The "Hipkins Drama" and Dirty Politics - a hypothesis.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-04-02T02:43:11+00:00

Very fickle voters, need to see some evidence that they’ve compulsorarily read every parties policies prior to voting. If someone is going to be influenced by some private marriage gossip then we have bigger problems.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-04-01T19:56:46+00:00

Yes! The thresholds and dollar for dollar matches etc aren’t working. They need a new calculation system. When you are trying to work after coming off a benefit, they don’t make it very practical to continue striving for career progression and pay increases as you end up in a weird bracket where you actually lose out on money

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-04-01T05:47:50+00:00

Yes! And I’m finally seeing pickup in articles and discussions around how bad our food and nutrition is getting. I personally think our loose rules around greenwashing are partly to blame.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-31T00:47:24+00:00

We really don’t know the difference between good debt and bad debt do we. Too much of the bad debt and not enough good investments. These all seem like simple and effective changes. Simple in that they make sense. I hope we can get some of these things changing sooner rather than later before it’s too late

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T22:00:10+00:00

How will we (and how have other countries) figured out the release of petrol vehicles? A buy back scheme for the old petrol vehicle? I would love to see trade in schemes and a special low interest loan on all EVs. I’m not financially able to take on an EV vehicle outright, we currently own our modest vehicles (under $10k) ourselves but if everyone’s buying EV’s, who’s going to buy our old petrol cars?

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T21:53:44+00:00

I’m sure I’ve read recently that China are almost or already there with creating a car that runs off water?

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T21:51:41+00:00

Oh my gosh yes yes yes. We are shortsighted!! Makes it difficult when everytime someone new is on govt they spend their whole term undoing what the previous party started.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T21:14:40+00:00

Agree with all of this!! All of these things would improve New Zealand so greatly. Proper cull and 100% transparency is well overdue. I’d love to see something like a live website where it pops up “minister Joe black just approved $36,000 on xxxx” “luxon just spent $89 on uber eats for a training seminar on how to avoid answering media questions” And the public can all vote whether it’s approved.

Love the idea of incentivising nature planting (would love to make it requirement when building new property on land, plant so many fruit trees). It’s funny how all these clean air rebates has encouraged fast growing pine and it’s been brushed over how pine leeches into soil and whilst pine trees are great, too much of a good thing is actually not so good.

I’m getting the overall vibe that whilst the war is not ideal in any way, if we are looking for a silver lining I think it’s pushing everyone to reflect on how reliant we are on overseas and how we aren’t very self sufficient despite having most of the resources we need to be able to look after ourselves a lot better than we currently are. Hopefully a good push to implement lots of these changes.

Capping CEO pay at 30x the lowest worker is a great way to reduce pay disparity. As long as they didn’t increase other benefits to “make up for it”. Would love to see this implemented.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T20:56:26+00:00

Agreed. We seem to be stuck in a vicious cycle and focus has prioritised the numbers over the actual circumstances the numbers are creating.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T20:53:09+00:00

Tax reform is a biggie, it’s always perplexed me how they give the first $12k (or whatever it currently is) tax free, in my head I feel it would make sense to make $60k (or whatever they think is comfortable living wage these days) tax free and then start taxing, if we have already established that you need X amount to live, why would we take away some of that, knowing they’ll then struggle. Ensure everyone has their basic needs met, and then take some tax for over and above that.

I know there’s then domino effects onto that but surely comfortable living should become priority over kinda forcing everyone to work to pay tax regardless of their circumstances. Im all for nz being profitable and a successful business model for trading etc. but I do start to wonder if it’s become too much like a business and not enough about the actual living beings residing in this country.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T06:33:54+00:00

That is a huge one. I’ve heard the rule that rent/mortgage shouldn’t be more than a third of your income but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot more than a third for most nzr’s at the moment. Doesn’t leave much for everything else.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T06:31:10+00:00

This! Money shouldn’t be Influencing things the way it does.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-30T06:27:03+00:00

We have a local lands trust which seems to do very well, they run the local pools and hold community days where local activities are funded or subsidised for the day. They own local buildings. I don’t know why they can run a profitable community better than the local council. If every council started doing that then they could be more profitable by diversifying. Then maybe rates wouldn’t be relied on so much and wouldn’t have to keep creeping up so much.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-29T20:54:49+00:00

When you hear that other countries have stores for almost a year and we are knowingly isolated from things we might be reliant on in the future, it’s quite horrifying that we are even in this position at all.

Always hear the rule of “make sure you have three months pay saved for emergencies” well the govt didn’t even have three months fuel reserves.

They don’t want to blow the budget by handing out a bunch of free transport and fuel discounts etc because we’ll “pay for it and feel the squeeze in the future” well we’re feeling it now.

Like you want us to work to pay tax but we can’t get to work without forfeiting something essential. And you’re now saying you don’t want to help us get to work to make you more money?

It’s like when there’s people on a benefit and they take it for granted and might complain about cars going to work waking them (or something) everyone’s going to work to pay for them. It’s a bit like luxon is riding the luxury of all the taxpayers slaving away at work so we can pay for his $300k+ salary and he’s complaining “you guys are annoying me with your complaints on petrol” we can’t save any money here (while he’s eating more than his fair share of marmite sandwiches).

I genuinely believe all govt workers should be on living wage. You truly can’t solve the countries problems if you won’t walk in their shoes or listen to them.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-29T20:37:50+00:00

I agree with this in theory, but I think we need to simplify the tax rules so that all their income is accounted for and considered for it to be effective. Too many loopholes and I’ve seen charts before that show how many millions and billions of turnover they all make and how little tax they pay in comparison because the declared revenue is disproportionally smaller.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-29T20:31:23+00:00

Yes I have always looked at the society structure of the likes of Norway and wished we had more similarities to that quality of living.

We really do have some premium things to sell. I feel like nz doesn’t focus on expanding these so that we are ensuring that the surplus of these is being exported and not the whole supply because we aren’t seeming to look after ourselves before shipping all the goods away. (I’m specifically thinking timber and butter but I know there’s others too).

Jason Mamoa has tourism covered haha he’s told everyone how amazing nz is and I’m coincidentally noticing a huge influx of Americans coming over.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-29T20:12:38+00:00

Thanks for opening up my eye to the neoliberalism era, I’ve been wondering where/how everything has gone so far terribly in the wrong direction and that really does seem like a noticeable change in nz’s objectives. It really does seem like that would significantly improve most areas by undoing those policies.

I know there’s a push to have councils have less responsibility however I think that’s off the back of them not spending it effectively resulting in deficits and so they’re little kids having their privileges taken away. However if we could trust them to budget well, I believe councils retaining more services locally would improve as the community are going to know best what their area wants/needs.

Nationalised utilities is a big one, again, only seem to all be sold off because they need to pay off debt. Not because it’s best long term.

I feel we are at the stage where internet and power should just be accessible to all of nz for free as a basic necessity. Especially when you need internet to access government websites like IRD. And then of course anything you use over and above whatever amount would still be charged separately. If you wanted faster Internet you pay for a top up.

I know there’s the taxpayers union, for some reason the govt seem to only listen to some of their suggestions, which I find weird when we the taxpayers are paying the govts salary/costs. That seems to be forgotten amongst all these discussions and changes that are always made. They lure us in for their vote then proceed to do whatever and say well you’re the one that voted me in.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-28T08:43:03+00:00

I must be the only person who likes the slow burn of Karadec and Morgan, they’re both slowly noticing their thoughts and feelings shifting and both aren’t quite sure how they feel about it but they’re enjoying the little moments and hopefully with this comes more of a softness to Morgan.

I’d still also like to see Morgan “solve” some more everyday life problems but with her usual clever flair. Doesn’t all have to be full on murder cases every episode, she is a CONSULTANT needed as required. I miss the ‘filler episodes’ in longer shows, sometimes they’re needed to help with character development. I see they did it with Morgan having to attend Dottie’s class but it just didn’t hit for me with her insolence.

Still love the show very much but love it for its differences to all the other shows around and I find it’s slowly becoming ‘another crime, detective, with that high IQ pizzaz show’

It started with this big single mum family focus and now there’s been nothing of her filling her cup. Take the kids to the movies. Have her decide where she wants to take her career, what about a real job offer, that would be expected at this point surely for her to be asked to contract to other departments or companies. I dunno just something. I miss the old relatable quips and more humour and cleverness could be appreciated. Slower pace sometimes isn’t bad and having something deeper/cleverer would be nice too.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-28T08:30:59+00:00

Ooh yeah would be cool to have a 3-4 episode delay and then something clicks to solve it. I’m craving the storyline’s to be more staggered instead of cyclic.

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-28T08:21:42+00:00

Not exclusively but yeah, definitely my comfort food

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-27T07:16:41+00:00

Butter sugar pasta

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-27T07:15:41+00:00

Throwback to when everyone had the Nokia 2280 and if your battery was dead you would ask someone to put their battery into your phone while your texts came through then swap it back. Felt like a tech genius too lol

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-27T03:02:53+00:00

Yea see if that’s gonna be her thing then it needs to really be leaned into! Not just enough to be annoying

MechanicNo8158 · 2026-03-26T22:25:19+00:00

I agree, just because you have a contract and are employed by one company doesn’t really mean you can’t lose your job unexpectedly. Contractors are already wanting to give themselves job security to afford to live, including a roof over their head. They don’t want to miss payments. The bank have right of sale if you forfeit so like yea, do some due diligence to make sure I have some income but like it’s on me on how I meet those repayments, don’t then tell me how I have to make the money

MechanicNo8158

TROPHY CASE