Setting aside any possible privatisation moves, anybody doing business with Serco given their record is suspect.

Most of NZ’s power is renewable (majority hydro, quite a lot of wind, and increasing amounts of solar) but in the 90s the neo-libs in the tory party did a market restructure that results in the spot price for all electricity being set by the most expensive power currently being generated.

In times of low generation from any of the renewables (droughts, weather, shenanigans) that has meant gas/coal plants temporarily spin up and then all of the generators get paid the big bucks because that power is pricey.

Over time we’ve struggled to keep up with electrical demand, lots of reasons. Governments not investing in domestic solar enough doesn’t help, challenges finding places to build more dams (none built in years now) which has meant most new generation up until recent solar developments has been wind only.

This is coupled with a foreign aluminium smelter holding an entire hydro dam to ransom for incredibly cheap power sucking up a chunk of generating capacity that might be better utilised elsewhere as no major party wants to be the one responsible for that smelter pulling out of a small region costing it quite a few jobs.

Now because we aren’t getting as much snow on the Southern Alps as we used to we are having more times where the hydro generation down there isn’t going full noise, and more times where the temporary plants are spun up which puts our spot prices up quite high - this has seen some timber mills completely shut down as their electricity costs are so high and data centres are under the same pressures.

(that’s my potted history / economics explainer)

$7.5B is a myth; and it was already announced a couple of years ago.

You could build an entire cellular network (maybe minus physical towers) for that much.

Labour borrowed to get through Covid & for infrastructure, Willis borrowed to give landlords a tax break.

They’re good* for certain parts of the economy that have a huge amount of money to throw at political campaigns I guess. Real Estate, Fisheries, Oil & Gas all got what they paid for.

*in the short term.

• consumers expecting inflation to pick up - and in some ways in important products it already has.
• unemployment expected to rise.
• economic growth pretty much non-existant.

I think we are in Stagflation territory in New Zealand, thanks to a moronic insistence on austerity to resolve a mostly external inflation problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation

Are you trying to suggest that a few thousand landlords getting a tax break doesn’t equal the same spending power as 10000 public servants?!

Hopefully us kiwis learn that austerity is BS and doesn’t work faster than the UK did before turfing their tories out.

One thing about the claim that its needed to attract talent is that from what I can see as an outsider looking in, getting onto boards is all about networking and who you know. The “skills” you bring are usually post-factum justifications for their appointment. And alot of the time boil down to, well this person’s been on a lot of boards before, so they must be good.

Also notice, people tend to fail upwards into board positions? They’re former (often failed) CEOs etc.

This!

The payouts for directors in the private sector is already BS, why would we want to match it with public sector.

The misinformation was in a segment on RNZ I think, not an official proceeding.

He’s got a very high pitched whistle, and he’s been subtly blowing it throughout his leadership of National.

And Groundswill

Setting aside all the other stuff.

Are claiming that Russia was not the aggressor in this current war? If so, what’s your argument, that it was a response to provocation? If so, what was such a provocation that justified invading another sovereign nation (again)?

https://archive.ph/WSjFp

I was trying to figure out the same thing, Ford Utes? But they might actually be made somewhere in SEA for all I know given they’re right-hand drive models. Teslas will be coming from there and it would be a good energy move to put tarrifs on electric vehicles imported from USA just to spite space karen. I’m sure there’s plenty of other mundane stuff we just don’t think about.

I don’t think its just bigotry, there’s a load of tradition and history that ties particularly Pakeha New Zealand to the west. And without devolving into bothsidesism (although, obviously it is) some people do have questions about aligning with regimes accused of human rights abuses and what not.

I think NZ does need to start having the discussion though; the old assumptions and alliances are bending and its foolish not to ask where our future alignment is best placed.

There are not many countries in the world where that would be true. And in many of the countries where that is true the arrests are often not on the judicial merits but more arbitrary wings of power blocks flexing their muscles.

One of the differences here is that in NZ we tend to find out about this sort of “light” corruption.

On another note, What will likely happen - along with most of the things our dairy lobby pushes, is that as trading partners like the US become unreliable and market realities change we will need to meet the standards we’ve just rejected anyway.

Its the same story as the eggs thing a couple years ago. The weakened voluntary standards didn’t meet the demand of the market and those that hadn’t opted to invest in what the market wanted were left behind. Same thing will happen to our agriculture if they want to continue to sell into Europe and China will just flex whatever they want so like it or not the increased standards will be coming down the line anyway.

I don’t think there’s a particularly right or wrong answer in response to the tariffs, but we should be seriously considering our security posture which ties us so heavily to the USA.

There has always been an unspoken risk by being tied so closely to the US; but as their interest in & ability to defend their allies wanes those risks move from the unlikely to likely.

Some will argue we can’t take an independent position as we’ll just get pulled in the orbit of some bloc against our will anyway. Its difficult to have a good answer on where we should align ourselves.

They also never talk about why the public services under Labour led governments tend to hire more.

1. Because National governments get rid of so many the Ministries struggle to get the work they were asked to do done so hire consultants & contractors
2. Because Labour led governments typically want the Ministries to do more things to fill the gaps in need that the private sector leaves
3. Because Labour led governments typically see a need to have a public service overseeing compliance from the private sector, whereas National led governments typically think its fine for private sector to regulate & monitor itself.

etc, etc, etc.

Talking about a number of people is a useful tool for propagandists like Bridge, but it dumbs down the discussion when we lose all the context about why we might, or might not, need certain numbers of people working in the public sector.

Also, his arguments (like most from the neo-liberal right) assume the magic of the private sector, as if there’s not vast amounts of waste happening in corps all the fricking time as well.