Quotes of the week

We fundamentally believe a drop in prisoners should happen because we have a drop in crime – it’s a novel idea, but we think it makes sense. – Christopher Luxon 

So the Luxon approach is:

  • Have clear targets
  • Make a Minister and CE accountable for achieving them
  • Require delivery plans on how the targets will be achieved
  • Have independent assessment of the delivery plan
  • Have quarterly reports on progress towards the targets
  • Hold six monthly performance meetings with Ministers if on track, and three monthly if not yet on track

Now this isn’t rocket science, but my God think what a difference it would have made if the last Government had done this. – David Farrar

In the last few years the protest movement has favoured causes such as climate change, Black Lives Matter and more recently, “Me Too”. As the pro-Palestine cause gathers steam I wonder what happened to those other causes. Perhaps, as short attention spans reign supreme, “protest du Jour” is the new cause.

What surprises me about the protest movement is this. We are seeing the very same University campuses that led protest movements in favour of women’s liberation in the 1960’s and early 70’s, protesting in favour of a regime that is barbaric in it’s treatment of women. Whatever happened to “Me Too”?

We’re also seeing the rainbow community out in force in favour of the Palestinians too. And yet, the regime for whom they are protesting would not think twice about inflicting punishment of the most graphic kind, on the lifestyle chosen by that community.

It makes you wonder about how many of the protesters really understand the background to the causes they are supporting. –  Bruce Cotterill

There are lessons for New Zealand in the immigration chaos. Fortunately we are a long way away, and it’s difficult to get here. Our distance, so often a handicap, is currently an advantage. As the numbers of those displaced by war on the other side of the world, inevitably increase, pressure will again come on us to take increasing allocations of refugees.

Unlike many of the countries invaded by illegal immigrants over the last few years, our physical separation from the rest of the world, and the oceans that surround us, provide us with a choice. We should take the opportunity to pause, consider the lessons from our allies on the other side of the world, and take our own decisions with great caution.

Fred Dagg once sang, “we don’t know how lucky we are”.  It is up to our very own Foreign Minister, and the government he represents, to keep it that way. – Bruce Cotterill

It might feel like the country is slogging it up the hill at the moment.

But we’re gonna get to the top of the hill, and it’s downhill on the other side. And the reason it’s downhill is because the fundamentals in our economy; in our country remain impeccable.

In a world that is worried about conflict, where there’s disruption on people’s borders, here we are: a safe, secure country surrounded by ocean.

In a world where many countries worry about how they’re going to feed themselves. Here we are, abundantly feeding ourselves and millions around the world.

In a world where many people worry about natural resources and whether they can have the electricity they need. Actually, we’ve got the resources for abundant renewable energy – all we need is to get the red tape out of the way. –  Nicola Willis

It’s a bit like an arsonist returning to the scene of a fire that they started. And then criticising the fire brigade for the means by which it’s extinguishing the fire. –  Christopher Luxon 

I believe that there isn’t a person in this room that doesn’t want better for the vulnerable members of our community. And what I have never been able to abide is the attitude from some of our political opponents that they somehow have the moral high ground on compassion.

Compassion should be judged by the results you deliver for people. And we have had six years of a government with abundantly good intentions, wonderfully phrased press releases, and literally billions of dollars spent. And can you really say that has made a difference to our most vulnerable? – Nicola Willis

Kāinga Ora is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5 billion of expenditure each year. It owns over 70,000 homes and is the country’s biggest landlord, providing accommodation to people often in great need. Its performance has a material impact on the Crown’s fiscal position,” Mr Bishop says.

We must never forget that Kāinga Ora’s performance also has a huge impact on the people it is there to serve. Over the past six years, even while billions of dollars were poured into it by the previous government, Kāinga Ora left thousands of social houses sitting vacant, tenants were left to rack up enormous rent arrears, and threatening, abusive tenants were permitted to continue living in Kāinga Ora homes despite the terror they inflicted on their neighbours. And despite all this, the waiting list for a social house quadrupled.  –  Chris Bishop 

New Zealand boasts some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and that was backed up when the RSPCA provided written evidence to the House of Lords which stated that New Zealand is the only country globally judged to have better farm animal welfare standards than the UK. –  Kate Acland

These past few days are a reminder that while we often disagree, Parliament is itself a community of colleagues trying to find ways to make tomorrow better than today, and that starts with family, empathy, and humanity.– Mark Cameron

 

Almost every week that goes by, we turn over a new leaf … and discover a nasty little scorpion running around with a nasty little surprise for the government. – Chris Bishop

The kind of people who go to book awards evenings are generally going to be the kind of people who go to dinner parties in Grey Lynn, and while drinking a bottle of $200 pinot noir, they moan about child poverty – and they can’t even see the irony in that. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

If you imagine little kids learning to swim and some of them are dog-paddling and some of them are putting their head down in the water … and some of them are learning to breathe properly. They can all do it – but only one of those systems will work if you’re in the ocean and caught up in a rip. It’s much the same with reading. – Betsy Sewell

I’ve heard from people who were involved in building Kainga Ora homes that each one was architecturally designed, and bespoke, and beautiful. And they do, many of them look absolutely lovely. You know, they’re homes that you would want yourself, and that’s great, but why wasn’t one architect tasked with the job of putting up, say three different designs, family homes, apartments, the like, and cookie cutter them? 

So many people have told me over the years that they could do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. And just because it’s, it’s government money, taxpayer money, everybody loads the invoices, everybody thinks that the money train is just gonna keep rolling in. The more sensible among us, we’re warning, no, at some point, this is going to have to be paid. 

But the, the thing that really rips my nightie is that it’s Kiwis who aren’t even born yet who are going to be paying for this mismanagement, this incompetence, this complete arrogance when it comes to the public purse and that’s what really hurts. 

I’m, you know, I’d love to be shocked. I’m not at all shocked and I bet you’re not either. These figures have been coming, all Sir Bill English did was say, yep, it’s official, it’s a bloody basket case. And we will be paying for the incompetence of the previous administration for decades and generations to come.  – Kerre Woodham

The BBC’s headline was symptomatic of the attitude of a superior class that divides people into those who, like themselves, choose to act, and those who are forced to act; that is to say the human automata of this world. The latter, of course, need the former to redeem them, to make their lives whole. – Theodore Dalrymple

We just kind of jumbled together complaints that we needn’t be making with urgent matters. And I think it is, certainly in the United States right now, a pox on our democracy and a pox on our civil discourse.

There is this insistence on being offended. this itch to be offended, that I don’t entirely understand. And that I think, is a very destructive thing for a culture and to society – Frank Bruni

Humility means understanding that the collective good matters as much as my individual good, and that politics and government is a tricky, imperfect, constantly evolving process of trying to balance those two things.

“And humility means understanding that the world is not always going to conform or be tailored precisely to my liking. And that is not, in most cases a tragedy, it is just the way it is. – Frank Bruni

So, it looks like the Government is going to ditch the First Home Buyers Scheme which gives people up to $10,000 to help get them into their first home.  

All up, it costs the Government $60 million a year. It seems that money’s going to go into social housing instead. 

And it’s tick, tick, tick from me. That’s because, even though I think there is a place for government involvement in helping people get ahead in life, buying assets is not one of them. – John MacDonald

But what I say to that is, just because you might never be on ACC, or you might never be on the unemployment benefit, or you might never need a sickness benefit, that doesn’t mean you’re owed anything.

And you’re certainly not owed anything to help you buy your first home.  – John MacDonald

But even though we have a relatively long history of governments helping people out financially if they want to buy a home —to varying degrees, certainly— it’s not a reason to keep doing it. 

And the obsession with home ownership certainly isn’t a reason to keep giving taxpayer money to people to buy houses. 

And good on the Government —or National anyway— for being true to its word and, in relation to this anyway – being true to its word and basing its housing support on need. 

Because no one needs to buy a house. They might want to, but they don’t need to. 

Unlike someone on the bones of their backside and on the edge of society, who does actually have a need. They need a roof over their head. And, if the Government is sitting there trying to work out the best way to spend $60 million – then, as far as I’m concerned, that $60 million has to go towards addressing people’s needs. Not subsidising their wants.  – John MacDonald

Kāinga Ora, he concluded, is financially unsustainable. Community concerns about its developments and tenancy issues are eroding social licence and effectiveness. And the rot started from the top, with previous ministers, the board, and management unclear about their roles, particularly financial responsibility. – Ben Thomas

Kāinga Ora quickly gained a reputation as an organisation for paying well over market rates, and for poaching council staff, as well as splashing out on the sillier accoutrements of corporate life, such as pricey office fit-outs. – Ben Thomas

The panel drily noted that the panel “has found it difficult to obtain definitive financial information” in its inquiry.

Which is a shame, because one unanswered question is, how much does a Kāinga Ora home actually cost? Or rather, when the costs of managing assets and being a landlord and administering programmes are stripped out of $21 billion in borrowing and around half a billion dollars a year in income, how much did Kāinga Ora spend on the 11,000 houses it has delivered in the past six years? And how does this compare to the private sector?

A Treasury review in 2023 found that privately-led Kāinga Ora builds on newly acquired land had cost $35,000 less per home than Kāinga Ora’s redevelopments of its existing sites. – Ben Thomas

In order to increase its own outputs to meet political demands, Kāinga Ora positioned itself in competition with the private sector, aided by what it saw as an unlimited well of government-backed borrowing, instead of concentrating on filling the gaps in housing needs that the market could not provide.

At the same time as its spending increased, the agency paid scant attention. A case study of a proposed development in Avondale notes that the estimated operating costs for the project presented to the board did not include the cost of servicing the debt to fund the build; essentially the same approach to debt as a drunk with a credit card.

The report documents, in English’s laconic style, a scandal. But its themes of mission confusion, unintended outcomes and a sublimely unaffected approach to spending public money have become depressingly familiar in the post-mortem of the past six years, following the Auditor-General’s report into the Provincial Growth Fund and the New Zealand Upgrade, which found press releases rather than business cases dictated big spending infrastructure announcements.

A scandal, but also a wasted opportunity. The housing crisis very genuinely sits at the heart of most of the country’s biggest social challenges. The report recommends working more closely with community providers, especially iwi, which can point to genuine, if small-scale successes in both development and tenant care. And which definitely keep track of money. – Ben Thomas

From a purely economic theoretical lens, the First Home Grants were effectively just a subsidy on housing for a certain group that generally bids up the price of housing – so good for those people that get the grant, but overall increases house prices more than without the grant.

The solution to first-home buyers having a harder time given higher house prices is to expand supply rather than to subside a scarce resource. – Brad Olsen

It is business, not government, that generates income to fund health, education and welfare services.  

It is business, not government, that employs most New Zealanders. And it is business, not government, that will drive the productivity and innovation on which New Zealand’s future depends. 

Let me also acknowledge the many social sector organisations represented here today. It is so often these non-Government groups that are getting on and solving the complex challenges in our communities, turning good intentions for our most vulnerable into real results. Thank you for what you do. – Nicola Willis

Now that the laws of economic gravity have reasserted themselves, New Zealanders are faced with the cost of cleaning up.  This is the hangover after the wild party. And, as everyone knows, the wilder the party, the longer and messier the hangover.  – Nicola Willis

Fiscal policy matters for real people, as recent history shows. The last few years have been something of an experiment to see what happens when the government fires money around in pursuit of transformational goals. The result has been high inflation, large deficits, growing debt, a struggling economy and nothing remotely transformational to show for it.

If bad fiscal policy can make things worse for businesses and people, then good policy can make it better. – Nicola Willis

I’ll give you an example. In 2011, the median full-time wage and salary worker earned $48,000 – and paid 15.5% of their income in tax. Today, the median full-time wage and salary worker earns $73,400 – and pays 20.6% of their income in tax.

This is the consequence of not adjusting tax thresholds for 14 years – the average tax rate for someone who, by definition, is right in the middle of the income distribution has gone up by more than five percentage points.

That is not fair. People deserve a break, and they need to see a future for themselves and their families in New Zealand in which, if they work hard, they can get ahead.  – Nicola Willis

You’ve gone line-by-line through your spending to decide what costs can be reduced so that you can keep funding the things that really matter and that will drive your business forward.

For some reason, governments have found this very difficult. Our Government has to do it because the alternative is fiscal vandalism. – Nicola Willis

Paternalism is a nasty form of racism that wraps the do-gooder in a cloak of virtue whilst hiding their contempt for those they are tossing alms. – Damien Grant

Kainga Ora spends more on repairs and maintenance than it receives in rent. On average, it gets $140 a week from each residential property.

Are we to believe that 3.5% of the population are unable to cover more than a nominal contribution to the cost of their housing, or is it more likely that there is no incentive to enforce financial discipline?

It is, I am suggesting, easier to give people free housing when the taxpayer is covering the cost than make a serious effort to access the financial capability of your ‘customer’. – Damien Grant

Why not do something that will have a material improvement of the lives of those 185,000 Kiwis living almost rent-free in state accommodation. Why not sell them their houses? The nominal value of the assets is $45b, but the state is losing money on this investment. So long as we recover the $15b in debt the Crown will be better off in cash terms and so will most of the current tenants. – Damien Grant

People who own property take care of it. They maintain, improve, and treasure what is theirs. Giving those in state houses, many who have had challenging lives, the chance to take an economic stake in this beautiful country would be the most powerful change beyond improving education that Wellington can achieve for those trapped on the margins of society. – Damien Grant

It is easy to write people off, which is what leaving them in state housing does. It is harder to take a risk on them, but we should. No-one can succeed without an opportunity. Believing in someone is often all that is needed to help them believe in themselves. Let’s do that. – Damien Grant

The double standard that obviously exists for Te Pāti Māori behaviour is ridiculous.

Depending on how you get your news, you may be completely unaware that Te Pāti Māori (TPM) launched a personal and racist attack on Children’s Minister Karen Chhour this week.

There was debate on NewstalkZB and two online articles, but that’s it. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Basically, what TPM is saying is that Chhour is not the right kind of Māori. That is a deeply troubling idea to promote. –

This is the kind of online trolling you would expect from anonymous losers hiding in the dark corners of the internet, not a political party with representation in Parliament.

No other party would get away with a direct attack on someone’s ethnicity like this.

David Seymour and Winston Peters regularly get pilloried for comments and policies that are far less inflammatory or directly racist. Both often get torn to shreds by the media for mere insinuations that we like to call dog-whistling to make them sound a little more sinister. Most of the time, it’s a very long bow being drawn by critics.

And yet TPM gets away with comments you don’t have to guess at. Repeatedly. There was hardly any coverage of the party’s official sports policy saying: “It is a known fact that Māori genetic make-up is stronger than others.”

Hardly any media were offended when co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer called Seymour (who is Ngāpuhi) “a Pākehā who happens to be Māori”, again suggesting he’s not the right kind of Māori. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Few things are more considered than the words you commit to paper, or in this case social media. It’s deliberate.

And that is why the media have to drop the double standards and start holding TPM accountable in the way they do parties from the opposite side of the political spectrum. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

First, waving through crazy stuff like this normalises it. If no one calls it out, it gets repeated until it’s accepted wisdom that there is a right and wrong kind of Māori. If the media really believe that they’ve done God’s work by calling out Winston Peters’ dog-whistling, they should do the same to TPM.

Second, we are about to have one of the most uncomfortable political conversations of recent times when we discuss Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. The draft should be out this year. That needs to be done with calm and measured language.

If TPM carries on with racist, personal attacks, it will inflame an already tense debate. The media seem to have decided Seymour is the biggest threat to peace here. Frankly, TPM is obviously more likely to inflame sentiment.

If you believe that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, you know there will be more of this from TPM. Here’s hoping it isn’t tolerated like it was this week. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

It’s better for everybody to be able to flourish in your own way to make a difference in your own life and the lives of those you care about. The problem with state dependency is that when the state gives something to you, It changes the dynamics of your own efforts. If you’re dependent on the state, then once you start doing something for yourself, you lose what you are getting from the state. We need to move towards tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). It should be a touchstone for all people in New Zealand. It’s a big part of our story. I talk about some of my Māori ancestors who navigated here and that’s pretty extraordinary when you see the comparison of sailing the Pacific Ocean in a small boat and then I think about people getting off the plane at Auckland Airport today to begin their journey as New Zealanders. They both took an enormous risk to go to a most isolated place because they want a better tomorrow. I think it sums up who we are as New Zealanders and the one thing that we all have in common no matter who our ancestors were. – David Seymour

The Treaty of Waitangi is a wonderful document and it reflects what you might expect given the nature of British politics at that time and says the government has a right to govern and we all have the rights to self determine, especially over our own property – we all have nga tikanga katoa – the same rights and duties for all New Zealanders. The Treaty of Waitangi is a beautifully simple document and a fabulous foundation for a society and I think we should restore that literal conception of what it says. Unfortunately, over the last 50 years, since particularly the State Owned Enterprises Act in 1986, this conception of the Treaty as a partnership between races, where you can have a different role in society depending on whether or not you are Maori is destructive. As an example, when it comes to resource consenting, often in order to get things done that will benefit the whole community you need to get a cultural impact assessment from a relatively small number of people who are no different from anyone else, except who their ancestor was, and we getting poorer than we need to be and that’s creating resentment. We need to change and say te tiriti gives the same rights and duties and self-determination to all New Zealanders. – David Seymour

So what is its role now? You actually have to go back to the original 1975 role. But what appears to be is the Waitangi Tribunal is fashioning itself almost as a House of Lords, an unelected second parliament. It puts forth its opinions on what the actual parliament and the people elected is doing. That’s fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Some of the parallels would be the ombudsman or the auditor-general or the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who hold those powers, who make sure that the law’s been properly administered. But they (the Waitangi Tribunal) is actually demanding that elected politicians make themselves accountable – if not more accountable – to them, than the people that elected them. When people start saying we are more equal than others, then you no longer have a democracy. – David Seymour

 It wasn’t just the Maori Health Authority, it was actually the whole merger into Health New Zealand which was the problem. They didn’t focus on the patients and the service they get but focused on the organisational chart or the wiring diagram of how the back office was organised. And the truth is we, we’re not going to get a better service by reorganising the back office. We’re going to get better service by having better trained people with the right patient at the right time with the right treatments and the right data are available. – David Seymour

People say that Māori health is worse and I challenge that. If you put all Māori in one bucket and all non-Māori and in another bucket, then that’s racially profiling and we are opposed to that. I suspect people who live in bad houses, Māori and non-Māori who don’t have ventilation and poor heating will tend to get respiratory issues and people who eat badly will be more prone to diabetes or heart disease. There are those who will say we need to start treating people culturally. I prefer a practical approach. Maybe the number one thing we really need to do is get warmer, drier homes so people don’t get sick as much. – David Seymour

 One of the questions that people have is why, why are we so critical of these Treaty-based policies? This elevation of Māori to a different set of rules and everything from education, to resource management. The reason why is that we passionately believe in a free society where each person is able to flourish in their own way. And we believe it’s incompatible with a free society that truly values each and every human being as a thinking and valuing individual. It’s incompatible to have a system where you say some people are tangata whenua and some people are tangata Tiriti. Our tradition is each human has their own special identity, we’d all like to have that recognised. It doesn’t mean you can’t express yourself as being Māori or Scottish or English or play bagpipes or go to Matatini or do whatever you like. All we want is a society that’s modern, that’s multi-ethnic, that values our universal humanity ahead of our differences. Let people flourish in their own terms because in New Zealand, there should be a place for everybody. – David Seymour

This entry was posted on Monday, May 27th, 2024 at 7:00 am and is filed under politics, quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    27/05/2024 at 10:53 am

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