The complexity inherent in the multiple measures of child poverty does nothing to instil confidence in their veracity. What the complexity does do is create a bias towards overstating poverty – a useful tool for proponents of greater wealth redistribution.
I tend towards a simple view. One which rarely rates a mention. The strongest correlate for child poverty is the rate of single parenthood. In New Zealand it is high. Among Māori it is very high.
Fixing that – an outcome largely in the hands of individuals – will go a long way towards reducing childhood hardship and deprivation. - Lindsay Mitchell
Transformation in any organisation is difficult. It takes time. You need to be very clear on what you are trying to achieve and you have to convince the people who you need on board to take you where you want to go. Often you have to unravel a mess before you can start building the new way.
But transformation in government is doubly difficult. Firstly, governments and the bureaucracies that accompany them are huge organisations and operationally slow. In most cases, the parliamentarians with the plans and policies are not in direct control of the people working in those organisations, people whose support is needed to make things happen. In this instance, and as reflected in the way people voted in the capital, many of those bureaucrats will have been supporters of the previous government, having owed their job or at least their inflated salaries to the policies of the predecessor.
On top of those challenges, the previous government left behind a vast number of challenges, not the least of which was the state of the financials. Transformation is difficult at the best of times. But it's extremely challenging when there is no money. - Bruce Cotterill
There is no question that the jury is still out on the capability of this new government to deliver. It is very early days in their parliamentary term. Many of us are, quite rightly, impatient to see the improvements that we expect from them.
But we need to give them time. I'm sure that many of the 'campaigners', those whose soapbox became prevalent during the six years under Labour, are as impatient as the rest of us. I'm equally sure that some of them rather like their soapbox, and a reluctant to leave it behind. However, for the moment they could take a break.
In the meantime there is a massive, complex turnaround job to be done. A job that requires changes on every front. Reviews of priorities and spending. Reassessment of policies and changing of behaviours. There will be interruptions along the way, creating urgency around infrastructure and recovery.
But the long term priorities won't change. Can't change. We need education, productivity and a cost regime that fits our income. We need debt levels reduced so as we can invest in opportunity. And we need every New Zealander to have the opportunity to do something special with their lives. - Bruce Cotterill
Quarterly reporting, as required by law for public companies in the US, where Luxon worked for years, is a double-edged sword: firms must be transparent and timely, but the practice can also lead to an over-focus on the short term, with longer-term detriment.
But it signals a structural, put-your-policies-on-the-line approach to politics which could well be a reaction to the disdain with which National and its allies hold the Ardern and Hipkins Labour governments. - Tim Murphy
The more National and its partners discover about the way policy-making and delivery was attempted under Ardern and Hipkins, the more they see value in a stark contrast. - Tim Murphy
There are security professionals in the field every day all over the world protecting people, property, critical infrastructure and supply chains," the police minister tells Newsroom.
Right now there are journalists in conflict zones providing critical information to their audience who rely on close protection teams to keep them safe and protected.
Governments can't and won't provide this. It is up to the private sector. - Mark Mitchell
It is easy to understand a privately owned news company deciding to get out of the business because it can't continue making losses due to reduced advertising income. But it is another thing for a major competitor (wholly government owned One Network News) continuing to operate contemptuously of any requirement to adhere to its charter principles. It would appear that some journalists are of the view that they have licence to ignore the sensitivities of viewers and readers who pay their enormous salaries. They act like rabid dogs that have slipped their collars. - Clive Bibby
Two shocking stats were released last week.
After six years of Labour, the number of children in material hardship is higher than when Labour came to office. The total number of people on Jobseeker has reached 189,000.
These statistics decide the economic debate: Is the way to lift people out of poverty to redistribute wealth or is it to have a strong economy?
Labour engaged in massive wealth redistribution. Labour collected record tax revenues by letting inflation take taxpayers into a higher tax bracket. Labour then redistributed using the welfare system. - Richard Prebble
Christopher Luxon is correct. The best way to reduce poverty is to have a strong economy. A rising tide lifts all boats. We will never eliminate poverty by making increasing numbers dependent on the state.
The left is claiming that Labour did not redistribute enough. If a future government was to confiscate all the wealth of our few billionaires, assuming they stayed to be robbed, it would only fund the government for a few weeks. - Richard Prebble
Just as Labour could not out-promise Social Credit who pledged to print money, Labour cannot out-promise the Greens and Te Pāti Māori who say the rich will pay.
Today, no possible wealth tax enables the 2,297,000 in fulltime employment and the 525,000 part-timers to carry the 378,711 on benefits plus the 880,000 on superannuation. - Richard Prebble
Work and Income (Winz) knows that not having a driver's licence is a barrier to employment. It has contracted driver licence programmes. I have been told of one in Gisborne that had a 4 per cent success rate. The Howard League programme in the same city that costs $840, including the sitting fee, has a 90 per cent success rate.
Winz paid for the number who sat the driver's licence not the number who passed. It is as silly as paying schools for the number of pupils they enrol not the number they teach. - Richard Prebble
The reality is that Newshub, like every other mainstream media outlet, was not a truly independent voice. It was in lockstep with every other MSM outlet on the significant matters of our time – treaty issues, climate and covid. It didn't offer any alternative views. It's political coverage, especially since the election, has regularly - like 1 News – presented anti-government views on policies the coalition parties campaigned on and were elected on. - Peter Williams
There will always be an appetite for news and commentary but the end of Newshub signals that in a not too distant future the way we impart and receive that content will be much different to what we've been used to for the last 65 years. - Peter Williams
The problem Labour now faces is that any government they form in the future will no doubt have to include the Maori Party and they'll have a hard job selling that to voters. Their other partner in crime will undoubtedly be the Greens.
The problem Labour has in selling that as a palatable option has just intensified with the impending departure of James Shaw. The only one that could possibly be described as level-headed will not be in the frame. Without Shaw's pacifying influence, the Greens are at risk of losing any semblance of an environmental party and morphing into nothing more than a radical left-wing bunch of political outliers. Chloe is not the answer but who is? - JC
Concerning Maoridom the moderates, whom most Maori support, are now on the right and Labour are seen as being in bed with the radical left in terms of both the Maori Party and the Greens. Labour will not be electable on that basis. - JC
Turns out the politicians who were insulted on Newshub's platform are the ones who won the election. Reports now suggest that Newshub's bosses may be asking those very same people described as bullshit liars on its platform for a bailout - arguing they need it to ensure our democracy works. My view is that Newshub's staff were unhappy with the election result, having tried to swing things Labour's way. Now they're claiming to be the upholders of democracy, asking for taxpayer help so they can try bringing down the new coalition? What's the word for it? Ironic? - Robert MacCulloch
Labour are soft on gangs. Labour let people out of prison. Labour funded an industry in cultural reports. Labour encouraged the judges to go soft, and what we got was rampant crime and anti-social behaviour. - Mike Hosking
This new Government has been left with the equivalent of an unexploded World War II bomb in a major built-up area and they're looking at how to defuse it and take it away.
It's almost daily at the moment.
And the more we get, the more we see the mess, the carnage, the tragedy, the abject failure and fiscal incompetence of Labour 2020 - 2023.
And with the more we know, surely the further from power they should be kept. - Mike Hosking
Let people live where they wish to, as long as they bear the costs. And let those choices themselves—choices based on people's own values for which they are prepared to pay the cost—organically reflect the way the city develops. - Peter Cresswell
Taking the power they've been given under the Resource Management Act and coupling it with the Utopian dreams handed down to them in Planning School, planners have almost single-handedly stuffed up our cities and restricted the supply of urban land, making building land even scarcer than it needs to be, and restricting the housing choices that New Zealanders are allowed to make to a one-size-fits-all bland-and-blander straitjacket, making urban space duller and even scarcer still. - Peter Cresswell
We let them ring-fence the city and stop people heading out and building away from the city when they want to -- "sprawl!" is the all-too hysterical cry -- and then we let them stop other people building higher density urban housing when they want to. Instead of leaving people free to choose, we have these boring "halfway houses" that some people like, but that many simply accept because that's all that's available, and they don't know any better.
When there's just so much available, so many great housing types from which to choose, it just doesn't make any sense.
"Sprawl" or "intensification"? That's a false dichotomy. I say let people be free to choose.
That's the path to genuinely liveable cities, and to affordability. - Peter Cresswell
Covid-19 triggered a wave of lockdowns across the world, contributing to a severe downturn in economic activity. Governments responded by introducing expansionary fiscal and monetary measures. We compare the health and economic outcomes in Sweden, commonly viewed as an outlier relying more on recommendations and voluntary adjustments than on strict lockdowns, with those of comparable European OECD countries. Our results suggest that the Swedish policy of advice and trust in the population to reduce social interactions voluntarily was relatively successful. Sweden combined low excess death rates with relatively small economic costs. In future pandemics, policymakers should rely on empirical evidence rather than panicking and adopting extreme measures. Even if policymakers appeared to act rapidly and decisively, the rushed implementation of strict lockdowns in 2020/21 probably did more harm than good. - Fredrik N G Andersson and Lars Jonung
On the whole, the cinematic world has dealt less severely with Communism than it has dealt with Nazism. The reason for this is at least twofold.
The first is that many in the cinematic world were sympathetic to Communism, at least in the abstract—which is to say, they might want it for others, though not themselves. Equality was for them what the abandonment of sin was for St. Augustine: They desired it, but not just yet. And when it was no longer possible to deny the horrors of Communist regimes, they probably did not want to display to the world the truth of what they had so long sympathized with. Their sympathy for it was now an embarrassment, as it remains even for their intellectual successors.
The second reason is that economic egalitarianism is a more respectable doctrine than racism, even if, in its extreme form (Communism), it has, overall, been as responsible for as many deaths. - Theodore Dalrymple
The efforts made in totalitarian regimes to procure bogus confessions have always mystified me a little. Why not just shoot or otherwise kill the supposed enemies of the regime, if that is what you want to do? Why bother to obtain confessions first when you have total power already, especially when the confessions are both intrinsically unbelievable and obviously obtained by force?
Presumably they were for propaganda purposes, if one remembers that the purpose of propaganda in Communist states was not to inform or persuade, but to humiliate: that is to say, to force people to pretend to believe what they could not possibly believe, and to celebrate what they most detested, including their own enslavement. Of course, the confessions also broke the spirit of those who made them, even if they survived. How could one respect oneself when one had given in to obvious lies in order to put an end to torture? What the regime wanted (though perhaps its leaders never quite put it this way) was a population that hated and despised itself. - Theodore Dalrymple
It is all about your rights instead of acknowledging that you also have responsibilities.
It may be a small percentage of Kāinga Ora tenants that are making other people's lives hell but those that are should be dealt with swiftly and in the best interest of others.
It is obvious that they should be evicted for the safety of neighbours but they should also be evicted because they don't respect the property and there are plenty of others who will. - Paula Bennett
We have heard too many excuses in the past about why people should not be evicted from Kāinga Ora homes for violent, intimidating and unlawful behaviour. The people who should be second in line to be angriest (the scared neighbour being the first) about this are those thousands of people living in appalling conditions in motels.
The Government is spending nearly $1 million a day on motels and many of them are disgusting and overcrowded. People are at a level of desperation that they don't have a choice and put up with it. Meanwhile, we have some tenants who are treating their state houses and their neighbours appallingly.
They do not deserve a state-subsidised house. There has to be some form of self-responsibility and consequences for actions. And one of those actions should be eviction - as National said it would do last year. - Paula Bennett
Some are outraged that there may be sanctions. It is quite simple – if you don't want to be sanctioned then simply acknowledge that you have responsibilities and comply. You won't lose part of your benefit on your first mistake, they will give you many opportunities to rectify the situation, but at some stage you have to take responsibility for your actions (or lack of them) or suffer the consequences.
Same as being in a state-funded social house. If you don't want to be evicted then it is quite simple. Don't terrorise and threaten your neighbours and treat the home with respect.
A state-funded cheap home is not yours by right and if you are lucky enough to be in one then you should take responsibility for your actions. - Paula Bennett
We need to let Newshub go. Its closure was a long time coming. It is not worth saving.
I can give you a list of what's going wrong for media in general and TV news in particular. Everything from viewers' growing distrust of legacy media through to them simply being too busy to watch an hour-long news bulletin. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
What killed Newshub is that linear TV is close to dead because we don't want to watch it any more.
Take a look at the numbers of 18 to 34-year-olds watching. At this age, people are establishing their habits at the start of their working lives, and are the big spenders of the future. Back in 2000, 129,000 of them watched TV. Now, fewer than 46,000 of them do.
The drop is even starker when you factor in that the country's population increased by 33 per cent.
TV is dead because Netflix and Neon and Apple TV are better. There is more to watch, whenever you want to, not just when they tell you to.
TV is the new video rental shop. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
The Prime Minister was right. All media need to innovate to survive. Many have. They've gone online, prioritised digital over whatever it was they were doing originally, and found a way to make money off it.
But TV news hasn't. It's still an hour. It's still at 6pm. It's still on linear TV.
The moment the internet arrived with its online news stories and videos and Netflix at our fingertips, the fate of the TV news was sealed. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
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