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@canefan 3 waters is a complete sham.
Sure, some regions are in desperate need, but like the Govt does with councils when things turn to shit, they should step in, not 'take' a strategic asset, pay way, way under market value for the asset, then, in a year or so when something needs upgrading to it, expect the previous 'shareholders' to dip into thier pockets again for the upgrade.
The govt has done so well with the DHB model, yet somehow, think they can do it better with 3 waters?
The Labour & Greens are so far out of touch with reality.
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If I was Jacinda I'd be bowing the fuck out right now and sailing off to a cushy UN job leaving the trail of destruction behind me.
Shit is going to get tough for a lot of people over the next 5 or so years, and she will be blamed.
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@antipodean keep the fluffybunnies that Aus turned into crims!!
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@antipodean said in NZ Politics:
Ahahaha, nah. Fuck off.
Labor's brightest and best meeting on the world stage, earnestly discussing matters of great moment to no-one.
Albosqueaky was the office boy at Labor HQ in Sussex Street during its great days, and was the last bloke wandering around the empty corridors after they ended 25 years ago. He's got nothing.
Ardern? She is clearly going to need to hedge her bets in a year or so. Without some sort of "leg up" crisis appearing I doubt she can run the con successfully one more time.
Australia doesn't need the lifelong criminal big tough tatts fellas for the same reason New Zealand doesn't want them back. If Labor is to retain western Sydney they need to do more to protect the industrious Asians and nothing for the mobs wandering about on the dole being important gang members.
Next effort by Clip Clop Ahem will have her back here preaching empathy for illegals from places that have not been war torn for a decade or more. She flies about the place, on a budget around the size of Bankstown Municipal Council, lecturing Australia about being humane. She hasn't contributed a zac to the $7 million the Sri Lankan pin up family of chancers has cost the country so far.
There are a lot of unworthies with their snouts in our shallow taxpayer trough. Friday evening schooners of New with me dodgy mates will get my mind off that quick smart.
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Meanwhile, our leader has been offshore talking NZ up as a great place...
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I hope the Greens can shoot themselves in the foot again 🙏
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As far as I have been able to observe; apart from the normal party political posturing i.e. can't say anything nice about someone because they are 'the enemy', the only people who have a bad word to say about James Shaw sit within the Green party.
The far left factions within Labour and the Greens really should join up. They could then agitate from the sidelines unsullied by actually having to work for pragmatic change and leave both parties better off.
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Apparently rumour has it this MP will challenge Shaw
https://www.greens.org.nz/elizabeth_kerekere
Please make this happen 🙏
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@canefan said in NZ Politics:
Apparently rumour has it this MP will challenge Shaw
https://www.greens.org.nz/elizabeth_kerekere
Please make this happen 🙏
Makes them electable
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Published yesterday, behind a paywall. If a subscriber can help,
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@Kid-Chocolate said in NZ Politics:
Published yesterday, behind a paywall. If a subscriber can help,
There you go. But beware: The article is from a right-wing newspaper which, to put it mildly, publishes a lot of intellectually-incoherent crap.
Jacinda Ardern oozes self-satisfaction, whether swanning about at Davos or lecturing the world on climate change and the importance of “wellbeing”. At first this young PM became the darling of the progressive world - many admired the feminist credentials, sensitive handling of the Christchurch mosque attack and zero-Covid strategy. But the carefully constructed façade is wearing thin. No amount of positive global press coverage can disguise the lacklustre economic situation in New Zealand, the growing list of broken promises and mounting unpopularity at home. Ardern is on track to lose the next election, with the latest opinion polls indicating a 10 percentage point drop over the last six months. The centre-right National Party, reinvigorated under Christopher Luxon, and the libertarian ACT Party, are both wooing voters. This has been a dramatic fall from grace. Ardern’s Covid strategy was widely celebrated. Taking advantage of the island nation’s isolation, she introduced short lockdowns and border closures, and managed, at least initially, to eliminate the virus. In October 2020, she won a historic majority in the general election. But things began turning sour within months. The failure to vaccinate left the country isolated for much longer than elsewhere. By mid-2021, as the rest of the world was reopening, New Zealand embraced harsh lockdowns yet again. The borders will not fully reopen until the end of this month. Until recently, even many citizens were not allowed back into the country, a policy which tore families apart and left Kiwis destitute overseas. In one shocking case, a New Zealand journalist was forced to turn to the Taliban for sanctuary to deliver her baby after struggling to get home. For all that pain, the Covid reckoning has now arrived. An upsurge in cases has led to one of the highest daily death rates in the world and the reintroduction of restrictions, including a mask mandate and isolation requirements. It’s a gloomy turn of events for a country that is still unprepared to live with the virus. The broader consequences of a nation closing itself off for such an extended period should not be brushed aside. Draconian pandemic policies turned the country inward and fearful of outsiders, scaring away immigrants and damaging trade relations. This is an about-turn for a country that achieved immense economic prosperity by being open to the world in recent decades. Before the pandemic, New Zealand was attracting a positive net migration of around 50,000 per year. Yet in the year to March 2022, migration turned negative, with 7,300 more people leaving the country than entering. This was driven by young professionals and graduates heading overseas to escape challenging economic times and broaden their horizons. The loss of people has contributed to an acute skills shortage, with the health system struggling to handle the influx of Covid cases and other ailments. School children are frequently being sent home due to a lack of teachers. Inflation has reached 7.3 per cent, a 32-year high, driven by rising food, fuel and rent prices that make life more difficult. Meanwhile, a surge in violent crime in hollowed-out cities, including gang activities, shootings and “ram-raids,” in which thieves drive cars into shop fronts to steal merchandise, have made the public fearful. This has, at least in part, been driven by troubled children and teenagers, who fell off the radar when Covid-19 shut schools and haven’t been seen in class for two years. The broader economic situation has combined with a sense that Ardern has over-promised and under-delivered. In 2017, Ardern’s flagship promise was to build 100,000 affordable homes within ten years – just 1,366 have been built. The same week that Ardern was featured on the front cover of British Vogue, in the edition guest edited by Meghan Markle, her government abandoned the housebuilding commitment. Since then, the government has spent over NZ$1 billion on emergency housing grants, including buying up motel rooms. Ardern also promised to build a light rail in Auckland. The project has not even started. She committed to lift 100,000 children out of poverty. Child poverty has increased. There was also a promise to urgently address climate change. Emissions have increased by over 2 per cent since 2018. Ardern has also taken a soft approach to the central geostrategic and ideological challenges of our time, the aggressiveness of Russia and the rise of China. She has rejected the idea that the war in Ukraine is “democracy vs autocracy” and even refused to join a military alliance to take on China, adopting a significantly softer stance and rhetoric than Western allies. New Zealand has been labelled the “lazy eye” in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance. It hardly feels like the sort of global leadership that Ardern promised. The New Zealand imagined by the international press is about as fictional as Middle Earth. The country is struggling. Lacking the capacity to address the numerous challenges facing her nation, the Ardern gloss has faded. In the end, standing ovations at international conferences will not make up for a loss of confidence at home.
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@Kid-Chocolate Mainly factually accurate but the spin is misleading.
Our awful economic performance is still relatively better than most western economies (e.g. UK) and the election is way too close to call. National still have the perennial problem of a lack of coalition partners other than ACT.
The danger for the right is ACT get bullish about their election prospects, come out with some (for NZ) pretty severe policies that turn voters off. Many will simply change from ACT to National but some will move away from National to stop ACT having a say in government. What both parties should do is just keep to law and order and the economy and bash Labour for their failings while trying in the main to avoid putting up any policy at all. Cynical but winning politics. Oh and hope the loonies in Green keep kicking own goals.
the article also ignores the fact that pretty much every incumbent government worldwide is struggling in the polls. Adern's is actually holding up better tyhan most given a global pandemic, health crisis, war in europe, inflation and a cost of living crisis.
Off course you can't expect perspoective from the media unfortunately.
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well well well. There must be teh chance of some tourism coming back, look what raises its head.
This shit comes up all the time. Same thing has been floated here. Great way of Governments to revenue raise and not piss off their voters.
And it gets lapped up by deadshits because they seem to ignore all the tax that tourists contribute indirectly. You know, the GST. The income tax on the tourism providers. The PAYG on the employees of the tourism providers. Ignored. Because it's real fucking easy to call foreigners "freeloaders"
Read the comments. Kiwis really fucking hate people who don't live in NZ aye? Real friendly little joint you're running over there. Covid has really laid it all out thereAlso, very first comment. Guaranteed to come up early on any tourism article. The long held myth of the massive profits on tourists being generated by the operators. "but, it's so expensive to do anything! they must be making a killing!" fuck off. Western tourism went the way of low margin, high volume tourism a long time ago. The time to move from that was over the past 2 years. But it's hard to make that level of change when you are just desperate for people to come through the door.
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@mariner4life said in NZ Politics:
well well well. There must be teh chance of some tourism coming back, look what raises its head.
This shit comes up all the time. Same thing has been floated here. Great way of Governments to revenue raise and not piss off their voters.
And it gets lapped up by deadshits because they seem to ignore all the tax that tourists contribute indirectly. You know, the GST. The income tax on the tourism providers. The PAYG on the employees of the tourism providers. Ignored. Because it's real fucking easy to call foreigners "freeloaders"
Read the comments. Kiwis really fucking hate people who don't live in NZ aye? Real friendly little joint you're running over there. Covid has really laid it all out thereAlso, very first comment. Guaranteed to come up early on any tourism article. The long held myth of the massive profits on tourists being generated by the operators. "but, it's so expensive to do anything! they must be making a killing!" fuck off. Western tourism went the way of low margin, high volume tourism a long time ago. The time to move from that was over the past 2 years. But it's hard to make that level of change when you are just desperate for people to come through the door.
I love the comparisons to Venice, which is located right around a huge population area with easy cheap travel, and is, well, fucking Venice.
You already get incredibly pantsed just to get a ticket to NZ (if you can get one), so adding a $200 charge, as suggested by one of those deadshits - for which you'll get nothing in return except overpriced everything everywhere - sounds like a fantastic way to get people to come back.
Newsflash, you fluffybunnies locked out the world and now the world is like, hmm, OK.
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@gt12 doesnt help when you have some of our "experts" (up until a couple of weeks back) questioning why we arent going back to Alert level red....why would a tourist come here when we have that hanging out there, even if it wont eventuate?
When Jacinda was in the UK a few weeks back promoting NZ, I am pretty sure someone asked why would someone come to NZ risking being put into lockdown while here...but cant find the article.
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@mariner4life Labour wants fewer tourists spending more.
It's a relatively popular position given the number of stories of tourists (literally) shitting up the place. Plus, of course, the NZ road toll would be zero if it wasn't for dopey Asian's who don't know how to drive.
Ignores the fact that a backpacker here for 6 months spending $100/day brings in almost 3x the revenue of a yank who is here for a week and spends a grand a day.
I think achieving the Holy Grail of fewer tourists spending a shit load more and not over stretching our resources and infrastructure would be great, but can't see it happening. Plus as has been vividly demonstrated we need all those feelthy johnny foreigners to fill all the vacancies that Kiwi's are 'too good' to take.
NZ Politics