Posts by Rich of Observationz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to BenWilson,
Email
IRD books things like Working For Families as costs while Treasury carries the interest on NZ's public debt. The actual costs of running the departments are dwarfed by this (in fact, very little of the governments costs are central administration).
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to Moz,
Email
You'd be much better off getting somebody to smuggle you out of the country by boat or whatever. so as to stay booked as resident.
Maybe that'll be the real reason John Key's imaginary boat people come to NZ, to load up with student grant refugees for the return trip.
-
Email
As in, the detail of MMP is not entrenched.
If NACT were smart and evil, as opposed to just evil, they could have dealt with this more cleverly by proposing a referendum on the recommended changes, plus an increase in the parliamentary term to four years. That would be accepted by MPs, who want the extra year, but roundly rejected by voters, who don't trust them with it.
-
Legal Beagle: On Consensus, in reply to Steven Peters,
Email
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to BenWilson,
Email
Which means in turn that people with good *science* degrees (not BAs) are working as shop assistants, school leavers are unemployed and former casual workers are sleeping on the street. (The number of street people in downtown Wellington has ballooned in the last few months).
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…,
Email
Meanwhile, the government is obviously very relaxed about how the dairy sector paid $26mln in tax for the last available year, Google paid $165k in tax and all those people selling their million dollar houses for a substantial profit are paying a big round zero tax bill.
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to BenWilson,
Email
Yeah. So a bunch of students hire a mega-lawyer and contest the payment demands in a British or Aussie court, because what was a loan has morphed into a tax on the overseas earnings of non-residents. NZ doesn't have jurisdiction to do that (any more than the UK could suddenly send me a tax bill here).
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to Keith Ng,
Email
Right, but that was (or purported to be) a contract, so it was a loan. If the government then starts dicking around with the terms by statute, then it starts to take on more of the nature of a tax.
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Email
I also suspect that one day there'll be an overseas court challenge to NZ student loan repayments, whereby the expat and their lawyers will try and characterize the repayments as being a tax on non-residents foreign income (and thus unenforcable in the foreign state) rather than a civil debt. Changing the rules as part of government budgets would tend to reinforce this.
-
Email
Logically majority <= consensus <= unanimity
I'd suggest that Banks and Dunne obviously don't support the suggested change, and if National doesn't either, we don't get to 'majority' so the issue of 'consensus' doesn't arise.
National are of course being disingenuous in suggesting that they aren't progressing the measure because of lack of consensus. But would it be any worse if they introduced a bill, supported it to second reading and then voted it down? (A Labour or Green member could introduce a private members bill to put this to the test..)