Wellington City has become a great case study for those that are suspicious that both local and central government politicians have become enthralled by property developers, the “professional managerial class”, and other vested interests.
This is the problem with treating senior public servants like private enterprise CEOs seems to me. They get a huge salary and a similarly sized sense of entitlement. You never saw these huge PR departments when they were actually servants of the public. And this has been true ever since Roger Douglas was let loose, so it's not just this council. When my son was a kid years ago he asked me once "What does the council do?" I said well it looks after the parks and collects the rubbish and fixes the water pipes and so on. I was obviously wrong about the last one, and all I can say is what the hell were you doing all this time.
"The idea is unlikely to fly, according to BusinessDesk’s Dileepa Fonseka, who suggests that land-banking and the under-utilisation of land are a big part of the economy and therefore important to vested interests. He says “the loudest ratepayers generally hate this form of ratings levy” – see his Monday column, Tale of two taxes hits cinema"
The same vested interests have so far resisted any attempt to tax capital gains. As economist Bernard Hickey has said, NZ's economy is basically "a housing market with bits tacked on". And it's fomented a new landed gentry that settlers tried to get away from in Britain. The way things are going, it'll take a severe bubble burst to correct it, when even a pandemic or natural disaster couldn't.
Furthermore, some people need reminding that "F**k off, we're full" is a xenophobic slogan, not a housing policy.
This is the problem with treating senior public servants like private enterprise CEOs seems to me. They get a huge salary and a similarly sized sense of entitlement. You never saw these huge PR departments when they were actually servants of the public. And this has been true ever since Roger Douglas was let loose, so it's not just this council. When my son was a kid years ago he asked me once "What does the council do?" I said well it looks after the parks and collects the rubbish and fixes the water pipes and so on. I was obviously wrong about the last one, and all I can say is what the hell were you doing all this time.
"The idea is unlikely to fly, according to BusinessDesk’s Dileepa Fonseka, who suggests that land-banking and the under-utilisation of land are a big part of the economy and therefore important to vested interests. He says “the loudest ratepayers generally hate this form of ratings levy” – see his Monday column, Tale of two taxes hits cinema"
The same vested interests have so far resisted any attempt to tax capital gains. As economist Bernard Hickey has said, NZ's economy is basically "a housing market with bits tacked on". And it's fomented a new landed gentry that settlers tried to get away from in Britain. The way things are going, it'll take a severe bubble burst to correct it, when even a pandemic or natural disaster couldn't.
Furthermore, some people need reminding that "F**k off, we're full" is a xenophobic slogan, not a housing policy.