Bruce Cairns

[Debbie @Dunibear]

To say I loved this man is an understatement… a truly lovely guy.. the day he followed me on here was one of the best days of my life! Such a guy.. such a crush… RIP 😢

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

It can be done. 👏👏👏

[Bruce Cairns @Brucec141]

@foundersam Real people 🤩

[Musical Chairs @MusicalChairs14]

We can't build as much as we wanted, too many builders have logged off.

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

"Next billion customers." Great slogan.Shame about the economics underneath it.

Trade deals aren't bad. More market access for NZ exporters is genuinely useful. But the way National frames this - as if signing FTAs is what creates jobs and lifts incomes - skips over a question that actually matters: what creates the productive capacity to serve those customers in the first place?

NZ's export base is narrow. It's been narrow for decades. We sell dairy, meat, logs, and tourism. High-value manufacturing, tech, advanced services - the stuff that generates the kind of jobs and wages politicians keep promising - is a fraction of what it could be. That's not a trade policy problem. That's a domestic investment problem. You can open up seven new markets and all you've done is given more access to the same commodities at the mercy of the same price cycles.

The government that actually wants to double export value by 2034 needs to ask why NZ private investment in R&D sits near the bottom of the OECD. It needs to ask why our banking system directs credit overwhelmingly into existing property rather than into businesses that make things. It needs to ask whether gutting science funding in Budget 2026 - while announcing export ambitions in the same election cycle - is a coherent position. It isn't. It's two press releases that haven't been introduced to each other.

And here's the thing National never quite explains: a sovereign currency issuer doesn't need export earnings to fund domestic spending. The real value of exports is the real resources they bring back - the imports, the technology, the capital equipment that lifts productive capacity. That's worth pursuing. But it requires building something worth selling first. A trade mission to Nigeria doesn't do that. Investment in the domestic productive base does.

"We're out there in the world smacking it" is a fun line. Less fun when the thing you're smacking it with is the same commodity export basket you had thirty years ago. #NZelection2026

https://t.co/R3AvTFlzs6

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

​The United Nations has officially declared Gaza a genocide zone, noting that Israel is deliberately targeting children and infants.

​It took them three full years to reach this conclusion.

[Irlandarra @martinez_j7902]

Up the Irish 🇮🇪 Happy 4th of July .

"Can I get a god bless America?"

"Absolutely not. F*ck Trump. Free Palestine."

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

To everyone celebrating the first flight on Qatar Force One today, understand what you are actually applauding.

A foreign government handed the sitting President of the United States a $400 million plane. American taxpayers then paid to retrofit it, with an estimated cost of at least another $400 million (some estimates far higher), for security and communications work in a Texas hangar since last September.

When Trump leaves office, the plane does not stay with the government. Ownership transfers to his presidential library foundation. In other words, he keeps it.

You are being asked to treat pure corruption as normal, to shrug at a President personally profiting from a foreign gift the taxpayers paid to upgrade.

In any other administration this would be the scandal that ends a presidency.

With Trump, it’s Wednesday.
https://t.co/qAfVUp8KBd

[Bruce Cairns @Brucec141]

@AlanWilkinsonNZ @GregPresland But if the kids get the right support they can break the cycle….they don’t choose their parents.

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

Simon Bridges says wealthy foreigners will bring the capital New Zealand lacks. I've spent a few years in corporate finance and private equity outside NZ, and I've run a small business here through the leanest years. So let me be blunt about the part that's wrong.

We don't lack capital. New Zealand issues its own currency. The government could fund a domestic venture ecosystem tomorrow if it chose to. The dollars were never the constraint.

Two things Bridges gets right:

First, it was never really about the money. It's the expertise, the networks, the hard-won knowledge of how you scale a company. That's real, and you can't issue it the way you issue currency. If that's the case for the golden visa, make it honestly. Just stop pretending we were broke.

Second, "the government could fund it" is not "the government would pick winners well." Picking winners is a mug's game, and I'd trust the state to do it about as far as I could throw Wellington.

But here's what neither Bridges nor the government will say. We already pick winners. We just pick a narrow few. Tech gets the agency, the summit, the golden-visa welcome mat. The plumber, the retailer, the small manufacturer, the ordinary firm employing four people pays tax (if it makes a profit), and has to deal with the rising costs of rents, wages, utilities, bureaucracy, etc, and risk they could lose everything.

The capital shortage small businesses actually feel isn't national. It's a decision about who the support flows to. And it doesn't flow to them.

So we import billionaires to own the upside of the few sectors we've blessed, while the businesses that make up most of the economy are told to sort themselves out.

That's not a capital problem. It's a priorities problem wearing a capital problem's clothes.

Why global investors could make Auckland a safe haven for growth - Simon Bridges, via @nzherald https://t.co/DWm8lrJeQZ

[Bruce Cairns @Brucec141]

@AlanWilkinsonNZ @GregPresland So the kids should suffer for there parents decisions? If you agree says it all🙈

[Jackal @Jackalblog]

Illegal Cigarettes Up 74% Since National Canned Smokefree
https://t.co/f6IjFy3WzL

[Glenn Tunes @glenn_tunes]

IT SEEMS LIKE HE'S EVEN MORE BAT SHIT CRAZY TODAY THAN HE WAS YESTERDAY 😬 MADNESS 🙄

[InfoGram @_InfoGram_]

Obama has just dropped the biggest bombshell on Trump 🔥

🇺🇸Trump at 2:00 PM: “Iran has agreed not to make a nuke. No president has done this.”

🇺🇸Obama at 3:00 PM— "We had a deal. Iran wouldn’t build nukes. Trump ripped it up. Iran ramped up its nuclear program.

Then He went to war. Burned billions. Wore out our military. People died.

And for what? We’re back at square one, but worse. Only a fool cheers this." 🔥

Absolute brutal by Obama 💪🔥

[Valy 🎩🎭 @liderfiscal]

#ULTIMAHORA En un acto de disidencia sin precedentes, el mayor de la Fuerza Aérea de los EE. UU. en servicio activo Jason Watson fue detenido en las escalinatas del Capitolio tras exigir el juicio político y la destitución de Donald Trump. Su detención, realizada a costa de arriesgar su carrera para cumplir con su juramento constitucional, marca un momento histórico.

#TrumpEpsteinPedoCoverUp

[Bruce Cairns @Brucec141]

@Nicmscp @VladimirJenin Duh…the kids struggle…maybe you need to increase your intelligence and improve your reading comprehension 🙈

[lachlan 🍉 - Free Palestine 🇵🇸 @lachlanp_]

Kind of comical that National wants us to worry about Labour's $11bn pay equity 'fiscal hole' while they're committed to a $56bn programme of gold plated mega-motorways which they still haven't explained how they're gonna pay for.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump: "I even had a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt. I said, 'What do you think about the Panama Canal? Do you consider that your greatest achievement and how do you feel about the fact that the Democrats gave the Panama Canal away to Panama for $1?'"

[Gino @305MIAMIUSA]

@EricLDaugh

[Bee @BeeBeaumont بي 💙💛@beaumontbee.bsky.social @BeaumontBee]

@RandomKiwiNZ TOP's main backer, the US-NZ citizen, Brian Cartmel, techbro, has also make very large donations to National, ACT and NZ First. That should tell you all you need to know. It's not a democratic party. Quilae was selected by job advertisement from outside, not from party members.