You hear Nats make huge claims about how much average rents are up under Labour. The latest claim: $175pw
It's actually $62pw. 35% of what National's claiming
A 22% increase: less than general inflation (23%), average weekly wage (30%), minimum wage (44%)
What’s going on? (1/17) First, let’s sense check National’s number.
If it was true, averages rent would be up $9,100/yr. Landlords’ incomes would be up $6b/yr.
They wouldn’t be griping about losing $900m/yr in tax breaks under Labour. They would be carrying Hipkins through the streets. (2/17)

Journos are getting fed up w National’s refusal to say what they would cut to both fund their tax package & suck demand out of the economy to dampen inflation.

Either National doesn’t know (a major credibility issue) or they’re refusing to say. Maybe we can answer for them 1/ When we did this in Labour in Opposition, we kept track of our spending and tax cut promises against the money available to spend in future Budgets.

Anything in excess of that available money would need more debt or more tax to balance the sums 2/

National will run in 2023 on 'they dont deliver, wanna wee tax cut (while the rich get a massive one)?' they always do. it's BS. Here's some of what Labour's delivered:
Record low unemployment
5.6% real GDP growth
149,000 new homes
Matariki
Abortion decriminalisation
26 was PPL..

https://twitter.com/NZStuffPolitics/status/1512840797057544195

1st year fees free
lower deaths during global pandemic
end state house sell off
ban letting fees
end tax loopholes for landlords
foreign buyer ban
limit rent increases to 1/yr
end no cause evictions
save main trunk line electrification
Mana in mahi
lower prison population...

Simon Bridges is more famous now for melting down during the first COVID lockdown but, if he’s going to be Nat leader again, let’s not forget his horrendous conscience vote record. The guy makes Collins look like a mainstream New Zealander by comparison (1/9) Bridges voted against:
•Marriage equality
•Having a euthanasia referendum
•Decriminalising abortion
•Medicinal cannabis
•Banning conversion therapy
& voted to raise the alcohol purchase age
On abortion, he voted for extreme ideas put up by other Nats during the debate (2/9)

I think this is the heart of the misunderstanding between political journos and public criticism of their questions.

The journos correctly say they're not asking silly or repetitive questions because they're dumb or mean, but to get the answers on record, or probe the answers...

https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1299960436058587138

...to critics, their response is 'don't want to see sausages made? don't tour the factory' (which is a little ironically thin-skinned for a group whose job is to question others and make them explain themselves).

But here's the thing, what press conferences are has changed...

what we never see from proponents of opening the border is any numbers. so, here we go.

There's no point doing it unless it generates a lot of money/jobs.

Let's say we want a billion extra GDP, roughly equal to 10,000 jobs.

How many tourists, intl students do we need?... The average tourist adds just $4k to GDP and visits for about 2 weeks. frankly, they're not going to come when isolation will cost them at least that much & take that long.

intl students? they each contribute 40k to GDP on average and stay longer. so focus on them....

Transport was my round when I worked for Twyford and earlier for Genter.

So, I had a look at National's '$1.5b' expressway to Ashburton that they announced to universal yawns this week.

First off - they've got the costing way, way under.... ... If you look at 4 lane expressway we've built recently/are building- the cost is $30-35m a kilometre (that's over $30,000 a metre - these things are beasts - new corridors need to be bought, huge road beds & works). Ashburton-Chch would 60km of new 4 lanes- so ~$2b but wait...

New Zealanders supported removing abortion from the Crimes Act and modernising the law by 3 to 1. So, Muller is already on the hard side of New Zealand conservatism in voting against it.

But his votes on abortion were far more hardline than you might realise (1/9) In the committee stage, MPs can vote on proposed edits to a Bill. On the abortion Bill, Muller voted for all nearly all the proposed anti-choice amendments. And there was so extreme stuff in there. A lot of these ideas weren't even supported by other anti-choice MPs. (2/9)

It’s the 1st election yr in a decade I’m not working in Parliament but I’ve got reckons!

So, what conditions are faced by the significant parties (Labour, National, Greens, NZF) & what strategies will they employ?

(this is a monster thread, I’ll spread it over a few days) (1/N) A lot of election coverage is about edge cases, weird situations, personality clashes. They're interesting, but they're not how elections are won & lost.

Political parties that win focus on the bottom line: getting enough voters to go their way to get the numbers they need (2/N)

A couple of days from Xmas and National's campaign of relentless lying and negative isn't taking a break.

Let's take a look at what the Government has achieved in housing and what, if anything, National is planning

For starters: the govt built 60 homes a week in November (1/10) All up, the Govt has completed 3900 homes since June 2018 (and several hundred before then, HUD doesn't say how many).

That's 50 a week, accelerating to 60 a week in November.

There are another 3,600 under construction right now and tens of thousands planned. (2/10)