If National wins ...

[winner69]

Did Mr Little lose it on TV this morning?

Plenty of comment about him not really a PM / statesmen in waiting

[Daytr]

Haven't you been listening Winner?
That's because its Winston, not Little that will be the next PM of NZ. ;-)

[Major von Tempsky]

But what's wrong with immigration? It's a very strong driver of economic growth, some of the immigrants are skilled and/or bring capital with them. You can't have it both ways DayTr/EZ - you like economic growth but you don't like immigrants and people with Chinese sounding names and you are ostensibly against racism....

[Daytr]

Bad assumptions MVT & if your economic model relies on increased population then your model is flawed & its not sustainable.
I'm not anti immigration as it has its purpose & I like the diversity it adds to NZ.
However when many Kiwis are staying put & returning from overseas then its time to turn the immigration tap down.
What I am against is a much larger population in general. A small amount of population growth would be ok, but personally I don't want NZ to have another million people or anything like that for that matter. What does annoy me we are happy to take wealthy immigrants etc, but there is a huge international problem with refugees & NZ could do a lot more in this area instead.
But to the point at hand. Does having the largest net migration numbers n record at a time when there is already a housing issue & bubble where most of these immigrants are residing. Let alone the infrastructure issues it creates. All this so called growth model is doing is making NZ unaffordable for a lot of its citizens.

But what's wrong with immigration? It's a very strong driver of economic growth, some of the immigrants are skilled and/or bring capital with them. You can't have it both ways DayTr/EZ - you like economic growth but you don't like immigrants and people with Chinese sounding names and you are ostensibly against racism....

[BlackPeter]

I would suggest you have discussed Labour's release of some data on the Auckland housing market to ad infinitum.
Are you an advocate of if you say something enough times then it must be true?
11 posts I believe by yours truly, sighting what you see Labour's racist or xenophobic tactics.

Look daytr, interesting that you start to count my posts on Labours appalling racial stunt. Looks like they start to hit - the truth is always painful, even for people with left wing blinkers. You might want to compare the number of my posts on Labour's racial slur with the tsunami of posts you created commenting on the isolated but admittedly somewhat awkward behaviour of our current PM related to the hair of a small number of females.

Interesting as well that I clearly called John's behaviour at the time as what it was - however you are dancing around Labours racist and xenophobic statements and even defending them. Sorry that my comments inconvenience your impaired political vision. Are you left-wing blinkers sitting that firm?

Looking into the issues - I have no problems whatsoever with an debate about restricting foreign (i.e. non resident) ownership of our housing stock. Personally I don't think that restriction of demand is the best solution to a demand / supply issue, but hey - why not having an intelligent discussion around it? If you feel it is worthwhile doing it - why don't you just go to the respective thread and post.

What I find appalling is Labours dirty political tactics to play the race card hoping to gain a handful of additional votes. Great it backfired. Instead of investigating how many house buyers are non resident (which is not that hard to find out - just refer to my previous posts) did Labour decide to gain some votes by poaching in Winston's camp. Not that I am too worried about Winston loosing votes, but it is a difference whether you have like in most countries one smallish racist and backwards looking party around the fringes of the democratic system trying to live of the votes of the always backwards looking rednecks, or whether this is a party which claims to represent (still?) the majority of the Left camp and wants at some stage to take over responsibility. I find this idea frightening.

Still surprised that your normally fine tuned moral judgement seems to lose its sensitivity as soon as its the Labour party doing something wrong. Just wondering - do you see any moral boundaries for Labour or does the potential gain of a handful of votes justify in your view any means?

So this time it was people with Chinese sounding names who seem to be the bad ones (i.e. buying houses otherwise hardworking Caucasian families could buy). Who is next, daytr? People with Arabic sounding names? People with Jewish sounding names? Just tell us whether you see any limits for the once grand party on this slippery slope ...

[IAK]

Bad assumptions MVT & if your economic model relies on increased population then your model is flawed & its not sustainable.
I'm not anti immigration as it has its purpose & I like the diversity it adds to NZ.
However when many Kiwis are staying put & returning from overseas then its time to turn the immigration tap down.
What I am against is a much larger population in general. A small amount of population growth would be ok, but personally I don't want NZ to have another million people or anything like that for that matter. What does annoy me we are happy to take wealthy immigrants etc, but there is a huge international problem with refugees & NZ could do a lot more in this area instead.
But to the point at hand. Does having the largest net migration numbers n record at a time when there is already a housing issue & bubble where most of these immigrants are residing. Let alone the infrastructure issues it creates. All this so called growth model is doing is making NZ unaffordable for a lot of its citizens.

I'm with Daytr on this one. I also agree NZ needs skilled migrants but not this many....

58,000 migrants on NZ's population of 4.6 mln, is an increase of +1.3%. If the USA was to accept a similar increase on a population of 319 min this would equate to 4.15 min. China with a population of 1.3 6 bin this would be 17.6 min.

[Daytr]

Ohh BP, no need to apologize, as there is a clear difference between what John Key did & what Labour has been accused of doing.
And I haven't once defended them for doing it even though you keep suggesting otherwise. I have on multiple occasions said it was poor & could have been done with more sensitivity. Hardly defending it. What I have defended is their policy something you continually want to divert from.
Now back to the difference. John Key did actually pull the waitresses ponytail on multiple occasions when asked not to. Correct?
It has also been uncovered that Key has done this on multiple occasions to multiple girls.
And I'll be honest its an embarrassment to Key & National & for anyone other than fervent National supporters & the victims its funny. Tug, tug, wink, wink...

Labour in anyone's rational view hasn't done anything racist. They have presented data. If that data presents certain obvious trends so be it.
It is not racist in itself, however as I will repeat again for the posters who do not care to read before responding, I am not defending it. It was poorly done. So its not actually interesting at all, as I to have called out Labour on what I would say was a dubious practice.

Actually I am on the respective thread, a political thread. Or is the National joy luck club?
Would I tell you where to post? And its not the first time you have tried to control content.
Something to do with climate change I recall. Interesting that is another area of poor performance by National.

So clearly we have a difference of opinion of what racism is. I see it as discrimination against a particular ethnic group or race.
Labour isn't doing that & neither is NZF, they are discriminating against all foreign buyers.
Nope I don't justify the tactics used as said on multiple occasions, however I don't see stating the bleedin obvious as a race attack.
If the biggest influence of foreign property buyers were from the UK, or from the US or anywhere to be frank I wouldn't care if that was stated as its just information.

And I agree the data is probably reasonably readily available, well to the government at least. So why don't they use it instead of forming a register in the future to maybe & most likely not do anything about it?

I hope that corrects some of the myths you posted above.

[Daytr]

The funny thing is BP, I am guessing you think that the more you raise this & repeat such frivolous accusations over & over that one, people might believe them and two that it may somehow do some political damage to Labour, when the opposite is true. The more you keep stretching the extremes of what was just a poor data release from Labour, the more desperate the right look & highlight an issue that NZers obviously have a clear concern about. The influence of foreign buyers in the Auckland property market. So please keep up the good work.
We of NZF & the Left thank you for your service. ;-)

[Daytr]

The National led coalition government is again covering itself in glory with two management failures in almost as many days.
Just as National want to lead the country down the path of further corporatization of government services the debacle that is the management of Mt Eden prison is revealed. A prison run by SERCO one of the targeted providers for other government services. Prisoners having a organized fight club, smoking dope, drinking alcohol & as an alleged initiation of dropping prisoners off balconies onto concrete floors with one possible death being attributed to the practice. Either Serco has no idea what is happening in its prisons, or they have been covering it up, or dare I say it had been reported to the minister & nothing had been done & the cover up was political. I suspect it was one of the first two reasons, to be fair to the minister.
SERCO have had some high profile controversy in the UK & have been awarded the management & build of the new prison in Wiri. National knows how to pick em!

The 2nd in a blooper highlight reel of the week, is that it has cost $3M & will take 5 years to move & house three historic documents in the national library. $3M ! This makes a set of doors & a sign in government buildings look cheap. How does it take 5 years to coordinate an exhibition for documents that are stored only 200 meters down the road! I thought the flag referendum / debate was/is a huge waste of money, but proportionally I would suggest this is worse. No wonder government debt is spiraling out of control, they couldn't manage the proverbial booze up in a brewery !

[BlackPeter]

The funny thing is BP, I am guessing you think that the more you raise this & repeat such frivolous accusations over & over that one, people might believe them and two that it may somehow do some political damage to Labour, when the opposite is true. The more you keep stretching the extremes of what was just a poor data release from Labour, the more desperate the right look & highlight an issue that NZers obviously have a clear concern about. The influence of foreign buyers in the Auckland property market. So please keep up the good work.
We of NZF & the Left thank you for your service. ;-)

Wow "we of NZF" - says it all, really. And another three posts in a row from somebody complaining about me posting too much about Labours shame. There is a nice Greek word for people like that. Hint - it starts with "hypo" and ends with "crite".

Anyway - everybody to their own style ... and hey - there are as well some areas we do agree on. Not sure whether we have already enough data to assess Kevin Davis' latest story around the SERCO run Mount Eden prison, but it clearly does not sound good.

Independently of SERCO's performance problems and MoC's alleged attempts to brush them under the carpet ... I feel quite uncomfortable with the attempt to commercialise the states monopoly of violence (and nothing else is a private company running a prison). All services licenced to exercise violence (like police, army and correction facilities) need to be under direct state supervision. Outsourcing these "services" opens up huge conflicts of interest - of them the desire to make money (by locking people up for along time) vs rehabilitating prisoners (and losing the money stream) being just one of them.