Posts by Russell Brown
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Steve (Curtis), I've blocked you from commenting. Your behaviour is in bad faith, hostile and not acceptable.
You can email me via the link at the bottom of any of my posts to discuss this if you like.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to SHG,
I have an IRD number and bank account of my own. Does that mean I’m “hard-working Kiwi money” not “foreign money”?
That's actually one of the problems with the government's chosen approach. As John Key has acknowledged, it will capture New Zealand citizens with foreign tax status.
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Also, we’ve just recorded a pretty good Media Take discussion with David Soh, editor of Mandarin Pages, and Raybon Kan – in the third part of tomorrow night’s show.
I really liked meeting David and his friends. His English isn’t great, but he got through and his concluding comments were thoughtful and positive. I'm going to see if he wants to work with someone on a post for us expanding on those comments.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Tze Ming Mok,
Rob’s latest column is just barefaced partisan hackery. I know Russell reposted it to encourage generate debate, but I’m embarrassed that it might be seen as an endorsement of Rob’s independence. Russell, I think that perhaps for Speaker posts it’s a good idea to include a line about the author’s political party affiliations and employment.
I’ve had it since Saturday and I gave myself yesterday off doing anything with it in part because I didn’t think it fairly characterised yours and Keith’s positions (the other part was that I had a very late and jolly Saturday night out and felt I was due a day off grown-up editorial decisions). I decided to go with it this morning partly on the reasoning that it gave you a place to respond.
Rob’s desire to have it discussed was genuine, I think. It’s not like it being here was going to get it in front of many eyeballs compared to being front-of-section in the Star Times.
Rob’s position as a sometime contractor to the party has been evident in some of his previous posts, and, indeed, is implicit in both the posts he’s made in this issue, so I’m not so concerned about that.
I’ve never been in a position quite like this before, with bloggers on my site on opposite sides of a live issue. I think letting the discussion happen has mostly worked. But I hear you.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to steve black,
Unjustified Advice? advice from Murray Horton to “follow Australia”. Sound advice? Well, Australia has the same story running there so I’m not sure the “problem” is “fixed” by following Australia.
To be fair, "following Australia" would achieve the major step of helping us understand whether we even have a problem.
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I’m pretty much down with Liam Dann’s column today.
TLDR: there is an issue of historic proportions looming with respect to Chinese capital outflows, but don’t make it about people or their ethnicity.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Ewan Morris,
Katherine, you say any imbalances involved in domestic speculation can be addressed internally through our political system. I’m asking Rob what the Labour Party plans to do to address these imbalances. He appears to be telling me they will be doing nothing because they are only concerned about offshore speculation.
They've rather cornered themselves by ruling out a CGT.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Rob Salmond,
No, Labour never used “Chinese” of mean “foreign.” Yes, we did consult some people who are ethnically Chinese on this issue. They understood our position, and were supportive.
I'm somewhat surprised you didn't have any of those people able to speak to the media.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Sacha,
I don’t think Phil Twyford ever pitted *all* Chinese buyers against *non-Chinese* hard-working Kiwis.
Please do go back and listen to his interview again. I understand you do not want to believe that’s what he said, but it is. Plenty had no trouble hearing him.
Twyford has said some dumb things – including wildly over-rating the evidence and insisting on repeatedly using the word "whistleblower" – but it does appear that in this case what he said wasn't what "plenty" of people heard.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Kalka River,
3) the greedy NZ homeowners —many many of them white, holding out for a good price.
If they plan to keep living in Auckland they don't have much choice but to take the market price for the house they're selling. I don't think "greedy white homeowners" is a very useful approach.
If you're going to blame sellers, it would be more appropriate to concentrate on the speculative house traders whose buying-and-flicking-on may be part of the story behind those last-quarter figures cited by David Hood.
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