deciding not to intensify for character reasons will lead to denser sprawl on city fringes without amenities, defeating the point a great extent given public transport funding has been slashed. This is already happening in Auckland
mixed use fuck yes do that
no minimum apartment size seems terrible when combined with the other sprawl idk. Banks are already very squeamish about lending less than 45sq m aren't they or has that changed
Wasn't the MDRS better than this though?
Build good quality, well sized apartment blocks and terraces in centrally located connected areas people actually want to live. If the private market can't or won't do that, then the state needs to step in and do it, like in every other housing crisis we've had in this country.
Sounds good on a headline but I think the policy misses a huge opportunity and will ultimately only help rich people.
Theyre right in that Flooding the housing market with houses is the only way to bring the cost down. But national is letting housing developers try and fill the demand gap
Housing developers will build houses to make money but not enough to fill the demand gap. It's also not going to work because the demand is to high and housing developers don't want to "flood the market"
If the housing was built and owned by the government at least it could be used as a safety net for the people unable to keep up with rising house prices. In nationals situation developers win, people who can afford to own investment properties win, renters lose and poor people lose.
Every dollar the government "saves" not building those houses will be spent renting emergency housing from those developers or subsiding rent for people who can't afford to live in them.
Cheap government owned, privately rented housing, and lots of it. It won't be fancy, but it will be safe and efficient and regulated. Imagine having a landlord/agent who is actually accountable? It would be amazing.
That's easy to say, but the truth is landlords are absolutely held accountable. The tenancy tribunal is heavily in favour of the tenant, meaning the burden of proof is on the landlord, which is fair enough.
I posted a story here a few days ago about a landlord getting reamed out over dodgy practices actually.
I’m all for housing intensification in cities and flooding the market, but for the love of god can they please invest in improving public and alternative transport infrastructure? I already hate returning to visit Auckland due to how bad the traffic is
I think we've got the wrong government for that. This policy is effectively free, while building infrastructure is... well not free, but probably cheaper as a whole than not building needed infrastructure.
Is our current model, with funding through petrol tax and road user changes, not already a user-pays model?
All the big roading announcements that National campaigned on were planned to be funded via the National Land Transport Fund, that gets it's money from road user charges and petrol tax.
I suspect the tolls are a necessary part of the partnership. In other countries, you get things like having a company fund the development in return for being able to collect tolls for 10 years (for example). If you didn't have tolls, how would the company get their money back from the investment? And if that money comes from the government, they might as well have just paid for it with taxpayer dollars to start with.
So I get why tolls are needed. But now you're just charging people twice to use the road.
I would argue that if you put a toll on an existing road you are charging people twice, but not if its on a new one. It's a great thing for things like the northern expressway.
My big thing is why even get private involved? If there's profit to be made keep it - country's running out of money and productive assets, use it.
I would argue that if you put a toll on an existing road you are charging people twice, but not if its on a new one. It’s a great thing for things like the northern expressway.
Yes I guess that's true to some extent. But I don't really get why we need three separate user pays systems.
My big thing is why even get private involved? If there’s profit to be made keep it - country’s running out of money and productive assets, use it.
Because the parties have nothing to gain from making the country money, but there may be some nice donations coming their way if they make money for some private companies.
"I think when even (former Labour finance minister) Roger Douglas says the ACT party has become the party of entrenched privilege, I think it's time for the ACT party to have a rethink."
RNZ seems to have missed that Roger Douglas was not only a Labour minister, but also a co-founder of ACT.
TL;DR the reserve bank is going to loosen restrictions on equity and instead have restrictions on income, with an expected impact that investors can't just buy more houses using equity when the house values go up.
Yeah that's what interests me, given the funding they've raked in from property related interests over the last couple of years they are quite beholden to that lobby.
Specifically about the DOC part of this, isn't one direction (the NZ First led one) about the public interacting with the departments in English, where as the Minister's comments on using te reo were about usage internally within the department?
Despite this, departments and agencies have received no official government directive on the use of te reo and English.
No Government entities have been directed to change their names to English.
A small number of agencies, including the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotaki, have voluntarily opted to change their names in line with the government's position.
I don't think this can be true. A government department doesn't change their name without a Minister's input, and even if the government provided no "official" advice, if the government's (very public) position is the name should be English and the Minister supports that then how can they say no? I'd probably put money on it that it didn't feel voluntary to them.
A reminder to anybody that isn't aware, that the structure of our economy requires a level of unemployment to keep wage demands low and combat inflation (even when the bulk of that inflation is imported through overseas cost & profiteering).
So the economy guarantees some people won't have jobs, and this government aims to be punitive to those people who don't have jobs; including the people the same government is actively forcing out of employment.
Being an advocate for genuine transport options in this country would drive anyone mad imo, I don't know how they do it for years on end.
The most basic infrastructure to enable public and active transport is continually challenged, subject to predatory delay and actual sabotage (tacks thrown on cycle paths, including this one).
Wellington seems particularly terrible for this, a city of nimbys and vested interests that want nothing to change, ever, because they already got theirs. But it doesn't really work because every year things decay a little more, the traffic gets worse and so on.
It sounds like they edited it out, possibly after legal threats? I'm not sure how they think they would get in trouble for quoting something that was actually said.
You can be found liable for defamation just by repeating what was said, so yeah RNZ removed the references and none of the other stories about it have published what he said https://defamationupdate.co.nz/legal-guide-publication/
I'm not sure that's quite the situation. If you told someone I was a fraud, then they told others I was a fraud, that person wouldn't be protected.
However, RNZ is not making claims about they guy, they would be saying that Winston made claims about the guy, which is a true statement easily provable.
I'd guess that this might be a line RNZ just aren't willing to test since court cases are expensive even if you don't lose.
I dunno, depends what 'repeating' it means. It sounds like just reporting on it might be a defense, but I could see a big loophole if you couldn't be touched for effectively picking up and amplifying the original claim with some qualifying words around it.
But I think you're right that they won't want to find out in court in any case.
Yes. The law applies what is known as the ‘repetition rule’ (or ‘republication rule’). Under this rule, the liability of a person who repeats a rumour or allegation is no different to the person who first made the statement. This includes rumours or allegations that come from reputable sources like the Police or news sites. This aspect of the law has some wriggle room when it comes to establishing defences. But for at least the element of publication, anyone who repeats a defamatory statement is liable.
but I could see a big loophole if you couldn’t be touched for effectively picking up and amplifying the original claim with some qualifying words around it.
I think there's a huge difference between an article stating "John Smith a fraudster" and then backing it up by using Winston as a source (which is what I believe your quoted part is for), vs an article that says "In parliament on Wednesday NZ First Leader Winston Peters called John Smith a fraudster". RNZ aren't actually claiming the things that Winston said, so in my view there would be no case against them, but now I think about it RNZ probably got a cease and desist and didn't think it was worth fighting over (which it's not).
What if the publisher just reporting what someone else said?
The rule is: whoever reports it is liable for it. Even if it’s from an apparently reputable and knowledgeable source, such as the police. The publisher has to prove the truth of the sting of the article, remember. That’s what the readers or viewers will take it to mean. It’s not enough for the publisher to prove that it has reported the accusation accurately. It must be able to prove that the accusation itself is true.
What if the publisher writes “alleged”?
This is just a fancy way of saying “I’m reporting what someone else has said” – so the same answer applies. Sprinkling a story with the word “alleged” or “rumoured” doesn’t insulate the publisher from a defamation lawsuit. The publisher is still passing on someone else’s allegation or gossip.
This bit is interesting (about what defamation is):
where no defence (usually truth, opinion, or qualified privilege) is available
So even if it was said outside of parliamentary privilege, Winston could just say it's his opinion. But the media could get in trouble for reporting he said it because it's not their opinion!
I'm sure it's structured this way for a reason, after all, rules are written in blood, but to an outsider it seems like it would prevent a lot of political news being published!
Now how come they can print that Julie Anne Genter yelled at a florist? They only have the florist's word. Its that enough to prove truth? We only have Winston's word about the other guy.
I find this a weird thing to worry about. $300k across 6 years is $50k per year. They have over 10k staff so that's $5 per staff member per year. It sounds like incredible value!
I have a lot of respect for Forest and Bird, but using highly emotional language like "destroy a pristine mountaintop and rip up the seafloor" and describing this as a "war on nature" make it much more difficult to take them seriously.
I reckon if you allow someone's tone to dictate whether to take what they say seriously, you're doing yourself a disservice.
If someone is screaming about a house being on fire I'm going to look to see whether it is, not just think oh well they sound hysterical so it can't be true.
In your quotes they used the adjective "pristine", the colloquialism "rip up" and the metaphor "war".
But if you strip away that language the bare facts are that in that list are companies that quite literally destroyed a mountain in one case, destroyed seafloor, and various other highly destructive activities.
One of the things I really dislike about NZ politics is the amount of hyperbole and over the top language used, from both sides of the aisle, and I very quickly lose interest in what someone has to say if they talk like that.
If what you're saying is true, the truth of the matter is bad enough without them needing to exaggerate.
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