Category: imported_guest

Promises, promises, promises, seems to be the theme of the election campaigns to date. Given the uncertainty of the result, the promises have more relevance. Unfortunately, for property investors some of the promises may not be welcome.

The New Zealand First Party has promised that if it is invited into a coalition government following the general election on the 23 September one of it's not negotiable policies will be to require the prospective coalition partner to agree to two binding referenda: One asking whether to retain the Maori seats, the other whether the number of Members of Parliament should be reduced to 100.

You've probably read about the five year old lemonade criminal of Tower Hamlets. She was selling lemonade outside her house on a sunny day, as children do, when four 'enforcement officers' charged her with trading without a licence and issued a £150 fine.

Calls to make freshwater rights an election issue have intensified. Critical to the discussion are whose rights are meant, how such rights are defined and what costs and benefits arise.

New Zealand has a retirement income framework that, compared with the rest of the developed world, is closest to our ideal. However, that’s a low bar to clear. We can make things much better but we must start with impeccable, deep data.

New Labour leader Jacinda Ardern is promising to run an election campaign characterised by “relentless positivity”. And, so far, there’s been an almost relentlessly positive response to her rise to the top. It appears that Ardern’s extraordinary elevation is going to lift this election campaign out of the ordinary, too.

Until the passing of the Resource Management Amendment Act 2017 the business of territorial local authorities was conducted by the elected representatives of the citizens living in the particular area. That is no longer the case.

New Zealand First looks like the only stabilizing element in coalition governments that would otherwise fall under the extremist sway of either or both the Greens and the Maori Party.

A number of European countries, responding to public demand, have now made begging illegal, as it once was here. It’s long overdue to restore illegality, thereby removing the difficult burden from Councils. Judging by how many senior police have urged the public not to give money and also the true nature of these layabouts, they will, once legally empowered, eagerly put an end to this disgrace.

The National Party’s desire to pander to the minor Maori Party led in March 2011, to the Marine and Coastal Area (MACA) Act. It gives major property and other rights to any Maori tribal group that can prove that it has “exclusively used and occupied an area of coast from 1840 to the present day”.