Are partners in Auckland's law firms and NZ Big Business the true enemies of free speech in this country?

For all the volumes of articles written by rightist commentators about how folks like former PM Jacinda Ardern tried to shut down personal freedoms and liberties by lockdowns and tightening laws on hate speech - and how NZ's Universities had been taken over by groups inhibiting the freedom of speech of academics - where has one of the most direct full frontal attacks on free speech come from? From Auckland's Big Law Firms and Big Businesses that use those firms to protect their interests. It's been reported Chapman Tripp wrote a letter to the University of Auckland requesting it remove an article by my colleague, Emeritus Prof. Tim Hazeldine, threatening a defamation lawsuit for calling out the Supermarket Duopoly. It was called, "Foodstuffs Wants to Merge its Co-ops, but Consumers Need the Opposite". Business Desk reports, "Foodstuffs North Island has made legal moves to silence an academic critical of its proposed merger". I've already discussed - and been warned - that Big Interests will come after the likes of this Blog when they're exposed. But it ended up happening not to me, but to the (by contrast) gentle and mild mannered Hazeldine. He writes opinions about subjects he knows lots about and earnestly believes to be true.

So shame on Kiwi Blog; Free Speech Union; Bassett Brash & Hide and NZ Initiative; shame on you for critiquing Universities for being hot beds of left-wing activism trying to close down free speech but not calling out Big Business using Big Resources and Big Money to weaponize Big Law Firms (that happily take the fee-income) to threaten one of NZ's leading economists for writing what his opinion. It's a sad day for NZ's big companies, CEO's, and our high net-wealth club, when those who pretend to stand for free-markets threaten the writings of a man defending competition & promoting ways of lowering the cost of living & alleviating poverty. Where was the Free Speech Union, Bassett Brash & Hide, the Initiative? Where were the folks on the NBR Rich List, many of whom donate money to the above free speech outfits & carry on about their right to speak freely & right to offend people? Where are they when the freedom of a guy like Hazeldine to call out Big Business is threatened? Why are they closing ranks and saying nothing?

Our Worst Ever Treasury Secretary, Caralee McLiesh, leaves office with a brain wave on how to improve prosperity in NZ: put up your taxes

You'd be forgiven for not knowing the name of the NZ Treasury Secretary, since most of us have learnt not a thing from her over these past years regards how to make the country a more prosperous place. Caralee McLiesh has been the most invisible Treasury Secretary we've ever had. She's presided over a huge rise in public debt, high inflation, high interest rates, fiscal deficit blowouts, an incompetently designed wage subsidy scheme that had no claw-back (which would've meant companies that never ended up needing the public funds would've had to pay them back), appallingly low productivity growth for which she never provided a hint of a solution, and what is shaping up to be a triple dip recession, making our economy almost the worst performing in the world on the basis of GDP growth .

McLiesh then leaves it to her "exit interview" with the Herald to give her solution as how to increase prosperity in NZ - increase taxes. In particular, go after the assets of those who have worked hard all of their lives and are now over 65 by imposing capital taxes on their wealth. She gets her wires crossed, messing up one of the few things she manages to blurt out during her vacuous interview, namely that, “With an ageing population, we’re seeing an increasing share of Government transfers going to the wealthy, because of course, we have an increase in population of the over-65s, and some of those are in the higher income categories.” What's she on about? The over-65s may have more wealth accumulated over their life-times (which in NZ mainly comes in the form of a house they may own). But in terms of income, which the Treasury Secretary refers to, Stats NZ reports the over-65s are in the second to lowest income group. Its obvious why - they're mostly no longer earning wages and must rely on the pension & typically meagre savings. For those who own a home and live in it, no income derives from that asset, just expenses.

The figure below reports data from Stats NZ on this matter. It shows the Treasury Secretary could not have got it more wrong - the over 65s are in the lowest income group in NZ, with the exception of 18-24 year olds, many of whom are non-working students. Why didn't the Treasury Secretary explain the crux of the issue? We have a Pay-As-You-Go Pension System. Our over 65s already paid taxes when they were young to fund pensions (and health-care) for their parents' generation. Now they have themselves retired, our new young generation is doing the same for them. And so it goes on. The alternative is a funded savings-based system, whereby people start saving for their own retirement (and health-care) when they're young. Kiwi Saver is a start in this direction, but other nations have mandatory systems way larger than Kiwi Saver, which is too small to make a big difference. Why didn't the Treasury Secretary discuss how to strengthen savings-based schemes rather than talk nonsense about hitting "wealthy" elderly with capital taxes to force them to pay twice for welfare.

If  "tax the rich elderly more" represents the quality of advice the PM and Finance Minister have been getting from Treasury - no wonder NZ is in trouble. What's astounding about McLiesh's views is that cutting waste & bureaucracy & designing more efficient ways of running health-care doesn't figure in her comments. There are health systems abroad achieving better outcomes than ours at far lower cost. Single (public) provider, single (public) payer systems like NZ's (and the National Health System in UK) are falling apart. Yet improving efficiency & productivity appears to have never been of interest to McLiesh - only hammering the public to pay more for the broken systems she presided over. Asked what her legacy would be, McLiesh replied, “Any leader wants to leave things better than when they came". On that Key Performance Indicator, her tenure at the Treasury was a failure.

Sources:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/nz-needs-a-capital-gains-tax-and-slimmer-superannuation-payments-outgoing-treasury-head-caralee-mcliesh-says/7UJDKN5NZ5BXFLXO3K7EQLU6SQ/