(New Conservative Party media release)

New Conservative co-leader Helen Houghton says workers and taxpayers are being taken for a rort while politicians squabble over who has the smartest policies to fight climate change.

“The simple fact is there is no climate emergency — it is an invented political crisis, and unfortunately every party in parliament has bought into it.”

Since being introduced in April it has been revealed that the government’s ute tax has brought in $63 million while $95 million was paid out in “clean car” subsidies, meaning taxpayers have had to chip in $33 million.

Both the ute tax and clean car subsidy are unfair and unjust. Neither taxpayers nor owners of other vehicles should be subsidising the wealthy to buy Teslas.

Helen says “this sort of meddling is an abuse of government powers of taxation and regulation. NC will end all climate focussed taxes, subsidies, and regulations, including both the ute tax and the ‘clean car’ scam.”

“Putting more electric cars on the roads is simply virtue signalling that only benefits manufacturers, dealers, and the owners who can afford them.”

“Furthermore, it is irresponsible for the government to promote widespread adoption of electric vehicles when the country has neither the necessary electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, nor a plan to build it. Engineers have estimated that to service an electric vehicle fleet NZ will need to increase electricity generation by more than 50%, and transmission capacity by 100%. This is considered unlikely to be achievable within the next three decades, and will impose a massive financial burden on future generations.”

“In the meantime we note that any increased demand for electricity is satisfied by burning dirty Indonesian coal at Huntly, so this policy doesn’t even have the intended effect of reducing so-called CO2 ‘pollution’.”

Unsurprisingly, Jacindaland is on it (the only non-NATO country which is), as you would expect from a government of belligerent Leftists.

Western nations began to train Ukrainian troops long before Russia launched a military operation in the neighbouring country. The US has been doing so for quite a while, with other countries, including Washington’s allies, following suit. Here is a closer look into the notorious list.

Despite the West’s incessant flow of money, weapons and military packages to Kiev, the US and its allies do not think twice before insisting that they are not parts of the Ukraine conflict, allegations which Russia says hold no water.

Moscow has repeatedly blasted the West over “recklessly investing in protracting hostilities” in Ukraine by supplying arms to the Kiev regime.

Following the latest decision by the EU to funnel additional millions of euros in military assistance to Ukraine, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Brussels for allocating more money to “train and equip Ukrainian militants with deadly weapons which will continue to destroy civilians, destroy civilian and critical infrastructure”.

Who Sends Instructors to Train Ukrainian Soldiers?

Read the rest

by Mark Sleboda

As in any conflict, it is crucial to look at manpower and troop numbers to understand the dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine

The Kiev regime started the conflict in February of 2022 with approximately 250,000 strong active duty armed forces, most of them conscripts.

This was supplemented with a 60,000 strong National Guard (with many Azov NeoNazis among its ranks), 50,000 border troops, and about another 50,000 in the 50 or so discrete far right battalions.

Though the Kiev regime’s initial military forces have since been badly mauled with the Russian MoD claiming to have inflicted an excess of 100, 000 casualties — through volunteers, territorial defense (now regularly thrown as cannon fodder into the front), several thousand foreign mercenaries, and a regime policy of mass forced conscription in some 7 waves thus far, with male citizens forbidden from leaving the country, the Kiev regime has substantially increased their military manpower since the Russian intervention began.

They claim to now have a total of a million total troops under arms defending the regime, though realistically it is probably more like 700,000 total, though many have next to no training or previous military experience.
 It seems that this is about the maximum number that the regime and its Western patrons can economically and logistically support at one time.

The Russian intervention force meanwhile has until now been self-limited by the terms of the “Special Military Operation” that the Kremlin dictated to just some 150,000 active duty professional and contracted Russian military troops.

And it has not since risen substantially above this number, though casualties have been replenished. This has been supplemented by some 40-50 thousand former east Ukrainian Donbass militia, a couple thousand Chechen Rosgvardia National Guard, and a couple thousand Wagner security contractors.

Read the rest

Cartoon credit: SonovaMin. The BFD

The political Left and some journalists are raving on about how bad Liz Truss was. She was bad, but not for the reasons you’ll hear from the Lazy Left. If you listen to them, they’ll tell you “she cut taxes and that is bad.”

Free Press believes it is critical that people here don’t take the wrong lessons from the last month in the U.K. That could prevent the next Government from fixing New Zealand’s economic policy.

Truss promised to cut taxes, but that was not in itself the problem. Truss did two big things wrong. One was that she dismissed the need to balance the budget, calling it “abacus economics” during her leadership campaign. Two was that she treated the usual process of budget-making in the U.K. with contempt, not asking the Office for Budget Responsibility to cost her plan, for example.

Together these two mistakes spooked markets. Nobody wanted to buy Gilts, British Government Bonds (that were once pieces of paper with gilded edges) unless they paid out a very high interest rate. Holding pounds started to look risky as the economy became unstable with a madwoman in charge. The currency went for a serious skate. High interest rates and a weak pound made the cost of living crisis much worse for British people, leading to a revolt that made Truss the shortest serving British PM ever.

The first part of the story, the tax cut part, had a lot more too it. The ‘Growth Plan’ that former Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Kwasi Kwarteng presented would cut taxes by £19 billion in the first year, rising to £45 billion in five years time.

At the same time Truss promised energy subsidies of £60 billion pounds a year in the first two years. She then promised this subsidy would be taken away the following year (yeah, right). Altogether she promised to borrow an extra £80 billion in the first year, half of it was extra spending and half was tax.

It’s not like the U.K. Government had been on a spending diet up to this point. Pre-covid they spent £857 billion a year, this year they are on track to spend £1.1 trillion, 27 per cent more spending in four years, before Truss’s increases are added in.

Tax cuts were forecast to grow in future years, but there was no plan to cut spending, just borrow. Even after five years, the the promise was that, for every £100 earned by Brits, the Government would spend £41. The tax cut would be about £2. They didn’t have a tax problem, they had a spending problem.

The mistake was a focus on tax rather than spending. America’s Republicans made this mistake in the 90s and 2000’s. They called it “starve the beast,” thinking that cutting taxes would force Government officials to save money automatically. Government officials just borrowed more, and the public loved it because their taxes were low and their services got better. Now the U.S. Government has lots of debt.

Anyone who cares about fiscal policy knows that spending comes first, then tax. There is no way that a Government won’t pay its debts eventually, unless you want to live in a failed state, so this year’s spending WILL be taxed back sooner or later. Control spending, and the taxes will take care of themselves.

The second big mistake was Truss’s attitude to normal procedures in the U.K. Normally, the Office for Budget Responsibility costs out Government policy. Normally, the Bank of England is consulted with on budget measures.

Out on the hustings, trying to get British Conservative Party Members to make her Leader, and therefore Prime Minister, Truss said all this balanced budget stuff was ‘abacus economics.’

Free Press happens to think fiscal policy and monetary policy should be strictly separate. A competent Treasury should not need a separate ‘Office to Budget Responsibility’ to check its figures. However, the U.K. did have those conventions so suddenly ignoring them was always going to cause trouble.

Snubbing the OBR and having a public fight with the Bank of England while claiming you can spend more, cut taxes, and keep interest rates low is nuts. If you make fun of abacuses, you can’t be very serious about balancing the budget.

The Left will try to say Truss showed why not to cut taxes. What we should learn from Truss is that the most basic rules of economics are real, and breaking them is very expensive.

New Zealand needs is a commitment to shrinking the size of Government that starts with an end to wasteful spending, then cuts taxes. ACT’s Alternative Budget for Real Change laid out exactly how to do that in May. ACT is the only party laying out an honest approach to getting the size of Government under control so that New Zealand can benefit from more free enterprise and less state control.

(ACT media release)

“A Federated Farmers poll released today shows what ACT already knew, New Zealanders back our farmers and reject Labour’s farming tax,” says ACT’s Primary Industries spokesperson Mark Cameron.

“The poll conducted by Curia shows that an overwhelming majority of New Zealanders are opposed to New Zealand taking on a farm tax before the rest of the world.

“ACT was the first political party to oppose the tax which will crush sheep and beef farming and increase global emissions. The farm tax will ultimately be a food tax as prices of meat and dairy rise as a result.

“The Government claims it has worked with the agriculture industry, but it has come out with a proposal that doesn’t even resemble what the industry put forward. It doesn’t recognise sequestration, it doesn’t involve farmers in the governance, and the levy will be set by the Minister.

“This illogical policy-making all kicked off when every party but ACT voted for the Zero Carbon Bill. It set a target that farm emissions must reduce 24 per cent below 2017 levels, and how that goal is reached is irrelevant and global emissions are not considered. The solution that Labour has chosen to meet the target is to hammer our farmers and increase global emissions.

“Kiwi farmers are the most emissions-efficient in the world and they’re not praised enough for this, but there’s more work to be done. ACT has four clear principles that should inform any agricultural emissions policy:

• No policy should give away market share to less efficient competitors

• Farmers should be compensated for their absorption and sequestration

• Methane should be measured properly, which it is currently not

• Innovation should be at the forefront of emissions reduction, instead of our current medieval approach to genetic engineering.

“The Prime Minister wants to go on the world stage and say that New Zealand is the first country to price agricultural emissions. But under this proposal we won’t be leading, we’ll be bleeding and we know most New Zealanders don’t support it.

“ACT will repeal the burp tax.”

A message we’ve received is below. In addition to the reason he gives, we suspect the result of the mayoral election is another factor.

Pete G from Hot Topic Coast Access Radio. Due to impending much higher fuel costs in the New Year I have closed my weekly radio show at Coast Access. I naturally retain a strong interest in the Kapiti Coast and the many contacts that I made in 5 1/2 years. I am an ardent follower of Waikanae Watch and will stay in the loop.

This calendar featuring images by Tokerau Jim was on sale ($20) at the Spring Market last Saturday. He takes some nice photos, below is another example taken from the Waikanae sand dunes. Contact is through his website or on Facebook.