Episódios
-
Dr Melody Nixon is a writer, editor, academic and artist living between the Bay Area, California, and Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD, with emphases in Literature and Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies, from the History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Having spent over a decade in the USA she has a keen understanding of the the social and political undercurrents that saw Donald Trump re-elected and warns against the similar disturbing trends she sees developing here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $9 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts,
To my paid subscribers, please know your support is much appreciated. Please restack posts you like and share the links to friends and whanau as it all helps to build readership. With the Christmas soon upon us,you may also wish to consider giving a year’s access to Bryan Bruce Investigates as a present to someone . Thank you.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Last week a group of economists wrote to Prime Minister Luxon and Minister of Finance Willis to express their concern at the Government’s approach to fiscal policy, and their alarm at the consequences for the people and communities of New Zealand.
In this episode of Head2Head I talk with the group’s lead spokesperson Dr Ganesh Nana.
Here is the letter in full.
Tēnā koe e Pirimia,
re: Your Government’s fiscal policy
We write to express our heightening concern at your Government’s approach to fiscal policy, and our alarm at the consequences for the people and communities of New Zealand.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss in more detail, more directly with you as soon as possible, the immediate and long-lasting harm that your Government’s approach to fiscal policy is creating.
We summarise our concerns below under four headings.
* Reduced current and projected spending is needlessly exacerbating the current recession
* A focus on government debt is far too narrow, as it ignores the impacts on private sector debt and external debt
* The accumulating harm risks a long-lasting hollowing-out of business capacity and capability
* Fiscal policy is in direct conflict with the Government’s stated export target
Fiscal policy is needlessly exacerbating the current recession
Current and projected reductions in government spending appear to be central to the Government’s fiscal policy. The economic rationale for this approach is unclear. Rather, there appear to be few considerations outside the short-term impacts. For example, your Government’s cancellation of key infrastructure projects and sinking-lid cuts to the public service are powerful contributors to the current severe and prolonged recession. This is substantially worsening the contractionary effects on the economy of the Reserve Bank’s use of the Official Cash Rate to contain inflation.
It is important to recognise that even prior to cutting back expenditure, government consumption spending was close to 20% of GDP. This covered spending on health, education, defence, administration, justice, transport, and culture. In addition, deferrals and reductions in projected infrastructure spending has further reduced employment and intensified the economic recession.
There is ample evidence that government spending, including the necessary infrastructure and allied networks, has for many years fallen well short of that required for population growth and demographic changes. The Infrastructure Commission has stated that New Zealand has a $104 billion infrastructure gap at present – and that this picture will significantly worsen given current spending projections.
These accumulating shortfalls put the nation in a poor position to improve its long-run economic resilience and to prepare for future challenges. If nothing is changed now, this under-funding simply passes the burden of adjustments, and investment spending, to future generations.
Failure to correct this course will lead to higher economic scarring, with the costs borne by those with the least ability to pay, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in New Zealand’s history. It will also undermine the resilience of the private sector – particularly exporters – and will continue to constrain the capability of firms to scale up.
A focus on government debt ignores impacts on private sector debt and external debt
Similarly, the fiscal policy focus on reducing government debt lacks a clear economic rationale. Irrespective of the debt measure adopted, international comparisons of government debt in comparison to GDP remain in New Zealand’s favour. Credit rating agencies continue to view the government’s debt situation without concern.
Bluntly, there is no government (or public) debt crisis in New Zealand.
The New Zealand economy’s ongoing problem is private sector debt. Importantly, private sector debt is being driven upwards by your Government’s fiscal policy in pursuit of surpluses for itself and its aim of rapidly reducing public debt.
Standard economics shows the relationship between public and private sector financial balances. When total domestic saving (both public and private) is insufficient for domestic investment (both private and public), the gap needs to be filled by drawing on foreign funds. The overall current account (or external) deficit is a measure of this gap and requires overseas borrowing or asset sales to foreigners to finance such a deficit. With the banks acting as intermediaries, the resulting increase in liabilities is reflected on both the private and public sectors’ balance sheets.
These connections – in particular, between the Government’s fiscal stance, the size of the current account deficit, and the consequent size of the nation’s external debt – are glaringly missing in documents describing the economic impact of fiscal policy. There is little explanation of how fiscal policy focussed on reducing government spending would reduce New Zealand’s external deficit and total external debt. Consequently, fiscal policy is adding to the vulnerability of economic activity and exposing New Zealand to inevitable global shocks.
The accumulating harm risks a long-lasting hollowing-out of business capacity and capability
There appear to be further spending reductions accelerating at this stage of the economic cycle. The negative impact risks undermining retail, hospitality, home improvement sectors, and challenges the heart of rural economies and communities across the nation. Prolonging the current cyclical downturn in this manner means that these costs result from a policy choice, rather than being an economic outcome.
In addition, increasingly worrying is the harm imposed on those households on low or casual wage income or dependent on benefits. The erosion of the already low psychological and financial reserves of the poorest will be hard – and socially and fiscally costly – to repair. We note that the consequent erosion of the tax base will also impair the government’s balance sheet.
This long-lasting harm is further evident in the increasing numbers of trained and skilled New Zealanders migrating abroad in search of hope. This is creating skills shortages across the country, particularly in health and education.
The loss of this capacity and capability – in terms of workforce skills, knowledge and expertise alongside investor/owner appetite for equipment, machinery, technology upgrades and expansions – becomes increasingly permanent the longer the downturn is prolonged.
This form of hollowing-out is currently clearly visible in the construction sector, where once again the boom-bust cycle is seeing harm that will impact on the development of the sector for years to come and further undermine critical efforts to expand the housing stock. This will (again) be likely reflected with future infrastructure and housing developments experiencing difficulties in attracting sub-contractors back to the building and construction sector.
The hollowing-out of business capacity and capability includes small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) across the economy. Many SMEs across regional and metropolitan New Zealand continue to be financed through mortgages on family homes and other informal community networks. The accumulating impact on household sector balance sheets will add unnecessary stress on an already stressed sector of the nation.
Arising from this situation is the long-lasting scar of the loss of entrepreneurial aspiration in our communities as the cyclical downturn is unnecessarily prolonged.
Fiscal policy is in direct conflict with the Government’s stated export target
A successful fiscal policy is one that has an economic justification consistent with a clear aspiration. Such aspiration would set the direction to an improvement in New Zealand’s external position, and so underpin its ability to confront the climatic, social, and demographic challenges, as well as increasing our ability to withstand global economic shocks.
The Government’s stated objective to double the value of exports over the next decade potentially provides direction. However, a focus on lifting export quality and unit values – making clear the target is not simply about increasing quantities – is required. Further, a goal directly targeting net exports (i.e. exports minus imports) would be more consistent with this aspiration, placing value on import competing activities as well as on export expansion.
Importantly though, there is a direct conflict between the current fiscal policy stance and the aspirational export goal. New Zealand’s historical reliance on volume-driven commodity growth and mainly low-value exports requires significant structural shifts for the returns from exports to be doubled. Without investment in key infrastructure, resilience building, business capacity and capability, human capital, and entrepreneurial endeavour, the necessary structural shifts will not occur. The current fiscal policy settings undermine the required investments to facilitate such shifts.
Consequently, your Government’s aspiration for the export sector will itself continue to be an aspiration due to a short-sighted fiscal policy stance, rather than the attainable goal it could become.
Our request
To reiterate, given the concerns set out above, we would like the opportunity to urgently discuss these matters directly with you.
In the interim, given the urgency of the situation, we request that
* your Government immediately suspend all directions for further reductions to departmental and agency spending and/or further delays in infrastructure spending.
* your Government request further advice from officials, including convening private and community sector advisors, to ensure that Budget 2025 provides a clear economic rationale for fiscal policy that will assist
* growth in the scale and resilience of the business sector
* reductions in private sector debt
* investing in infrastructure
* strong employment growth in good jobs
so that the New Zealand economy can be fit for the future needs of the people and communities of New Zealand.
We look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Ngā mihi nui
Signed:
This interview is feely available thanks to the generosity of my paid supporters.Thank you for your continued support for my public journalism work . It is much appreciated.
If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.
And thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated and has allowed this podcast to now become freely available. Please restack the item if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Estão a faltar episódios?
-
Why is borrowing to give tax breaks stupid? How could we use some of our superannuation fund to build housing? What’s an economy for anyway?
Shamubeel Eaqub has the gift of making economics understandable and often gives voice to common sense solutions for some of the problems that beset us today.
He has worked as an economist in leading international banks and consultancy in Wellington, Melbourne and Auckland and he is now the Chief Economist at Simplicity KiwiSaver.
He is a columnist, media commentator and a thought leading public speaker and author who has published three books: Generation Rent (2015), co-authored with Selena Eaqub; Growing Apart: Regional Prosperity in NZ (2014); and The NZ Economy: An Introduction (2011), co-authored with Dr Ralph Lattimore.
If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.
And thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated and has allowed this podcast to now become freely available. Please restack the item if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Gareth was a Green MP for 10 years and is now the Director of The Well Being Economy Alliance of Aotearoa which not only examines the neoliberal status quo that drives our current economy but looks a the many alternative economic models we could adopt to have a fairer society.
WeAll have an upcoming conference : Economics in the Public Good ( see details below)
He is is the author of A Gentle Radical, a biography of the late Greens leader Jeanette Fitzsimons which was published two years after her death in 2022.
If you are a Paid subscriber please know that your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated. If today’s post reaches 50 likes from you, I will make it free for everyone to read.
If you are a Free Subscribers please consder upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none. Thank you.
It’s time to redesign our economy to deliver wellbeing for nature and all our people.Join us at the Economy for Public Good Conference in Pōneke Wellington, we’ll weave a shared purpose for moving beyond a broken ‘business as usual’ economy.If you’d like to build bonds and share ideas with people inspired to create an economy where people and nature thrive, this one day hui is for you.The conference will feature Dr Katherine Trebeck as international keynote speaker, thought leaders discussing the big ideas for Aotearoa 2040, practitioners sharing stories of the new economy in action, and in-depth interactive training and breakout sessions.Tickets for this in person conference are set at only $100 and numbers are limited.https://www.weall.org.nz/economyforpublicgood#EconomyForPublicGood#TimeToRedesign
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Peter Newport has had a long and distinguished journalistic career including becoming European Correspondent and Bureau Chief for Channel 9 , Deputy News Editor BBC TV News and a documentary producer with the Discovery Channel before returning to work in NZ with Mediaworks as a producer on their current affairs programme 3rd Degree.
When he moved to Queenstown he decided to start Crux, a local digital media outlet featuring stories and events in the Southern Lakes and Dunedin districts where he applied his talent for public interest journalism.
His channel got a significant following reaching almost 2/3rds of the population. However after almost 7 years of first rate journalism the funding for Crux has fallen because local business and councils had largely pulled their support and the government’s public journalism fund has been axed.
In this interview I talk with Peter about his new approach which is to publish via Substack as I also have been forced to do because neither of us intend to be silenced.
Thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated. Please share and restack this article if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.
If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
John Quiggin is a professor of Economics at The University of Queensland, Australia and I first met him 10 years ago when I was making my documentary Mind The Gap . He had not long published his book Zombie Economics about how the dead economic ideas of neoliberalism such as “the market knows best”, deregulation, privatisation and “trickle down” theory, still manage to haunt the corridors of power in our country.
In this interview we discuss how Australian political parties on both left and right have managed to kill off some of these zombie ideas (such as how public hospitals would be run more cost effectively if they were privatised) yet in the New Zealand graveyard of economics such dangerous ideas still walk among us.
And in the wake of Trump’s victory in the American Presidential race last week, John gives his take on what impact it might have on the economies of both Australia and New Zealand and on the geopolitics of the Pacific.
Thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated.As agreed, if today’s post reaches 50 likes from you, I will make it free for everyone.
If you are a Free Subscribers please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none. Thank you.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Rebecca is an extraordinary person.
Back in 2011 she saw two problems in her Palmerston North community. A lot of food waste going to tghe dump or feed pigs and a lot of hungry people. So she decided to do something about it - rescue the food and feed those who need it
So she created Just Zilch in a free store, and today she had a full time team of 5 and 100 volunteers who distribute surplus food, and fresh, locally grown produce to people in need - without conditions.
Everyday the Just Ziltch team feed give food to around 350 people a day≥
In this interview Rebecca talks about how the demand is growing and why it is getting harder to meet it..
Head2Head is made possible thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers To help me continue with my public journalism work please consider becoming a supporter by taking out a $9 per month subscription. Thank you.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
What must you believe to be a Christian? In 1967 New Zealand Presbyterian Minister and Theologican Sir Lloyd Geering faced charges of heresy for teaching that the Biblical record of Jesus' death and resurrection is not true.
For the making of my of my documentary Jesus The Cold Case - Who Killed Jesus And Why? - I interviewed Sir Lloyd who was then aged 90 . (At the time of posting 30/6/24 he is 106).
Bryan Bruce Investigates is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a $5 a month paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Worried about the calls to privatise our public health system?
Concerned about falling numbers of doctors and nurses and the increasing difficulty of getting access to medical care when you need it?
Dr Gary Payinda MD MA DDU FACEP FACEM is an Emergency Medical Doctor in Te Tai Tokerau Northland. He is at the frontline of our health care system and he spoke to me frankly about what has gone wrong with our hospitals, what we need to to do to fix them, and why we need to do it .
While the mainstream media tend to uncritically carry the government’s message that cuts to our health system are necessary because the budget is “blowing out”, the fact of the matter is that we have been seriously underfunding the public health service for the last 30 years.
A case in point - “In the 1970’s” Gary told me” there were 12 hospital beds for every 1000 New Zealanders. Today there are 2.5.”
Instead of calls for privatising our hospitals we need to expand our taxation base by making the wealthy top 1% pay their fair share, so that we we can all have free medical care when we need it.
If you are a Paid subscriber please know that your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated.
If you are a Free Subscribers who may be thinking of upgrading to Paid , you may wish to act now as the current fee of $5 a month will be going up to $9 per month starting on the 1st of November.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
There’s avery good chance you have heard of Ruud, the Dutch-New Zealand naturalist whose passion for insects saw him start a talkback radio show (Ruud's Awakening) in in 1987 in which which he offered environmentally friendly tips to gardeners.
It earned him the name of “the bugman” which he carried to the NZTV series Maggie’s Garden Show from 1992 until December 2003.
This led to successful international series for Animal Planet called Buggin with Ruud.
For services to entomology, conservation and entertainment Ruud was appointed an honorary Member of the NZ Order of Merit in 2018.
In this episode I catch up with Ruud and find he is as passionate about communicating the importance of respecting nature as when I met and worked with him on a documentary I directed back called The Bug House in 2001 about the insects that live in our houses which is available under the documentaries tab on my Substack byanbruce.substack.com
Today Ruud is working with teachers and school children as part of his ongoing work to educating us about the importance of nature and why , in his words, we “need to be gentle with it”.
If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. It’s a good idea not get in now because the cost of subscription will be going up to $9 at the end of this month to meet rising costs.
To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going. Your support is much appreciated.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Michael Belgrave is Professor Emeritus of History at Massey University. He was research manager of the Waitangi Tribunal and has continued to work on Treaty of Waitangi research and settlements. published widely on Treaty and Māori history. His 2017 Dancing with the King, an exploration of diplomacy and peace-making in the decades between the Waikato War and the opening of the King Country, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and won the Ernest Scott Prize. He has worked in advisory groups supporting the implementation of the new national history curriculum.
In this interview we discuss his new, and very readable book, Becoming Aotearoa- A New History of New Zealand.
If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. It’s a good idea not get in now because the cost of subscription will be going up to $9 at the end of this month to meet rising costs.
To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.Your support is much appreciated.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Yesterday I decided to interview the Chat Bot Chat GPT (the GPT part is an abbreviation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer - I’ll let you look that up :).
First of all,let me admit that I have come very late to this particular party which hundreds of millions of users have already been enjoying, because…well, to be honest, I saw it as a gimmicky young person’s thing and not for oldies like me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Frankly I was stunned by ChatGPT’s speed of response to my questiions and the human- like quality of them, and while I’ll admit to trying it out as a bit of fun, the implications of this new technology are as serious as they are scary.
By the end of our brief chat, during which I raised some very light ethical questions, I found the ChatGPT’s constant response that it was there to serve me and I had nothing to fear from it, less assuring each time we touched on an ethical issue.
Now there’s a lot I don’t understand about AI, but I do understand a bit about human behaviour, and I know that whatever we create reflects our unspoken (and often unconscious) personal biases.
So, I wondered, “Who owns and controls Chat GPT?” and no, I didn’t ask the Bot, but resorted instead to old fashioned deep dive research.
And what a frightening rabbit hole that simple question has led me down.
But I’ll save what I have been discovering for another day, because the ethical and moral issues are so complex I’ll need to unpack them over a series of posts from time to time.
For the moment please have a listen to my 9 minute chat with Chat GPT and tell me what you think.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Susan St John Bsc, MA, PhD, QSO, CNZM, is an honorary Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland . With Auckland accounting tax expert Terry Baucher she has been publishing papers on what they term a Fair Economic Return Tax (FER)as a much better solution than either Capital Gains Tax or Land Tax as a way of getting the wealthy to pay their fair share towards the upkeep and future of the society we all share.
What is it? How would it work? These are the question I was keen to ask Susan .
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Aotearoa New Zealand does not have a written constitution, rather a collection of fundamental laws, conventions, and documents, including The Treaty Of Waitangi, the Māori text of which ,Te Tiriti, was the one signed by most rangatira Māori (540, compared to 39 who signed the English version), and it is that text which is recognised in international law (contra preferentem).
David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill is, for many reasons, deeply flawed; not the least of which is that his proposal is based on a mistranslation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
In this interview Dame Anne Salmond, who is a Distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, takes us back to 1840 to supply the context in which the treaty was signed, before describing, in detail, what each of the articles in the Māori text, Te Tiriti, actually says.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Gavin Ellis is a media consultant and Honorary Research Fellow at Koi Tu, The Centre For Informed Futures at Auckland University.
He holds a PhD in political studies and is a former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Lisa teaches taxation at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research interests include social justice and inequality. She has a particular interest in what is politely termed “the behavioural impacts of taxation.”
White-collar crime (fraud and deception) is the fastest growing crime type in NZ and in our conversation we cover the general attitude to it in our country
The Tax amounts each year that ought to have been paid but aren’t, are staggering - in the most recent year where data is available (2022-23), Inland Revenue “identified” $973 million in revenue. With our population of 5.124 million, that is $190 for every man, woman and child in the country. That’s what was found – what wasn’t found will be much, much more.
In short, if everyone was honest and paid their taxes we would have better public services or we could all pay less tax than we do.
What could we do?
Lisa says:
“We could resource detection and prosecution more – roughly only 40 people are prosecuted each year for tax evasion as complex cases are costly to enforce.
The government has just cut the Serious Fraud Office budget (by 3.5%) – and the SFO will lose around 7% of their workforce as a result. Currently, they only take a small number of prosecutions a year as their funding is quite low – but this will be reduced even further.
See Table 1 below on IR Resourcing.
And we could increase the penalties for tax evasion. Very few tax evaders go to prison or pay a fine (see Table 2 below on sanctions).
There is a lack of transparency around all the cases that receive negotiated outcomes from Inland Revenue. Negotiations are preferable from IR perspective as they generate at least some revenue – prosecutions typically do not.
Most people are unlikely to be prosecuted if they pay the tax that is due (even if it is from evasion) – which means that people can buy justice (this is not an option open to – for example – benefit fraud).
It also leaves honest taxpayers at a disadvantage (because those who only earn wages and salaries are not in a position to not pay their tax). And essentially there is very little by way of “punishment” for tax evasion.
So there is no deterrence – it just returns people to the same situation that they were if they had been honest.
We have a lot of liquidations in NZ of companies that have tax debt – Inland Revenue initiate usually around 60% of liquidations in NZ. Some will be legitimate – but some will be businesses trading while in solvent – but there are very few prosecutions of these companies.
Lisa told me she likes the idea of sentencing guidelines for white-collar crime. They have these in England and Wales – and the idea is that there are set penalties for certain values of offending. The courts can still take into account mitigating or aggravating factors – but it lends a lot of transparency into the sentencing process. Interestingly, tax fraud has higher penalties than benefit fraud.
There are a lot of things that other countries to do ‘encourage’ people to pay tax – there isn’t necessarily crime in this, but Inland Revenue writes off significant amounts of money every year from unpaid tax. Those who earn wages and salaries don’t get the opportunity to not pay their tax, so there are equity issues when those who are (for example) self-employed, can negotiate to not pay some of their tax:
Publish names of tax debtors
·Impose liability on company directors (e.g. Australia – directors become personally liable for tax debts)
Pass debtors details to credit agencies
Use debt collectors
Not allow tax debtors to bid for government contracts”
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Catherine was an MP from 2008 to 2017 representing the Green Party. These days she remains an activist in environmental, social justice, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues. She is Chair of Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki and works in the campaigns against multinational goldmining in the Wharekirauponga Forest and is active in the national solidarity network for a Free West Papua. She is a writer and a tutor on social change issues, and Te Triiti.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
What happened to the coastal shipping network we once had?
Why are we not training young New Zealanders for Seafarers jobs especially with the advent of offshore wind farming on the horizon?
And why are the major transport sectors of our economy - trucking,rail and shipping not working more effectively together?
Find out the sensible solution Carl would instigate if he was MInister of Transport.
To support my public journalism work and speaking truth to power, please onsider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Max Harris describes himself as Public Lawyer. He is a barrister at Thorndon Chambers who also works at ActionStations.
He was an Examination Fellow in Law at All Souls College at the University of Oxford, where he completed a DPhil in constitutional law on the prerogative and third source. He completed BCL (with Distinction) and Master of Public Policy degrees at the University of Oxford as a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar. While at the University of Oxford he tutored philosophy of human rights, taught law for public policy, and participated in (and developed) an education programme at Grendon Prison.
He previously graduated from the University of Auckland with a BA/LLB(Hons.) degree. At the University of Auckland he was Senior Scholar in Law and Political Studies, and Editor-in-Chief of the Auckland University Law Review. His academic work has been published in, among other places, the European Human Rights Law Review, the Journal of Contract Law, and the New Zealand Universities Law Review. He is co-editor of two books on the legal contributions of Dame Sian Elias and Bruce Harris, and author of the book The New Zealand Project. He tutored tort law at Victoria University of Wellington while clerk to Chief Justice Elias at the Supreme Court.
Max has worked as a campaigner and policy researcher, and has a longstanding interest in and commitment to progressive politics. He splits his time between legal research and work as a campaigner for ActionStation. He has authored policy reports on housing policy and a Ministry of Green Works, worked as an economic policy advisor to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in the UK Parliament, and was a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme in New York.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Dr Bryan Betty is a General Practitioner at Union and Community Health , a not for profit health clinic in Cannons Creek, East Porirua, a suburb that is known for its high needs and social deprivation. The practice has 7,000 enrolled patients, 90 percent who are high needs with 25 percent Māori, 50 percent Pasifika and the remainder mainly refugee.
Dr Betty was the Medical Director of The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners before stepping down to become Chair of General Practice New Zealand (GPNZ) last year.
I first met Dr Betty back in 2011 when I was making my documentary Inside Child Poverty and I can tell you he pulls no punches about the broken state of our primary care system and what we need to do to fix it.
Over the course of his career, he has been a vocal critic of New Zealand’s rheumatic fever and type 2 diabetes statistics and is a strong advocate for change that will improve health outcomes and reduce health inequities for everyone – no matter where they live.
Free to listen on Apple Podcast.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe - Mostrar mais
