If National wins ...

[Major von Tempsky]

So, you think FBU should be nationalized?

[elZorro]

So, you think FBU should be nationalized?

No, but when Labour get in I hope they give the building materials industry a short sharp lesson in competitive pricing for the massive housebuilds they are planning. What is happening in NZ is that middlemen and importers are buying in raw materials and finished goods, adding value sometimes only in terms of a stuck-on badge and a bit of branding, and selling to the building trade and the public with terrific margins. Float glass comes over in containers, it just needs to be cut down when it gets here. I know of unmarked Chinese made s/s kitchen fittings being branded with one of our top domestic appliance brands. It has been much easier to make a profit through this type of deception than to honestly manufacture goods here.

And now National is going to sell 20% of Air NZ shares, leaving the govt with 53%. Read the comments after this article, I think the public really are getting sick of this government.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Government-to...x#.Uoh35ST2-00

[slimwin]

Aluminium is a poor window frame material EZ. Even with a thermal break between the panes it loses far more heat than pretty much anything else. Europe ditched it decades ago. Wood is best but mostly PVC is used over there and it's cheap as chips. Haven't seen ones that needed replacement but the glass is obviously reusable.

[elZorro]

Aluminium is a poor window frame material EZ. Even with a thermal break between the panes it loses far more heat than pretty much anything else. Europe ditched it decades ago. Wood is best but mostly PVC is used over there and it's cheap as chips. Haven't seen ones that needed replacement but the glass is obviously reusable.

Yes, I did notice that poor thermal behaviour of aluminium in charts when I was looking for PVC data, Slimwin. Maybe I'm not an expert on window sashes or anything else, but I have grown wary of plastics when used outside in all weathers, along with cement board made with wood pulp. But maybe more heat is lost through single panes of glass than the framing. And older wooden frames are fairly draughty too.

I'd better get in first about Air NZ.
Labour privatised Air NZ in April 1989, at the tail end of Rogernomics I suppose. This brought in $660mill. By January 2002 the company was on its knees, and Helen Clark's govt bailed it out with a $300mill loan and an investment in shares for $585mill, giving it 83% of the company. Since then it has paid some good dividends, about $80 mill in 2012 and perhaps the same in 2011, for example. I guess the loan has been repaid.

Now it is worth about $1.8billion as an MCap, and the National Govt will sell down 20% of it ($363mill) to get about 10% of the way towards the cash they need to get back to a budget that is not full of red ink. Maybe this is not as bad as selling down hydro schemes, but the workers at Air NZ will be a bit worried about how private shareholders view their payscales and tenure. Of course this is all happening just before the referendum.

Everyone assumes the vote there will be against the selling of state assets, yet another black mark against the National Government and their unimaginative policies, policies that tend to assist those with lots of capital.

[slimwin]

I'm a worker at air nz EZ. I can assure you nobody but the union reps are worried where I am..
You make some bold statements.

[blackcap]

Maybe this is not as bad as selling down hydro schemes, but the workers at Air NZ will be a bit worried about how private shareholders view their payscales and tenure. Of course this is all happening just before the referendum.

.

Excuse me? Air New Zealand already has private shareholders so how is the govt selling 20% whilst retaining 53% going to change anything at all? Unions like to scaremonger and politik and that is exactly what is happening here. Nothing is going to change at Air NZ while the govt owns a majority stake.

[Cuzzie]

Back in 2005, Helen Clark's Government spending increased from $29 out of every $100 earned by NZers to $35. That level of taxation and spending discourages productive work and investment, and encourages the mentality that New Zealand can vote itself rich & it worked.

An example of electioneering politicians using public money to win elections was Clarks interest free student loan election bribe. Back in 1999, Helen Clark successfully campaigned to remove interest from student loans of students while studying. She gave 81,000 students an average break of $18 per week. The $74 million cost to approximately 2 million taxpayers was 74 cents per week, each. More students voted for her to get $18 per week than taxpayers voted against her to save 74 cents. Helen Clark and a small number of students won, the country as a whole lost. We got a policy that taxes all productive behavior and gives the money to highly qualified people who don’t need it. It was no surprise that she repeated the trick by making student loans interest free for graduates in 2005.

Most of that statement above is borrowed from another website. It is factual and the quoted figs. can be backed up within the pages of the Reserve Bank website.


Now we face something far more sinister, a Labour Government with Green Power. You wont have to worry about cheap housing falling apart in 20 years elzorro, because no body will be able to afford those. Even if they could the Greens would of stopped the trees getting milled. We'll have tin houses at best. Whole industries would be forced to close down if the Green Taliban gain enough power to do so. Not to mention going 100% Solar Power like Ross Norman said we are ready to go with right now. That means shut down the power stations, close all petrol stations and anything else that does not run on sun or wind generated power. Wow, Air NZ is a gone-burger right there anyway.


The question should be, what if National looses. My answer is run for the hills. Why do you think National is selling off our asserts? To pay for Helen Clarks massive spend and bribery to win two elections was a big part of that. The National Govt. now has to settle Labours bills, do you think they can do that by plucking money from trees or printing it like the Americans, you would be wrong. Maybe a Labour/Green Govt. could be good for one thing - the death of both parties for ever.

[Cuzzie]

Oooo ... Cuzzie ... wonderful example of argumentum ad absurdum ... you humorous devil you.

Helen Clark thought the same thing when she saw the current account balance for her tenure. Check it out: http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/k...rrent_account/ Just look at the state of affairs between 04 and 08. Terrible just plain bad reading right there. Now have a look when National was in and add in the Christchurch earthquakes just to put it in perspective. Not so good reading if you are a Labour supporter. BTW, make sure you click on the spreadsheet containing all key graph data while your in the webpage above. Again compare Helen's reign with John Keys. You might not like reading that too. So Labour spends big time and then complains big time when National tries to pay Labours debt. That's why they call them the loony left I suppose.

[elZorro]

This post is going take a while. I'm under siege!

Slimwin, good to hear the Air NZ staff are still as well paid as they used to be. I was of course parroting a press release from Labour, so I should have added IMHO.

Blackcap, surely there will be a tendency for the board makeup to change, and the govt has so far allowed the company to run its own affairs by and large, even though they had 73% of it. It all depends what sort of a dividend they expected in the past, and now there will be new faces expecting different dividends perhaps. Will National use this as an excuse to also push for bigger dividends?

Cuzzie, welcome to the thread. Would you please have a look back through some of the graphs you are talking about? And also some that I have posted in the past. The current account is not the govt books, it's the books for the whole country, sort of. If everybody thinks things are going swimmingly, they borrow more, and that is what happened during Labour's last term. Interest rates moved down, property was appreciating well, so we all borrowed a bit more.

Except the Labour govt did the opposite. They paid off a lot of old debt. They ran record budget surpluses on their own books. All this time the National Party was extolling Labour to drop taxes and pay back the taxpayers. But Michael Cullen showed extreme forethought and kept paying off the debt, and other ministers used the extra tax cashflow to further stimulate the economy. So although the GFC had started when National got back in, Labour had the govt finances in an excellent state compared to many other countries. Unemployment was also at a low point, so there was a wide tax base. Labour succeeded in increasing the tax income each year without hurting anyone too much.

You refer to zero interest student loans. Many parents think this is only fair, because many of them had a free tertiary education, and the latest crop have to pay for about 30% of their costs. Plus, the govt gets cash at a lower rate than the rest of us, so it's not a great cost. If it was such a bad idea, why has National kept this in place? Exactly, it would cost them a lot of votes to remove it. Many tertiary students go on to become employers, so if you wanted to cripple NZ even more than National has managed to do over the last five years (still not reaching the performance figures Labour achieved back in 2008) then that would be one way to do it.

[Cuzzie]

This post is going take a while. I'm under siege!

Slimwin, good to hear the Air NZ staff are still as well paid as they used to be. I was of course parroting a press release from Labour, so I should have added IMHO.

Blackcap, surely there will be a tendency for the board makeup to change, and the govt has so far allowed the company to run its own affairs by and large, even though they had 73% of it. It all depends what sort of a dividend they expected in the past, and now there will be new faces expecting different dividends perhaps. Will National use this as an excuse to also push for bigger dividends?

Cuzzie, welcome to the thread. Would you please have a look back through some of the graphs you are talking about? And also some that I have posted in the past. The current account is not the govt books, it's the books for the whole country, sort of. If everybody thinks things are going swimmingly, they borrow more, and that is what happened during Labour's last term. Interest rates moved down, property was appreciating well, so we all borrowed a bit more.

Except the Labour govt did the opposite. They paid off a lot of old debt. They ran record budget surpluses on their own books. All this time the National Party was extolling Labour to drop taxes and pay back the taxpayers. But Michael Cullen showed extreme forethought and kept paying off the debt, and other ministers used the extra tax cashflow to further stimulate the economy. So although the GFC had started when National got back in, Labour had the govt finances in an excellent state compared to many other countries. Unemployment was also at a low point, so there was a wide tax base. Labour succeeded in increasing the tax income each year without hurting anyone too much.

You refer to zero interest student loans. Many parents think this is only fair, because many of them had a free tertiary education, and the latest crop have to pay for about 30% of their costs. Plus, the govt gets cash at a lower rate than the rest of us, so it's not a great cost. If it was such a bad idea, why has National kept this in place? Exactly, it would cost them a lot of votes to remove it. Many tertiary students go on to become employers, so if you wanted to cripple NZ even more than National has managed to do over the last five years (still not reaching the performance figures Labour achieved back in 2008) then that would be one way to do it.

When you say current account, where exactly is your cut off point. So what your saying is Clarks last year in power, "2008" could be far worse that the graph suggest, or are you conveniently suggesting that the cut of point starts from Nationals first day in office over five years ago? Yeah right, buy hey if you can throw up some proof supporting your statement, I will take notice. I look forward to that with baited breath. I broke out with a rash all over me when you mentioned "Michael Cullen".

Look the fact is Helen Clark made Rob Muldoon look like a choirboy & her Govt wasted or spent more money than Robs think big projects that would be paid off & would making money for us right now. Add that to the fact that a Labour/Greenie coalition would do it's best to stop mining NZ natural energy products, why would anybody even entertain such a joke?

Look I'll be honest elzorro, if Labour could win the next election without a coalition with the Green party, it would be bearable and almost OK, but that is not going to happen. They will need to get into bed with the Greenies and that will be the death of NZ as we know it forever. That's why we can only vote for the non-negative party - National.

Graphs that supports your story please.