Our PM Jacinda Ardern (and the government)

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Networkn
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#2678485 22-Mar-2021 14:53

I have zero issues with criticsm,

Well, I 100% disagree with that. Frequently if I post criticism of Labour, and the coalition, you fly into a rage. I am not sure why you take criticism of Labour so personally. You have the entirely reasonable option of ignoring what I write.

tdgeek

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#2678491 22-Mar-2021 15:11

networkn:

I have zero issues with criticsm,

Well, I 100% disagree with that. Frequently if I post criticism of Labour, and the coalition, you fly into a rage. I am not sure why you take criticism of Labour so personally. You have the entirely reasonable option of ignoring what I write.

OK. Rage? Ok. This reply would be what I would write but its only me that is exceedingly biased, not you, ok. There is a topic, that topic has many layers, unless it was clearly created from nothing by Labour. But we arent meant to discuss the overall topic, the other layers. i.e. the housing crisis and the two previous Governments, who are basically the cause of all this. It was a boat thats already sailed for whoever won 2017. Too late, yet for you, its all on this Govt. KB was a failure we can all agree on that. The affordability was already lost. But again we cant say that its all about this Govt Thats one example of balance. Clark knew it,had measures, nothing, Key knew it, had measures nothing. Boats has now sailed.Add in Covid and QE with its near zero interest rates and thats made a bad situation worse. Thats the fact of it. This lot has measures, put them in, failed. Even if their measures could have worked better it was already way too late, so yeah, bagging them for the sake of it is a bit silly

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#2678497 22-Mar-2021 15:15

Neither does being biased make someone automatically wrong. Yes i 100% agree. Its not easy to be biased and pout forward a reasoned reply without being targeted

I wouldn't say multiple occasions, but me saying never was wrong. I just see the issues as being the issue of the day you just seem to want to bag, but yes, it can all be ignored

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#2678505 22-Mar-2021 15:22

@networkn

I think others here might prefer we back off. I know I'm a good person and from your many posts on other topics here I know you are too. Its not worth us banging heads any further

I'll take note of all this, and BTW there is no rage lol, just the odd annoyances, no biggie. And I'm not that dedicated to the life of red either

But yeah.

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#2678518 22-Mar-2021 15:38

tdgeek:

OK. Rage? Ok. This reply would be what I would write but its only me that is exceedingly biased, not you, ok. There is a topic, that topic has many layers, unless it was clearly created from nothing by Labour. But we arent meant to discuss the overall topic, the other layers. i.e. the housing crisis and the two previous Governments, who are basically the cause of all this. It was a boat thats already sailed for whoever won 2017. Too late, yet for you, its all on this Govt. KB was a failure we can all agree on that. The affordability was already lost. But again we cant say that its all about this Govt Thats one example of balance. Clark knew it,had measures, nothing, Key knew it, had measures nothing. Boats has now sailed.Add in Covid and QE with its near zero interest rates and thats made a bad situation worse. Thats the fact of it. This lot has measures, put them in, failed. Even if their measures could have worked better it was already way too late, so yeah, bagging them for the sake of it is a bit silly

I disagree with this Governments policies almost entirely. Sometimes the idea is OK, but the implementation of it (or in some cases lack of) is really poor, but, grudgingly I'd give them some credit if they had done what they said they would. But they haven't. In my opinion, there isn't much to be positive about. Rail to the airport was one of maybe 2-3 things that interested me in the policies Labour offered, but that is a total mess as well. I disagree with the plan they have for it (But strongly agree we must have rail to the airport and ASAP), and agreed with Winston (ugh) in trying to block it in favour of a faster and more scalable and lower-cost option).

Despite claims to the contrary, I have been complimentary of the Government and Coalition if I've felt they deserved it, which is rarely, but it happens.

I don't think the ship has sailed on housing, I think there are some things still that could be done. Incentivising (heavily if required) building (or penalizing buying), finding a way to encourage people to move out of the bigger cities, there ARE measures that could be taken. Not magic fixes, but *something*.

Labour has fallen laughably short on delivery of it's promises in almost every area, add to that many scandals, incompetent ministers, lack of transparency, why should I be singing their praises? If you don't think that's bagging worthy, fine, praise away.

The big difference in my opinion between National and Labour was that Labour stood up and said "we can fix it all" and there is minimal to no evidence they can. I don't buy the line better to have tried and failed than not to have tried, especially with what is likely to be massive amounts of public money wasted trying.

Jacinda Ardern appointed herself minister for Children. She was popular and could have done whatever she wanted in that space. She could have siphoned off all sorts of funds to address it, and very few would have batted an eye, but 4 years on, child poverty rates are pretty much the same as they were, and some measures have us about 6-7% backwards from 3 years ago.

I also disagree that you can't make any form of plan on Covid Recovery when we don't know when it will end. Doing nothing isn't acceptable. You take the information you have, and you make a plan based on what you know now, and what information you have gathered over the next 3 years. Other governments have done things. Australia subsidized airfares to hard-hit tourism areas. That may not work here well, but the tourism minister has been almost entirely missing. We work for tourism operators, who have begged for meetings with officials and either been denied or ignored. The least you can do is front up.

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#2678701 22-Mar-2021 17:40

networkn:

I disagree with this Governments policies almost entirely. Sometimes the idea is OK, but the implementation of it (or in some cases lack of) is really poor, but, grudgingly I'd give them some credit if they had done what they said they would. But they haven't. In my opinion, there isn't much to be positive about. Rail to the airport was one of maybe 2-3 things that interested me in the policies Labour offered, but that is a total mess as well. I disagree with the plan they have for it (But strongly agree we must have rail to the airport and ASAP), and agreed with Winston (ugh) in trying to block it in favour of a faster and more scalable and lower-cost option).

Despite claims to the contrary, I have been complimentary of the Government and Coalition if I've felt they deserved it, which is rarely, but it happens.

I don't think the ship has sailed on housing, I think there are some things still that could be done. Incentivising (heavily if required) building (or penalizing buying), finding a way to encourage people to move out of the bigger cities, there ARE measures that could be taken. Not magic fixes, but *something*.

Labour has fallen laughably short on delivery of it's promises in almost every area, add to that many scandals, incompetent ministers, lack of transparency, why should I be singing their praises? If you don't think that's bagging worthy, fine, praise away.

The big difference in my opinion between National and Labour was that Labour stood up and said "we can fix it all" and there is minimal to no evidence they can. I don't buy the line better to have tried and failed than not to have tried, especially with what is likely to be massive amounts of public money wasted trying.

Jacinda Ardern appointed herself minister for Children. She was popular and could have done whatever she wanted in that space. She could have siphoned off all sorts of funds to address it, and very few would have batted an eye, but 4 years on, child poverty rates are pretty much the same as they were, and some measures have us about 6-7% backwards from 3 years ago.

I also disagree that you can't make any form of plan on Covid Recovery when we don't know when it will end. Doing nothing isn't acceptable. You take the information you have, and you make a plan based on what you know now, and what information you have gathered over the next 3 years. Other governments have done things. Australia subsidized airfares to hard-hit tourism areas. That may not work here well, but the tourism minister has been almost entirely missing. We work for tourism operators, who have begged for meetings with officials and either been denied or ignored. The least you can do is front up.

There is a lengthy list of achievements on their website, but no housing or covid or LR fixes. They haven't been sitting on their hands.

LR. AFAIK thats dependent on a report from Auckland City Council, LTA and the Govt, so that Auckland expansion plans are set in place, so then they can arrange a network. Last I heard from GV a while back that was still in progress. Is this a 100% Govt only plan?

Compliments. Yes Ive seen them, usually laced with a paragraph of "other" commentary but thats fine. This isn't a popularity contest. It needs to be balanced. But the general theme I see from some is tell the anti story, not the whole story. Housing is a good example. The story goes back 20 years. Today its too late, well too late for some of the responses here from some to get back to 2017 prices, and reform the RMA that will fix it, even one said to regulate the market, and so on, its too late. The Covid effect with QE has blasted the market, thats not on their head, unless we avoided QE and went into a deep recession. Compounding that is the demand from returning Kiwi's. IMHO this isnt their fault, or they failed, its life as 2020 threw at everyone. But its often the case that all of a sudden its all on this Govt. Yes, they made promises, but I don't recall them saying we will fix it just like that.

Scandals, incompetent ministers etc covers both parties. Thats not tit for tat, its just factual. I dont even know who the finance minster os for National. It was the Labour PR man then National PR man, Goldsmith, so economically, they need to find someone.

To me National and Labour are 1. sit on hands and talk about the surplus, 2. run round in circles and increase benefits. National need to man up, there is more to life than surpluses and no election promises. Labour has talked the talk and walked not far, they've made a number of minor changes, and whether that would have improved if covid never occurred thats debatable. It would have been interesting to see the surpluses we had and not spent that and more on covid, who's to know. But I do rate Robertson.

Child Poverty. Not good. How do you solve that? The minimum wage increase caused a furore. We are a low wage economy and like that. If you can't make them better off, or reduce costs (winter energy stuff was a help I guess) how can you get them out of poverty? Beneficiaries/WFF have had solid increases, where has that gone? Our low wage economy, high living expenses and market economy (where its way too small to allow the market to find an equilibrium) wont allow the lower socio economic people to be a bit better off. So as always, NZ potters away. I did see a thing about poverty, the international standards have many metrics and supposedly we are doing better on many, but not all. The low ones were the subject of that piece. I should dig that up some time

Covid Recovery. Well, you can make a spreadsheet, but there are no numbers to put in it. Tax take, GST take, covid costs, covid handouts, until this factors start to trend based on vaccines and the extra activity, there are no numbers to play with. If an idea is to subsidise tourism, thats fine. There are many sectors affected, do they need subsidising as well? Maybe they do.But there is a limit on what decades of funding we throw at covid. There is a balance between these covid costs and these LR and other plans, we cant have everything. Then its a problem down the track as everything else is delayed till the never never as we are still paying down debt. The old style Labour would just spend spend spend. I guess we could do that, but at least GR is hanging on as best as he can, rather than just throw the kitchen sink at it.

Housing, you mentioned that Govt cannot build housing, obviously, inferring KB. KB isnt Govt building houses its funding them. Govts can build and have, twice. Post the Great Depression and post WW2. Yes, it can be done.

My bottom line is reality. You cant fix most things in this country. I dont recall any Govt saying they will fix this and fix that, we have a very small economy, no international weight. You may wonder and probably disagree that we are pandering to China. We are very vulnerable.

End of the day, running this country is delicate. Labour overstated their goals. But they haven't run this place into the ground, far from it. What we dont know os where would we be in 2017/2020 were another party?

networkn

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#2678881 22-Mar-2021 23:50

My issue is, everytime someone points out Labours failure to deliver on housing, you point back 20 years. The difference being, Labour came out, made a massive song and dance about how they could fix it, and they haven't (opposite in my opinion). Same with transparency. If you don't say you are going to be transparent, then you are less likely to be held accountable for being not transparent. It doesn't really matter if you have a benchmark to test against, if you know they aren't being transparent (where are the Kiwibuild costs, why didn't they publish the coalition agreement, quietly changing the fresh water improvement targets, and moving people out of Hot spots, into cushy jobs at AirNZ the day Ardern gave birth and many other things) then you aren't being transparent like you promised. It doesn't matter what anyone else did, it matters that Labour said they would be, and they haven't been. Whilst I cannot measure it, I am very confident they are not the most transparent Government NZ has ever had. Broken Promise. They won't be building 100,000 houses, broken promise. They won't be planting a billion trees, broken promise. They didn't deliver on reducing the cost of GP visits for people as promised.

If you remove the wild promises made by Labour they won't deliver on, subtract the Winston Bribe, then policy wise, National and Labour were pretty close on healthcare, child welfare targets, social spending and many other things. The difference for me, is that a settled and established Government with experience would have had a better chance to deliver those. The 2017 election was the first in a long time that National had campaigned on social spending of any significance (which I felt they felt more confident in being able to sustain with a surplus). The first year of the coalition was largely a waste of time, they were all over the place. Second and third years weren't much better. They weren't ready to govern, I don't think they thought they would win, and then had the treasury benches. They have tinkered a little, but they haven't been by any measure (that I can think of), transformative.

I disagree on the Covid Recovery. They have a year of data, a year to form a plan. They will have some sense of timing now the Vaccines are here. I would expect something by now, but it's literally crickets.

I said at the start that I felt Labour would be better than National to run a review of Mental Health in NZ. I felt with a more compassionate socialist view, they would get a better result, but I no longer feel confident that a Mental Health review will achieve anything close to what is required.

I'm reserving judgement a little on the RMA reform that was announced, but most of what I've heard in discussions seems to indicate some huge holes that are worrying if true. Every plan has it's detractors of course.

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#2678903 23-Mar-2021 07:07

Housing announcement at 9am.

tdgeek

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#2678913 23-Mar-2021 07:31

Whats the expectations? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300259265/dday-for-the-governments-plan-to-fix-housing-with-few-easy-options has a few ideas

Unless there are attempts to make me build than buy, not a lot will change

Be interesting to see how landlords are affected. If being a landlord became less palatable, that could cause a number to drop out of that market, turning them into homeowner properties. That would be quite a good option, IMO A minor exodus would not be a bad thing.

Bottom line is she doesn't want prices to fall, so unaffordability will remain

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#2678917 23-Mar-2021 07:50

Interesting point in a Newshub article

"There isn't a lack of housing per se, what there is is too many people living in rental properties who seek to own," Prof Tookey said. The Government could incentivise rental property owners to "liberate" their properties, without punishing them, he said.

Id always wondered about this oft stated 100,000 understocked number, there aren't 400,000 living in tents

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#2678953 23-Mar-2021 09:02

tdgeek:

Whats the expectations? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300259265/dday-for-the-governments-plan-to-fix-housing-with-few-easy-options has a few ideas

Unless there are attempts to make me build than buy, not a lot will change

Be interesting to see how landlords are affected. If being a landlord became less palatable, that could cause a number to drop out of that market, turning them into homeowner properties. That would be quite a good option, IMO A minor exodus would not be a bad thing.

Bottom line is she doesn't want prices to fall, so unaffordability will remain

Making rentals unattractive to own, will not make them cheaper, and the issue is affordability surely? Is the idea she will make all landlords want to divest property at any cost, therefore they will sell way below market value, meaning the first home buyer can get into those properties.

I agree, unless it's all about making building faster, cheaper, and less risky, then really the only other levers to pull look pretty unattractive.

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#2679010 23-Mar-2021 09:35

networkn:

Making rentals unattractive to own, will not make them cheaper, and the issue is affordability surely? Is the idea she will make all landlords want to divest property at any cost, therefore they will sell way below market value, meaning the first home buyer can get into those properties.

I agree, unless it's all about making building faster, cheaper, and less risky, then really the only other levers to pull look pretty unattractive.

Will not make them cheaper or is that your opinion? If I had a rental again, and I planned to cash in, in less than 10 years, I dont want to pay tax, Ill cash it up now, dump it on the market, less demand. Re the tax change, I might choose to suck it up and increase rents if I can get away with that or I'll get out of the market, adding more homes for sale. Thats the intention

ALL landlords. At any cost? Where did you get that from? The intention is to get investor landlords out of the market as its not worth it. If these are dumped on the market, that eases the supply and demand issue. Those Mum and Dad investors that have a rental or two for retirement, no change. Unless you want to retire and cash out inside the new 10 year Brightline, may as well sell up today or next year, again, releasing more onto the market. Thats how I see it.

Im not that sold that the interest offset change will help much, what will turn investors off is prices stabilising. Higher LVR makes leverage less beneficial as do the tax changes, but the only thing that matters is price inflation

I didnt catch the 3.8 billion plan for base infrastructure. What I heard makes it sound like that they will pay for the installation of that, allowing developers/Councils to not bear that cost/time, and I assume recover it when lots are sold?

She said she didn't want houses to rise, so no, I dont see affordability changing, not unless the assistance with infrastructure means they can buy rural land easier, and thus allow, with RMA reform, lower land prices, maybe. While unaffordability is rife, there are apparently a lot of FHB's at open homes.

In short some fiddling around the edges, see what happens. Landlords may just accept the new rules/costs. The development in my view is the bigger picture, the Lincoln project down here is what we need more of

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#2679042 23-Mar-2021 10:31

Some political stuff here so will use this thread

10:20am - Judith Collins is now speaking to media. She says the Government has taken the bright-line test and "turned it into a full-scale capital gains tax". The National Party leader says Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson have broken their promises not to introduce a CGT or alter the bright-line test.

10:15am - The NZ Property Investors' Federation has hit out at the interest deductibility change.

"The deductibility of mortgage interest for rental property providers is not 'a tax loophole' - any business in NZ is entitled to deduct interest paid from their taxable income. Once more, we have a unique and special penalty applied to, and only applied to, residential landlords and no-one else."

She's right, if Brightline was promised not to be extended

Re interest, the commentator here nailed it in reverse. Residential home ownership is actually not wanted to be a business. That's half the problem. Leave that to Mum and Dad retirement investors who just want a rental or three that more or less pays itself off and is there for retirement

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#2679045 23-Mar-2021 10:35

tdgeek:

Will not make them cheaper or is that your opinion? If I had a rental again, and I planned to cash in, in less than 10 years, I dont want to pay tax, Ill cash it up now, dump it on the market, less demand. Re the tax change, I might choose to suck it up and increase rents if I can get away with that or I'll get out of the market, adding more homes for sale. Thats the intention

Yes. That is my opinion. I don't think lots of landlords dropping property onto the market is going to help affordability much. Maybe a fraction, but we aren't looking or fractional decreases.

Also, given it's only for properties bought from 27th of March 21 (I think that's the date), it won't make existing stock get released, it may slow down new rental property purchases. I guess that may make some difference, but I doubt it will be significant.

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#2679053 23-Mar-2021 10:45

networkn:

Yes. That is my opinion. I don't think lots of landlords dropping property onto the market is going to help affordability much. Maybe a fraction, but we aren't looking or fractional decreases.

Also, given it's only for properties bought from 27th of March 21 (I think that's the date), it won't make existing stock get released, it may slow down new rental property purchases. I guess that may make some difference, but I doubt it will be significant.

Thats how I see it.

Rentals will be affected from now with interest changes, so that should drive many non Mum and Dad investors away who run it as a business. If once all this shakes out, and if residential house prices somewhat stabilised, that would be a win. The media articles on real estate will be interesting from now on.

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