Posts by Deborah
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Sacha,
If Labour do not demonstrate for voters right now that they can work constructively with progressive allies, we will get another term of the incumbents.
That's a two way street, not helped by this sort of thing.
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Today's Parliamentary Question #5:
Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade stated on 19 April 2012 that they were "finding an appropriate mechanism to meet Al Khalaf's concern for 'compensation' (possibly through the joint venture)", did 'compensation' mean compensation or have some other meaning like "not compensation"?
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All those eyes are creeping me out, but before I decided that I just couldn’t manage any more, I found this fascinating transformation.
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While I was searching for links to answer Rosemary's information request above, I came across this from 2013.
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There's some worries about the Korean FTA and non-residents purchasing housing in NZ.
NZ hands tied on foreign home buyers under Korea FTA "bungle"
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Regarding whether the FTA with China might preclude restrictions on people from mainland China buying houses here if they are not NZ residents:
From politik.co.nz (Richard Harman)
CONTROLS ON LAND SALES TO FOREIGNERS
Another big issue for Labour which has emerged into the public glare this week is the possibility of limitations on the ability of a Government to impose controls on land sales.
Mr Parker says that has happened in the Korea Free Trade Agreement where the only controls that are permitted are those that were in place when the Agreement was signed.
WHY PARKER SAYS STEPHEN FRANKS IS WRONG
But he says the China Free Trade Agreement is different and does permit New Zealand to impose controls on land sales to foreigners.
This is contrast to a reading of the Agreement yesterday by Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks which was quoted on POLITIK yesterday.
Mr Franks argued that Chinese citizens could not be treated any differently to Australians over land sales and Labour would exclude them from its policy to band urban property sales of existing houses to foreigners.
“I was in Cabinet when we checked this before we signed the Agreement,” he said.
“I remember it because I was the one who raised it.
“We delayed Cabinet Policy Committee approval for the agreement to go to Cabinet before we had confirmation on that very point.”
And Article 139 of the Agreement provides that existing trade agreements stand and are not affected by the FTA nor do they affect it.
“Earlier agreements – like CER with Australia – are not affected and do not flow into the China FTA,” he said.
“If NZ wants to further restrict the sale of farmland or residential land to Chinese investors, we can.”
China has imposed further restriction on land sales which apply to New Zealanders since the FTA was signed.
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Raybon Kan in the NZ Herald: If Chinese buy houses and pay you too much - you don't like it
Being Chinese in New Zealand always puts you on the back foot. We don't play the race card: we show up with it stuck to our face. So, when mainland Chinese house-buyers are accused of being the nation's problem, I can't help but feel attacked as well. Because I don't entirely buy it when you say it's not about being Chinese in the face. We know what you mean when you say foreign ownership. You don't mean state houses being sold to Australia. You don't mean Canadian pension funds. You don't mind the white: you don't see the white. White is how things should be.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Alfie,
My point is, as ten years was the cutoff point a decade ago, why has the new legislation been set at a mere two years?
The ten year cutoff would have been an operational decision within IRD about which transactions to target, just as they make operational decisions from time to time about which industries to investigate. For example, a few years back they made an operational decision to investigate tradies in northern Auckland suburbs where here seemed to be an awful lot of work going on, but not much income tax being paid, suggesting that lots of work was being done on a cash basis.
The two year brightline test will be law ie. they don't even have to investigate anything. Maybe as an operational policy they were already looking at these short term transactions, but now they won't even need to investigate.
/heading back to hanging my head in shame now
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Speaker: Honest Bastards & Dishonest Cowards, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes... 'though one of the difficulties I have in asking people to do work for free is that I feel that we should value people's labour.
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“Representation” is the primary function of the House of Representatives in my opinion.
There's another wrinkle to throw into this, and that's to do with the physical size of electorates. People living in Taumarunui have as much representation per capita as do people living in Auckland Central, but people living in Taumarunui get to have their elected representative within reasonable physical distance of them (ie. making it possible for them to actually see their elected representative) about once a month. That's because Taumarunui is about 3 hours drive from the major population areas in the Rangitikei electorate. (I know whatof I speak: I spent an awful lot of time on the road during the election campaign last year.) The effect of distance on representation is even more pronounced in some of the South Island seats, and in a majority of the Maori seats.
One advantage of having a somewhat larger house might be reduced physical size of some electorates.
FTR, I'd like to see the threshold reduced, to maybe 3%? Enough to get you two and a bit seats under our current system.
