the Government is looking at a range of around 15 to 25 per cent of the GDP.

Don’t you just love the way this government treats its voters like idiots? So let us just stop and think for a minute as to exactly why they might want to move from a specific target to a ‘range’. Then let’s be honest. They are not doing this because they want to reduce debt, are they? No. They want to increase debt by an extra 5%. And don’t forget – this is after their little ‘off balance sheet’ trick with debt for Kiwibuild that they pulled last year. quote.

Alternatively, it could opt to spend a little less and aim to further pay down debt. end quote.

Take it from me. They are not doing this so that they can pay down debt. If that was their aim and it was actually possible, we would know about it, as they would be shouting from the rooftops about how prudent they are. quote.

National Party finance spokesperson Amy Adams said the move was an admission of defeat on fiscal responsibility.

“This is a blunt admission the Government can’t manage the books properly, it is not wriggle-room. This makes the fiscal hole look like a puddle,” she said.

“This decision will mean billions of dollars more debt because the Government can’t manage the books properly and wants to spend up on big wasteful promises in election year.” end quote.

Yes, it will. It wants to bribe the voters. Remember Helen Clark’s interest free student loans bribe in 2005? We are probably looking at a repeat of something like that. With a slowing economy though, that is the last thing they should be doing. quote.

But Robertson said the move to a range reflected the fact that circumstances could change over time and did not necessarily mean moving to the outer limit.

“A range gives governments more capacity to take well-considered actions appropriate to the nation’s circumstances,” he said.

“It establishes boundaries within which debt is kept to sensible and sustainable levels and where fiscal choices are driven by impact and value,” Robertson said.

A newspaper. end quote.

Yes Grant. Of course, you are managing the economy brilliantly. Oops. I just had to duck out of the way of a flying pig.

How do you feel about the government passing a law to give police and media control over what you say or post on social media?

Pretty soon it will be illegal to say and write anything that anybody considers offensive. No lines will be drawn in the sand, no guidelines laid down, the sole measure will be whether somebody chooses to be offended.

Shutting windows, drawing curtains and locking doors won’t keep Jacinda Ardern out of your home or your conversation.

The law Ardern wants will dictate what we are allowed to talk about. It will effectively be censorship on the fly, and another draconian measure to morph New Zealand into New Draconia.

Proponents of introducing hate speech law argue that it leads to violence and terrorism. You can make up your own mind about this, but what you think doesn’t actually matter.

Along with NZ 16 other countries and Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Google and Amazon have signed the “Christchurch Call” pledge. Facebook explains their commitment to the pledge. Quote.

…we are sharing concrete steps we will take that address the abuse of technology to spread terrorist content, including continued investment in technology that improves our capability to detect and remove this content from our services, updates to our individual terms of use, and more transparency for content policies and removals.” End of quote.

Facebook Newsroom

If you think this sounds like big brother watching, you are not alone. Quote.

Dr Bronwyn Howell, a programme director at Victoria University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has closely followed the developments in Paris and outlines exactly what the pledge entails. She is extremely concerned, however, that the process has been hijacked for political purposes:

“At first glance the pledge appears, as intended, a positive example of collaborative negotiation toward a self-governing regime… A deeper examination, however, leads to a more worrying conclusion.

While governments have agreed to a range of difficult-to-enforce aspirational goals, the tech companies have agreed to take a number of concrete, observable, and measurable steps on which it will be much easier to hold them explicitly accountable.

Here you have it – the fight for equality is simply a licence to censor your views under the guise of preventing terrorism. Quote.

Picture a dinner party where half the guests are university graduates with prestigious white-collar jobs, with the other half consisting of people who are trade workers, barmaids, cleaners and labourers. While one side of the table trades racy jokes and uninhibited banter, the other half tut-tuts this “problematic” discourse.” End of quote.

Currently, the white-collar brigade are forced to take disagreeable opinions on the chin, but under the proposed law changes they could single out individuals for inciting hatred (hate speech) and make a police complaint.

Claire Lehmann reported on the Australian media reaction after the recent surprise election result. Quote.

And thanks to social media (and the caustic news-media culture that social media has encouraged and normalized), these attacks are no longer confined to dinner-party titterings and university lecture halls.

Brigid Delaney, a senior writer for Guardian Australia, responded to Saturday’s election result with a column about how Australia has shown itself to be “rotten.” End of quote.

Rotten? Really? Delaney dehumanises her political opponents, they are not people anymore, they are rotten fruit. Quote.

One well-known Australian feminist and op-ed writer, Clementine Ford, has been fond of Tweeting sentiments such as “All men are scum and must die.”

Former Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who also has served as a high-profile newspaper columnist, argues that even many mainstream political positions—such as expressing concern about the Chinese government’s rising regional influence—are a smokescreen for racism.” End of quote.

Claire Lehmann writing for Quillette

In other words, if you dare to disagree with me, I have the means to silence you.

This is the government’s plan for New Draconia, and this is how you can expect to be treated under the proposed elitist hate speech law.

Today, 21 May 2019 a team entered the Pike River mine drift tunnel. Was Winston Peters there as he promised in 2016 and reaffirmed in 2018? Nope! Just another failed empty promise from the master of failed empty promises. Quote.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is sticking by his promise to be the first person to re-enter the Pike River mine drift.

Mr Peters first made the promise in front of Pike River families in December 2016, saying: “I’m that confident on the expert advice that you have, that I’m offering to be on the first party back in.”

During the post-Cabinet news conference on Monday afternoon, he reaffirmed the pledge.

“I made that statement a long time, before anybody wanted to enter the mine because I do have an experience of mining or working underground… so it’s nothing new in terms of danger,” he said. End quote.

Newshub 18 June 2018

Quote. Winston Peters said the re-entry was a “victory for the families who are fighting tirelessly for answers”.

“Re-entry into Pike River is about justice. It’s about finding out the truth, and it is about doing what’s right for the families of those 29 men,” the New Zealand First leader said. End quote.

A Newspaper

So where’s Wally Winston? Piking out in parliament, certainly not at Pike River.

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.