The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
She was perplexed as she was unsure of what to write about, after all this woman was on record not long before being anointed to become Prime Minister as saying she would never want to do the job. Pity she never made good on her musings.
Someone suggested to her she should write it about leadership and she liked the idea, and that's what we're going to get in the bookstores sometime in the future.
Well, I suspect many of us would’ve had the same reaction when we saw the news alerts on our phones last night.
That a retailer had been stabbed to death in a store. And that was thinking, we knew this was going to happen. Because we did, didn’t we?
With all those ram raids, daylight robberies, tobacco thefts, we could see this coming.
I’m not going to lay blame on anyone for this other the person who did it. Because no one put the knife in their hand. They did it, it’s their fault.
But I’m talking about the politics of this.
That poll out last night should be a shock to no one.
That’s what happens if you ignore voters and just keep pushing through stuff we don’t want, like Three Waters or farmer’s climate tax.
They deserve to be on 32 percent. I’d put that as the high-water mark frankly.
And yesterday’s announcement is not going to help. It’s supposed to help; it’s supposed to make us like them a whole lot more again.
I don’t think the Prime Minister's assurances that New Zealand is a great place to live will have any sway with all the potential overseas workers we could have, who’re choosing to go elsewhere.
Prime Ministers have to be cheerleaders for their country, it’s part of the job description.
They also have to be relentlessly positive, as Ardern is, when it’s a country you’ve been governing for five years and its reputation as a great place has, under your government, gone backwards.
It looks like Auckland’s going to be commuter hell for the next few years.
Yesterday, Kiwirail and Auckland transport announced they need to do huge maintenance work to the rail network. They’re shutting down big chunks of the train network on all three lines for the next three years.
The Eastern line, for example, is going to be down for nearly a year next year.
There is no one to blame here, from what I can see at the moment at least. This work needs to be done. It’s as fundamental as piling your house. They’ve got to do it.
It’s becoming more apparent every day that this Government is on its way out and I just wonder whether that’s why they’re spiralling now into the realm of the nutty.
The KiwiSaver tax announcement certainly looked like it. And now the embarrassment of axing that within about 5 minutes of announcing it due to such widespread backlash. What a cluster.
I see the latest attempt by councils to control our lives and get us all out of our cars is to axe the school drop off.
Actually it’s not fair to just lay the blame at the feet of councils; these powers are allegedly going to be given to them by the Minister of Transport Michael Wood.
So it’s more anti-car government ideology creeping into our lives at every turn.
The health system crisis is the cost of living crisis all over again isn't it?
Doesn't this have a familiar ring to it?
A government in denial of something existing, which is laid bare for all to see, in broad daylight, in every part of our community, and yet politicians heads are firmly in the sand.
Nothing to see here.
My brother travels a lot, both for work and to visit family – my nephew's studying in the US. So he’s made about three trips during the pandemic, done MIQ twice, and since MIQ was dropped he’s made about three more trips, he left again on another one yesterday. Given I’m not flying anywhere I always appreciate the update on his experiences.
Yesterday, he sends me a text from the airport, he’s mad. Mad because all the stuff he’s moaned about on all his previous trips are still not fixed or addressed, in fact he reckons it’s the worst it’s ever been. How’s that possible? Given we keep hearing from Auckland airport that they’re stepping up their game, given we keep hearing from Air NZ that they’re looking to streamline services, given we keep hearing from the Government that they want to make it smoother for people to travel. Newsflash – it’s still not any of those things.
The Government has finally announced its long-awaited immigration reset in the last 3 hours.
So, here’s a first take on what it looks like:
Depending on what industry you’re in and what job you're trying to fill you are either stoked or gutted with today’s announcement.
Because that is really the theme here: picking winners.
It’s a rare day I find myself agreeing with Winston Peters, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s never happened. But given the circumstances of yesterday, I’d have to agree with Winnie; Trevor Mallard has lost the plot.
I mean I have actually used those exact words about Trevor Mallard before. When he spent half a million taxpayer dollars on a playground slide at Parliament, when he played the protestors the Macarena and set sprinklers in them, when he made false rape allegations and then used taxpayer money to fund his legal defence.
No surprise. We weren’t imagining it last week.
A wealth tax from Labour is definitely on the cards.
We now know this because the Prime Minister was given plenty of opportunity to rule it out this morning but refused to.
Do you need any more proof?
You’ve got David Parker dedicating $5m to investigating how much tax the wealthy pay in New Zealand. You’ve got him giving a speech on it last week. You’ve got him refusing to rule out a wealth tax at the next election, only saying he has no plans to introduce it this term.
The news out this afternoon is that the Grounded Kiwis group has won its court battle against the Government over MIQ.
The thing to take away from this is that the Government’s MIQ story is falling apart.
It’s getting harder and harder to believe that MIQ was the right thing or the best thing for Kiwis.
The High Court today hasn’t ruled that MIQ itself was unfair.
So we got a big jump for the minimum wage - $21.20.
The advantage for the Government is most of the people they pay, aren't on the minimum wage.
The burden is carried by the small businesses of this country, the same small businesses that any number of polls tells us were already downbeat about the year ahead.
And how can you not be?
