Posts by Tinakori
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Polity: Land of the brave little kids, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Never had that problem with Southern Cross, including for oral surgery that could just as easily be done by a dentist.
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In NZ you do best with both the public and the private system. My folks got medical insurance in the 70s when they discovered they had no hope a getting a routine operation in the public system for my mother's condition that caused considerable discomfort. They had to pay to get it done in one of Hamilton's private hospitals to get relief. Since then our family has always had private insurance sometimes funded by us and sometimes by our employers - including at one stage, Wellington Newspapers, a subsidiary of INL when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch.
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to Steve Barnes,
No, that makes no sense at all. The debt is falling because the amount being paid off is greater than the sum being borrowed.
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to linger,
To your third point, the preceding sentences in the summary also say,
"New Zealand has an average annual disposable household income above the OECD average, and the poverty rate is somewhat lower than the OECD average. Poverty rates among older people fell by 11 percentage points from 2007 to 2010, while the poverty rates for children increased by 1 percentage point."
To your first two points, While the GFC had an impact the increase was significantly higher than for the rest of the OECD most of which had tougher time than NZ. In the GFC our recession lasted 6 quarters and unemployment stayed significantly lower than other countries. Christchurch also had an impact but once again the impact on social spending was relatively short with unemployment falling because of the demand for workers. If you look at the Treasury graphs on social spending - health, education, welfare - the trend is up and steady over time. I think my original point stands. The idea that National has somehow gutted social spending is wrong.
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to Steve Barnes,
"Our Govt. is now borrowing at unprecedented levels...."
That's not true and our gross foreign government debt is going to start to fall in 2016/17 because of debt maturing exceeding projected additional debt. Check out the fiscal and economic update on the Treasury website. The changes to the surplus/deficit announced today will make the debt outlook even better.
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Given National has gutted education, health and social welfare spending............
According to the OECD
"The real value of social spending in New Zealand increased by 22% from 2007/08 to 2012/13. This is well above the OECD average of 14%. "
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to Russell Brown,
Sometimes these policies work best when the two major parties are in agreement. The debt repayment started when National first had a surplus in 1994. Similarly both parties had effective bi-partisan approaches to bank regulation which improved the banks' ability to withstand the shocks of the GFC. That both Australia and NZ were not hit as hard as other countries is also partly attributable to the fact the banks in both countries were different in kind from the banks that faced such strife elsewhere.
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"Key doesn’t actually believe Labour is in do-nothing mode – he just wants the public to believe that. Hence the interview."
In NBR, behind a paywall? Please, even if half their audience (no matter how affluent) read the article that is still a tiny sliver of the electorate. You are taking the piss, Rob
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OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to Russell Brown,
Well, David Fisher and Patrick Gower might have different ways of going about things and different motivations for what they do but to this viewer/reader the end result is exactly the same - sensationmongering. On Mathew Hooton there are left wing journalists with agendas just like there are liberal pundit/ journalists like Matthew, witness Gordon Campbell's continual petitions for sainthood for Jim Anderton. I also think Matthew's main agenda is excitement and the adrenal rush from mischief making rather than client interests.
There's another structural reason why political journalists have less impact than Keith thinks they should. One consequence of changes in journalism, particularly print journalism, has been the departure of all but a tiny handful of specialist journalists who could report with some authority and would not be simple suckers for the leaker de jour. Political reporters know politics and almost nothing about the key output of politics, public policy. They are entirely dependent on what politicians - government and opposition - tell them about public policy which, - surprise, surprise - is often wrong or artfully misleading. Specialist rounds people provided a filter for that sort of crap and politicians and their advisors were a little more hesitant or a bit more skilful about saying things that were wrong. It's not that the specialists were giants of the trade but the simple fact that more eyeballs on the task provided more scrutiny. Political reporters have no subject credibility beyond politics and when reporting on anything other than the sheer horse racing side of politics their impact is accordingly limited. Within that limited role they fulfil a useful function but to expect much more from them as Keith Ng does is like asking a fish why it can't knit. Across the Tasman, Australia has mostly very bad political journalists but it has superb investigative journalists across a range of subject areas who can go deep into stories and catch some serious whales, like Edde Obeid. That's mostly a function of their market size and resources but also that they have a lot more dirty dealing, especially on the state level, to investigate. We have moderately competent political journalists but very few credible investigative ones with any subject knowledge. That's down to resources and a much more open culture with less to hide in both business and politics.
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"Back in the day John Campbell and his team chased some of the Dirty Politics stuff really hard, yet nothing really seemed to change as a consequence, and eventually the story just died."
The impact of shows like Campbell Live is blunted because what they do and say is so utterly predictable - White Hat, Black Hat - Boo, Hiss!. And when they are gracious and praise someone who is not of their ilk it is almost always for saying or doing something that conforms - finally - to their world view, which is just another form of self praise. This is true of both left and right wing journalists. Fran O'Sullivan and Gordon Campbell suffer alike because every one of their articles says the same thing. Sensationmongers like David Fisher and Patrick Gower eventually have the same problem. One reason Matthew Hooton does so well is because people read him to find out "what crazy fucking thing is Matthew going to say now." . In short, he isn't predictable and while he may have a party line it's a bit like those tyre marks at road accidents, all over the road. He doesn't have a left wing equivalent and that's the Left's loss. Danyl McLachlan at the Dim Post is probably the closest to an equivalent but without the gonzo damn the torpedo approach.