Countdown to the NZ Election

[donna]

6.5 months to go until the NZ Election - 14 October 2023.

See this news item...

National plans to bring back no-cause terminations and drop rules that allow fixed-term tenancies to roll into periodic tenancies.

The party has already signalled its intention to restore interest deductibility for rental properties and restore the bright-line test to two years, down from 10 years under Labour.

• LLs will have more confidence to take on higher-risk tenants
• More rentals in the market
• Less pressure on rents

cheers,

Donna

[PC]

But.... Once in power - will they actually do it?
Not the first time they have promised to fixed Liarbour stupidity - then done absolutely nothing.

[donna]

I reckon they will do it - and really what have we got to lose? We know it's only going to get worse under the current Gov't. (IMHO).

cheers,

Donna

[richard56]

Hi
I notice that you never hear them mention Ring Fencing.
I bet that doesn't change.
Richard

[artemis]

Hi
I notice that you never hear them mention Ring Fencing.
I bet that doesn't change.
Richard

Ringfencing just kicks the can down the road and incentivises landlords to break even earlier so the losses can be used. Break even means raising rents as high as practicable as soon as possible, and delaying nice-to-have upgrades.

I see a potential issue as those selling their last (or only) rental while carrying losses will eventually lose those losses unless they buy another rental. A nasty surprise for those not up with the rules, especially if there's a big loss.

There is info at the below link about amount of revenue from ringfencing. Not exactly sure what the numbers actually mean though. Looks like the Minister and IRD don't know. But hey, it's only a couple of hundred mill.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/order-paper-questions/written-questions/document/WQ_03261_2023/3261-2023-chris-bishop-to-the-minister-of-revenue

[Re@der]

I would also like them to allow building depreciation, which National removed, to bring us back to parity with other businesses in New Zealand

[Perry]

I would also like them to allow building depreciation, which National removed, to bring us back to parity with other businesses in New Zealand

That was Blenglish's doing. Showing a cranial compound so devoid of perspicacity, he averred that buildings go up in value.

A munster of financial fiddles who didn't know the difference between value, cost, numbers, inflation and depreciation.

[donna]

I know we've been saying this for years -

Property needs to be outside of politics......

“We basically had 40 years of under-building houses, and that’s basically because the state hasn’t built enough.”

Stubbs said the solution to the housing crisis was for National and Labour to collectively sign up to a multi-year agreement with private developers to buy large numbers of homes that could be built quickly, or for more KiwiSaver schemes to get involved in building.

“You have to create a very long term view here, and one of the problems with changing all of these policies is that it basically discourages developers.”

“There’s a hundred billion dollars of KiwiSaver money running around, I think Simplicity are the only KiwiSaver building houses with that money,” Stubbs said.

Political parties shouldn't be able to use the property market as their bargaining chip with voters.

National have reneged on the 3 storey 3 buildings per property intensification - though not entirely as Chris Luxon has said he's leaving it up to the Councils to make the call. Kapiti Coast District Council has a Labour-first focus and so they have committed to it (Medium Density Residential Standards). However other councils won't from the get-go.

Additionally, KCDC is on board today - but the next council may renege on it. KCDC are in desperate need of $$, and MDRS is a good move to fill the coffers.

I think National should have stuck with the bipartisan agreement and focused on additional development like greenfields etc.

cheers,

Donna

[donna]

Hi All,

Dr Muriel Newman was an MP for ACT for some time. These days she uses her journalistic skills to inform us how NZ is tracking - politically.

This week in her newsletter - the focus is on the Waitangi Tribunal rort. If you're like me - it's frustrating to learn when we've been ripped off in NZ - i.e. paying way more for petrol, loans etc.

However it pales in comparison to knowing millions of taxpayers $$ can still be given to so-called 'grievances', that have nothing to do with us. See below if you want Muriel's take on it all.....

NZCPR WEEKLY:

DANGEROUS INFLUENCE
By Dr Muriel Newman

After winning all seven Maori seats in the 2017 General Election, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern established a Maori-Crown Relations portfolio with Deputy Labour Leader Kelvin Davis as Minister.

Minister Davis held 20 meetings across the country to discuss with iwi their priorities for the new agency, and invited veteran activist Titewhai Harawira, and Wikatana Popata - the protestor convicted of assaulting former Prime Minister John Key at Waitangi in 2009 - to be part of an advisory group.

The Office for Maori-Crown Relations, Te Arawhiti, is the result of that collaboration with iwi. Among a raft of measures designed to promote Maori interests throughout the State sector, this powerful agency with 200 staff helped develop the Treaty of Waitangi guidelines issued by the Cabinet Office for all ministers and chief executives to ensure new policy is Treaty compliant.

These guidelines prioritise Maori rights through a series of leading questions relating to each article of the Treaty: “Will the policy enhance Maori wellbeing? Should the proposal be led by Maori? Will Maori have a role in design and implementation?”

The guidelines note the Waitangi Tribunal “plays an important role in providing advice to government on the application of Treaty principles.” Since the Tribunal is now having a significant influence on day-to-day Cabinet decisions, let’s examine what we know about this Agency.

The Kirk Labour Government established the Waitangi Tribunal as a permanent commission of inquiry into the Crown’s alleged breaches of the Treaty in 1975, through the passing of the Treaty of Waitangi Act.

Intense lobbying by the iwi elite led the Lange Labour Government to extend its jurisdiction in 1985 to cover historic claims going back to 1840. Even though most claims had already been settled by previous governments, new claims were lodged resulting in some iwi like Ngai Tahu receiving a fourth ‘full and final’ taxpayer-funded settlement - to become the country’s richest iwi with a $2 billion asset base.

Over the next 20 years, as the number of claims escalated, public concerns over the Treaty gravy train grew, leading the Clark Labour Government to announce a final deadline of 1 September 2008 for filing historic claims. Altogether 2,034 historic claims were lodged - up from just three in 1987.

The Waitangi Tribunal consists of up to 20 members, appointed for a three-year term by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Minister of Maori Affairs, along with a chairman - either a judge, a retired High Court judge, or the chief Maori Land Court judge. Between three and seven members are appointed for specific inquiries. Current Tribunal members can be seen HERE.

Under section 6 of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act, the Waitangi Tribunal may make findings and recommendations on claims, but since it is not a court, they are not binding on the Crown.

The description by Northland orchardist and tutor Robin Grieve, of a Waitangi Tribunal hearing taking place on a Marae near his home, provides a rare insight into the workings of this powerful body:

“With much of the dialogue in Maori, I drew the conclusion the Waitangi Tribunal was some sort of pseudo court… but the law and the process was unlike anything I was familiar with. The Crown was represented by two fresh faced young lawyers who were very restrained and respectful in what were referred to as cross examinations, although they sang well, with all participants required to sing a song at the end of the day…

“After giving his evidence the claimant was asked by one of the many lawyers there representing Maori, to comment on what she described as the ‘inherent racism’ that his evidence highlighted. The claimant had no idea what she was talking about, so she elaborated. ‘Having land taken under the public works act and not given back happened more to Maori than non-Maori, so that must prove racism’ she said. The claimant was not sure what he was supposed to do…‘Do you agree?’ she asked firmly.

“The claimant still seemed unsure but meekly agreed to the lawyer’s racism statement although I am not sure he really understood what he was agreeing to… considering it was never established that this claim had anything to do with the public works act…

“‘Do you have a vegetable garden now that you tend with your own children like your grandfather did with you?’ asked the Crown lawyer. ‘No’, he replied, ‘it would be nice but it is just easier to go to Pak n Save’. That was what it was really all about I thought because much of what they claimed to be lost, was not taken from them, it was given up by them. The Waitangi Tribunal process was just a place where loss had a home, loss of land, loss of independence, loss of ‘the good old days’ and somehow, all be it indirectly, blame the Crown and racist Pakehas for the losses they themselves had given up…

“My impressions were negative. There seemed little merit or logic in any of the claims, any supporting evidence was ill prepared, there was very little probing by the Crown lawyers into the gaping holes in the claimants’ evidence, the lawyers used each claimant to get some point across that was nothing to do with the claimant’s case but everything to do with the lawyers’ anti-Crown and anti-Pakeha agenda…

“The Waitangi Tribunal is… not a place where the merits of a case are thrashed out to their conclusion, it is a show with a script that appeared to me to be to take whatever claims were presented to it, no matter how illogical, and use them to further the rhetoric that Maori have lost a lot and that even that which they gave up freely was the Pakeha’s fault. Two days of hearings were enough for me, I drove home feeling that whether Maori or European, we were all being ripped off by the Waitangi Tribunal’s existence. I began with the impression that the Tribunal might be a questionable entity with a questionable purpose, I know now that it is.”

Professor Elizabeth Rata of Auckland University, who has long followed the attempts of tribal leaders to gain control of New Zealand’s public institutions, observed first-hand how the Waitangi Tribunal was ‘captured’ by the iwi elite and radicalised:

“The Tribunal played a crucial role in legitimating the material and political aspirations of the neotribal elite. The 1985 Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act that allowed claims to be backdated to 1840 established the Waitangi Tribunal as the main brokerage site between the emergent neotribal elite and the government. Political recognition and institutionalisation were extended throughout the 1990s to include the concept of a political equal ‘partnership’ between the tribes and the government.”

This radicalisation is evident in Tribunal decisions.

According to a Ministry of Maori Development policy makers’ guide, in 1988, the Waitangi Tribunal stated, “on reading the Maori text [of the Treaty] we are satisfied that sovereignty was ceded.”

That view is, of course, consistent with Sir Apirana Ngata’s 1922 explanation of the Maori version of the Treaty where he says the first article “indicates a complete cession”: “This was the transfer by the Maori Chiefs to the Queen of England for ever of the Government of all their lands. What was the thing they transferred? What was the thing which they gave away so freely for ever? It was the Government of their lands.”

But by 2014, the Waitangi Tribunal’s report into the first stage of their WAI 1040 northern Maori inquiry, claimed Maori did not cede sovereignty after all: “We have concluded that in February 1840 the rangatira who signed te Tiriti did not cede their sovereignty. Rather, they agreed to share power and authority with the Governor. They agreed to a relationship: one in which they and Hobson were to be equal…”

Auckland University of Technology historian Professor Paul Moon was outraged: “This report distorts New Zealand history and seriously undermines the tribunal’s credibility. I was shocked by some of the statements contained in the report. This is not a concern about some trivial detail, but over the fundamental history of our country, which the tribunal has got manifestly wrong.”

Ngapuhi leader David Rankin, who gave evidence at a Waitangi Tribunal hearing, was scathing – and as an ‘insider’, his views are worth repeating:

“When my ancestor Hone Heke, signed the Treaty of Waitangi, he did so because he knew it was the only option in terms of having a relationship with the British Crown. But the tribunal is now telling us that all those chiefs saw the Declaration of Independence, which a few had signed in 1835, is the basis of their relationship with the British. That is a lie and is not what the tribunal was told by me…

“It may surprise many New Zealanders, but a growing number of Maori are fed up with the Waitangi Tribunal, and the entire Treaty gravy train.

“The Tribunal makes up history as it goes along. Facts are omitted in Tribunal reports, and evidence is shaped in some cases to fit predetermined outcomes. The bias is so obvious, but most historians are too scared for their careers to question the tribunal’s findings.

“In the 1970s, many of us hoped that the Tribunal would be an organisation that would achieve reconciliation. It has turned out to be a body that is bringing in apartheid to New Zealand.

“Treaty settlements make tribal corporations rich, along with the help of favourable tax status and often little or no rates to pay. So with these advantages, it’s pretty easy to become super profitable. But do you think the average Maori sees any benefit from this? None at all.

“The tribunal is a bully. Go against it, and you will be labelled a racist or worse.

“Let’s be clear. The Tribunal exists to make lawyers, and a few elite Maori very rich, and to give the impression that wrongs are being righted. We all know the Crown breached the Treaty in the nineteenth century. But by the time of my parents’ generation, this was behind us as a people… until the Tribunal dragged it all up again.”

David Rankin believes the Waitangi Tribunal should have been shut down long ago.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, the former Judge Anthony Willy also believes the Tribunal should go:

“The Waitangi Tribunal has not only out lived any usefulness it may have once had but has become a focus for unending grievances real or imagined. Increasingly it drives a wedge between those currently claiming some Maori ethnicity and the overwhelming majority of the rest of the population. Not only is this an insult to the many New Zealanders having some Maori ethnicity who have made outstanding contributions to all sectors of our society and economy, it has become a gravy train for greedy tribalists claiming and receiving unearned rewards which must be provided by the rest of society, the taxpayers.

“In the interest of social cohesion, the Tribunal must be wound up. In doing so the document signed in 1840 can be relegated to history, and New Zealanders of all ethnicities can go back to working to return this country to what it once was - the envy of the world and not somewhere from which our young, and not so young are queuing up to leave.”

And that’s the point – unity in this country needs to be restored as a priority.

The division the Ardern-Hipkins Labour Government has created through the recklessness of unmandated power sharing arrangements with the iwi elite has not only damaged the social fabric of New Zealand, it has undermined democracy itself.

After the election, the new administration must not only abolish the Waitangi Tribunal - and remove all references to the Treaty from legislation, but also disestablish the Office of Maori-Crown Relations, which has become the chief purveyor of the dangerous separatism that is now infecting public and private institutions across New Zealand.

[donna]

National's tax policy is out - and compared to Labour's, it is winning the battle to win over the low to middle-income earners and property investors.

However, the devil is in the details, and while National is saying they will 'roll-back' many of Labour's go tough on LLs policies with their rollback of interest non-deductibility - there will be conditions and we need to know what they are.

PTer deechnz in this discussion points out one such detail that needs clarification....

OK, so the National tax plan looks good, but the current Labour rule is that no tax deductibility was allowed for houses bought after 2021 (during Labour's phasing out). Whilst National have said that they are phasing it back in, they haven't specifically stated whether houses bought after 2021 are included. I mean, logic states that they will be, but it hasn't been stated. But from the logic, it means that houses bought after 2021 will go from (currently) zero tax deductibility to 50% as of next year? That's a pretty huge thing.

cheers,

Donna

[flyernzl]

While ACT have pledged to reinstate tax-deductibility of loan interest in full as from April 2024, National’s policy is a staged removal taking until 2026.

Rather worryingly, many National Party luminaries seem to be unaware of their own actual policy. Last week I caught up with the Party Chairman of one electorate, himself a residential landlord, and he assured me that National’s policy was immediate reinstatement.
I directed him to look up his own party’s policy, and he was shocked. The candidate he is promoting did not know the details either.
If you are hosting any political meetings ensure that not only do you know exactly the policy of each party involved but also that the candidates know theirs.
Based on my experience, some do not.

[donna]

Who will give in? ACT or National when it is a coalition government? Hopefully ACT get their way. David Seymour would be a great PM - or worse case deputy. He should expect it.

Latest poll suggest National need Winston Peters too - who only knows what he will demand. Kingmaker Winston - yet again! Don't think he will want to do any actual work - just have a nice office, full drinks cabinet etc.

What's good about him though is he is anti-woke and co-governing e.g. 3 waters etc.

cheers,

Donna

[donna]

I missed the live webinars so I have just watched the two Election webinars GRA hosted with ACT and National. I am glad I did it as both videos confirmed to me that a National/ACT Government is a no-brainer for NZ.

If you want to watch the video recordings of the webinars with ACT and National click these links:

https://www.gra.co.nz/seminar-record...-special-1-act. For ACT webinar recording

https://www.gra.co.nz/seminar-record...d-chris-bishop. For National webinar recording

Please, everyone - vote! We need change like never before.

Thanks

Donna

[Perry]

Fascinating - seeing how the Winston First party is doing in the polls.

[donna]

^^ you’d think it could only be the diehards - older voters who remember he sorted the gold card.

cheers

Donna