Left of Tāmaki

Supporting the political Left in the Tāmaki electorate, promoting progressive and common sense policy that benefits everyone and supports all communities.

[Musical Chairs @MusicalChairs14]

I expected bad, but this is awful. Malpractice even. I'll limit my criticism to 9 posts.
The Herald have added together the gross debt of NZ public & private sectors and called this debt 'we collectively owe the world'. Pure unadulterated nonsense. Literally untrue. [🧵1/n]

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

Reasonable policy. The Commerce Commission found the duopoly pulls a million a day in excess profit. That's market power, not competition. But watch the critics. The objection isn't to the bill. It's to who's holding it. The same policy from National would get applause.

‘Food is not a luxury’: Greens unveil supermarket price plan – The Front Page, via @nzherald https://t.co/TESqcCt1R5

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

We can't give these clowns any more time to wreck the economy. National 'better economic managers' is only a myth- the current state of the economy after 3 years under their control proves that without doubt. How much more evidence do we need!!

[Musical Chairs @MusicalChairs14]

People will blame oil prices, Trump etc, but truth is the economy has been in steady decline for 3 years. The 'recovery is round the next corner' stories are based on the reckons of reckonomists who are programmed to believe in the inevitable return to a mythical equilibrium.

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

The Bank of England settled this in 2014. Banks don't lend out your deposits, they create new money when they lend. Their own paper, their own words. Twelve years on, NZ's Treasury and every "sound money" politician still runs on the textbook the authors threw out. Not a debate. A correction they ignored.

The Bank of England Admitted in 2014 That the Textbook Model of Banking Is Wrong. New Zealand's Treasuries have maybe received the paper, but never read or acknowledged. https://t.co/EgEWpQcKKh

[QuinnjinWilliams @quinnjin2009]

The reason rent rises have slowed, is because this appalling govt has emptied the country - Working age kiwis fleeing NZ for Australia in their hundreds of thousands.
For those that remain, the economy is in the toilet.
They can not afford to subsidise the lifestyles of tax dodging landlords and the profits of Aussie owned banks, any more than they already do.

House prices maxed out, as a percentage of earnings.
People thought the doubling in house prices every 10 years could go on for ever.
- that was always delusional.
NZ has some of the most expensive residential property prices on planet earth.

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

Ahiraro's kete framing is the sharpest way I've seen this put in a NZ context. The real debt we hand our grandchildren isn't a dollar figure. It's the state of the country. Depleted rivers, a health system run down, pipes that fail. You can't refinance a wrecked environment the way you roll over a bond.

And the rainy-day bag says it all. When the flood actually comes, cash isn't what saves you. Food, water, a dry place, people who know what to do. The government chasing a financial surplus while the real stores run down has the whole thing backwards. It's saving the one thing it can always issue and running short of everything it can't.
\
Every year we obey the fiscal rules is a year we could've built and didn't.

Fiscal myths and economic reality https://t.co/MrZfBS4VQG

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

RBNZ hiked the OCR today to fight inflation from a Middle East oil shock that was already fading by the time they announced it. Their own decision record runs to thousands of words. Government spending isn't mentioned once as a cause. ACT is out there blaming it anyway.
Read more: https://t.co/dgwGKkcNan

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

The government of slogans and bumper stickers takes us all for fools! (Well clearly there were SOME fools who voted for them!) - hopefully they won't be further duped by these nonsense announcements.

[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

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@makesyougomm @labourcartel What other more tax friendly regime would you suggest?? Its utter hogwash to say people make such decisions simply based on tax they pay, ignoring quality of life, family and other opportunities available here. A few, very few may. But the majority think beyond their bank balance

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@RebelEkonomista @JosephMooneyMP Absolutely correct!! Mr Mooney obviously doesn't understand how government finances and money supply actually works. But inadvertently his argument supports the truth. Such irony!

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@GlobalPOVs @ClintVSmith And what was the increase in supply of housing delivered and paid for by the previous government? Of course you don't know! The additional supply under THIS govt is the due to the mass exodus to Australia. No one can afford the extortionate rents so they had to reduce.

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@makesyougomm @ClintVSmith Rents have fallen due to the mass exodus to Australia and greedy landlords finding no one can afford their extortionate rents. Rents have NEVER been based on landlords costs, only on the ability of tenants to pay.

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@UCo4rcnplZQkYFn @ClintVSmith Making surplus a target is DELUDED. You are stuck with the 'run the countries economy like a household' narrative and clearly have no idea how the macroeconomy works. If u focus on productive investment and spending, surpluses may follow but the sky doesn't fall in if they don't

[edward miller @labourcartel]

Don’t take lessons on fiscal rectitude from these profligate troglodytes https://t.co/FNUGjbij3g

[David Peez @RebelEkonomista]

Willis keeps telling New Zealanders to feel a bit of pain now to reach a surplus later. The pain is real. The surplus is the household myth running the country.
A government that issues its own currency isn't a family saving up. It spends by creating money. Tax manages the real economy. The "huge debt" is the rest of us holding government bonds, which is to say, savings.
So "getting back to surplus" means pulling money out of households and firms until the books balance. They call it prudence. It's a drain dressed up as virtue.
And look at the polls. People can't all cite the theory, but they can feel the gap between "pain now" and a benefit that never lands. Cost of living and healthcare, the lived result of treating a currency issuer like a chequebook.
The story isn't failing because the marketing's off. It's failing because the economics underneath it was never true.
You can't balance your way to a country that works.

Willis shows she's ready to fight her way back into power https://t.co/fzC3oQMxFm

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@BruceHick220152 @Bridgetpee NZ is not broke, this government has made choices to suit its ideology and generous donors. Labour understands how the macroeconomy works so can make very different choices, knowing that investment in the economy stimulates sustainable growth. Cuts and austerity lead to failure.

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@OnyouIrons @JonesVincentt Probably good to get your facts straight before commenting so you don't look, well... 'retarded'. Many FANTASTIC women clergy in this church my friend..

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@NZNationalParty And THIS is why the economy is in free-fall. Surplus should NEVER be the target of a govt economy, but may well be an outcome if as a result of strong and strategic govt INVESTMENT in health, education, public utilities and services that GROW the economy in a sustainable way.

[Left of Tāmaki @LeftOfTamaki]

@DiackChris @Pazienza82 What other viable 'business' has debt servicing at 98% of total 'business' expenses?? NONE. Landlords are not intending to make an operating profit, they intend to make tax free capital gains. This is not a viable business as defined by the IRD.

[Willie Jackson @WillieJLabour]

Chris Hipkins was on Q+A with Jack Tame this morning and I urge everyone who hasn't had the chance to see it, to watch it on TVNZ+.

Labour are for the many, not the few and Chippy this morning stood for the kind of values that benefits everyone.

He will not make the same mistakes of making promises he can't keep, he will read the budget and work to produce a platform of policies that we can implement and make meaningful change in Kiwis lives. Jacks interview highlights why so many in Labour respect Chris and believe he would be a far better Prime Minister than Christoper Luxon.

Chippy pushed back on Jack's silly attacks on education funding decisions and refused to mock the jobs that Jack wanted to attack. The reason I'm with Labour is because Labour wants to work together with Māori, wants to welcome migrants and wants to build the country for everyone, which is the total opposite of what this Coalition Government stands for.

Look at the appalling Māori Crown relationship that is going from bad to worse with this deplorable attack on the Treaty inside our laws and wiping the Treaty from our education!

The latest Waitangi tribunal report shows just how damaged that relationship has become from these terrible policy decisions by ACT, NZ First and National which have nothing to do with working together and everything to do with pacifying the Right's reactionary and angry voter base with anti-Māori crap.

The economy is turning bad because of this Government's dreadful decisions and rather than front up and admit that, this Government simply launches wars on the Treaty as a distraction.

Robbing the next generation of Kiwis from having access to the Māori culture just to score political points is a pathetic move that manages to demean everyone.
We are strongest when we work together as a people and as a country, pulling race baiting stunts like this to gloss over the economic damage caused by this Government is belittling even for National, ACT and NZ First