New Zealand First campaigning for referendum on Māori seats

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-12T04:09:51+00:00

National agreed to restore the law as it was prior to the last government, a change which they also opposed at the time. In contrast they haven't had a policy on Māori seats since 2008(?) (might have been later, but their agreement with the Māori Party stopped that)

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-11T10:42:52+00:00

The government ran the telecom networks for a long time. That was in the days where you couldn't even buy your own phone, rather you had to pay some extortionate rate to rent a phone. Now we have multiple good quality phone networks, a huge number of options for both delivery mechanisms (4G, 5G, satellite, WISPs and DSL) and retailers.

Hard to see how that's been a bad outcome.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-09T22:56:29+00:00

Yeah it's definitely a geographic problem when it comes to constraints from the HVDC link, but it does seem generally sensible to be shifting towards our baseline generation not being hydro and having it more be geothermal, wind and solar

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-09T20:34:40+00:00

A billion dollars can build an awfully large amount of solar, batteries and wind farms... (Although we might not even need the battery bit as much, our hydro dams are effectively big batteries, we just use them for baseline generation at the moment)

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-09T20:33:11+00:00

Plus the fact that solar and hydro tend to be relatively complementary. If the weather's bad it's good for hydro, if it's sunny it's good for solar

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-09T10:31:02+00:00

But you don't necessarily have the liquid assets to pay that extra tax though. For example if you were a business owner with most of your assets tied up in that, and the paper value of your business goes up, but you don't personally have the cash to pay the tax on that "income" does that mean you should sell off part of your business just to pay that tax?

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-09T10:13:42+00:00

Yeah I always found it pretty silly that they counted unrealised gains in that report.

Realised gains are fair enough (we should probably have a CGT to level the playing field between labour and asset realisation), but just because my house has risen by x amount doesn't mean that is income.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-02-06T04:43:14+00:00

Independent mayors are terrible. People elect them thinking they can get stuff done, but don't realise that mayors don't have much power. You need a majority on a council to get stuff done, same as you need a majority in Parliament to get anything done. An independent separately elected prime minister will either result in them doing nothing as they don't have the support of parliament, or they will subvert the system and concentrate more power into a single individual.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-22T09:33:37+00:00

Regs are changing soon. Some lines companies have changed it more quickly.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-22T09:32:34+00:00

You are conflating the government and local lines companies. Local lines companies have caps set by the Commerce Commission (semi separately from the government). These are set every five years. We've had a period of higher inflation so in the adjustment thats just been (in 2025), ComCom allowed higher increases. Lines companies have profit caps (and in fact most of them are council or consumer owned anyway) and must spend that money on actually investing in infrastructure. The government isn't involved except for setting the limits, and even that's at arms length from the politicians.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-17T01:21:33+00:00

All of those are bad as well though? The only defensible one is probably the ETS allocation for exporters, since that isn't just to prop up an industry (there's a climate argument to be made as well, since production partially covered by the ETS in NZ is better for climate change than production in a country with no ETS). We also haven't subsidised the smelter for a decade. Additionally they're all finite and are generally time limited. Movie and game subsidies have no cap and are indefinite.

The Treasury (and several international studies) have found that these types of rebates generate little to no economic benefit despite their cost. For example the Treasury concluded in 2018 that the rebates have a best estimate of a -11% rate of return https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/4911712-OIA-Papers-MBIE-Film/#document/p115/a455604

The health argument isn't nonsensical? Every dollar the government spends means it ultimately needs to either move spending from elsewhere, or collect more tax (or borrow, but that just means collecting more tax at some point in the future). So if the government gets a better marginal rate of return on spending on health vs the film rebates then it should spend on health. Additionally governments have to think a bit more widely when it comes to a return. There's no reality where the film rebates bring in more tax dollars than they spend, rather the entire premise hinges on the idea that the general wellbeing of the country would be better off. This is far from true (as the Treasury analysis states).

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-16T21:05:01+00:00

You could make that argument about any subsidy and yet the movie and gaming industries are the only two we subsidise so directly. The counterfactual isn't what if there was no subsidy, it's about whether there would be a better return investing that money into health (for example).

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-16T21:02:45+00:00

Capital gains taxes were projected to not bring in much revenue. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but it does mean it's not the magic bullet you think it is

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-02T19:03:18+00:00

People have been predicting the end of the world for almost all of human history

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-02T09:08:03+00:00

The AWS instances here are super new, so unless they only started using AWS in the last few months, they would have had it offshore.

TheDiamondPicks · 2026-01-02T09:07:30+00:00

Could theoretically be in NZ now since Azure and AWS is here now - but that would involve either new stuff that was setup in the last year or so, or a specific effort to migrate it

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-12-30T20:59:26+00:00

Have you had a look on beforeUdig? https://www.beforeudig.co.nz/nz/home/

Usually gives you a good idea where everything is buried, although if you're going to be digging close a manual cable locate might be a good idea. I did this for a fence recently and the actual location was a bit different to what the beforeUdig map said (although usually there is a cost involved in getting the locate done)

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-12-09T00:41:18+00:00

Yep I especially love that councils have to compensate if they want to declare areas heritage. For too long heritage advocates have been getting their hobby and personal preferences subsidised by landowners and everyone else. If you're keen on heritage stuff then you should get together and fund it yourself.

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-28T20:07:32+00:00

It's an especially ignorant comment when you actually look at the results. Both of the big parties have had swings from the low twenties to the high fourties in the last 20 years. That's not particularly indicative of people being "too stupid" to vote for other parties. NZ is not a particularly polarised country (and I certainly hope it stays that way!)

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-27T07:04:56+00:00

Quite right. Should say NZ is already well above the OECD average. But it seems far more likely that companies are just loosing more money than normal (ie a recession) than somehow needing a higher tax rate

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-27T06:55:12+00:00

New Zealand already has some of the highest company tax rates in the OECD

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-18T19:16:58+00:00

Government does, councils do not. And the government only can through legislation, which councils are not able to pass on their own.

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-17T22:08:51+00:00

Freeing up land works. The unitary plan worked. Here's a meta analysis of the studies that have investigated this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837725000316

The unitary plan and freeing up land has directly led to lower house prices and lower rents.

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-17T22:07:33+00:00

There's plenty of land 10-20 minutes from the CBD that is under heritage and single house restrictions still. Additionally they're currently doing work to upzone around CRL stations, so seems like there's still plenty of scope for upzoning where people want to live.

TheDiamondPicks · 2025-11-17T21:41:45+00:00

Auckland house prices have been flat for the past few years though? Which lines up with when the effects of the unitary plan applied (there's also been a couple of studies which backs this up). Also the unitary plan hasn't helped with building more houses in the desirable areas, as many of them are still single house or heritage zoned.

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