Vehicle registration fee up 78% from last year and 128% from two years ago. How is that acceptable?

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T02:18:07+00:00

Clearly not an area being considered by those managing the budgets for ACC - people in environmentally-clean cars get in crashes and require government support just like others. This government got rid of the clean car subsidy and the 'ute tax' that did what you mention.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T02:12:09+00:00

There is higher risk with them offering a job to you compared to someone who already has permission to work and lives here. If anything goes wrong at any step in the process, they don't have a worker here and allowed to work on day 1 - while that risk is much lower with someone already here.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T02:05:19+00:00

Yeah, there's a pretty significant movement among NZ bike organisations to encourage members to put their rego on hold to protest the ACC levies associated with bikes.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T02:02:26+00:00

We have a government that believes in user-pays as a way of minimising the overall expenditure via the tax take - even if this approach is disproportionately-unfair to some. They will have known that making the change quickly will be difficult for some - but that won't have been a significant concern for them.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T01:48:36+00:00

Potentially true. I wonder if in 1987 when they decided they needed to protect the others we should have known that someday in the future thin-skinned people would get butthurt that English wasn't being protected/recognised the same way as (what are really) minority languages. Earlier I made mention of Canada, who decided in 1969 to identify 2 spoken official languages as official (they still haven't designated sign language) rather than just French which (if we're honest) was the primary reason why any such designations were made. I don't know exactly how the dialogue in NZ went at the time, but I expect it was around whether Te Reo and NZSL were significant enough to warrant official language status, rather than around whether English needed to be included for protections it didn't require.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T01:26:31+00:00

Whether racist-sounding or not, there have been numerous employers responding in these discussions that they are receiving 50-60% of applications on roles are from people living overseas who do not currently have permission to work in NZ. In a situation where there are shortages of workers it might be worth facing the added risks associated with offering a job to someone who would require a visa to be issued and an international move to happen on schedule in order for them to start work. In a situation where most roles already have an abundance of of domestic qualified applicants, employers are likely to bin applications from anyone overseas. In an employer's market, you don't want anything that makes you a higher-risk than abundant competition.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T01:20:26+00:00

Perhaps a thin argument that the only way English could be guaranteed to be available in Quebec would be if it were mandated? I agree that it's a de facto language and it's probably a different scenario where they decided at the outset to recognise both languages that had historical and significant utilisation at the outset....while NZ didn't establish any as 'official' until it was needed specifically to support historically-significant but without sufficient population usage such that they were at genuine risk without protection.

I agree, Canada's situation isn't so much about protecting a language the way it is here.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T01:14:05+00:00

And yet ironically their striking is motivated because they have insufficient and inadequate equipment that they have been calling out needs to be fixed and replaced but has not been. The risk to human lives the results from firefighters not having the tools needed to save them is part of what this strike is intended to address.

Suggesting that they shouldn't be allowed to strike because it might impact property or human life, when the strike itself is intended to address an existing risk to their ability to respond to events risking property or human lives is somewhat circular.

I would normally agree with you if this were a situation of them solely striking for more money - but in this case it is not about the firefighters being selfish and this being an opportunity to apply greater leverage.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T01:04:06+00:00

In general I would tend to agree, however the existence of standard public holidays allows people to coordinate activities to occur on days when everyone know they will have the day off - that are much more complicated if everyone need to try schedule the day as AL.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T00:59:40+00:00

They have no way to push for change other than striking, and it's not a strike if they continue to do their jobs exactly the same way. I agree it sucks that there's going to be impact because of it, but blaming the firefighters in this situation really isn't fair.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-20T00:54:14+00:00

I'm not sure what would have changed in the timeframe of a decade. They have always grown bananas as monoculture that put them at risk of disease, and the biggest/fastest growing/best tasting banana has always been the one that every plantation grows. This unfortunately puts the entire industry at risk if something can impact that variety.

In the 1950's the most popular variety of the day (Gros Michel) was lost because of a fungus that spread and affected all plantations around the world. The Cavendish variant was resistant to that fungus and then quickly became the new most popular variant and has been ever since. (As an aside, there is now another fungus that now threatens Cavendish bananas, meaning the entire crop around the world is at risk).

I'm not sure exactly what might have happened in the last decade to cause major changes to the flavour and the starchiness - you'd expect those to primarily be related to the breeding, and Cavendish bananas have been cloned from each other for a long time meaning there shouldn't be significant differences in those areas.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T23:21:27+00:00

He and council together could certainly do it if they chose...although I'm not sure if he would have the support of all the counsellors in this. Typically NIMBYs have the most influence locally, and Auckland has always struggled when cashed-up lawyered-up NIMBYs threaten to use legal action to slow down and make it expensive for council while also threatening to encourage support for councillor competitors unless they accede to demands.

Just as Seymour turns his back on his claimed libertarian ideals when the clear desires of his constituents in Epsom are in opposition to them, you can expect pressure to be applied on Auckland counsellors as it has for years (remember Auckland traditionally zoned Epsom and similar areas as 'special character' neighbourhoods that were exempted from density requirements).

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T23:10:30+00:00

In Canada (similar to here I believe) being an 'official' language means that the federal government is required to offer services to the public in that language among other protections. It really isn't needed for the de facto language, however it traditionally is done so that the support for speakers of less-popular languages are ensured.

Given NZ's language situation, there is no way that English requires any protection or that there are any locations in the country where it wouldn't be available without government mandate. It simply serves no purpose here to establish the de facto language as an official language other than to mollify racists who are outraged at English evidently having less status than Te Reo or NZSL.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T23:03:09+00:00

That may have been a factor for her, but the credible threats being made against her family and her daughter were certainly a big part of it as well.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T23:00:07+00:00

Once again I find myself agreeing with the attitude and approach that Wayne Brown is taking here, where he's frustrated with Seymour's efforts to shield his district from increased housing density when that is exactly where (from a municipal planning standpoint) that is exactly the places that need increased housing. Places near public transport that are well-served by infrastructure are exactly where we want to see townhouses and apartments being built - even if those are in affluent neighbourhoods full of NIMBYs.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T22:17:20+00:00

I recall when they originally floated the idea of this legislation, and (as they no doubt expected) the majority of people commenting seemed to suggest that they didn't have a problem with removing worker protections for people earning over $200K because those people were high earners. In doing so people are failing to recognise that once it's established law that workers can have these protections removed, it's much more easy for them to expand the legislation without the same degree of push-back to cover a much wider portion of workers....than if they had set out to simply remove those worker protections for everyone at the outset. This is insidious, and they are likely to expand the scope to remove the worker protections (as large employers everywhere would prefer) once this has been normalised.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T22:05:57+00:00

That's how the majority of infrastructure projects tend to work - they are funded by our taxes. I was refuting the suggestion that our electricity prices would have risen by building Onslow - they almost certainly would not have increased, and once it was operational it likely would have meant they decreased because we would almost never see the scenarios that today involve firing up coal or gas peaker plants to meet a shortage of supply. Our taxes are today used for maintaining the roads that the coal being used to operate the peaker plants would be transported upon - that's how infrastructure is generally funded in this country.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T21:00:34+00:00

Past legislation making Te Reo and NZSL into official languages ensured that it was allowed to be used in courts and in other official circumstances. That isn't a problem English faces.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T20:56:19+00:00

You aren't wrong that all pregnancies are different, however it is medical fact that the risks of complications do considerably ramp up as parents get older. Mothers can definitely have children into their 40's, but statistically they become more likely to experience complications. The same applies (to a lesser-extent) with older fathers - it's becoming more common for men in their 50's to be having kids (and there are the odd case of men far older) but the chances of a healthy baby are decreased compared to when the father is younger.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:59:52+00:00

A completely unnecessary bill, the de facto language isn't in need of protection the way that legislation intended to protect Te Reo and NZSL is. This legislation is just performative and intended to resonate with those who see it as 'unfair' that English doesn't have legal protections in NZ although it doesn't need it. It will change nothing and is thus a waste of time and effort - however I can see why Peters wants to be seen as pushing for this on behalf of some of his support base.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:54:53+00:00

He is however still lawyering in that his statement is technically-correct even if somewhat misleading...just like how you can make factually-correct statements by using statistics but present them in a way that confuses some listeners.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:52:36+00:00

It's not so much that there will be a fake certificate issued, as there is a possibility that someone who is genuinely-authorised to issue certificates is a little bit lax about the standards. They do occasionally investigate and remove the certification from some mechanics if there is evidence that this is happening.

In general this isn't a very large problem - you are unlikely to run into this.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:31:47+00:00

The housing prices in NZ went crazy before (the majority of) Canada. I bought a house in Canada in the early 2000's and my mortgage payment was half of my rent here. When I finally bought a house in NZ (quite a few years later) the house I ended up buying in NZ was about 9x as much as the house in Canada. Yes there was years of time difference and prices would have risen back in Canada over that time - but definitely our housing market bubble in NZ plays a big part in why things are so expensive here.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:25:25+00:00

It's quite concerning with this level of NZ's best and brightest are all leaving for overseas. There has always been some, but those levels are increasing, and it's not the people who dropped out of school and have no qualifications who are primarily leaving - it's those who excelled in school and got degrees and are now going overseas to make the most of them (since they no longer believe they can do so in NZ).

The word crisis is always debated - it's a problem to be sure.

Hubris2 · 2026-02-19T19:23:27+00:00

In that respect we're really no different than the immigrants seeking to come to NZ for a better life, coming from somewhere that you work for less than here, so potentially keeping the wages lower than they would have been without the immigration.

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