Local Bodies

Anna Chrichton's brilliant cartoon sums it up.  The farming sector is enjoying a boom time at the moment. Beef prices are experiencing a 60 year high, the farm gate milk price is almost $10/kgMS, wool prices have achieved a 10 year high, lamb is getting $2/kg more than last year and fruit prices are also strong. If the sector is the 'backbone of the economy', as is often claimed, then why is it that we are struggling to stand upright economically at the moment. Unemployment is sitting at 5.3% (over 11% for Māori and Pasifika) and households are generally struggling to make ends meet.   The problem with agriculture is that most New Zealanders get little value from the sector. While it earns around 85% (dairy is 30%) of our export income it only adds only 5% to our total GDP. It employs just 5% of the workforce and contributes a measly 1% of total tax income . The income generated mainly goes to the likes of Fonterra (15 staff earn over $1 million pa), various corporates (...

When I was a child in the 1960s I didn't have an awareness of inequality. There was no evidence of rough sleeping, all children brought lunches to school and whether you were a freezing worker, a teacher or even an MP, incomes didn't seem to vary that much. 60 years ago an MP would earn about the same as a teacher, plus expenses. The unemployment rate then was under 1%.  There were no records regarding the individual wealth of New Zealanders until the first NBR Rich List in 1986. John Spencer topped the list then with his total wealth of $675 million, inflation adjusted it would be the equivalent of about $1.9 billion.  Today there are 18 individuals and families with wealth over $1 billion and the wealthiest have over $20 billion. In 40 years real wealth at the top has increased around 10 times. Sixty years ago the top statutory personal income tax rate was 67.5%, it is now 39%. The IRD found that the very richest in NZ only pay around 8-9% on their net income, due to untaxed...

New Zealand voters are being presented with a real scandal.  It isn't that a Labour Party in house, media training event was leaked and the Minister of Finance was jokingly and insensitively described as a "duck-faced horse"; It isn't that Chlöe Swarbrick was kicked out of the House for suggesting that government MPs should "grow a spine" and should vote for a bill sanctioning Israel for war crimes; and it certainly isn't with regards to what Chris Hipkins' ex-wife shared about her ex-husband...this is much, much bigger than that!  This scandal implicates the Prime Minister's Office in a deliberate coverup involving Fonterra (New Zealand's largest corporate), Z Energy (the country's largest fuel Company) and the coalition government cabinet. It involves the Supreme and High Courts of New Zealand, the Ombudsman, environmental lawyers and Mike Smith (the climate change spokesperson for the National Iwi Chairs). Considering those connected t...

David Seymour fronts Act, New Zealand's libertarian party that also embraces elements of populism. Libertarians believe that Governments should be small, property rights supplant human rights and market forces are all we need to ensure a thriving economy. Taxation should be limited and people should be able spend their money where they choose for their health care, education and core services. Public services are an anathema to them, especially public broadcasting. Despite advocating for free speech, Seymour can be quite a snowflake when criticisms are directed at him or his party's policies. He is also well known for making sweeping generalisations and promoting disinformation to support his case. My personal interactions with him have confirmed his blind support of corporate thinking and his flippant dismissal of anything outside his narrow ideology. I challenged him about his disastrous school lunch programme being delivered by an overseas corporate. His initiative destroye...

The  NBR rich list  has been published for 2025. The combined wealth of the 130 listed is $102.1 billion. In 2015 the 180 individuals and families listed had a combined wealth of  $55 billion . According to the Reserve bank inflation calculator the percentage of change over the last decade was 32.9%. Given that the 2025 list is much smaller than that in 2015, the increase in wealth for those on the list must be well over 3x that of inflation. For some years average  household wealth has decreased .  Since 1980s and 90s, when New Zealand experienced the  fastest growing inequality  in the OECD, we have become so used to this wealth capture by a privileged few that when each wealth list is published, it receives minimal attention. When there are criticisms of the systems that favour the rich the current government  dismisses it as envy , while continuing to gift even more advantage to the already wealthy. The  $2.9 billion tax break f...

For Ruth Richardson to receive the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as a Member of Parliament and to governance should not sit well with millions of New Zealanders who have been negatively impacted by her 1991 Mother of All Budgets .  Richardson slashed benefits by 12.7% and the impact on child poverty was almost instant. Before her brutal budget around 25% of children living in beneficiary households experienced poverty and this leapt to 75% shortly afterwards. Rogernomic's began New Zealand's neoliberal journey, but it was Richardson who cut huge holes in the 50 year old social welfare safety net established by the First Labour Government. No government since has restored benefits to the same level and 17.7% of our children in Aotearoa are currently living in poverty with 13.3% suffering from material hardship. Conservative and libertarian parties like to create the impression that benefit payments should be kept low to encourage people into work and ...