Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Tonight’s historic first vote on abortion laws will inevitably disappoint many advocates of reform. This is because of the watered-down proposals put forward by the Government, and the politicking that has accompanied the legislation – especially New Zealand First’s insistence on seeking a referendum. 

Of course, abortion law reform has been inevitable for some time, and the nature of the issue means it was always going to be complicated. Politicians have been avoiding the reform question for decades, while a public consensus has continued to build in favour of liberalisation. The public are generally more progressive on abortion than the politicians, who continue to risk only moderate change for fear of alienating more conservative voters.

That’s why, even over the last year, the Government’s promises of reform continued to be stalled as Labour attempted to negotiate a compromise package of reform that would keep their New Zealand First colleagues happy. The results of this process, as well as all the overall politicking around it, are nicely laid out today in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Abortion bill heads to Parliament: What’s changing and when.

Reform success looks likely

It is clear that the more moderate legislation planned by the Labour-led Government has been designed so as not to buy too much of a fight or mean it will struggle to get passed. Hence, early signs are that the first reading tonight will very easily get the numbers. Henry Cooke and Thomas Coughlan are projecting, at this stage, 73 votes for and 26 against – see: Abortion vote will sail through with or without NZ First, according to Stuff survey.

Aside from the mysterious New Zealand First orientation to the bill, the stances of other parties’ MPs are becoming clearer: “All 8 Green MPs have said they will support it, while 32 of Labour’s 46 MPs have said they will definitely back it. Four more say they’d be likely to support it. National is slightly more divided with 17 of its 55 MPs saying they will definitely back it, with just 7 saying they will definitely oppose it. Ten say they’re not yet sure how they’ll vote. Act leader David Seymour and independent MP Jami-Lee Ross have both said they back the Bill.”

And for more on how a number of conservatives, including the National Party leader, seem to be on board for at least the first reading of the legislation, see Henry Cooke and Thomas Coughlan’s Simon Bridges will vote for abortion bill at first reading but wants more safeguards.

Bridges’ own position seems to have become more liberal lately, as this article reports that he now supports “the changes to the law for abortions in the first 20 weeks”, with him saying “the position pre-20 weeks of gestation is one where law and practice should match, they haven’t, so I accept that’s the right decision” – which is a turnaround from his position last year in which he insisted that the current rules don’t need fixing.

The same article delves into the positions of some of the more socially conservative Labour MPs, and also finds increasing support for change. For example, “Aupito William Sio, Peeni Henare, and Kris Faafoi all said that they were ‘leaning’ to or ‘probably’ voting yes. None opposed the bill.” Similarly, “Several MPs who voted against the End of Life Choice Bill on euthanasia were supportive, such as Health Minister David Clark and backbencher Kiri Allan. Some members, like Maori caucus co-chair Meka Whaitiri, said they would vote for the bill at its first reading, but would not commit to voting the bill any further.”

But there will still be some Labour MPs who vote against it, and are not willing to speak publicly about their stance. For example, the article reports: “Nanaia Mahuta refused to say how she would vote, simply describing it as a conscience issue.”

The Government’s conservative reform

Despite some degree of positivity that politicians are finally catching up with the broader public mood in favour of increased liberalisation, the details of the Government’s reform are finding less favour with many advocates of reform.

After all, the Government bill really amounts to only partial-decriminalisation instead of full decriminalisation of abortion. This won’t satisfy those who believe that abortion should fundamentally come down to a “woman’s right to choose”. Instead of going along with that demand and principle, Justice Minister Andrew Little has very determinedly decided that it’s a woman’s right to choose up until 20 weeks of pregnancy, but women lose the right after that, by which it essentially remains a criminal issue rather than a health issue.

I wrote about the details of this issue in a previous column, earlier in the year – see: Abortion reform in question. This pointed to an array of health professionals and reform advocates wanting a more progressive result than the Government was looking to deliver.

And it has come to pass that the Government has gone with a watered-down and relatively conservative option for moderate reform. This has caused some to complain that Labour have let the reform movement down, as they have on other important issues. For example, the No Right Turn blogger says it’s “another example of Labour chickening out. They promised to listen to medical professionals, and they haven’t. While a technical delivery on their promise, its a substantive failure” – see: Labour chickens out on abortion.

Here’s the main point: “Health professionals were crystal clear in supporting complete decriminalisation. But instead of that, Labour has taken the most conservative option, then made it worse, imposing a test for women to access an abortion after 20 weeks. Such abortions are almost always performed for medical reasons, and so should be a health issue, but instead Labour is going to make women continue to endure the wagging finger of society if they need proper medical care.”

The blogger argues that Labour MPs need to push amendments to make the legislation more radical, but fears they will “refuse to in order to avoid upsetting their bigot rump and their conservative coalition partner.”

RNZ has published one anonymous opinion piece on the issue, which criticises the reform bill for retaining much of the status quo for pregnancies beyond the 20-week mark, saying: “The proposed bill is not much better. It sends the message that you may know what’s best for yourself up to 19 weeks, six days, 23 hours and 59 minutes. Once the clock ticks over at midnight, boom, a doctor suddenly becomes the expert on your life. How can a country that trusted women enough to allow us to vote, not trust us to know our own situations?” – see: Abortion is a medical necessity, reform is needed.

According to this writer, “The proposed bill has been called a “mixed bag”. To be blunt, it’s a bit of a cop-out. Sure, the government took a turn in the right direction by making it a health issue and proposed some steps to ensure better access to abortions. But it does not go far enough.” They urge the Government to go further, and to use this moment to create a legacy rather than just another compromise fix.

Similarly, leftwing commentator Gordon Campbell is disappointed that the reform falls so far short of what has been required for modernisation: “Abortion is to be medicalised, rather than criminalised. That’s progress, I guess. If that sounds grudging… it is. Undoubtedly, the proposed law will be better than the 1977 legislation it replaces. Yet surely, you’d hope there would be progress, 42 years down the track” – see: On reforming the abortion laws.

Campbell doesn’t believe that abortion control should simply be converted from being a criminal issue to a medical one: “there is no objective need for the level of medicalisation envisaged by the current Bill. The message being: the ultimate control of women’s reproductive choices is being handed over from the Police to doctors. That’s supposed to be counted as progress.”

And if the issue is a simple health one then why, Campbell asks, isn’t it being treated like this by the Government and Opposition: “If abortion really is just a medical procedure, then the Health Minister should be owning it, and promoting it as part of the government’s health programme. That’s what a grown-up country would do.” He argues against the vote being a conscience one.

Campbell also makes the case that the legislation is entirely backward in assuming that abortion has to be a “medicalised procedure enacted by a doctor”, when the trend – especially in other parts of the world – is towards the use of chemical abortifacients: “they offer a safer, less invasive means of abortion than surgical means. It is a process that can be supervised by a nurse.”

Here’s Campbell’s main problem: “In other European countries, the two pills involved are moving towards being available as an over-the-counter abortifacient. The reforms being proposed in New Zealand do not recognize this trend. For the foreseeable – and by that I mean potentially for decades to come – the women who import such drugs and/or those people who help them to access such drugs will continue to be prosecuted under the Crimes Act.”

Referendum debates

The law reform itself has been overshadowed in recent days by New Zealand First’s desire to make reform contingent on a public referendum – see Jenna Lynch’s Justice Minister Andrew Little caught off guard as New Zealand First hints at abortion referendum.

It seems that in the months of negotiations between Andrew Little and New Zealand First’s Tracey Martin, the traditional stance of her party in favour of referendums on moral issues like abortion never arose. But then in NZ First’s caucus meeting this week, MPs pushed back, despite – or perhaps, because – Martin had said publicly the same day that no referendum was necessary.

According to Henry Cooke: “It’s understood NZ First members have been giving the party some grief about the fact it is demanding a referendum on euthanasia but not abortion” – see: Winston Peters pulls rug out from under Andrew Little – again.

Cooke gives his view: “Little has every right to be furious with this blindside from NZ First, even if he can’t quite say it. He’s already softened the bill to keep NZ First happy, shrinking the number of weeks that an abortion can be accessed without a statutory test. But he shouldn’t be surprised. Peters has used the Parliamentary process to have several bites of the same cherry before, and has also humiliated Little in the past over three strikes. At the end of the day these people are from different parties and will be fighting over the same voters in about a year’s time.”

Of course, New Zealand First wanting a referendum doesn’t necessarily impact on the legislation at all. The party has already signed off on the bill being introduced to Parliament tonight. It simply means that the party is likely to put up an amendment to the bill to include a referendum. This wouldn’t happen in practice until after the second vote on the bill, and it’s very unlikely to be successful. The big question is whether New Zealand First MPs will vote for the bill without a referendum being put in place.

This is all best dealt with in Claire Trevett’s column, NZ First abortion referendum ploy leaves sour taste (paywalled). She argues that no one should be surprised that Winston Peters would want a referendum: “It was not that long ago both NZ First’s leader Winston Peters and Martin herself had provided statements setting out the party’s position that abortion was for a referendum. Given that, if it was not raised in caucus perhaps Martin should have raised it herself to ensure it would not become a stumbling block later.”

Trevett suggests that the re-positioning by New Zealand First could simply be one of empty strategy: “NZ First could simply be posturing to allow Peters to say the party had tried to stick to its policy but was thwarted by others”.

So, who’s to blame for the miscommunication and incorrect assumptions about New Zealand First’s policy on referendums? Mike Hosking points the finger at both Tracey Martin and Andrew Little – see: Winston Peters again pulls the wool over Labour’s eyes on abortion referendum.

And today Winston Peters has struck back, accusing Andrew Little of bad faith and blindsiding New Zealand First – see: Winston Peters takes aim at Labour over abortion law reform.

There is now some very interesting discussion going on about the role of referendums in determining law. For the best of these, see Sam Sachdeva’s Why Winston Peters is wrong on referendums, and today’s editorial in The Press: Abortion debate: let the politicians decide.

Finally, for satire on these issues, going back a long way, see my blog post, Cartoons about abortion law reform in New Zealand.

The debate over moving into official emergency status has already been going on in every local government body throughout the country. A large number of authorities have voted to declare climate emergencies. It’s happening overseas, too – mostly with local authorities, but countries like the UK have also officially moved into a state of declared emergency.

These council declarations have been a useful way for politicians to illustrate their commitment to addressing climate change. But there’s also a lot of doubt about what declaring a climate emergency really means, whether it will achieve anything or be “enough”, and even whether it might actually be a mistake.

Political scientist and climate change campaigner Bronwyn Hayward, of the University of Canterbury, has spoken out against the trend for climate change emergency declarations. She was recently interviewed on RNZ by Jessie Mulligan, and argued that the declarations can be counterproductive and ineffective. She said: “When people are in panic mode, they’re easily manipulated, and one of the big risks is that people panic and don’t look at the basic things that are possible and within our grasp to do right now” – see: Taking climate change seriously without being alarmist. The whole 18-minute interview is well worth listening to.

Hayward “is worried recent doom-and-gloom climate reports will just induce paralysis and panic.” She says: “it is great that we are seeing the urgency, but it’s actually taking the practical steps that matters more than the declarations.” And she argues that the concept of an immediate emergency is also one that goes against the need for a sustained long-term approach: “People can’t sustain this long period of panic, so my worry is what happens when this drops off? We need to be building for a sense of inter-generational support over the long haul, not just the immediate.”

Hayward prefers that climate change action focuses more on solutions than hyperbole about imminent collapse and chaos: “Let’s wind back the language of panic and wind up the language of practical action.”

Talking to Herald science journalist Jamie Morton, Hayward cautioned against the Auckland Council’s declaration of emergency, arguing it was more important to focus on actions: “We can’t maintain this level of intensity – we have to get quite practical and a lot of that is very boring… It’s attending to those first principles of lowering carbon emissions in the cities, like changing the way we build our buildings, tackling freshwater supplies and making sure our housing is as dense as we can make it, live-ably” – see: Explained: What does Auckland’s ‘climate emergency’ actually mean? (paywalled).

The same article also discusses the legalities of whether the climate change crisis could be classified as a Civil Defence emergency: “As it stood, climate change wasn’t included in the formal definition of an ’emergency’ under the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Act 2002. A declaration of a ‘climate emergency’ also had no other inherent statutory or legal implications.”

So, if it’s problematic to deal with climate change with a declared state of emergency, should it be something stronger? Political journalist Henry Cooke has argued this week that a declaration of war makes more sense: “War is much better. Wars take several years, require cooperation between countries, and often produce millions of refugees, much like climate change will. Vast technological change can be engendered as countries gear their entire economies towards a singular goal outside of simple growth” – see: We don’t need a climate emergency. We need a climate war.

Here’s Cooke’s main argument against the concept of a state of climate emergency: “Emergency responses are almost the opposite of what climate change requires. Emergencies last for small periods of time and require governments to temporarily act quickly to deploy resources to the effected area, in order to make an abnormal situation normal again. Almost everyone accepts that the normal rules should be suspended for this immediate response – dairy owners hand out water, respondents work overtime, and normalcy is eventually restored. Climate change is nothing like this. It is urgent but not urgent like an earthquake is. And fixing it requires a much more structural change to the way the world is run than other emergencies do”.

Another important analysis and critique of the logic of declaring climate emergencies can be found in Mark Blackham’s recent opinion piece, Declarations of climate emergencies will only increase apathy. As with Hayward, he suggests that the declarations will have a negative impact on fostering the public mood for change, suggesting that “Right when we most need sombre, thoughtful global and local action, our institutions are all too often faddish and hypocritical.”

The good intentions behind the declarations are noted, and he agrees with the concept of trying to get people to understand the seriousness of climate change, but for Blackham, the declarations are too gimmicky, especially in the absence of sufficient actions taken by the politicians: “We get it, but there is no emergency in the sense that ordinary people commonly use it. Where are the dead, dying and the fleeing? Where are the emergency services? No matter how you co-opt language, reality interferes. We will always respond differently to an emergency happening in the next 10 years, and an emergency happening right now.”

Blackham says “I doubt the authorities will take the sort of robust action that corresponds to an emergency. There will be no bans on cars, foreign travel, or imported consumer goods.” Ultimately, therefore, the public will lose more trust in those institutions making the declarations, and will become more cynical about climate change.

Does it matter if the emergency declarations are simply “symbolic gestures”? According to scientist Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland, this is exactly what is needed at the moment: “Symbolic gestures are what motivated New Zealand support to end apartheid and the nuclear-free stance and they had an effect, and we can hold our heads high knowing we were clear where we stood” – see Joel MacManus’ PM Jacinda Ardern: Government ‘not opposed to’ idea of declaring a climate emergency.

Atkinson is one of “more than 50 of New Zealand’s top scientists” calling for a declaration of emergency. And responding to this, “Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government is not opposed to declaring a national climate emergency”.

Ardern is reported as favouring a New Zealand-wide emergency declaration, but also suggesting that the Government is already dealing sufficiently with the problem: “I don’t see why there should be any reason why members of Parliament wouldn’t want to demonstrate that this is a matter of urgency… The one thing I think we need to make really clear though – a declaration in Parliament doesn’t change our direction of travel. It’s what we invest in and it’s the laws that we pass that make the big difference and on those grounds I think we are making good, solid progress.”

Ardern has also reiterated that the Government’s progress so far shows that the emergency approach already exists: “Certainly I would like to think our policies and our approach demonstrates that we do see it as an emergency” – see Jason Walls’ Jacinda Ardern is keen on declaring a climate-change emergency but roadblock remains.

This article explains that a motion was earlier put in Parliament by Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick but was voted down by National. The National Party spokesperson on climate change issues, Todd Muller, criticised the motion as being just “Green Party symbolism”, and explained why his party didn’t support it: “There was no plan at all behind it – normally when Government’s calls emergencies, it brings the whole aspect of the state to bear to be able to deal with it.”

Quentin Atkinson, one of the scientist behind the call for a declaration of emergency, also challenges whether the Government has a sufficient plan for dealing with the crisis, saying: “Such a declaration also serves to highlight the hypocrisy of ongoing government policies that are inconsistent with a climate emergency. This is exactly what has happened in the UK, where policies are now being scrutinised in the light of the climate emergency declaration. This is a good thing. Of course, declaring a climate emergency does not in itself solve the challenge we face. We need a real Zero Carbon Act that lives up to its name” – see: We must face climate emergency head-on.

There are some real questions about whether the current Government is doing anywhere enough on climate change. For example, looking at last week’s rather moderate and limited policy announcement on electric vehicles, John Armstrong was scathing, saying it epitomises the “profound lack of urgency” in dealing with climate change under the current administration – see: Jacinda Ardern’s eco-warrior, emissions cutting image is a ‘charade’.

Armstrong argues that the Prime Minister continues to deliver “warm fuzzies” rather than make hard choices: “Ardern constructed an image of herself as some kind of eco-warrior in the front-line of the international crusade against global warming. It is a charade. Jacinda Ardern would like everyone to believe her administration is being bold in its framing of policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn’t.”

Within the Government itself, there is division about whether to characterise the campaign on climate change as an emergency or even a war. Last week the Associate Transport Minister, Julie Anne Genter, tweeted to say climate change was “our generation’s WWII”, which was an escalation of Ardern’s famous statement about it being “our generation’s nuclear-free moment”. The Prime Minister has since stated that she wouldn’t use the same comparison as Genter – see Jamie Ensor’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won’t compare climate change to World War II.

In terms of local government, most authorities appear to be passing emergency declarations – but not all. For example, earlier this month, Environment Southland voted eight-to-four against such a state of emergency. One councillor justified voting against the declaration, saying “The word emergency creates a knee-jerk reaction” and arguing it would create a “siege mentality” – see Blair Jackson’s Southland climate emergency motion voted down.

Similarly, the Thames-Coromandel Council voted six to three against the declaration in April, and now some residents are taking legal action to get this reversed – see Amy Williams’ Council taken to court over lack of action on climate change.

And some of the councils declaring emergencies are now being taken to task for subsequent actions that apparently contradict their gesture. For the best example of this, see Dave Armstrong’s How serious is Wellington about its ‘climate change emergency’? He points to continued attempts by the council to extend the airport runway, promotion of a convention centre as a destination for conferences, and the use of dirty diesel buses as going against the lofty proclamations of an emergency.

Similarly, when the Auckland council passed its climate change emergency motion the mayor had to miss the vote to attend the announcement that one of the world’s biggest retailer, Costco, was about to launch in the city. Simon Wilson asks: “Were the two events – the climate emergency declaration and the Costco deal – by any chance related? The timing might have been coincidental but each has far-reaching implications for the other” – see his in-depth and thoughtful examination of what the emergency declaration might mean for Auckland and its council: Costco vs the climate emergency: planning the future of Auckland (paywalled).

Finally, there’s an ongoing debate within the environmental movement about how to rally the masses to take climate change more seriously without producing a sense of doom. This was raised in a recent debate in which an environmentalist from an NGO published an article suggesting that the type of groups that they had worked for had downplayed the state of the crisis in order not to scare people – see: An apology from an environmentalist.

This got a response from Danyl Mclauchlan, who wrote: The real enemy: Why blaming NGOs for climate inaction is stupid. He explains: “Every piece of research about climate messaging always finds the same thing. If you tell people we’re doomed – which is the apologetic environmentalists message – they’re less likely to take action than if you give them agency and tell them there’s hope.”

Mclauchlan examines the problems of over-egging the crisis of climate change: “some people seem to like declaring that the world is ending and that we’re all about to die. This is a religious impulse not a scientific one, but some activists relish playing the role of end-of-time preacher condemning society to perdition for our consumerist sins.”

Instead of seeing the struggle against climate change as “a binary phenomenon” in which the world is either saved or doomed, he suggests that it’s more like a spectrum of possible outcomes, and therefore the actions taken by humanity will impact on how good or bad the outcomes are. In terms of current efforts by the Government, Mclauchlan – who is a former Green Party activist – is not so impressed: “I’m less optimistic about progress in national politics, and a little staggered by how little progress this government has made on climate issues.”

The solution has been relatively well-received, because it has an elegance in its “cost-neutral” approach of putting a penalty tax of up to $3000 on the purchase of new higher-emitting vehicles, and using the proceeds of that revenue to offer up to $8000 in subsidies for those buying new energy-efficient cars such as electric vehicles (EVs).

But is it enough? Does it really match the scale of the problem? And what negative consequences will it have for those who can’t afford, or aren’t able to use, electric and low-emissions cars?

A well-received policy

Newspaper editorials have been especially positive towards the Government initiative. Yesterday, the New Zealand Herald argued that the policy is a “clever” way to encourage greener car purchases, and that the public is likely to be highly supportive in the same way that the plastic-bag ban has been accepted – see: Clean cars the right road forward.

Similarly, the Otago Daily Times labelled it a “smart policy” because of its “moderate” and light-handed approach to changing consumer behaviour. The newspaper editorial emphasised that this meant the policy was likely to be enduring: “It is also sufficiently restrained to likely survive any change in government” – see: Nudging car fleet changes.

The paper praised the “nudge” component of the approach: “It is a variation of the ‘nudge’ theory, recognised in marketing circles and human psychology. Rather than use education, enforcement and over-the-top rules, it adjusts the costs of new and imported used vehicles. While how much impact that will have can only be estimated, the plan would lower one of the high hurdles to electric and hybrid ownership, the relatively steep purchase price.”

The Dominion Post has also praised the policy as “practical, maybe even elegant”, and has defended the scheme from critics who “lamented the Government’s lack of boldness” – see: Better late than never for a plan to lower vehicle emissions.

A number of other voices have been very positive about the proposal, including the motor industry. And even National is generally supportive of the subsidies for greener cars.

But attention has also been focused on those sectors of society that might be negatively affected by the cost of many cars going up – especially the poor, but also farmers and tradespeople – see Jason Walls’ National says the Government’s plan to get greener cars on the road could hurt NZ’s poorest.

National’s Brett Hudson says: “There is a risk that a feebate system could turn out to be regressive in its nature; that lower-income workers and working families might see themselves worse off compared to some people on better incomes”.

Similarly, the Taxpayers’ Union says “this is a tax on Otara vehicles to subsidies Teslas in Remuera” – see Rebecca Moore’s Government’s proposed vehicle tax taking from the poor to benefit the rich, Taxpayers’ Union says. Executive Director of the lobby group, Jordan Williams, says “Just because something is shrouded in environmental branding doesn’t make it any less nasty to the poor”.

Lacking boldness and ambition?

Is the new policy ambitious enough? After all, given the climate change emergency we face, is this policy sufficiently bold and radical to meet the challenge?

So far, environmentalists have been less than impressed. Greenpeace energy campaigner Amanda Larsson has welcomed the policy in general but questioned the penalties being imposed on the less-efficient petrol and diesel vehicles, saying that the upper level fee of $3000 is disappointing. She points out that the French equivalent is about $10,000 – see Jason Walls’ Greenpeace wants the fee charged on higher emitting vehicles to be a lot higher than $3000. Greenpeace is also calling “on the Government to set a timeline for banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles.”

This is a point also made by blogger No Right Turn: “As the Cabinet paper points out, a dirty car imported today stays on our roads for 19 years on average. So the quicker we turn off that tap, the better. But more importantly, we need to turn it off permanently. Other countries have announced phase-out dates for fossil-fuel vehicles, typically aiming to ban new sales in 2030 (and non-museum-piece registrations 5-10 years after). Such a date sets market expectations and helps drive the push for people to make their next car electric. But there’s no mention of one at all in the Cabinet paper – the necessary action seems like too much for the government to take” – see: Climate Change: Timid and unambitious.

The blogger also takes issue with the timeframe of the Government’s initiative, saying “the government needs to do more than this, and it needs to do it faster. They should be pushing this through the legislative process as quickly as possible, and implementing it immediately, rather than with a 5-year phase-in.” He points out that “the government is planning to apply a vehicle fuel efficiency standard Japan and Europe had five years ago in 2025”.

Drawing attention to Jacinda Ardern’s promise of a “nuclear-free moment” in combating climate change, No Right Turn says “contrary to the Prime Minister’s rhetoric, we’re not seeking to lead on climate change, we’re not even being a ‘fast follower’. Instead, our government is dragging its feet, just like its always done.”

On this issue of whether the Government is intervening enough, business journalist Liam Dann discusses why strong intervention is required: “Left to market forces alone, the widespread adoption of electric vehicles looks a long way off – too late for the world based on current predictions of a climate crisis. So if New Zealanders collectively want to hit current climate targets and reduce fuel emissions – it seems we need further government intervention. And that means big calls about the politics of who pays” – see: Kiwis are still too addicted to petrol, Govt had to act (paywalled).

In the end, the Government’s proposed scheme isn’t likely to make a huge difference in the take-up rates of EVs. David Linklater makes the case that current EVs simply aren’t yet very economical, even once discounted. For his “reality check” on the costs of buying an EV, and the costs of running them, see: Let’s not be fundamentalist about feebates and EV ownership.

He argues that to have a truly beneficial impact on the environment, car buyers need to be buying new EVs rather than second-hand ones, but at a cost of about $60,000 it’s hard to make the case that they are more cost-efficient over the long-term than the equivalent petrol-fuelled versions. For example, he argues that “it will take you 150,000km to recover the extra cost of a Leaf over a top-line Corolla”. Nonetheless, he says the new feebate policy isn’t designed to get everyone into an EV immediately, but just to nudge everyone into more efficient cars generally.

What is missing from the Government’s green vehicle policy?

The Dominion Post editorial, cited above, makes a recommendation for improving the Government’s green vehicle policy, suggesting that a serious investment in the infrastructure of public charging stations is required: “Charging stations remain an urban novelty, and are even rarer between some of the country’s cities and towns. That is an important next step, especially if the Government hopes to have its feebate running by 2021. We can’t afford another long wait for progress.”

Similarly, the Herald says: “There is also the issue of whether there will be an adequate network of charging stations to serve an increase in electric vehicles.

The Government also considered and rejected an array of other policies before announcing the latest green vehicle initiative. For example, a more generous subsidy for EVs could have been on offer, with the consideration of an extra $2000 being possible to reduce the costs – see Jason Walls’ article, Cabinet paper reveals the Government scrapped plans for a direct $2000 subsidy for EV buyers. The Government also decided against taking GST off electric vehicles.

Reporting on a Cabinet paper on the issues, Walls says the Government “is also exploring the possibility of a second-hand EV leasing scheme aimed at reducing transport costs for low-income households and supporting EV uptake”.

But why didn’t the Government decide to put some of their own money into subsidising EVs? In another article by Henry Cooke, the Associate Minister of Transport, Julie Anne Genter explains: “We just decided it wasn’t tenable to take away $100m from schools or hospitals or hip operations to subsidise new cars that wouldn’t work for a large amount of New Zealanders” – see: Government considered $2000 subsidy and age limit on imported vehicles instead of feebate.

According to this article, the Government also rejected a “variable annual licensing fee”, which would make registration more expensive for high-emissions cars.

Will New Zealanders really care about this EV subsidy? Talkback host Ryan Bridge suggests otherwise, arguing that “Kiwis don’t care about climate change. They say they do, but then they go buy a new SUV and have another child. They have choices already and they’ve voted big, loud, and gassy” – see: Climate change tax proposed for driving utes, SUVs.

He’s rather cynical about the policy, saying “Farmer Bob from central Otago with his Ford Ranger will be hit with a $3000 tax, while latte-sipping, lentil-eating Fabio from Ponsonby with his VW Golf Electric will get an $8000 discount.” And today’s Listener editorial on the topic adds to this, saying “there is in this policy a whiff of pandering to urban liberals at the expense of workers in the provinces.”

Finally, Judith Collins took to Twitter this week to ask: “Given that EV cars have a wee electric motor, why do the manufacturers charge so much for them?” And to explain that, see David Linklater’s article, Silly car question #53: if EVs have ‘wee’ electric motors, why are they so expensive?

For those interested in politics being more transformational and meaningful, an important report was published recently which relates to some of these issues. Produced by researchers at Victoria University of Wellington in conjunction with Parliament’s Office of the Clerk, the report contains some important – and contentious – recommendations for reform of New Zealand’s democracy – see the report here: Foresight, insight and oversight: Enhancing long-term governance through better parliamentary scrutiny.

Veteran political journalist John Armstrong said the report “arguably is the most meaty menu in terms of options for change in a fundamental component of the political system since the Royal Commission on the Electoral System of the mid-1980s” recommended the shift to MMP – see his must-read column: Report critiquing Government swept under the rug along with thoughts of the future.

Armstrong laments that the report hasn’t had much attention, suggesting it should be “compulsory reading” for MPs. But he’s not holding his breath: “How regrettable, wasteful and unforgivable it will be if MPs shun what is nothing less than blueprint for a much-needed overhaul of New Zealand’s increasingly sorry excuse for a Parliament.”

So, why aren’t our politicians interested in this report? Armstrong suggests that it challenges the very nature of modern politics, saying the report is “a very welcome antithesis to the self-serving unwillingness of politicians to address the future for fear of losing votes. It rejects the attempt to divorce the present from the future. It suggests numerous mechanisms to acknowledge the long-term rather than being fixated with the short-term.”

The report is all about finding ways to reconfigure parliamentary politics to be more future-focused, and able to deal with long-term and often intractable issues such as environmental collapse, and demographic population changes causing problems for resource use. It makes the argument that politicians don’t deal with such problems because they’re more focused on short-term and day-to-day problems in society.

This is all best explained by one of the co-authors of the report, Jonathan Boston, who argues that because of the way New Zealand’s system of political accountability is currently set up, “poor decision-making may go undetected while non-urgent, but potentially serious, long-term problems receive inadequate political attention. Future citizens are then left to pay the price” – see: Taking the fight to short-termism in government.

Boston has a number of questions about whether our system of parliamentary scrutiny is producing a forward-looking system of government: “Are they successfully identifying, mitigating and managing significant national risks? Are they sufficiently alert to slow-burning or creeping problems, not least those with irreversible consequences? Do they have effective strategies to address major long-term policy challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change, the fiscal impacts of demographic changes or the social consequences of disruptive technologies? In short, are they exercising sound anticipatory governance?”

Although all politicians are likely to be more focused on the “present” than the “future”, Boston believes our democratic configuration “compounds the presentist bias in decision-making”.

A package of potential reforms is raised for debate in the report. These range from a number of changes that could be made in the way Parliament operates, through to the number of MPs (proposing an increase to 150), to the length of the parliamentary term (proposing it be extended from three to four years).

It’s this latter recommendation that has received the most media coverage. Jonathan Boston went on TVNZ’s Breakfast to advocate for the reduction in elections, saying that the main advantage to having less frequent elections is that politicians would then have “more time and opportunity to address big, long-term issues, whether they are environmental, economic and housing and so on” – see: Extending MP terms to four years would allow more ‘thoughtful analysis’, expert argues.

Speaking on RNZ’s Morning Report, Boston elaborated on the problems of the current three-year election cycle: “As it currently stands a new government can be formed and then in effect got to spend maybe the first year trying to work out what it’s going to do, the second year trying to do it and then the third year preparing for the next election. In dealing with very complex, difficult issues, that’s a very, very tight timeframe” – see: New report calls for four-year term, more MPs in Parliament.

In addition, RNZ reports Boston’s view that “short electoral cycles are compounded by the rapid nature of social media and the news media. Professor Boston said relentless reporting puts governments under pressure to deliver quickly, which encourages a short-term approach.” Boston is quoted saying: “I think we have plenty of evidence in New Zealand of governments of all persuasions really struggling to address big issues like climate change, fresh water, housing in very short parliamentary terms.”

The same article quotes former Labour Party president Mike Williams agreeing on the need for change, but suggesting that it would be unlikely: “My gut feeling is both would be rejected. My personal opinion is that the term is too short and four years would be much better. I just don’t think that would be acceptable to the public. They like the option of being able to chuck a government out after three years.”

This ability to throw governments out is also emphasised in the same article by Otago University professor of law Andrew Geddis, as an important part of holding politicians to account in a system with very few checks on power: “We don’t have a written constitution, we don’t have courts that can strike down legislation, we don’t have an upper house of parliament or anything like that… So if we get rid of three-yearly elections and move to four yearly we’d have to ask what other arrangements we put in place to increase the accountability of members of parliament.”

Regardless, it’s highly unlikely to occur since Justice Minister Andrew Little has stated the Government’s lack of enthusiasm for the proposal – see the Herald article, Andrew Little cold on change to four-year parliamentary term.

However, it’s worth noting that “National’s electoral law spokesman, Nick Smith, said the party was considering a policy backing a referendum on longer terms.” And when he retired from Parliament late last year, former Attorney General Chris Finlayson also made a plea to shift to a four-year parliamentary term.

This was taken up at the time by a New Zealand Herald editorial, which argued, “Anything that encourages decision makers in any field to lengthen their horizons is a good thing. Just as business needs chief executives who can look beyond their annual reporting cycle, and beyond their likely tenure at the top, democracies need governments that can look well beyond the next election. Even one extra year in the electoral cycle might make quite a difference” – see: Four year terms could make governments more far-sighted – New Zealand Herald.

In contrast, for some opposing arguments, it’s worth reading an older opinion piece by lawyer Graeme Edgeler: Four-year term better in theory than practice. He puts forward the case that “There’s no evidence that a four-year Parliamentary term would lead to better legislation. And nor is there evidence that the current three-year term prevents Parliament from completing major law reform projects.”

The proposal to increase the size of Parliament from 120 to 150 MPs is also highly unlikely to be accepted by the public. After all, New Zealand has previously had referendums which give an idea of the likely public orientations to the idea.

Brittney Deguara reports: “In 1967 and 1990, two referendums were held regarding a potential term expansion. Both produced results against a term increase, with only around a third of voters supporting the change.  Similarly, a 1999 referendum resulted in the majority of citizens – 81 per cent – voting in favour of reducing the number of MPs from 120 to 100” – see: Proposal to extend parliamentary term to four years, increase MPs to 150.

As blogger David Farrar says the notion is “likely to be about as popular as a Big Mac at a Green Party conference”, but he supports it – see: Good parliamentary reform proposals.

Farrar makes some comparisons between the New Zealand Parliament and those of some other comparable countries: “A rough rule of thumb for the size of national legislatures is the cube root of the population. That would mean we should have 169 MPs. We have one of the smallest legislatures in the world because we have only one chamber. Also we have no state legislatures. Let’s look at the size of legislatures in a few countries. Croatia and Ireland have smaller populations than NZ and have 151 and 218 MPs respectively. Norway, Finland and Denmark have under six million population and have 169, 200 and 179 MPs respectively. Sweden has 349 MPs for 10 million people.”

Reducing the voting age to 16 has been raised again in the report, but this has also been rejected by the Prime Minister – see Danielle Clent’s Lowering voting age not on radar but more electoral education needed, PM Jacinda Ardern says.

Therefore, it seems as if the package of suggested reforms is not getting much traction. But there really are many other options worth debating in the report. As John Armstrong says, even if some of the higher profiles proposals are rejected, this “still leaves a truckload of other recommendations which are not contentious. MPs could pick and choose the ones they favour. In a sense, the gauntlet has been thrown down for the Speaker to pick up. It is an opportunity for Trevor Mallard to show leadership in that role.”

And without some of this type of change, there’s the risk that New Zealand democracy will continue to be mired in what Rod Oram calls the “soundbites, dog whistles, one-liners and other cynical devices” instead of the “fundamental, comprehensive and long-term change” that is necessary – see his column from late last year: Ditch the dog-whistle, save democracy.

Finally, members of the public will soon get the chance to have their say on some of the types of recommendations in the report that pertain to how Parliament operates. That’s because every three years the Standing Orders Committee of MPs call for recommendations for the rules of Parliament, and RNZ’s Phil Smith explains how this works – see: Adding foresight to oversight.

There’s an argument that with KiwiBuild so utterly discredited as the Government’s flagship policy for this term in power, Labour should now be shifting quickly to something more radical and progressive. State provision of quality and cheap rental housing is still the best remedy for the problems of housing-related poverty and homelessness. Therefore, perhaps the state housing sector – which has largely been neglected not just by this government but previous National and Labour administrations – should become the focus of efforts under the new “housing reset” following last week’s Cabinet reshuffle.

This would effectively mean a shift to the left, which is what I argued last week is a possibility, given that Megan Woods might well be “the first genuine left-wing housing minister in ages” – see: Is the government now more serious about the housing crisis?

Responding to this, Chris Trotter has made the case for what a leftwing shift in housing and state housing policy would look like: “It would kick-off with the complete scrapping of KiwiBuild. In its place, a state-planned and executed programme of state house construction would be announced. Instead of 100,000 ‘affordable homes’ for the frustrated sons and daughters of the middle-class, Woods’ programme would commit to constructing 100,000 state houses for the nation’s poorest families to move into. A state-owned construction company would be required, along with state-owned prefabrication plants. Such a programme would necessitate casting aside practically all of the policy assumptions of the last 35 years” – see: If Megan Woods really is a left-wing housing minister, then pushing for a left-wing shift in housing policy is the last thing she will do.

Trotter goes further in explaining the theory of a leftwing state housing policy: “The construction of so many housing units, their rentals fixed at 25% of the tenant’s income, would very quickly impose massive downward pressure on rents. The business model of the ordinary property investor would be wrecked – forcing more and more of those landlords at the margins to sell-up and exit the market. With more and more properties being offered for sale, prices would plummet. The very people for whom KiwiBuild was originally created would now be able to purchase their first home at an affordable price. By placing its thumb firmly on the supply side of the market’s scales, the state would have solved the housing crisis. At least, that is how a “left-wing shift” in housing policy is supposed to work.”

However, Trotter doubts that the current administration would be bold enough to deliver such a traditional policy mechanism. Furthermore, they’d have to be willing to put up with a lot of negative reaction from the business community and Labour’s middle class voters etc.

Given the worsening housing crisis, it’s not only leftists calling for this Government to get serious about state housing. The OECD report out last week about the New Zealand economy and wellbeing was explicit in recommending that in the area of housing, the Government “should do more to focus on people on low incomes”, and that this meant they should “reallocate money from KiwiBuild to social housing” – see Jason Walls’ The OECD says the Government should make significant changes to its KiwiBuild policy.

Phil Twyford responded to this call for a shift from KiwiBuild to state housing by pointing out the key problem with this: “The idea of just transferring the KiwiBuild allocation across to public housing doesn’t really work because it costs a lot of money to build public housing, as you continue to own them.”

Nonetheless, the OECD report’s primary author, Andrew Barker, has pointed out that in New Zealand, “social housing supply is low by international comparison and there are poor outcomes for at-risk groups, including overcrowding, low quality housing and high homelessness” – see David Hargreaves’ OECD report notes lack of success of KiwiBuild programme and says Govt should focus more on low-income renters.

He also explained that resources directed at state housing would be more beneficial than being directed at more wealthy citizens, saying “Better targeting of government programmes (including KiwiBuild) through focussing more on low-income renters would enhance overall well-being”, and that “Further expansion of social housing in areas where there are shortages has the potential to deliver improvements across a number of well-being dimensions, including health, education and life satisfaction”.

Even on the political right there now seems to be a realisation that an increase in state houses needs to occur. For example, National’s Housing spokesperson Judith Collins is in favour of a greater public housing build.

And rightwing political commentator Matthew Hooton has long argued that the Government must think bigger about supplying housing than the limited and piecemeal approach of the Labour Party. Like Trotter, he suggests that instead of the 10,000 new state houses promised by the Government, this should be escalated to 100,000.

In his latest column on the matter, however, he adds a rightwing element to such a massive state house-building programme: “Better still, [Twyford] would have implemented KiwiBuild as the construction of 100,000 new state houses which would then be sold to tenants under a rent-to-buy scheme. While the Labour left would have whined about privatisation, such a scheme would be a beautiful fusing of the politics of Michael Joseph Savage and Margaret Thatcher” – see: Why Housing Minister Phil Twyford must go (paywalled).

Any sort of mass programme of state building is unlikely, according to Newsroom’s Bernard Hickey, who argues that the current government is just too obsessed with leaving the private sector to fix the housing crisis (even via KiwiBuild, which essentially relies on the private sector), because they don’t want to have to spend money – see: How Phil Twyford lost housing and why KiwiBuild failed.

According to Hickey, the Government is “mindlessly” stuck in the “dark days of late 1980s”, keeping to rightwing fiscal policy that is “horribly out of date” and is precluding them from properly investing in things like state housing.

Hickey says this conservative thinking from Ardern, Robertson and Twyford is having horrible consequences: “They fear an unknown and yet-to-exist crisis in the future when a very present and known crisis exists right now and is right in front of their noses: a massive shortage of affordable and healthy housing that has consigned 250,000 kids to such poverty that 40,000 of them get so sick each year with respiratory and skin conditions they end up in hospital. Their parents are mired in working or non-working poverty that is impossible to break out of without affordable and healthy housing.”

So why is the lack of state house building under the current Government not causing outrage? Perhaps it’s because many people actually mistakenly believe that a massive building programme is already underway. While it’s certainly true that Labour is delivering more than National – which is hardly a surprise or something that Labour supporters can really see as a triumph – it’s still on a tiny scale and one that is more in line with National’s efforts than with current needs.

To get a sense of the increased state housing build, see Henry Cooke’s article, While KiwiBuild falters, state house build rockets ahead with ninefold increase. This article explains how it’s possible that the Government can argue there has been a massive increase in state housing: “There are 2700 state homes under construction, with 1389 due for completion before July 2020. In June 2016 just 282 homes were under construction.”

Although the National Party might quibble with those figures – especially since many of the new builds are actually houses planned and consented by the previous government – there has definitely been an increase. The problem is, given the burgeoning population and greater need resulting from worsening affordability of home ownership, it’s a tiny increase.

Significantly, even under Labour, the proportion of state houses will remain at its lowest point since the early 1990s. Back then, there was one state house for every 50 citizens, and now there is only one for every 70 – for more on this, see my Newsroom column from late last year: Will state housing fix what KiwiBuild can’t?

And many of the new state houses are merely replacing older state houses that have been demolished, meaning that the net increase of state houses is somewhat less impressive than the Government likes to suggest. The new builds also tend to be much smaller than previous state houses.

What’s more, when Housing New Zealand demolishes state houses, the new developments that replace them often involve the sale of some of that state housing land to private developers and KiwiBuild homes – see Mike Treen’s Phil Twyford the privatiser of state assets.

Added to that, not all “new social housing” is actually new. The incorporation of community and council housing into “public housing” means that the increasing house number count might be much less than is presented to the public. For example, earlier in the year Isaac Davison reported: Only one in four of Government’s new public housing places in Auckland are new builds. In this, it is explained that a large proportion of the supply of “new public housing” is actually “redirects” in which properties sourced from the private sector or “non-government providers – like councils or charities – are moved on to government funding”.

The community housing sector is also critical of the way the Government is funding social housing provision, which they say is benefiting the private sector developers. Isaac Davison and Ben Leahy have reported on this, citing one community housing provider worrying that “that Government funding will be pocketed by private owners” – see: ‘Short-sighted’: Govt looks to developers to ramp up social housing – angering non-profit groups.

The community sector is also disappointed that the Government isn’t funding them to build more social housing. Todd Niall reports: “Social housing providers in Auckland say they are being restricted by the absence of capital funding, once provided by the Government. One of the largest said it would not be able to continue building new homes, once its current programme of 167 homes is completed. The body representing 21 Auckland providers said the Government appeared to now be ignoring them, at a time when they could do more for those needing affordable homes” – see: Auckland social housing developers say building will stop because of government funding vacuum.

Meanwhile the housing affordability crisis for those at the bottom just gets worse, as indicated by the official state housing waiting list, which has doubled over the last couple of years and is at its highest point for a decade – see Henry Cooke’s Public housing waitlist climbs to 11,655 as winter begins to bite. And in addition to the increased numbers waiting for housing, waiting times seem much longer.

The factors behind the increase in state housing demand are discussed in Katarina Williams’ article, How NZ’s social housing problem is expected to worsen before it gets better. This also explains why “1261 public houses across the country were sitting vacant at the end of March”. And Auckland Action Against Poverty coordinator Ricardo Menendez March is quoted saying “The Government needs to ramp up the target of state homes being built if it is serious about making a dent on the social housing waiting list”.

And while the proportion of state houses continues to shrink, the private sector just becomes more and more profitable, with landlords continuously putting up rents, turning the “housing crisis” into a “rental crisis”. The latest report on this, out today, says that rents in the capital are growing twice as fast as wages – see Julie Iles’ Wellington rent rises outstripping wages and it’s tipped to get worse.

Finally, the Government’s low ambitions on state housing are putting lives at risk. This is best illustrated in a harrowing RNZ Checkpoint story and interview by Lisa Owen – watch: Working poor: The long, excruciating wait for a state house. This follows the story of one family, on the waiting list for more than four years despite their youngest child recently having “meningitis, prompting a doctor at Middlemore Hospital to write a letter saying the family’s overcrowded conditions were putting the baby’s health at risk.”

The chart shows what we in New Zealand would call the ‘progressive parties’ (ie leftwing) in red and green. Together they got 58 percent of the vote. What we in New Zealand would call a landslide win to the Left.

But no, the result was actually a landslide win to the Right – and quite a belligerent Right, given the new government’s propensity to cut back on government-funded services. The PC party scored 61 percent of the seats, leaving just 39 percent to the Left; the Conservatives are comfortably in charge in Ontario.

Canadian democracy is horribly distorted by the socalled ‘firstpastthepost’ voting system (never mind that the PCs never got close in Ontario to the 50% ‘post’ that constitutes a popular majority). Divided and ruledover is the fate of the Left in Ontario, and probably Canada too, especially when Ford moves over into Federal politics.

I cannot see much momentum to change. Ontario had a referendum in 2007. FPP soundly defeated MMP. A similar result (61% to 39%) occurred in British Columbia last year. Federal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abandoned his party’s commitment to electoral reform soon after taking office in 2016. The only hope seems to be little Prince Edward Island, which did support MMP in a popular referendum in 2016, and will hold another in October this year.

In a socially progressive (but arithmetically challenged) country, the divided Left can only beat the remorseless FPP arithmetic when it throws up charismatic personalities (such as Trudeau) as its leaders.

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The concept of a “woman’s right to choose” is at the centre of the demand for abortion liberalisation reform. Campaigners believe that neither the state nor doctors should have any say in whether a woman terminates a pregnancy. They want the current laws repealed so that the existing legal and practical barriers are removed, allowing individuals to freely obtain pregnancy terminations. And this was something promised by Jacinda Ardern during the 2017 election campaign.

However it’s not clear that this is going to be delivered. Instead, it looks more likely that only some barriers will be removed, meaning that a woman’s right to choose will be remain limited.

So far, the Government’s reform plans on abortion liberalisation are well behind schedule. Delays, produced by internal coalition negotiations, suggest that the reform agenda is in danger, and there must some risk that the promised legislation won’t get passed this year as planned.

Originally, a Cabinet decision was due at the end of last year, following the November publication of the Law Commission’s report on reform options. This report gave three options for reform – ranging from Option A (complete decriminalisation) to Option C (partial decriminalisation, based on a cut-off date of a 22-week gestation – after which a medical consultation process would still be necessary). And ever since then the Government has been suggesting that a decision is imminent.

The latest news on the abortion reform process came earlier this month in Claire Trevett’s article, Breakthrough sees possible abortion reforms back on track (paywalled). According to this, the Government appears to have decided on a reform option that would see a degree of liberalisation, with women being given the right to choose to have an abortion – without legal barriers – for the first 19 or 20 weeks of pregnancy. But after 19 or 20 weeks, any woman seeking a termination would still need to go through a consultation process with a doctor.

This amounts to the Government choosing the more conservative Option C from the Law Commission, but shifting the cut-off point forward from 22 weeks to 19 or 20. After that 19-20 weeks of pregnancy, abortion would essentially remain subject to the Crimes Act or something similar.

As Justice Minister Andrew Little said in an interview late last year, “If the threshold test is to have any meaning, there’s got to be consequences” – see Dan Satherley and Simon Shepherd’s Justice Minister Andrew Little backs removing legal restrictions on abortions up to 22 weeks. According to this report, “it’s not clear what would happen if an abortion was carried out after the 22-week threshold without meeting the statutory requirements”.

That article also points out that “During consultation almost all health professionals supported having no test.” This is also a point made by Eleanor Ainge Roy’s Guardian article, New Zealand pro-choice campaigners hail move towards abortion law reform. She reports that the Law Commission “found health practitioners and professional bodies were ‘almost unanimous’ in their support for model A.”

Furthermore, she reports that “Terry Bellamak, director of ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa, said model A was the only option that would make accessing abortion a more streamlined and dignified experience for women, many of whom found the existing system ‘degrading’.” This model – which asserts a woman’s right to choose at any stage of the gestation – is used in other countries such as Canada.

Bellamak also writes about this elsewhere, quoting Little’s justification for keeping a limit on women’s right to choose: “given the likely viability of the foetus there are public policy considerations that come into it that I think a GP should be held to when they are giving advice.” She provides her own interpretation of what Little means by this: “it looks like he’s saying women can’t be trusted not to request abortions later in pregnancy in situations where the doctor would be required to put a check on their wishes and deny their abortion in the interest of public policy. It implies women are likely to delay requesting abortions for reasons that are morally indefensible” – see: Four different perspectives on reproductive rights.

She points to the fact that “women in other countries have been deciding to receive abortion care without let or hindrance for yonks”, and therefore suggests that limiting a women’s right to abortion is “sexist” and “shows a complete lack of trust in women and pregnant people as fully autonomous human beings”. Furthermore, she argues that “the cultural narrative of a woman popping off to get an abortion on a whim at a late stage for morally indefensible reasons” is a “ridiculous lie”.

Another pro-choice campaigner, Liz Beddoe, says “Most people want the option which leaves the decision to terminate a pregnancy to the pregnant person and would enable self-referral to free and accessible services” – see: As US protection of abortion rights weakens, NZ should strengthen laws.

Beddoe is suspicious that the Government is watering down the reform agenda: “We were told by Minister of Justice Andrew Little that a decision would be announced in April. In the middle of May we have yet to hear that decision. Women are questioning what is happening behind the scenes? What rights are being traded as coalition politics pitting conservative New Zealand First politicians against Labour and the Green Party, both of which have promised reform? Will we yet again see our rights cynically traded for political favours? This is a watershed moment for women’s reproductive freedom in Aotearoa.”

A challenge is issued to the Prime Minister not to compromise: “Will the Prime Minister stand up to the misinformed, selfish zealots and deliver women a safe legal abortion service as promised? Women are watching and anything less than this, with protection of patients and health professionals from harassment, will not be forgiven. It’s time Prime Minister. This is the ‘well-being’ legislation we want.”

Most politicians are likely to favour the compromise solution of Option C. This is explained by Claire Trevett in her excellent overview article from late last year, in which she examines the orientation of various MPs and political parties to the prospect of reform – see: To the Barricades: The battle over abortion forty years on.

From this, it appears that the only MP who overtly favours complete decriminalisation of abortion is Act MP David Seymour. The Greens don’t seem to have come to a position on this, while the other parties are clearly divided. The overwhelming lesson of Trevett’s article is that virtually all politicians are treading very carefully for fear of offending voters  Even someone as normally outspoken as Judith Collins is noted as being reluctant to talk. And Jacinda Ardern, despite her promises of reform, wouldn’t be interviewed on the topic.

In contrast to the timidity of MPs on abortion reform, there seems to be a growing societal mood in favour of a “woman’s right to choose” on the matter. According to one recent poll, two-thirds of New Zealanders are in favour of a women’s right to choose – see Regan Paranihi’s Abortion survey: 66% support women’s right to choose.

A Newshub-Reid Research Poll in March also showed the majority want abortion decriminalised – see Tova O’Brien’s Revealed: Large majority of Kiwis want abortion law change.

Clearly politicians are struggling to catch up with the public on this issue. I wrote about the rise of abortion politics in New Zealand in two 2017 political roundup columns: Should abortion be decriminalised? and The uncomfortable abortion reform challenge. As I explained in these columns, there are some disappointing reasons that the issue of abortion law reform has been kept off the agenda and, although politicians lacked the courage of their convictions on this, they were being forced to confront a growing demand for change.

Late last year I also wrote about the rise in public acceptance of abortion: “Abortion has gradually become more acceptable to the wider public. Yet over that forty years politicians of all sides have effectively kicked for touch on the issue, happy with a compromise situation in which abortion laws have been draconian in theory, but liberal in practice. Therefore, the politicians – from Labour and National, alike – have simply not kept up with social progress” – see: The mild abortion “culture wars”.

In this article, I also tracked how the topic of abortion reform had heated up after a long period of inactivity. This is reflected in my research on media publications: “the number of published articles about abortion remained relatively stable since 1991, with normally about 700 published each year. But since 2017, the number of published articles mentioning “abortion” has started to skyrocket” reaching about 2000 articles last year.

Last week saw an explosion of new articles relating to abortion due to National MP Alfred Ngaro’s views on the matter being investigated. The MP shared a Facebook post comparing abortion to the holocaust, which he later expressed regret over saying abortion was, more accurately, a tragedy.  He also made a very contentious statement questioning the necessity of abortion reform: “Here’s the thing: Has any woman actually ever been made to feel like a criminal? Absolutely not. Those provisions have been there for some time”.

Ngaro also brought the discussion back to the question of when a “woman’s right to choose” begins and ends, “claiming the Government had suggested abortions up to the full term of 40 weeks as part of changes to abortion law” – see Katie Fitzgerald’s Government ‘poked the bear’ with discussion about abortion rights – Ngaro.

He argued the Government was being provocative in potentially giving women the right to choose at any point during gestation: “I tell you who poked the bear, it was this Government which decided in their recommendations they want to go from 20 weeks to 40 weeks. Now the question is do you think New Zealanders accept that? Absolutely not.”

Finally, partly in response to Ngaro’s claims, but also in reaction to the increased debate about abortion reform, there have been plenty of personal stories published of womens’ lived experiences of abortion and contraception – see, for example, Emma Espiner’s Abortion – a life on my terms, Lynn Williams’ On Abortion, and Paula Penfold’s Women are in fact made to feel criminal, Mr Ngaro.

That’s exactly what has happened with KiwiBuild. Labour politicians largely won office in 2017 on the basis of their scathing critique of how badly the National Government had managed issues of inequality and, in particular, the housing affordability crisis. Labour convinced voters they would take action on these problems, and their flagship housing construction policy would swiftly produce 100,000 “affordable” new homes.

It is now evident that Labour will not deliver on this, breaking their election promise. Therefore, commentators and opponents are increasingly talking about the possibility of Housing Minister Phil Twyford being sacked for his poor performance.

The heat was turned up last week, after Twyford gave an interview in which he suggested he was considering abandoning the KiwiBuild promise of delivering 100,000 houses – see Jenée Tibshraeny’s Twyford coy on 100,000-house KiwiBuild target.

This all comes in the context of Twyford and the Government saying that the KiwiBuild programme is now being “recalibrated”, by which they appear to mean that the whole programme is being re-evaluated and a re-launch is expected, in which some of the detail of the scheme might differ from what has been promised.

In the interview with Tibshraeny, Twyford says the recalibrated version will be announced in mid-June (a date that has been continually pushed back). In terms of the 100,000-house promise, he said this was something he’d been “looking at” but wouldn’t comment on, except to say: “It’s like American nuclear ships in the 1980s. It’s a neither confirm nor deny situation”. And since then, neither Twyford nor the Prime Minister have been able to confirm in Parliament that the promise still stands.

Reporting on this, Tova O’Brien pointed out that this wasn’t the first time Twyford has had to admit defeat on the targets: “In its first year, 1000 homes were supposed to be built. That promise was broken in January, and revised down to about 300. A KiwiBuild reset was announced then, but still the mother of all targets remained” – see: KiwiBuild: Is the Government’s flagship policy over?

O’Brien also pointed out that “Earlier this year, Phil Twyford said he’d stake his job on achieving the goals”, but “asked on Wednesday if he would resign, Twyford refused to answer and stormed off, as a proverbial storm brews for the Government.”

It’s still not entirely clear whether the 100,000 target stands or not. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is adamant that not only does it stand, but it will actually be surpassed. Jenna Lynch reports: “Peters is doubling down, saying the Government will build ‘a lot more’ than 100,000. He doesn’t believe the nay-sayers, telling the House that the KiwiBuild target is ‘easily achievable’. He even borrowed a line from US President Donald Trump: ‘The intention is to make this country great again’.” – see: KiwiBuild: Winston Peters says Govt will build ‘a lot more’ than 100,000 homes.

Duncan Garner has reacted to this, saying “Does Winston Peters think we are thick, or does he think we just aren’t watching and listening? We are Winston and it’s time to call you out, stop misleading the public on stuff that matters – housing” – see: KiwiBuild was Labour’s biggest promise, now it’s their biggest failure.

Garner says “it’s a total flop, 84 homes in 541 days, what a spluttering mess.” Looking at how disastrous the programme has been, he concludes that “KiwiBuild should be scrapped and you work on the things in housing that matter and work.”

For Mike Hosking, this was all inevitable and is typical of politicians: “You can’t build 100,000 houses in 10 years. You can’t, and shouldn’t, promise you can, because it isn’t real, it isn’t possible – and any promise to the contrary is dishonest, naive and bound to end in tears” – see: KiwiBuild collapse confirms this is a Government run by amateurs.

According to Hosking, Twyford should have resigned: “If this was a business deal, there would be legal action, the operators would be accused of fraud.”

Henry Cooke is also scathing, writing in the Sunday Star Times this week that KiwiBuild failure is more than a broken promise, it’s a betrayal. He says “this is not just one promise broken – it’s a betrayal of the very foundation Labour built its election campaign on.”

Cooke says that “some level of punishment” is now likely, and “Labour can expect a whole lot more hostility, of distrust in their promises. Its best issue has gone from go-to to embarrassment. It’s hard to come back from that.”

The 100,000 promise should be taken seriously says Cooke: “Now, specificity is its biggest problem. People remember a big number. Suddenly Housing Minister Phil Twyford is telling people he can’t guarantee that number any more, as the entire policy is ‘under review’. The review follows a string of smaller failures. The interim goal of 1000 in the first year was scrapped when it became clear KiwiBuild would have difficulty hitting even 100 homes.”

Cooke reports that there are still serious attempts within the bureaucracy to make KiwiBuild work: “The KiwiBuild unit within the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is hard at work signing up developers – the disappearance of the interim target and installation of new leader Helen O’Sullivan has allowed the team to re-assess what went wrong with some of the earlier developments.”

Yet there is an intrinsic problem with the KiwiBuild design, Cooke says: “The underlying issue for KiwiBuild is that it is a policy from the middle of last century transplanted into the 2010s. When Labour dreamt up KiwiBuild the party was in the middle of a profound identity crisis, and looked to its history for inspiration – a history that involved the first Labour Government building tens of thousands of state homes. But that Government did it with state-employed builders, a politically-controlled interest rate, and a very cushy deal for a guy named James Fletcher. That is simply not the way Governments are run these days.”

Similarly, Hamish Rutherford wrote in February that KiwiBuild is the solution you come up with when you don’t want to fix the problem. He argues that the Government is looking for a simple solution to the housing crisis but is inadvertently making things worse: “Rather than focus first and foremost on removing the barriers which make housing so expensive, the Government’s solution is to add fuel to the fire.”

This comment came in the wake of the Reserve Bank explaining that the KiwiBuild programme was actually going to “crowd out” other developers from constructing houses. Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr had explained that “If they [KiwiBuild] were going to build 100 houses, that means that between 50 and 75 houses elsewhere aren’t built.”

Commenting on this, Newsroom’s Thomas Coughlan said: “It added further evidence to fears the programme was broken beyond repair. A little over halfway through its first year, there appear to be two major issues with the programme. First, ironically, is a lack of demand. The houses are too expensive for most people. Second is a concern about houses being built in the wrong parts of the country” – see: Is KiwiBuild broken beyond repair?

The Otago Daily Times also seems to think that the building programme needs more than a recalibration. In a recent editorial it says that recent developments in KiwiBuild suggest it “has already lost the hearts and minds of those it was earmarked to help”, and it “appears to be in tatters” – see: Is it time of a KiwiBuild switch?

The newspaper believes that something can be salvaged from the wreckage, and the best possibility is that the Government turns it into a way of getting prefabricated construction going on a large scale instead: “Perhaps, then, it is time KiwiBuild’s champions accept defeat, drop the last of their targets and instead embrace pragmatism – by focusing the Government’s heft, with guarantees of funding and demand, solely on ensuring a powerful factory-built housing industry grows in New Zealand. It is not too late for a KiwiBuild shift away from its initial promises towards a market-led, Government-backed solution. Forget the targets, build the factories.”

So will the Minister be sacked? There are increasing calls for him to go, as well as forecasts that he will lose his job in the upcoming Cabinet reshuffle after the Budget. Certainly, there have been plenty of harsh criticisms of his performance. For example, in her assessment of all Cabinet Ministers, Audrey Young awarded Phil Twyford the lowest evaluation of four out of ten, saying this: “Made the classic Opposition mistake of over-simplifying the housing supply problem, then over-promising and under-delivering the solution, KiwiBuild” – see: Who rates highly in our Cabinet report card – and who disappoints? (paywalled).

Others are also suggesting he’s got problems. RNZ’s political editor Jane Patterson outlines some of the challenges in her report, Housing Minister Phil Twyford refuses calls for resignation over KiwiBuild.

She also quotes economist Shamubeel Eaqub saying the programme needed major change if it was to survive: “I’m not optimistic that we will see a big reset but I think we need a fundamental repositioning of KiwiBuild if it is to succeed. In its current form it is doomed to fail”.

Jane Patterson also deals well with the latest bureaucratic problems in the scheme, especially controversy over how officials are determining which property developers to provide financial backing to in underwriting their house construction – see: Phil Twyford’s credibility questioned over changing answers on KiwiBuild.

Here’s the key point about this “additionality test”: “Twyford is under fire for a series of statements he and his ministry have made about the oversight of the Crown underwrite – hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars committed to shift the risk from property developers to the Crown by promising a guaranteed price.”

The underwriting of private developers’ KiwiBuild constructions has become an issue, given that Twyford has redirected the scheme to incorporate houses that were already planned or being constructed in the private market. And last month it was revealed that most of the new “KiwiBuild homes” had not started out as such – see Jason Walls’ Half of all KiwiBuild homes already under construction before being brought into the programme. In this article, National’s housing spokeperson, Judith Collins, comments that this change means that “KiwiBuild is just a welfare scheme for property developers”.

On this point, Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, has also been cutting: “If the aim is to increase the supply of housing because we’re not building fast enough and that’s contributing to the affordability programme, then Phil Twyford’s modus operandi to date of walking down the street, finding a house that’s already being built, and slapping a KiwiBuild sticker on is patently stupid and nothing more than window dressing” – see Susan Edmunds’ Huapai KiwiBuild homes had already been tried for sale on open market.

Kiernan has more to say: “However, if the aim of the programme is to effectively provide a taxpayer subsidy to help a select and lucky few people into their first home, then selling at a discounted rate to first-home buyers fits the objective. Because, as I’ve previously argued, the Government doesn’t really know what it wants to achieve with the policy beyond virtue signalling, KiwiBuild is fast slipping towards the lesser latter aim than the more admirable and fundamentally more important goal of genuinely trying to fix the housing affordability crisis.”

For more arguments about the major changes needed to make KiwiBuild work, see Susan Edmunds’ KiwiBuild ‘almost no chance of success’ in current form.

Finally, for more comment on the KiwiBuild scheme, see my updated blog post, Cartoons about Labour’s KiwiBuild and the housing crisis.

The Labour-led Government’s decision to hold a referendum should be celebrated – even by those who wish to oppose liberalisation. It allows a societal debate on an issue of importance for many people. The Green Party should also be thanked for progressing the question.

That doesn’t mean the newly-announced referendum process for next year has been well-designed. Unfortunately there seems to be plenty of room for things to go wrong. There is certainly going to be confusion and uncertainly as a result of how the Government has decided to proceed with the referendum.

For the single best item on the referendum announced on Tuesday, see Henry Cooke’s Explainer: The cannabis referendum and why it isn’t binding. This clearly provides all the detail on what we know about the referendum and what is being proposed.

For example, Cooke explains that the proposal is about “legalisation” rather than “decriminalisation”: “It sets up a full legal process for the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis. Decriminalisation does none of this – instead just removing the penalty for consumption and possession, rather than actively setting up a regulated market.”

Plenty of other details are provided about aspects of the proposal to do with sharing cannabis with friends, using it as payment for a tradie (you wouldn’t be allowed to), and the legal control of products like cannabis edibles, lotions, and resins.

But the more important part is the issue of whether the referendum would be a binding one or just an “indicative” one. And Cooke explains that this particular referendum will only be “indicative” to whatever government is elected next year. And there will be plenty of potential for that government to ignore the referendum or indeed to change the proposed reforms, so that voters could end up getting something different to what they are voting for.

Cooke points out that Justice Minister Andrew Little has tried to argue otherwise – to make out that the referendum will in fact be binding – but “This does not conform with what basically anyone else describes as ‘binding’ – including his own justice ministry.”

The fact that significant changes to the proposals could still occur after the public have voted in the referendum is confirmed in the advice of the Ministry of Justice to the Government, which was quite explicit: “There is also a risk that the legislation, if introduced, could be changed significantly by the next Parliament or Government before it is enacted.”

This is examined by Thomas Coughlan, who writes: “It’s not unusual for legislation to change during the legislative process, particularly as interest groups and the public give their input at select committee. Many of these changes are minor and to do with the drafting of the bill, however some can be substantive. David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill is likely to be changed substantively; at first reading it applied to people with terminal illness or a grievous and irremediable medical condition, but it’s likely to be restricted to just terminal illness when it returns to Parliament for its second reading” – see: Non-binding referendum open to many changes.

This article also quotes constitutional law expert Graeme Edgeler suggesting that voters cannot trust that the referendum will lead to the changes: “It’s exactly as binding as any other political party promise prior to an election”. The article also reports that “Edgeler noted that it was possible a party, likely National, could interpret a ‘yes’ vote as a vote for change, but enact substantively different legislation.”

Andrew Little also admits that changes to the proposed cannabis rules – such as the age threshold of 20 years – could occur after the public had voted, saying “For departure from the policy there would have to be a very compelling case to do so… I can’t believe there would be any compelling case to reduce that, there would have to be a compelling case to increase it”.

Coughlan’s article quotes Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern being tighter about post-referendum changes being made to the rules: “On the principles that have been determined we need to stick to those so that the public have some assurance so that what they vote for would then either not proceed or does proceed… We need to give the assurance to the public is that the core principles and substantive policy decisions will remain the same”.

Green Party Drugs Spokesperson Chloe Swarbrick is also reported as believing that “it was unlikely that any party would want to substantially alter legislation put to the public in the 2020 referendum”. Swarbrick says “There would be substantive political cost” for any party making substantial changes to what the public had voted on.

Nonetheless, it seems voters are being asked to trust the politicians. Blogger Pete George is unhappy with this: “They are asking voters to trust that politicians will honour the will of the voters, some undetermined time after the next election. That doesn’t fill me with confidence. It looks like the Greens have got as much as they can, but NZ First are not as committed to voters deciding via referendums as they have made out, and Labour have allowed a Clayton’s binding referendum to be proposed. National don’t look trustworthy on this either, with the positions of Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett shifting at a car barking rate” – see: Cannabis referendum – trust the politicians?

Blogger, No Right Turn, thinks the exercise has turned into a farce, suggesting that the Labour Party has gone with a non-binding referendum as a soft-option in which they don’t have to pass contentious legislation that might lose them votes: “they don’t want to pay the political cost of actually making it happen, preferring for change to happen by magic instead. And so instead of a binding referendum with certainty not just about the proposal, but that it will actually happen, they’re giving us a glorified public opinion poll with no certainty at all. And under those circumstances, I’m not sure why anyone should bother participating in the farce” – see: Not binding.

He also argues that the decision by the Government to make the referendum non-binding was a strategic one, designed to encourage people to vote for Labour, New Zealand First or the Greens, or risk the referendum result being ignored by a National government: “In other words: if you want cannabis legalised, you have to re-elect the government. And so a binding referendum has been transformed into a naked scam for votes, so Labour Ministers can keep their jobs and their one-percenter salaries. They are treating the public with utter contempt here. And we should punish them for it” – see: The fix.

Other commentators are actually very happy about the non-binding nature of the referendum. Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking argues that it means a vote for change might not actually result in change: “the good news in the government’s cannabis vote announcement is we are voting on proposed legislation that will be enacted only if this lot gets back into power. It potentially won’t be enacted as voted, or indeed at all. It’s important to understand the nuance of all of this. What we will vote on, and what will pass in the Parliament, are two very different things. And that is, of course, if there is a yes vote. And this is where New Zealand First will once again save us – they will ‘CGT it’ if the three pronged coalition is re-elected” – see: There’s hope we can stop the legalisation of cannabis.

The Government has deliberately decided to go for the more confusing and uncertain option. Cooke explains in his article: “The way to avoid this situation would have been to pass a bill enacting the law changes now, but include a clause that means it only has power if the referendum returns a ‘yes’ vote. This is called a ‘self-executing referendum’ and is how the referendums on MMP and the flag were designed. A ‘self-executing’ referendum was the preference of the Green Party during negotiations.”

That’s why a lot of commentators are seeing this as a major loss for the Greens. Barry Soper says the result of the referendum passing will be uncertain: “what finally ends up in the mix is anybody’s guess. So this isn’t the binding referendum the Greens signed up for when they agreed to give the Government the numbers to take office” – see: So-called binding cannabis referendum latest dead rat for Greens to swallow.

Claire Trevett suggests today that the Greens naively and mistakenly trusted New Zealand First would support the referendum being binding (in a trade-off for the Greens voting for the “waka jumping law against their own principles”) – see: Cannabis referendum ‘stoners tax’ could be golden haze for the Government (paywalled).

According to Trevett, New Zealand First then vetoed the referendum being binding. She says that a Cabinet meeting in December of last year actually made the decision to make the referendum binding, but Winston Peters was overseas at the time, and when Cabinet next met the decision was reversed.

Here’s the key part: “What seems likely is that NZ First realised it would have to vote in favour of that legislation to legalise cannabis rather than treat it as a conscience issue. That is something many of its MPs would not easily stomach. It also noticed the Greens’ agreement did not promise a binding referendum, but simply a referendum. Words matter, as Peters constantly says. So what was delivered was the promise of draft legislation which may or may not be pursued in the next term.”

This is a big problem according to former Cabinet Minister Peter Dunne. In a column looking back at the history of government-initiated referendums, he says that this “will be the first Government-initiated referendum not to have an immediate definitive outcome. Despite being styled as a binding referendum, it will, in reality, be no more than an indicative vote” – see: Sophistry and bollocks on the referendum (paywalled).

Dunne outlines a lot of the uncertainty and confusion that could result from the way the referendum process has been established, especially in regard to what happens with the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill currently before Parliament.

He laments that this was entirely unnecessary: “All this uncertainty creates a potentially extraordinarily confusing situation, which could have been avoided had the specific law been in place before the referendum, to be triggered by a positive vote. Everyone would have known not only where things would stand once the law changed, but it will also occur immediately, removing instantly the uncertainty likely to accrue from the inevitable post referendum delay and confusion the government’s current approach will surely cause.”

In conclusion, Dunne ponders whether this will be just another in a list of promised reforms that haven’t worked out under this government: “Is cannabis law reform therefore about to join welfare, tax reform, electoral reform and a raft of other things this Government says it would ‘love’ to do properly, but, when the crunch comes, just cannot ever quite manage to bring together in a cohesive and comprehensive way?”

Finally, for the two must-read constitutional analyses of whether it’s a problem that the cannabis referendum isn’t binding, see Graeme Edgeler’s What we know about the cannabis referendum in 10 easy questions, and Andrew Geddis’ Sorry, but the cannabis vote is going to look a lot like the flag referendum.

Auckland Council is split into two significant blocks, referred to as Goff’s A-team and his opposition, the B-team, which is often strategically positioned by Manurewa-Papakura ward Councillor Daniel Newman.

Over the past twelve months, the B-Team has siphoned support off the Mayor, and can claim some big hit wins, including out-politicising Goff over the city’s stadium-strategy and also winning a reprieve for Speedway, effectively ensuring the sport is able to continue operating at Western Springs albeit for a finite period.

Auckland Council’s CCO, Regional Facilities Auckland (RFA), has come under significant attack by the B-Team, and Newman singles it out for pushing what he calls, a “disastrous Venue Development Strategy”.

The B-Team councillors want to have some of the CCOs axed and the structure of Auckland’s supercity council reformed.

Newman’s reaction to the Mayor’s campaign promise suggests at least half of the city’s councillors believe Goff’s move is tepid and will not correct a power imbalance where CCOs have too much control and elected councillors are rendered ineffective due to the legal and corporate structure of the Auckland supercity.

CCOs were initially set at seven, but now number five. They are: Auckland Transport, Watercare, Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (Ateed), Regional Facilities Auckland and Panuku Development Auckland.

The supercity was designed in 2010 by former leader of the ACT party, Rodney Hide. He was then the local government minister in John Key’s National-led Government and was given free-reign to restructure and legislate to pull all of the greater Auckland region’s city and district councils under one supercity umbrella.

Hide, like those of his party, ideologically believed Auckland’s councillors had too much say in the city’s affairs, and structured the new Auckland Council so that the CCOs could effectively operate undeterred as commercial entities or elites. Problems arose when the CCOs were seen to under-perform (as Auckland Transport did during the Rugby World Cup). They were seen by the public as beyond reach and faceless corporate entities.

Under the current structure, there’s a sense that at least half of the city’s elected councillors feel they are unable to adequately represent their constituents – even when they inject a good dose of public interest into their politics.

Clearly, something has to change. On one side, the current Mayor Phil Goff promises to have an ‘independent review’ of the CCO structure. On the other hand, Daniel Newman and the B-Team want some CCOs to be axed, brought under control, and for councillors to again become effective representatives of their respective communities.

For more, read Mayor Phil Goff’s view in the New Zealand Herald report by Bernard Orsman titled: Auckland Mayor Phil Goff promises review of council-controlled organisations if re-elected

For Councillor Daniel Newman’s view, read below:

Not good enough. This is completely insufficient and is doomed to deliver no meaningful change.

I am not surprised that Mayor Phil Goff reportedly favours appointing “… four independent people” to review council-controlled organisations (CCOs). Nor am I surprised that he reportedly has no fixed plans to axe any of these organisations.

I have come to the conclusion that Mayor Goff prefers to appoint ‘independent people’ to undertake review exercises such as this one because it’s a convenient way to avoid taking a controversial decision.

Here’s a better option: how about we axe CCOs that are not fit for purpose.

The most obvious CCO to go would have to be Regional Facilities Auckland (RFA). That CCO’s performance in relation to its disastrous Venue Development Strategy has bled support within the community for years.

The debacle over trying to turf speedway out of its spiritual home at Western Springs is a case in point. I note that years of forecasting the demise of Western Springs as a venue for speedway was reversed after approximately one week of bad publicity and 30,000 (THIRTY THOUSAND) Aucklanders signing a petition declaring they wont stand for that eviction.

The EBITDA results for stadia run by RFA is inferior to the financial performance of Eden Park. The financial performance of RFA in relation to other entities like the Auckland Art Gallery isn’t much better, frankly. Quarterly meetings with RFA have become something of a ritual …. questions from me and colleagues like John Watson and Wayne Walkerabout unfavourable results against financial targets elicit sobering reflections about the need to constantly review assumptions etc etc. You get the picture?

I support Watercare Services Limited but I think Panuku is the product of the wrong strategy to sell-down too many publicly-owned landholdings when in fact you hold assets to build your wealth. But the A-team are generally the practitioners of asset sales, which surprises me as many of them claim to come from the Left-side of politics. As from ATEED, it was Mayor Goff’s decision to promote the controversial Accommodation Provider Targeted Rate, which (wrongly) rates the capital value of property rather than bed-nights (and which is now subject to a judicial review in the High Court).

Unlike the majority of my colleagues I did not vote to put the boot into Auckland Transport in April 2019. I am surprised the Mayor did but suspect it had more to do with political calculation.

Mayor Goff removed elected councillors from the board of Auckland Transport. The Mayor took the decision to remove Christine Fletcher and Mike Lee from the board of directors, thus removing an immediate reference to the community that elects regional councillors.

Mayor Goff championed the regional fuel tax despite that tax being hypothecated. A hypothecated tax does not provide for revenue derived from charging my constituents 10 cents per litre of fuel at the pump with the means easily move that revenue around to address community need and community expectation in the transport space. This is something that colleagues like Fa’anana Efeso Collins, Mike Lee, Greg Sayers, Desley Simpson, Sharon Stewart, Sir John Walker and I pointed out.

Mayor Goff lamented Auckland Transport’s no-show at St Heliers (but I do pay tribute to Desley Simpson who is a formidable advocate for her constituents). Did he front similar meetings at other centres subject to painful and controversial changes such at the Mt Albert and Mt Eden town centre upgrades?

This campaign promise is a bland one.

Have the political left and supporters of the Labour-led Government been conned again? Big changes were promised in welfare reform, but with the response to the just-released working group report on the welfare system, it looks like very little is actually going to be delivered.

Of course, the left has already been feeling shocked and disillusioned by Jacinda Ardern’s capitulation over the capital gains tax proposals, which is raising serious questions about the Government’s promised “Year of Delivery”. And now the weak response to the Welfare Experts Advisory Group report is essentially “Capitulation Number Two”.

Once again, the Government has opted for caution and conservatism instead of making bold reforms recommended by experts. Leftwing supporters and those who care about a properly functioning welfare system are outraged.

The report released on Friday was radical, with a solid critique of the state of the welfare system, and 42 recommendations for fixing it. But the Government response has fallen vastly short. The Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, has come out to say that only three of those recommendations will be taken up. Of course, she’s suggesting that more reforms might happen in the future, but few observers appear to have confidence in that eventuating.

One of the best explanations of the Government’s response is Henry Cooke’s column yesterday Greens fail to win major change with welfare review.

In terms of the three working group proposals chosen by the Government, Cooke explains these are hardily bold: “Given the sweep of the report, these changes seem pretty small. Labour and the Greens have been campaigning on removing the sanction since before the election, and have delayed doing it until this report has come back. The change won’t go into effect until April 1, 2020. The sensible abatement rate changes track with minimum wage hikes and are so non-controversial that National agree with them. New staff are hired all of the time. You can even quantify the smallness. The changes as a whole will cost $286.8m over four years. The working group estimated its full suite of changes would cost $5.2b a year – more than the Government’s entire operating allowance.”

Activist and former Green Party MP, Sue Bradford isn’t mincing her words, saying the Government’s “dismal” response to the report recommendations indicates it’s “neoliberal”, by which she means economically-rightwing and still clinging to Establishment and punitive approaches of the last few decades – see: No hope for progressive welfare reform from this government.

Bradford includes the Green Party in this critique. She says the Greens are good at saying the right thing on welfare but, when it counts, the party is wedded to neoliberal practice. Bradford concludes that for the political left, this latest capitulation proves that a new leftwing political party is necessary.

Other commentators are also acknowledging the Greens’ failure to secure welfare reform. Henry Cooke points out that the party had increased its reputation with the left and the poor on the basis of their 2017 election campaign on reforming the welfare system, but says “The Greens are not living up to Metiria Turei’s promise of transformation.” Given that they promised so much, but are delivering so little, he suggests they now “need to be asking questions of themselves”.

Disappointment with the Greens on this appears widespread amongst activists. Leftwing blogger Steve Cowan says that it’s a failure of Green Party leadership, and especially of co-leader Marama Davidson, who he says “has proven to be yet another routine establishment politician betraying the interests of the very people she claims to represent” – see: Why is Marama Davidson in Parliament?

His disillusionment is clear: “We’ve been shafted again. Watching Marama Davidson blandly smiling as Sepuloni denied beneficiaries and the poor a better and more secure future reminded me that in 2017 Davidson was making speeches at South Auckland rallies, lambasting the National Government’s failure to address growing poverty and inequality. All that passion has faded away to bland smiles and empty words trotted out about she knows about the hardship that many people are enduring and that she will continue to work hard for them.”

And for Cowan it’s not just a case of Davidson and her caucus lacking courage, but that they have essentially revealed their true colours now that they are in power: “But her ‘radicalism’, if it was ever there in the first place, has gone missing in the impenetrable centrist fog that now clings to the Green Party like a wet blanket. She displays exactly the same kind of reverence for ‘politics as usual’ centrist politics displayed by the Labour-led government and her fellow Green MPs”.

On the report and the Government response in general, Cowan is highly sceptical, suggesting there’s been an attempt to bury this embarrassing capitulation: “Was it just a coincidence that Jacinda Ardern’s engagement to Clarke Gayford was announced on the very same day that the Labour-led government announced its shocking response to the Whakamana Tangata: Restoring Dignity to Social Security in New Zealand report? If the motive really was to deflect attention that Jacinda Ardern and her government have shafted ordinary people once again, it kinda worked. The engagement news was the leading item on one of the six o’clock news bulletins (TV3’s Newshub) while it was trending number one on Twitter for most of the day, with the welfare report nowhere to be seen” – see: Government response to welfare report is a shocker.

Others have also expressed scepticism about the Government’s handling of the release of the report. Some have noted that the timing for the release and response from the Government was late on a Friday, and at a similar time to the long-anticipated (but thwarted) Pike River Mine re-entry attempt.

Auckland University economist and welfare expert Susan St John declared her suspicion: “Releasing the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report at 2pm Friday (3rd May) just before the weekend at a far-flung West Auckland venue miles from the train station was a masterstroke of political strategy”, and she complained that the actual launch that she attended was strangely uninformative – see: I am not a conspiracy theorist but….

St John suggests that the whole working group approach lacked transparency and public engagement: “For 11 months no one breathed a whisper of what the WEAG was concocting. All consultation was one way to the WEAG with no outsider trusted to respond to any of the development of ideas. In stark contrast with the Tax Working Group process, no background papers and no interim report were released. There were no public forums preceding the report, and no interviews were given”.

She reports from the launch that the audience were less than impressed with the proposals being adopted, and the timeframes involved: “The Minister’s pre-Budget announcements were breath-taking in their superficiality. There were audible gasps of disbelief when she announced that the sanction applied to sole parents who do not name the father of their children would not come in until 2020.  Another lowlight was very minor changes to the abatement thresholds that are to be phased in over 4 years.”

St John is also highly critical of the “lost opportunity” to fix many different elements of the welfare system such as Working For Families. And she suggests Labour is incapable of facing these problems with the welfare system because the party is complicit in creating many of them.

There are so many important recommendations in the report that the Government appear to be ignoring, but the biggest is benefit levels. Henry Cooke explains this best: “The report presents a coherent argument for greatly increasing benefit rates, indexing them to inflation, and reforming the way relationships are treated by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). It makes the point that relative to wages, benefit rates have fallen an extremely long way since reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. If implemented, this report would truly represent an ‘overhaul’ of the benefit system, and this Government could make a pretty good claim to being ‘transformational’.”

The issue of benefit levels is discussed by Tim Watkin in his excellent column, Another chance to be transformational rejected… Labour’s cautious welfare response. He says the report “recommended a massive 47 percent increase in current benefit levels. Those would be hugely controversial reforms… or, you could say, transformational. Because the report says if its recommendations were adopted it would lift 40 percent of children in poverty out of that plight. And that it could be done in two years.”

Watkin explains one of the reasons for the proposed increase is the increasing gap between beneficiary incomes and others: “What people seldom consider though is that since then wages and salaries have continued to grow. Super, linked to wages, has grown to. But other benefits – with any increases linked to inflation, not wage growth – have not been increased nearly as much. Until, that is, John Key and Bill English famously raised them in 2015. So the gap between work and welfare has grown since the 1990s”.

Therefore, on this rejected recommendation and many others, Watkin says Labour and the Greens are showing their real colours: “Sepuloni agrees the welfare system is not working. Greens co-leader Marama Davidson agrees the welfare system is not working. And then they commit to ignore the report’s big recommendations. They say no to up to 47 percent benefit increases, preferring ‘a staged implementation’. The call for ‘urgent change’ is rejected. Remarkably, Davidson has put her quotes into the same press release with Sepuloni, tying the Greens to this approach when they could have been dissenting from the rafters. The political and institutional reality is that no government can make these changes overnight. But the cold water thrown on this report underlines what we’ve learnt about this government in its handling of tax, its debt level, labour reform and more. It is not just incremental, it looks timid. There is certainly no sign of it being transformational.”

Once again, therefore, as with other potentially-transformative change in key areas for the political left, the Government has lost its political values and courage: “Ardern has political capital to burn after the Christchurch attacks and twice in three weeks she has chosen not to spend it. She has the political cover of National having increased benefits under Key (so just how critical could Bridges be?)… Yet Labour has chosen not to go to the wall for something it believes in. Again.”

But not all is lost. The report is going to have an ongoing impact. Max Rashbrooke writes about how the report represents a major change in thinking about beneficiaries. Previous and existing models saw “welfare recipients as akin to naughty children, needing a harsh overseer”, whereas “the experts’ report is an attempt to put a nurturing, caring assistant at the heart of the welfare system” which sees beneficiaries as needing support – see: At last welfare emphasis will move from punishment to support.

Also, although Chris Trotter bemoans that the fiscal conservatism of Finance Minister Grant Robertson is behind the Government’s rejection of progressive welfare reforms, he thinks there is still a good chance that Robertson and Sepuloni might yet be able to create a new world “of ‘active’ labour market management and planning” – see: The State and welfare: Opportunity or cost?

Finally, for a first-hand account of how well the welfare system works (or doesn’t), and how life on a benefit could be improved, see Hannah McGowan’s The dehumanising reality of life on a benefit in New Zealand.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

It really was a shock for the political left. The capital gains tax, in some form or another, was accepted as a major part of the battle to create a more equal New Zealand. It had come to symbolise the struggle against much of what has gone wrong in our society in recent decades. So there was a lot invested in people’s minds about the necessity of some form of capital gains tax that would hit the wealthy, and level a playing field that had become so distorted.

Of course, it was widely recognised prior to yesterday’s announcement that any new capital gains tax was likely to be watered-down. In fact, many on the left were already critical that the Government had set up the Tax Working Group with a heavily watered-down remit in which major exemptions were expected, including the expectation that a CGT would be fiscally neutral.

But few expected that the Government would reject any form of CGT – let alone Jacinda Ardern’s outright rejection of even revisiting the issue in the future.

Anger and disappointment on the left

For many on the left, the decision is an indictment of the whole idea that this Government will be transformational. Danyl Mclauchlan argues that the CGT programme was one of four key policies agendas for this Government – the others being KiwiBuild, the Carbon Zero Act, and the Wellbeing Budget – and there are clear problems now in delivering them – see his column, Four months in, Labour’s ‘year of delivery’ is a disaster.

He despairs that Labour axed the tax after first initiating “one of the most bafflingly disastrous public policy debates imaginable, making John Key’s flag-change campaign look like the Normandy landings”.

He says any strategic wins from ditching the tax, will come “at a cost of one of Labour’s most important, long-term policies, and it was their failure to control their coalition partner or even attempt to make the argument for taxation reform that forced them to pay such a bitterly high price.”

Mclauchlan argues that Ardern could have won the debate and got a mandate for the changes, but simply didn’t bother. In contrast, even John Key, managed to use his political capital to campaign on and win unpopular policies.

Other leftwing bloggers are very unhappy. No Right Turn is now calling for a leftwing boycott of the Labour Party: “If you want change, don’t vote Labour, don’t donate to Labour, don’t volunteer for Labour. Give your vote, your money, your time and effort to another party, any other party that promises change, than the one who betrayed you. Because if you don’t, Labour will continue to treat you like a fool, and continue to promise change while delivering none” – see: Don’t get fooled again.

They also argue the decision means the Government won’t have the money to afford many of their future policy goals: “Effective policy costs money, and this government has just robbed itself of that vital tool. Remember this next time they plead “poverty” as an excuse for not doing something: they chose to be poor. They chose to have a government which could not afford things. They chose to not be able to do the things they promised” – see: The cost of cowardice.

This idea is expounded in detail by inequality researcher Max Rashbrooke, who argues that many other Government priorities will now be hamstrung by the lack of future revenue: “building more state homes, eliminating introduced predators, and repairing mental health services, among others – also require significant funds, again well above what will be generated under existing tax settings” – see: Capital gains tax shutdown threatens govt’s other plans.

In particular, “Consider the Prime Minister’s pledge to halve child poverty within a decade, possibly the political priority closest to her heart. It is very difficult to see how that can be achieved without the $3.4 billion a year that the capital gains tax was, according to the most recent estimate, going to raise.”

Of course, some are suggesting that the left shouldn’t be too hard on Ardern and Labour, because they had to deal with the reality of MMP and it was New Zealand First who wouldn’t budge on the CGT.

David Farrar debunks this idea: “The reality is Labour choose not to proceed. How do we know this? Simple. Ardern’s announcement that Labour won’t implement a CGT ever ever ever while she is leader. If this was simply about NZ First, then Ardern would have said we don’t have the numbers in this Parliament for it, but we believe this is important and we’ll try again when we do get the numbers. This is what National said when they didn’t get the numbers for RMA reform” – see: Analysing the CGT back down.

What’s more, Farrar argues that if Labour had really wanted to, they could have got their coalition partner onside: “A deal could have been done with Winston. If Labour really wanted to get the numbers to pass it this Parliament, then of course a deal could be struck for some form of a CGT. This is what politics is about. Look at the oil and gas ban decision. That went against NZ First’s interests just as much as a CGT would. NZ First backed it because they did a deal in exchange for their waka jumping law. Labour could have offered NZ First some other wins if they had wanted to.”

So will Labour Party activists now lose some of their faith in Ardern and their government? One news article provides mixed reports on this – see Jason Walls’ Long-time Labour activists don’t think the party will be too hurt from CGT rejection. For example, former Labour Party President Mike Williams suggests that although there are “elements of, particularly the unions and the extreme left of the Labour Party, which would be annoyed”, he “did not think the wider Labour Party base would be too worried about the CGT rejection”.

But Newshub’s Anna Bracewell-Worrall reports that “Labour is facing a massive backlash from its base for ditching any hope of a capital gains tax (CGT) – even Young Labour and the ever-loyal unions are fuming” – see: Young Labour furious at capital gains tax backdown, leak reveals.

According to this report, “Newshub’s been leaked a discussion from a secret Young Labour Facebook group revealing they’re frustrated with the decision. The Labour Party faithful say they’re ‘mighty disappointed’ and ‘exponentially angry at New Zealand First’s role’, and complaining of ‘unfulfilled promises’.”

Questions about political leadership and courage

It’s not just the political left expressing surprise at Labour’s capitulation on the CGT. Some media have also challenged Ardern on why she has given up on what was supposedly a central and principled part of her philosophical agenda.

At the Prime Minister’s announcement, Newsroom journalist Thomas Coughlan asked the very pointed question of Ardern: “Are you worried you now lead the party of capital, rather than labour?” And now he’s followed this up with an article suggesting that rather than Ardern and her Government implementing transformation, it’s actually them who are transforming – into a cautious and weak government not willing to make the hard and necessary decisions – see: Capital gains tax: Let’s not do this.

Newspaper editorials have also challenged the convictions of the Government. Yesterday, the Dominion Post asked if the decision came out of “cowardice or pragmatism”, but suggested the two are indistinguishable anyway. The editorial suggested more debate and leadership had been required for the CGT proposals to get off the ground: “Labour voters were evenly split on the pros and cons of a capital gains tax. It is a situation where brave political leadership and persuasion were required but for whatever reasons, a deep and thorough debate about fair and unfair tax failed to eventuate” – see: Capital gains tax: Political capital but for what gain?

The newspaper says that Ardern had a “a failure of nerve”, and laments that an opportunity has been missed: “If there was ever a moment when significant change to the tax system could have happened, as the fairness and transformation her Government promised, that moment was now.” And there’s the question of “if the Tax Working Group was merely an expensive waste of time with a predetermined outcome.”

Likewise, according to the New Zealand Herald, “The decision has the hallmarks of pragmatism rather than strong leadership”, leaving “little evidence so far that Ardern will make tough but unpopular decisions to deliver on her convictions” – see: Capital Gains Tax surprise raises doubts on coalition.

The newspaper, which mentions its own support for more capital gains taxes, complains that the decision-making process on this vital issue leaves a lot to be desired: “If laws were introduced only when there was a mandate, we might as well be governed by a series of weekly referenda.”

Many political commentators are quite amazed at just how easily Ardern has capitulated on the issue. For example, Tim Watkin, says the decision “is truly remarkable. She didn’t deliver what Labour wanted. She didn’t get even a compromise version. She got nothing. Zip. Nada. Nil. What good is power if you are unable – or too cautious or too timid or not savvy enough – to wield it? If Ardern can’t stare down or cajole Peters now, with the world at her feet, voters are left to assume she will never be able to. And if she is not able or prepared to go to the wall for a policy like this – a Labour passion and bugbear, something she made a ‘captain’s call’ on, a policy with inter-generational ramifications – then what will it take?” – see: Jacinda Ardern thuds back to earth thanks to NZF’s ‘carefully generated torpedo’ (CGT).

And one commentator says that this episode proves Gareth Morgan was right to argue in 2017 that Ardern wasn’t up to producing transformational change, but was just “the lipstick on the pig” of a conservative Labour Party – see Jamie Ensor’s ‘Lipstick’s come off the pig’: Sean Plunket blasts PM Ardern’s capital gain tax backdown. Plunket says: “She was never really committed to it in the first place. She was just lipstick, there was no substance” and now the “lipstick has come off the pig”.

Finally, although many are viewing the CGT capitulation as a failure of leadership and conviction, there’s an argument to be made that it was actually worse than this – and the entire exercise was executed in bad faith. Writing on the RNZ website, I suggest that perhaps there was never any real intention to implement a capital gains tax – see: Signs Labour didn’t intend to implement capital gains tax.

Perhaps the public has looked at the Tax Working Group proposals for a capital gains tax and come back with a “no”. Certainly, the opinion poll published last night about the tax proposals looked quite definitive – the headline for Tova O’Brien’s Newshub scoop was: Large majority of New Zealanders don’t want capital gains tax – poll.

According to Newshub, a poll by Reid-Research – the polling company contracted to TV3 – “shows an overwhelming majority of voters – 65 percent – don’t think a CGT should be a priority for the Government. The poll found that just 22.8 percent think it should be a priority.”

More importantly, nearly 50 per cent opposed a capital gains tax on housing (with the family home exempt), against 39 per cent in favour. On the issue of businesses and farms being included, 54 per cent disagreed and 32 per cent agreed. And 69 per cent disagreed with a tax on shares, and 90 per cent disagreed with another tax on KiwiSaver.

Based on this poll, Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking has come out this morning to say the Government will ignore this poll at its peril: “If these numbers don’t wake them up, it might well be the break National have so badly been waiting for” – see: Numbers don’t lie, time for the Government to wake up over CGT.

In particular, Hosking says, it’s New Zealand First who will be most concerned: “these numbers, I would have thought, are about the final nail in the coffin for New Zealand First, who most see as the moderator of any excess that comes out of the Cullen report. If they weren’t hesitant to sign up before, surely the polling we’ve seen now is about as rock solid by way of proof as you could ever possibly want.”

Business NZ’s questionable data

However, Newshub’s Reid-Research poll wasn’t actually commissioned by them, but was instead paid for and set-up by Business New Zealand, a lobby group which is strongly opposed to the introduction of the full capital gains tax proposals. And, as always, the polling questions help determine the type of data produced.

So not only did Newshub report the survey in a questionable way, but the actual survey questions are rather unusual. For example, the headline figure is based on whether New Zealanders see the capital gains tax proposals as a priority. It is a useful question, with useful results, but it’s far from indicative of whether New Zealanders oppose the proposals.

Likewise, questions about whether the issue has harmed the government – 48 per cent say it has, against 33 per cent who say it hasn’t – are interesting, but not entirely useful. Similarly, it’s difficult to interpret the fact that 25 per cent of respondents say the issue would change how they vote, against 58 per cent who say it wouldn’t.

In general, when looking at the poll results, keep firmly in mind that the source is a lobby group with an interest in slanting the results a certain way. Similarly, the business group recently released research to show “estimates the ‘economic drag’ over the first five years of the proposed CGT regime at between $2.75 billion and $6.81b” – see Liam Dann’s Capital Gains Tax could cost NZ economy billions – Business NZ.

The head of Business NZ, Kirk Hope, explained that these concerning figures had been independently assessed by economists, and that the assumptions and estimates were actually “conservative” – i.e. the real figures are likely to be worse. However, this is all strongly challenged by Tom Pullar-Strecker in his article, What’s behind BusinessNZ’s claim CGT would cost $5 billion?

It turns out that many of Business NZ’s claims are less than rigorous. In fact, one of the economists, Chris Evans, who is cited as emphasising the likely high compliance costs of the new tax has been quoted out of context. Evans actually said “that the compliance costs would not be excessive”, and Pullar-Strecker reports his belief that the proposed CGT “would compare favourably with those in other countries, including Australia”.

Pullar-Strecker concludes his investigation into the lobby group’s report stating “BusinessNZ says it wants to start a debate, accepting its numbers aren’t perfect. But its figures may be better viewed as politicking dressed up as a study.”

This doesn’t mean that Business NZ are the only ones who might be accused of massaging the figures and evidence to suit their own arguments. Even the Tax Working Group and Treasury are being criticised for their questionable use of wealth inequality data to make their arguments in favour of change – see Troy Bowker’s Why argument of Capital Gains Tax fairness is based on unreliable data.

According to Bowker, the CGT report was based on wealth statistics gathered by Statistics New Zealand, which were used to show that few New Zealanders would be subject to the new taxes. However, “By the Department of Statistics own admission, it contains data that is so unreliable they cautioned against its use.”

Other capital gains tax surveys

There has been some other public polling about the tax proposals that provide additional and alternative information. The most recent was published just over a week ago, by the Horizon Research company, and this is best covered by Liam Dann in his article, More Kiwis support capital gains tax than oppose in new poll. Most notably, this survey showed much stronger support for the tax proposals: “44 per cent of New Zealand adults supported introducing a capital gains tax and 35 per cent opposed it. A further 16 per cent are neutral on the new tax, while 6 per cent did not know.”

This poll was particularly interesting and useful, because it also indicated how different voters and asset-owners felt about the proposals. Here’s the different political party supporters in favour and against: Labour (60 per cent support; 14 per cent oppose), National (23 support; 62 oppose), Greens (75 support; 14 oppose), and NZ First (30 support; 55 oppose).

In terms of asset owners: those with shares (56 per cent oppose), with rental properties without a mortgage (66 oppose); with rental properties with a mortgage (74 oppose); and those with farms or large lifestyle blocks (90 oppose).

Some farmers are actually showing increased support today for a capital gains tax on farms, particularly when the asset is brought and sold in a short space of time. Newshub reports today that “Federated Farmers vice president Andrew Hoggard told Newshub people’s gains from quickly selling on farms need to be targeted first” – see: Farm flippers should be taxed – Federated Farmers.

It’s also interesting to look at a survey of business owners, which was carried out by the MYOB company, and showed that opposition from this sector wasn’t as clear as might be assumed: “Most business owners are against a capital gains tax but a survey found fewer than half were strongly opposed and a fifth were supportive” – see Tom Pullar-Strecker’s Capital gains tax compromise inevitable, accounting body believes.

This article shows that “Backing for a CGT was strongest among ‘Gen Y and Z’ business owners – with more than a quarter of them happy to stomach the tax – and from business owners in Wellington, while ‘baby boomers’ were more likely to be opposed.” In addition, research in New Zealand from the Certified Accountants Australia found that “there was a minority of business owners who did not like a CGT but who felt it would be necessary to meet the country’s future social and economic challenges”.

New public debate on CGT

A new campaign was launched yesterday to provide a pro-CGT perspective in the current debate. The Tax Justice Aotearoa launch at Parliament is best covered by Tom Pullar-Strecker, who points out that “Much of the lobbying over a CGT to date has come from groups opposed to the tax, which include the Taxpayers Union”, and the new campaign is meant to even up the disparity – see: CGT supporters and Taxpayers Union take tax wrangle to Parliament.

The article reports concerns about the political independence of the new campaign, as well as whether taxpayer funds are being used to assist it, especially because of the involvement of the Public Health Association, which receives funding from the Ministry of Health. The article reports: “PHA chief executive Prudence Stone clarified it had not provided any cash or resources for Tax Justice Aotearoa to date but did not rule out doing so in future.”

The campaign has established a petition: Tell Jacinda we want a capital gains tax. It’s time to join the modern world, which currently has 1,200 signatures.

Although Tax Justice Aotearoa’s petition appears to implicitly support the Government’s Tax Working Group proposals for a capital gains tax, including the exemption of a family home and the package being fiscally-neutral, two of the campaign’s organisers explain in more detail their advocacy of tax reform, which involves going further than what is currently proposed – see Paul Barber and Louise Delany’s Why we’re shouting about a capital gains tax.

In line with some of these messages, it’s also worth reading today’s opinion piece by Alison Pavlovich who emphases some of the selling points she believes are missing from the debate on the current proposals, such as the importance of equity in the tax system, and pairing of tax cuts with the CGT – see: The point being missed in the capital gains tax debate.

Finally, for humour on the tax proposals, see my updated blog post, Cartoons about the proposed capital gains tax.