Posts by izogi
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Hard News: Crowded houses, in reply to Russell Brown,
The rate quoted on Checkpoint – $1330pw – is bizarrely high. Would a motel like that earn nearly $200 a night on casual rentals? I can't imagine it.
If there ever needed to be an example of a government driving revenue to business at the ultimate expense of poor and vulnerable people, who'll eventually face the debt collectors for money they're unlikely to have, this would have to be right up there.
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Hard News: Crowded houses, in reply to John Farrell,
Housing NZ is run as a business, and pays a dividend to the government. They haven't yet found a way to get dividends from WINZ.
It just seems so stupid that people eligible for social housing are being instructed to borrow money for paying what's apparently the full commercial rate to stay at motels, before becoming liable to pay it back at their own expense, which by definition of being eligible for social housing, they already can't afford. And then, I guess, we end up creating new situations which encourage people to get themselves criminal records.
If this shortage of social housing were being handled intelligently, motels should be competing with each other to get contracts for accommodating people, on behalf of HNZ, at substantially lower bulk rates.
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Also, what are the main reasons for WINZ and Housing New Zealand being separate agencies?
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Hard News: Crowded houses, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm afraid I've missed much media around this. One thing that's confused me over John Campbell's reporting yesterday and tonight, though, is why people are reportedly being charged absurd amounts for emergency accommodation.... then "loaned" thousands of dollars to cover its use for a matter of days, then being required to pay it back, when they're supposedly already eligible for social housing.
Is this seemingly ridiculous thing of further indebting poor people, apparently due to HNZ's own inability to house them, because WINZ itself isn't a housing provider and doesn't have any legal mechanism to directly pay for emergency accommodation to which they're probably already entitled? Or is it more about politics?
Oh, the bureaucracy!
[Edit: Oops. This was meant to be a reply to the OP. Not to that specific comment.]
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Marc C,
I think it was just part of a larger pattern of clumsy process. This Bill was just one of many that had similar treatment. When even DPF agrees there's been a problem with National's process, it's worth a glance.
I'd agree with Deborah that the issue wouldn't necessarily have been detected with lengthier time to consider, and that it's at least as significant that the government then chose to ignore symptoms of a likely problem when they were presented. That said, the process which led to this stuff getting legislated to begin with really stinks.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to nzlemming,
This government, from the day they got in, have insisted on oral briefings from officials. They never wanted a paper trail.
I guess that complicates things but it'd still seem like quite a risk for a Minister to claim they hadn't been told something, unless they were certain.
If I were a public servant who had any contact with political branches of the government, I think I'd perceive a big incentive to keep clear notes and aide-memoires in the organisation's EDRMS about everything that's been communicated, even if it was vocally. Otherwise you risk becoming the scapegoat despite doing your job properly.
I suppose the Minister can always fall back on the "oops I don't recall that" line, but not recalling stuff you were told also doesn't look that great. That happens a lot. The alternative is to start accusing government agencies of lying about stuff, which usually doesn't look great for any number of other reasons.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Deborah,
Hi Deborah.
But the problem with foreign trusts and LTCs is clearly there now, so fixing it would be a good idea.
I agree.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Deborah,
Hi Deborah. I'm not meaning to suggest anything malicious or that LTCs are inherently bad, but the government of that day was already getting major criticism for mis-using urgency over and over again, resulting in big changes that had almost no time to receive real scrutiny and consideration of the implications. There's no guarantee that the implications of that change in combination with foreign trusts would have been picked up with a better process, but the chances of that are greatly reduced when there's virtually no time between showing everyone and fully passing it into law.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Martin Brown,
Mainly since we introduced LookThroughCompanies (LTC) in 2010.
..which were created with the Taxation (GST and Remedial Matters) Bill 2010. It stated an outright intention of seeking to remove tax avoidance opportunities, and didn't spend such a lengthy time in the process. It was introduced 5th August, with just 3 weeks available for submissions between First and Second readings, and was passed on 9th December.
The key here, though, seems to be that Look-Through Companies didn't even exist in the Bill until SOP 187 made the change with its release on Tuesday 7th December, two days before the Bill passed its Third Reading to gain Royal Assent.
Labour (notably David Cunliffe, Stuart Nash, Trevor Mallard and Pete Hodgson) made a big deal about the sudden injection of a 77 page SOP into a 57 page Bill during the Third Reading with barely any time to study it under urgency, including raising particular concerns about Look-Through companies and the huge changes to tax legislation this entailed. Peter Dunne defended the process, as Minister of Revenue.
Then it was finally passed 66 to 47, thanks to National, ACT, Maori and United Future.
In essence, this change to introduce look-through companies was part of the government's gratuitous obsession of avoiding process via urgency in the name of "getting stuff done", that received criticism at the time?
Yeah, okay.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to papango,
it's worth noting that he is claiming he 'can't recall' any advice, which is not the same thing as not receiving it, or as rejecting briefings before they arrive
This seems like the type of advice that, if present, would be very OIA'able from IRD.