Sounds exactly like National were trying for a few years. Just shove Winston in the mine like he's so keen to do.
Printable View
Re-entry? Wait, as we need to spent $7M plus first to assess what this Pike River re-entry promise is :p
Even some die hard Labour supporters must be feeling some shame by now. Yippee-ki-yay, mother......!
I have no idea where this money is going to go. I can only assume its a Labour Trickle Down theory in play that will help see people out of poverty. Solid Energy has already done loads of work on this as have the families. The worse case risks are known; mitigation strategies are known. All that is needed is knowledge of current methane levels and then send people down the drift bit by bit to work it out.
All this talk of "safety" drives me nuts. Its going to be a major handbrake preventing us from doing anything - and its a great scapegoat for allowing dishonest politicians a back door exit to sneak out of.
Labour's tourism tax policy appears to be yet another ill thought out policy that may need backtracking on:
"Labour campaigned on charging international visitors a $25 per trip levy, with 60 per cent of funds collected going on tourism projects, and the rest going on conservation work.
Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis has asked for advice on implementing a levy, and last night said no decisions would be made until after that was received.
The previous National Government introduced a border clearance levy, which has meant people with a return ticket to or from New Zealand pay a total charge of about $22, included in their airfare.
Labour's plan for a new charge would come on top of that, but only affect visitors who are not citizens or residents of New Zealand.
Tourism Industry Aotearoa's chief executive Chris Roberts told the Herald the proposal as outlined pre-election, "is not actually implementable".
"We can only find one border tax in the world where local passport holders and residents are excluded from paying it. And that is in Mexico, but Mexicans who fly out of Mexico have to pay and then seek reimbursement," Roberts said.
"Unless they are going to set up booths at the airport to collect the tax, to put two different prices into all the airline systems around the world . . . that is a complication that they haven't thought through.
"We are yet to see how it could be workable. It would essentially be coming up with a world first.""
When so many of the local populace being permanent residents and dual nationals then you can only describe this is as a government bureaucrat job scheme. I can't imagine Sabre or Amadeus going to do a mountain of development to register a separate identity document for travel to allow passengers would are NZ nationals or those with residency visas to pay a different fare, let alone a aggregator like TriVago or Expedia to change their interface to facilitate exemptions in airfares.
I can't see booths at arrivals and departures with passengers queuing up to show they paid the $25 levy, then processing their ID documents and handing out $25 in cash, credit card refunds or international bank transfers being part of a seamless visitor experience or streamlining the chaos at Auckland Airport when a bunch of inbound aircraft arrive at peak times - I can only assume that they will have to exempt Australians because they don't give them a residency visa or alternatively we'll all be queuing up to pay $25 entry arriving in Australia as kiwis in a tit-for-tat with the Turnbull Government.
The alternative is paper or online forms, scanned documents and refund processing and another wing of Internal Affairs.... or they say exemptions are too hard and we all get paddled an Sir Apirana Ngata everytime we head to Australia - $25 for NZ and $25 for Oz because anything we do to Australian citizens will be matched here and the NZ Labour led Government and the Australian Government are getting along so well.
Hmmm - thinking hat time. I wonder what I can go and study next year with my new free fees Special Tax Dividend.
Edit. I like the sound of this: Diploma in Professional Scuba Instruction at DiveHQ.
Or maybe a bit of surfing. I can do Surf and Beach Education at Ara where I get to learn surfing technique
Theres also a Diploma In Skydiving - that could be "educational"
Theres also a NZSFW Certificate in Cocktail and Mixology
So Cindy Astern is now looking for a CEO for a new agency to assess re-entry into Pike River Mine. He/she could be liable for several millions of dollars in fines or jail time if something goes wrong. I think this is a perfect job for Little himself or Peters, to show how brave (or stupid) they really are.
" From Stuff:
" However, the briefing documents show the way the agency would run, and while Little would be in charge of overseeing the agency and make the final call on re-entry, the chief executive of the agency would be liable for any decisions."