Open Mike 08/08/25
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6:00 am, August 8th, 2025 - 80 comments
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
National Party wants to sell / exchange up to 67% of NZ’s conservation lands
New Post up:
National Party wants to sell / exchange up to 67% of NZ’s conservation lands
Life has become quite dramatic, and advertising's tendency to create a nexus:
Bomber demonstrates his leftist credentials by giving hate a capital letter.
Left and right must copy each other, to conform to established norms of behaviour.
I suspect he has been sitting in on classes at the local university: creative writing, cultural analysis and political science, so as to do simultaneous synthesis of all three.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/08/08/woke-activist-social-media-proxification-and-outrage-at-white-jeans/
Political theorists have been slow to factor in darwinism. Robin Dunbar, a leading scientist known for specifying a threshold of around 150 for scaling influence in political groups, earlier published his book about the role of gossip and grooming in evolutionary theory. I admit to not taking him seriously at the time. Bomber inadvertently clarifies the connection between politics, gossip and advertising – a powerful nexus.
Bomber is in a class of his own.
The working class boys brigade champion who has signed up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of neutrality between Q (fascist. neo-liberal, social conservative chameleon) and the (post-modern progressive society liberal feminist) woke.
To compete with all the other males who have a platform (Sean Plunkett, Mike Hosking, Jordan Peterson et al).
Desi is the anthropologist who does the expose on Fox News for Jon Stewart (since Samantha has left the Beehive).
She will explain. It is about having good genes. She has them.
If my SM feed and the sudden ramping up of attacks on Labour by our dollar store Fox outfit NZME are any guide the internal polling for the Nats must be absolutely dire…
When are the next set of (reputable) public polls out?
The Roy-Morgan one has just dropped – they poll the last week of each month – so you won't see another for 4 weeks.
RNZ-Reid Research do one about quarterly – so I'd expect an August poll from them – but no idea when.
Talbot Mills don't ever officially release their polling (it just gets 'leaked') – so no idea on the frequency, or when we can expect to see another one.
I'm guessing that by 'reputable' – you're excluding Curia. However, their results seem to be very much in line with the other polls. They should be out with their first week of August poll shortly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_New_Zealand_general_election
whatever might be happening with National, it doesn't look that great for a left government
TBH, a lot of the shifts in the polling figures for an individual party are a bit irrelevant. In that they're all within the margin of error.
Trends are important. However it would seem that dropping support for National is shifting to ACT or NZF. We see much the same thing on the left – where dropping support for Labour, shifts to the Greens or to TPM. So not a great degree of shift overall in terms of potential governments.
I also don't have confidence that any of the polling companies are measuring the Maori seats correctly, and/or the support for TPM. I feel as though their results for this constituency are just not well measured by any of the tools that the polling companies are currently using. It will be very interesting to see the outcome of the by-election – and how close any of the pollsters get to the actual result.
The black horse in all of this is, of course, NZF – and right now, with these poll results, Winston remains in line to be a kingmaker.
I just looked at that chart again. Someone who understands polling and stats can comment but the trend since the last election is left up/right down. If the up/down curves continue along the general trend, then the left should overtake the right this year.
From a data perspective, polling this far out from an election isn’t a prediction. It’s a snapshot, heavily shaped by whatever’s dominating media and social media at the time.
It’s issue-driven, not vote-driven. People aren’t in "election mode" yet, and numbers tend to fluctuate in response to headlines or hot-button issues before gradually settling as the campaign kicks into gear.
Right now, the fundamentals still look solid for the progressive bloc:
It’s important not to overreact to every poll drop. What matters is the direction over time, not any single data point. Overcorrecting based on noisy polling can lead to weakened messages, internal panic, and unnecessary strategic shifts.
Most likely? We’re headed for a tight race. Probably something like 2017 and decided in Auckland. None of the post-2023 boundary changes seem likely to flip seats on their own.
But honestly, you don’t need millions of dollars in polling to know that.
Boundary changes that flip individual seats make no difference to the election result- the overall number of seats in parliament are allocated on the proportion of party votes gained.
(Though there may be an overhang if TPM take all 6 Maori seats)
The Wiki poll in the graph includes the regular Curia poll. Curia (which has links with the Taxpayers Union and never has the Greens above 10%) is owned by David Farrar; it resigned from from Research Association New Zealand (RANZ) before it was thrown out.
One News, Reid Research, Roy Morgan Talbot Mills and Verian are members of RANZ.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1esghxy/curia_has_resigned_from_the_research_association/
https://theintegrityinstitute.substack.com/p/talbot-mills
If the Curia poll is excluded, the standing of the Left and Right blocks from the two recent polls (both from members of RANZ) are:
Lab 33.0 Gre 11.8 TPM 3.6 = 48.4
Nat 31.5 ACT 9.3 NZF 8.2 = 49.0
Given that TPM will likely sweep the 6 Maori seats this means the election is in the balance.
I'd add that the reputable polling companies you reference (ie the ones who were not thrown out of RANZ) are not highly partisan, political activist-lobbyists who run a blog which had to introduce moderation to hide rampant islamophobia in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, like the owner of Curia is.
two polls aren't enough for a trend. One point of the long trend is to overcome rogue polls. eg Roy Morgan is known to often over estimate support for the Greens.
The problems with Curia are afaik related to two polling questions that weren't voter intention polls. With the most recent one, a question about puberty blockers, most of the complaint wasn't upheld, and the bit that was upheld related to the question framing.
https://www.researchassociation.org.nz/Upheld-complaints
Is there a problem with Curia's voter intention polling? If so, what is it?
We know that PDF was part of Dirty Politics. I think we have to be careful not to reject everything that the right do as inherently corrupt, because that would make politics even crazier than it already is. We should instead be assessing actions and information in context and with regard for evidence.
Weka:
1. I used the only two recent polls-the others are back in June.
2. If Curia is confident of its methods why has it not rejoined RANZ?
But I know what you mean about putting too much weight on any polls-we all know on TS that they are fickle beasts.
If you look at the trend, you can see those two polls don't tell us much, even adding few earlier ones.
I don't know what the implications are for removing one polling company. I've not seen any evidence that Curia's voter intention polls are corrupt or wildly inaccurate.
Farrar explained his reasoning at KB
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/08/why_i_have_resigned_from_the_research_association_of_new_zealand.html
https://archive.ph/lkgza
Weka-I've been pondering your response while making my poached eggs and I think you are wrong here.
I think that NO polls should be reported by the MSM if they are produced by companies/people that refuse to be members of RANZ.
These polls simply cannot be relied upon. Curia's results should not be reported and neither should they be incorporated into the Wiki graph.
As I listed above, there are at least 5 pollsters that are members of RANZ-on this basis they can be relied upon.
as much as I think DPF is a problem, unless someone produces evidence that Curia's voter intention polling is misleading and/or corrupt, I can't see the rationale for ignoring their polling. I'm open to being wrong about this, but atm it looks like the general objections are political partisanship.
DPF's explanation made sense to me, especially the bit about multiples complaints and complaints being politically weaponised.
I've seen a large amount of culture cancel activity done around gender identity politics, which has caused inordinate damage to the public good including to research and universities. The thing it comes down to for me is what it would be like for the left if the shoe was on the other foot. And we are at risk of that with rising fascism. The left is supposed to be the side with ethics.
I'm also aware that DPF could be manipulating perception. We don't have the details on complaints against Curia. Nevertheless, there is a principle here.
But all that aside, someone who understands statistics can tell us if the Wikipedia poll trend reporting is accurate, and how it would be affected by removing Curia.
We will have to disagree on this one. Farrar's polls consistently favour the Right compared with other polls-it looks to me like he is manipulating the NZ electoral process.
This is serious.
I would accept his polls if he joined RANZ.
Those lines are drawn through interpolation of the data points. Different interpolations will draw different lines, obviously. Generally, the data points are the midpoints of the polling periods; some polls have been conducted over just a few days while others were taken over a month or so. In this case all polls have roughly the same sample size, which makes comparisons a little easier. However, to establish a real trend through interpolation alone is flawed, IMHO, and lacks statistical rigour.
Is the wiki trend of polls useful at all?
Depends on what you’d want to use it for, e.g., reliable statistics or fodder for vacuous commentary and endless speculation, et cetera, IMHO.
😆
Shall I take from that that you consider the wiki trend poll to be not particularly useful and reliable?
I love to look at those lines as much as anyone. I get engrossed in fiction as well 😉
do you think the polling is not accurate, or the wiki compilation?
Labour could go online with a website connecting party and supporters. The Greens did have a similar operation years ago, based on topic forums, and it puzzled me when they eliminated it. I thought member commentary online was a way to better democracy.
Yeah but the Greens aren't really democratic you will be wanting to point out. Well, there was no onsite commentary here when they made the change, so I guess everyone felt the situation was too marginal to be worth discussing. Perhaps folks just aren't ready for public discussions of political stuff. Any other explanation, anyone??
So now you can use a gizmo operating at PhD level intelligence to design the public interface of a political website. Just give it the right instructions, and it will create the optimal design for you. Go for it! https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5prvgw0r1o
Hate to burst your bubble, but as a data engineer, I don't trust AI-generated code. Or, at least not blindly.
I've been using Cursor as my IDE for the past 6 months, working with a mix of ChatGPT and Claude.
Don't get me wrong, I love it! It's incredibly helpful for automating repetitive logic, generating boilerplate unit tests (which I absolutely despise writing), and even fleshing out documentation.
It’s also great at offering creative suggestions when I hit a wall on a tough problem.
I think of it as a particularly bright-but-clumsy junior dev who just happens to have memorized all the documentation for whatever platform I’m working on.
But the truth is, I often spend more time reworking its output: fixing syntax errors, logic bugs, or just cleaning up clumsy design choices, than I would if I'd written the code from scratch.
People forget that building software isn’t purely engineering. It’s a creative process.
And my decade in the industry I’ve seen some absolutely awful code shipped by folks with PhDs in Computer Science and Maths.
So handing the reins to an “intelligent” model doesn’t guarantee smart, usable, or (especially when it involves handling personal data) secure results.
Okay, I get it. So Englebart's augmented intelligence scheme from the late 1960s remains the prevalent paradigm (popularised in The Innovators, where the media guru author makes it his primary theme).
Still, nice to know that a clever gizmo can hallucinate as well as any human. Your typical Nat/Lab sheeple voter will breathe a sigh of relief. No need for paranoia. But wait, Elon Musk remains paranoid about AI, and he's a top producer of it.
Plus he seems to have plenty of company at that top level. Perhaps humans are subdividing organically into 2 sub-species: the paranoid and the complacent.
Totally.
It’ll get good enough eventually, and probably sooner than we think. But I don’t buy the “AI will destroy the software industry” panic. What it will do is shift the work.
We’ll still need people who know how to use the tools wisely, spot subtle errors, and apply judgment that only comes with experience.
The craft will become less about typing code and more about shaping good systems. Architecture, abstraction, security, stability, scalability.
Ironically, those are exactly the parts junior engineers struggle with most. Writing code is easy. Designing well is what separates amateurs from professionals.
In that sense, the paranoid ones might be right to worry: just not for the reasons they think. The real danger isn’t AI becoming too smart, but people becoming too complacent, trying to outsource oversight and responsibility.
IBM said it best in the ’70s: A computer can never be accountable. Therefore, a computer must never make a management decision.
Absolutely agree from a report-writing perspective. The LLM generated report is a good starting point – but often doesn't include the quirks of the system I'm working with; or (sometimes) totally invents functionality that doesn't exist (sending me down a rabbit-hole of confirming that no, they haven't actually updated the reporting tool and/or database structure to make X possible)
It's also really frustrating when Management use ChatGPT for 'research' and blindly believe it – requiring me to spend hours checking and writing counter documentation – to 'prove' that it hallucinated the whole thing.
And, yes, I've been working with ChatGPT5 – and it absolutely still does hallucinate data. It really doesn't like to 'report' that there *is* no data – and will 'extrapolate' it. Even when specifically instructed not to.
From a political perspective that is much more dangerous – if we have political leaders believing their ChatGPT generated 'research' (which is probably confirming their initial biases) – and being highly reluctant to have a reality check provided by their staff (or anyone else).
Absolutely. I run into this constantly: LLMs love to invent functions that don’t exist, or that don’t exist in the version or implementation I’m actually using.
Case in point: I’ve been working in Flink to process thousands of IoT messages per second in real time. But no matter how clearly I prompt it, GPT keeps referencing features from raw Apache Flink that don’t apply in the Confluent Cloud environment, which behaves just differently enough to break things.
But what really concerns me isn’t the hallucinations: I can catch those. What worries me is the proliferation of vibe-coded products out there: shiny wrappers around AI-generated slop that pose serious privacy and security risks to anyone who trusts them.
The core problem is that for most users, good software engineering is indistinguishable from magic. They can’t see the scaffolding, so they don’t think to question it.
And if they don’t question it, they won’t demand better.
Funny take on a place like TS, which has a long history of providing a platform for people who are ready for public discussion.
My guess is the Greens' reprioritised their limited time and budget. There is still a login for members, afaik with access to discussions, as well as email lists and FB groups.
National Party journalist, Jason Walls, has a Road to Damascus moment:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/cost-of-living-economy-challenge-national-ahead-of-election-2026-the-front-page/VD56TY7GZ5GO5AHOLX4NR26SWY/
Green Party AGM this weekend. Marama's speech 2.10pm Saturday, Chloe's 1pm Sunday. Livestreams probably on their FB and IG.
Chloe was good on RadioNZ's Midday Report just now. We don't hear enough of the opposition leaders on the MSM.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/middayreport/audio/2018999101/auckland-mp-backs-calls-for-govt-to-help-auckland-economy
Couple of reports simply stating Lynn Fleming and Adam Ramsay were on foot patrol when they were struck by a vehicle.
Fairly sure they had someone on the ground arresting them at the time. I remember reading this in reports following the incident.
I don't know why they were arresting someone on the ground at 2am on New Years Day but in the context of the employment of more aggressive policing and the abandonment of agency policing when the National government was elected, the outcome is interesting as well as tragic…
…can't help thinking it was avoidable.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/08/08/man-accused-of-murdering-nelson-police-officer-lyn-fleming-named/
Entirely avoidable.
The male driver could have chosen not to drive the vehicle at people and other cars. He did not.
Sure, but that's a reactionary position, worthy of Kiwiblog commentary.
I'm interested in Police policy on the night and whether the changes in government and commissioner, and therefore direction, influenced that specifically and also policing in general.
So do you have any evidence of your assertion that anything other than a foot patrol was going on?
A link to an article from the time will do.
I think that you'll find that most people, left or right, have little interest in excusing the behaviour of a disqualified driver, who chose to drive, then chose to ram people – resulting in serious injury and death.
People like you are a disgrace to the left, victim blaming ,concern trolling lightly vailed as rational debate , the cops where doing their job , if your getting arrested at 2am it'll be for your own safety or others, or you're being a crook.
Here's more disgraceful behavior.
After 70 bail checks (for non violent crime)in 38 days, a man snaps and lets loose on a cop car with a slasher.
A cop with 1 year under his belt, arms himself, shots and kills them tells fibs about it when questioned.
IPCA is found seriously wanting following their first
cover upinvestigation and the cops are basically saying nothing to see here, move on.Kudos to the victim's Whanau and the grace they have shown following the latest coroners report.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/569347/police-shooting-coroner-rules-shargin-stephens-death-was-preventable
That has what incommon with some loon running down and killing a police officer in Nelson?
It was yr faith in the cops that prompted me.
If you get arrested, yr in the wrong.
I'll side with them mostly, the situation you posted is a cluster, no doubt, it looks like a hot headed rent a cop parole officer was the spark, I'd be interested to know what was polices motivation to check the guy so regularly, harassment or maybe the guy like to sneak out and get upto no good at night?
On the other hand, I was raised in a household where Arthur Thomas's conviction was never trusted.
Bent cops basically and then other cops stood up for them. I get having a tight team mentality, I did 6 years in the Army. When someone does go rogue though, everyone benefits when folks are held to account.
I'm the sort that I would rather 10 guilty people had their freedom before 1 person lost their liberty.
As to the checks my reckons are harassment. He had been compliant 70 times in a row, despite being woken on several of them.
Then there’s the IPCA saying the checks had nothing to do with Stephens getting upset.
As I said before, the Nats, Mitchell and Chambers arrived with great fanfare on their new tough on crime and end the woke policing platform and I'm interested in how that manifests for those officers on the front line…
…ie, surely it increases risk?
Tasker, who was driving the car, has pleaded guilty to drink driving and driving while disqualified.
The report of the incident says the two offices were hit by a car (one seriously injured, one died), which then reversed and rammed a police car, injuring another police officer and two members of the publ ic.
Looks like an avoidable death and injuries to me too.
There's a description of the lead up to the incident here.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nelson-police-officer-lyn-fleming-dies-after-car-ramming/MCI2433GANDCBJQ7FCQ4ZE2YV4/
My original question was about the reporting that Fleming and Ramsay were "on foot patrol", but there's a lot more to it than that.
thanks.
I think it's stretch to argue that police were overreaching in that arrest due to National and that's why one of them died/
Perhaps, if it is looked at as narrowly as that. The arrest was the second to last incident of the night but more broadly, in the context of National's strong-arm signalling, what led to the scene getting so out of control? Was the police plan normal that night or was it beefed up as per increased police visibility policy? Why were there so many people still in that carpark at 2am? Was that a response to the police presence?
There are violent nutcases out there and part of the police's role is to manage that properly and I don't think aggressive posturing by a former mercenary and his hawkish appointee helps much.
So my point is that the tough guy approach can lead to extra risk for the public and police alike.
Your argument appears to be that National has an aggressive policing policy, and this led to the death/injuries. In order to argue that, you seem to be suggesting that the officers weren't visible to the drunk, disqualified driver and that them arresting someone was a result of aggressive policing.
I'd rather not rely on your memory, so please go and find the report that shows the two offficers were arresting someone and were at ground level.
Reply to this is at 7.1.1.3.1
Jim Quinn today looks at the Trump tariffs saying:
"a little perspective on the scale and ultimate impact of these tariffs may be helpful.
The national debt is on course to increase by $1.9 trillion this fiscal year ending 9/30/25. It is up $700 billion since Trump took office. The Big Beautiful Bill didn’t cut one dime from the budget. The national debt will increase by about $2 trillion in the next fiscal year, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. You get the picture. Increased debt until economic collapse.
The national debt will increase by approximately $5.5 billion per day forever, because the spending is on automatic pilot. So basically, the $300 billion in added tariff revenue will be frittered away by your government in less than 2 months.
..the corporations will pass the (tariff induced) price increases on to their customers, generating an increase in inflation and further robbing the average household of their spending power. Of course, Trump will instruct his new head of the BLS to fake the CPI number even more than it is already faked, to hide the real inflation caused by his tariffs."
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jim-quinn-questions-tariff-mania
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360784780/fair-cop-chris-bishop-publicly-called-out-tory-whanau-when-she-texted-him-privately-he-took-it-back
Surprise Surprise a nat mp gets caught being a lying pos, and pulls a oh shucks routine
At least he apologized and withdrew the comment.
I wonder if Chippie will do the same with his remarks about NCEA consultation? Stanford offered briefings for Prime which were ignored. Then after further offers Prime refused to have the offered sessions. Stanford even took it up with Hipkins who later complained that National hadn't tried to involve the Opposition.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/ncea-changes-erica-stanford-offered-labour-invitations-to-briefing-willow-jean-prime-didnt-respond-and-then-declined/TARBJJK54RBAPPNMT7FOBYC63U/
[Again, diversion trolling and whataboutery from you despite so many warnings this year already (e.g., https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-26-05-2025/#comment-2034821, https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-04-04-2025/#comment-2030711, https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15-03-2025/#comment-2028691, and https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14-01-2025/#comment-2021202). Take 4 months off – Incognito]
Apologized and withdrew the statement!!
Not before enough of his moron followers have swallowed the lie and now spread it to their idiotic mates, standard dirty politics , nearly always from the right.
Mod note
This pay per km won’t do much for the provinces or regions, when you can live near the train line in Auckland with a train every 5 minutes and ditch the car..
Not great for tourism either, in a place tourists already call a rip off. Bishop and Willis Thernardier if that’s how you spell it.
It needs to be pay per km AND by weight.
This will mean the road damaging trucks and Remuera tractors will pay for the damage they do.
Those battery cars are easily double the weight of combustion cars.
So I wouldn't get too bureaucratic, beyond the already existing NZTA vehicle weight class tariffs.
"Those battery cars are easily double the weight of combustion cars"
What rot!
Ford Focus 1500kg
VW ID3 2000kg.
Perhaps not.
Let’s look at the Peugeot 208 as an example, a small hatchback which is available with either a petrol engine or as an electric car. If you go for the 1.2-litre petrol model, it tips the scales at 1,090kg. On the other hand, the all-electric e-208 with its 50kWh battery weighs in at 1,910kg, almost double the amount.
https://www.carwow.co.uk/editorial/going-electric/ev-tips-and-advice/are-electric-cars-heavier-than-petrol-and-diesel-cars
Autocar NZ gives the weights as being 1508kg for the electric and 1186 for the ICE equivalent.
Significantly heavier but not double.
https://www.autocar.co.nz/peugeot-e-208-and-e-2008/
Yep, still way off the mark, from yr link;
"The BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe weighs 1,695kg when you opt for the basic petrol model, however this rises to 2,065kg in the electric i4 with a 70kWh battery. Go for the larger 84kWh battery and you’ll be lugging around 2,125kg."
So, at best 4-500kg more.
The possible extra heavy vehicles are probably hybrids with their ICE, transmission/gearbox, battery and electric motor set up.
For mine, this will be the real issue with heavier vehicles.
With the implementation of stringent emission regulations and the growth of electric vehicles, more attention should be shifted to road traffic-derived non-exhaust emissions. Tyre wear particle (TWP) emissions have outweighed those from the exhaust and are potential for microplastic pollution.
[…]
Electric vehicles seem to make things even worse given that they are 24% heavier than their gas counterparts, leading to a 20% increase in tyre wear PM10 and a 30% increase in tyre wear PM2.5 as estimated (Timmers and Achten, 2016).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231023000237
There is some concern there with that issue, like wear and tear on the roads, private motor vehicle use is trivial when compared to the impact the trucking industry does.
Whatever it is, it’s a disincentive for people starting out to live in places where they are totally dependent on a car. That’s the provinces and rural areas, already hurt with large rate burdens to fund infrastructure, and climate change and flood protection that the government is walking away from.
In many, many cities worldwide and in parts of Auckland, public transport is sufficient for commuting and most personal trips. And for some you can shop on foot.
Trips away can be by hire car or even by rail in some amazing places, though NZ is not really set up for it.
New Zealanders First or international billionaires first? Luxon’s Lux club, once he’s dealt to the Maori and conservation problems.
need to see cost comparisons with the petrol tax and diesel RUCs.
It should be a useful change and one the left should embrace.
Generally speaking running an older car that perhaps isn't fully maintained and tuned you are burning a lot more petrol than someone driving a newer model. Basically if you are unable to afford a modern vehicle you are paying more than your fair share under the current system especially compared to new vehicles with fuel economy that can be over 50% and more better but at the same time causing the same if not more damage to roads.
There would be opportunity to stratify road user charges further as well, not just by weight but by vehicle type for example there's no reason large luxury vehicles or sports cars attract a higher charge to better reflect their owners ability to contribute to the upkeep and improvement roads and wider transport network?
The biggest fishhook I see is that it will become yet another poverty trap, people struggling won't buy the RUCs when they also need to buy food, pay rent or power etc then the eventually get pulled over and fined hundreds of dollars as well as having to pay the outstanding RUCs. If we're able to solve that, it's they way forward.
the biggest problem I see is the privacy issue. That on it's own makes the scheme a hard no.
Beyond that, I'd still like to see the cost comparisons, because what you say sounds plausible but might not be true.
Its an easy comparison to make.
A modern car will say use @ 6L of petrol per 100km an older poorly maintained car could use 10L per 100km so paying far more tax for the same distance travelled.
(Depending on the rate thats set of course) even if the person in the 10L per 100 km car is not paying any less tax it would mean the person in the 6L per 100km car would be paying more than they currently do and inline with the person in the less effiecient car
I mean of course, apart from all the other BS.
The handing over to a private company the data of people’s movements, the responsibility for dealing with false positives, how late or non-payment would affect people and prevent them participating in society…and as per the discussion further below where people work in the city centre but have brought property far away and commute by car, especially those on shift and rotating shift work as there is often no public transportation alternative.
That’s often those on lower in incomes. There’s a strong market for cars with high ticket prices but low weekly payments. That’s a pride factor for people on lower incomes. This spikes that weekly cost.
The further privatization of core government functions too, of course.
I think that the poverty trap risk is real. Very real.
We already see people pumping $20 of petrol into the car (because they can't afford more). That $20 already includes the taxes.
If they have to mentally set aside a RUC of $8 in addition to the (say) $12 for the petrol they're pumping – then it's all too likely to be forgotten, or spent on an emergency or disappear into the just-surviving-this-day expenditure. It's really tempting to have $20 for petrol – and just spend it all on petrol – not hang onto some for the RUC.
Whereas now, if they don't have the money, they just have to get only as much petrol+tax as they can afford.
I can see major bills being racked up. And people getting hit with penalties, in addition to their RUC costs. Once you get into debt like that, it's really, really, hard to get out of it again.
Road toll debt is a problem in Australia. Your concern is real.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/abc-news-daily/how-unpaid-tolls-could-land-you-in-prison/104489628
It is usual for ruc to be bought in advance, but yip it's not going to work for the poorer end of society, and the cocs know it and don't care ,
The government and opposition political parties are being asked what their plans are for a growing problem.
We have a rare surplus of nurses.
We have unmet demand for a service of care (including existing services underfunded and failing to provide an acceptable standard of care).
We have unused construction capacity.
If not now when?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568964/aged-care-association-says-ward-for-medically-discharged-shows-need-for-funding
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568995/aged-care-association-says-it-warned-government-on-lack-of-hospital-discharge-options
Peters claimed an interest in this matter in 2023, but there is no evidence of any activity.
So Tracy Martin of the Aged Care Association is pleading for National and Labour to take up the issue.
I agree that this is a big issue.
Sadly, I'm at the stage of my life when many of my friends are dealing with this situation for their parents.
My understanding is that the bed-blocking is happening for 3 reasons:
The answers to these could be:
All of that is going to cost money – although the provision of disability accommodations and convalescent homes should pay for themselves in freeing up beds.
Making Kainga Ora prioritize disabled people up front (rather than 9 months later) – should be cost neutral.
The increase in aged care facilities – for those unable to pay for this themselves – is going to be seriously expensive. And we need to get a handle on how it should be approached – because the demographics are getting worse, not better.
I'd like cross-party support on this. Although probably not going to get sign-on from ACT. Really, there needs to be someone, respected on both sides of the house, to broker a cross-party deal (much as happened with superannuation)
Is this some of what the Cullen fund should be spent on?
The Cullen Fund was set up to help future governments with the cost of super payments from their annual budgets.
It could of course invest in aged care and charge a cost to government. That would create a value to and revenue stream from its aged care assets. Something international funds or KiwiSaver Funds could buy into.
The first need would be identifying the breadth and scale of the problem. And then advice on a plan of action. Something bi-partisan in terms of design and buy in would be a nice to have.