Posts by Gareth Ward
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One of the concerns many people have with minor parties is their exercising disproportionate power. But the greatest chance of that happening is when there is only a small number of small parties.
Absolutely, it's always confused me when people advocate HIGH thresholds by complaining that small parties "wield disproportionate power". It strikes me that they only do so because we realistically limit their number to around 5-6, of which 3-4 are likely to be "clearly sided" to a particularly major party.
Regarding your broader point, perhaps we should be asking why the workings of Parliament make 1 or 2 MPs so hamstrung in executing their mandate and if there aren't improvements to be made? -
The.... Grease soundtrack. That was hard to even type.
I think I realised there is actually one OK song in that movie somewhere but there is no f*&%ng way I'm putting myself through listening to it to find out.
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Sacha,
links upthread have some details
Some but not quite the specifics (unless I've missed them as usual) - the "12%" seems to be used quite differently across reports. It sounds like McKay gave ACIL the high-level financial target though - which makes the Mayor and Council even further removed from it (McKay being the operational CEO, not an elected Council member). Of course, Council will have signed off the financial plan from their executive.
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Aside from that. Can someone, anyone, explain this monstrosity that we paid for down in Slimepool Park?
I thought it was a temporary structure to hide the tanks until the rest of the Tank Farm redevelopment can occur
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Sacha,
But the Council are the ones who insisted on that level of return in the first place.
I'm really keen to see where/how this occurred - I believe it, I just want to see the mechanism that was used.
But I also think that's a bit of a red herring - the POAL Board will be doing their best to maximise returns and it sounds like these adverserial employment relations have been in place for some time. In short, I don't think this would be solved if the Council said "oh don't worry, just get us 6%"
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It's not so much the inaction that is Brown's problem - rather that he campaigned as the Mayor to counter the ideological constructs of the SuperCity creation. He's now been shown up as completely constricted by them and either unwilling or unable to go around them.
As far as I can see, the only way to really get around this is for the Council (not just the one vote of the Mayor) to convince the ACIL Board that they will pass resolutions to dump them if they don't in turn put pressure on the POAL Board to direct their management to tone down their approach. That's a lot of interim levers with some pretty serious calls to be made. And I suspect there's some fish-hooks in the legislation that requires the Council to have quite specific reasons to be able to do that. The "motions to support" currently being talked about are, at best, weak indicators of intention. -
Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
What about all the stuff being trucked from Tauranga to and from Auckland?
Port of Tauranga already own and operate MetroPort in South Auckland - it's linked directly via rail to Tauranga and operates as an "in-Auckland" port for both inbound and outbound (POAL has the same thing at Wiri). I've no idea as to the feasibility of scaling this approach up to take on some, if not all, of POAL's duties but it's already in place...
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Why? What is the real figure and what are the assumptions? I’m guessing the median is lower and I’m also guessing it includes an assumption of overtime which is also unreasonable.
I understand it includes the cost of non-cash remuneration such as health insurance provided by the employer.
Yes the question will be how far "down the stack" that number goes - is it a full "cost per employee" including things like lunchrooms etc etc or is it just salary plus bonus plus benefits stuff. Presumedly it's somewhere in the middle...
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Hard News: Unwarranted risk, in reply to James Butler,
selling such a large swathe of assets, in this market, is never going to realize the best cash return.
I still think they're looking at it even more simply than that.
"If the state's finance's are roughly equivalent whether they own it or not, we shouldn't" plus "our time in Govt is limited" = sell them now. In that simple model they don't have the time to wait for theoretically ideal market conditions to sell.Screwing us in the name of base ideology either way...
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Hard News: Unwarranted risk, in reply to BenWilson,
If you are a NZer and you sell your business to someone outside of NZ, who is not a NZer, then the ownership has moved outside of NZ
Of course, you now have NZ ownership over the big chunk of cash that was given to you for your business. So the business may not be NZ owned but the equivalent cash asset it was swapped for now is, and the profitable returns from that accrue to you/"NZ".
I think to try and understand the Nat's reasoning for these asset sales, you have to realise that all financials being equal (interest payment reductions roughly equal to cash dividends otherwise received; realised value of debt reduction roughly equal to book value of asset...) they just don't see the point in the state owning something (and indeed, the risks to the state balance sheet of owning make it overall unattractive). It's horribly simplistic and misses all the more nuanced arguments against but I suspect that's how simply they see the economics of it.