Rangelus

Concerning.

Ah yes, good point. I stand by my general point though, that it's bad optics given all he's being harping on about lately.

The issue isn't that, it's that other previous PMs who lived in their own residences in Wellington did not receive the payment. Chris Hipkins for example.

Given the retoric from the PM about belt tightening and benefit bashing, and given he owns the apartment outright with no mortgage, the optics are pretty poor.

Also he just announced he is paying it back, btw.

Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm quite bored of discussing this with you.

Congratulations.

Man you really are a muppet aren't you?

Implant babies in women. Allow more immigrants. Kill older people or at least urge them to kill themselves to solve this crisis that’s going to destroy their country.

Or encourage families to have kids through incentives? Or increase wages and lower the cost of child care so couples can afford it now? Or combat social norms that women are supposed to stay at home? There are lots of ideas that aren't "force women to have babies" and "kill all old people". I can only assume you are being intentionally obtuse, because I can't imagine you are so stupid to think that these are the only options.

Then again I completely and utterly reject your insane alarmism over this issue. I don’t think this is some massive problem that’s going to destroy the country or GASP!!! make us like Japan. Imagine New Zealand being like Japan. Can anybody imagine something so horrible!!!

You do realize it's not just me, but lots of countries and scientists around the world pointing to the problems that can arise from a rapidly aging population, right? Take Korea, for example. They have the worlds lowest birth rate, and this year it dropped even lower to 0.78 children per woman. By 2067, it is predicted that 46% of the population will be over 65. Can you really not grasp how this will have huge ramifications for a society? When the working population is drastically lower than it is now? How will this affect the economy? Who will look after all the retired people when they need care? And so on and so on. It's not a hard concept, despite you doing your damnedest to channel a moron.

Honestly your alarmism is unhinged.

What alarmism? I simply pointed out it will be a problem if it continues. I didn't shout "WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT NOW!" or anything, did I? I pointed out it is already starting to be a problem in other countries, which is true, and you started going on about forcing pregnancies and other stupid shit.

By the way, most countries where the birth rate is significantly below replacement level have started trying to combat this, usually with financial incentives for having children. Some, such as Korea, have spent billions on this. If it isn't a problem, why waste all that money?

If it's so simple why don't you post your solution then?

I think his point is that we don't have any wild game here that requires a semi-auto AR15 to hunt, because this article is about NZ gun laws here.

The only use case for semi-auto rifles here in NZ when it comes to hunting is for pest control, and in this case they are allowed (if you have the correct documentation and license).

Fair enough. There is definitely a lot of underutilized land which can be repurposed.

Where I live, there is limited land zoned for industrial, so it concentrates businesses to one or two areas. This isn't a problem, but because of zoning it means this land can never be repurposed into housing. Not that we need it yet, when the CBD has plenty of buildings which could be turned into residential/retail dual use buildings, instead of half empty offices for things that could be done at home...

Bollocks, you sound just like ilovethebomb. One is able to recognize a problem without knowing a solution for the problem. To say otherwise is disingenuous at best.

We watch the chase and the news most nights, which are good for the kids imho. We watch the odd housing show or doco on tv as well, although all of this can be streamed on tvnz+.

As long as there is land to build on, and there is, we can just keep building them until demand is met.

This is one of my concerns: we shouldn't be building on new land, we should be building up. But if left up to councils, do we really think this will happen? I took the central government stepping in to get many local councils to even consider medium density in the first place.

Absolutely.

There are legitimate uses for passing things under urgency, but I think we need a much more robust set of rules around this so it can't be abused.