As A Matter Of Fact -a few quick comments on some recent NZ news items.

7/8/2025

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Think -"Tanks"

A photo caught my eye a day or so ago. It was of the rotund Minister of Resources and Regional Development , Shane Jones, climbing into an empty fuel tank at Marsden Point for what I first took to be a photo op when he and his leader Winston Peters paid the site a visit to the site.

But then I thought.. no.. this must be NZ First’s Think Tank After all, what better place to dream up environmental destruction than from inside a huge container you want to reuse for storing fossil fuels .

And what destruction he’s be havocking - from sanctioning gold mining under a native forest in the Coromandel to allowing commercial fishing companies to plunder our ocean and banning the public from seeing onboard camera footage, so the activities of these exploiters can go undetected .

Our Tanking Building Industry

An Auckland-based housing block, which featured 108 modular units, and was once promoted as the way of the housing construction future now lies abandoned, with its' builders in liquidation owing millions of dollars.

It’s a poignant example of the downturn in the building industry where problems are rife, thanks to the decisions of Housing Minister Chris Bishop. The number of building consents in our largest city have fallen by 23%, apartment consents specifically have fallen by 52%, in the last year, thousands of tradies have left our shores and we are headed for an undersupply of housing.

This under-supply coincides with Bishop telling Kāinga Ora to stop building houses at a time when there are about 20,000 households on the state house waiting list.

Charities report the number of people sleeping rough this winter has gone up dramatically as the government has cut back on housing folk in motels. It’s estimated there are over 5000 rough sleepers but we don’t know the exact figure because the Ministry hasn’t kept track of the people it has evicted.

Don’t collect the information and bingo, there is no problem. Brilliant!

Our Tanking Economy

Economist Bernard Hickey recently wrote that “the economy is now tanking through a winter of business and consumer discontent, which is expected to force the Reserve Bank to cut the OCR by late November, and possibly as early as next month. Luckily, those lower rate cuts aren’t expected to fire up house prices too much because the Reserve Bank just introduced debt limits to stop landlords borrowing more heavily as rates fall.”

Employment is also tanking

Unemployed numbers have increased by 16000 over the last year and has risen to 5.2 percent in the second quarter of this year with 2000 job loses

Minister Willis tell us to “stop moaning “ because the “positive news” is the figures are “still better than forecast.” So… your economic policies are failing but instead of getting an F you got an F+ …and you think that’s something to be proud about?

Get a grip Minister ! One reason the numbers of unemployed is lower than you expected is that, thanks to your economic mismanagement,record numbers of job seeking workers have left the country!

• Long-term departures reached 123,256 in March 2025, with 70,000 citizens leaving and nearly 60% going to Australia.
• Net immigration dropped by over 74%, to 26,400, compared to 100,400 the year before, mostly due to fewer arrivals.
• Economic pressures and slow residency processing drive both citizens and skilled immigrants to seek better opportunities abroad.

Still, never mind, as long as we have Luxon the Tank engine getting our economy “back on track” we have nothing to worry about.

(Tanks ... um..sorry .. thanks.. to Daniel Vernon cartoonist.)

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