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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 5h

And I have all the OIA-generated receipts for how Ministry of Health officials stalled and then killed the repeal and replacement of the MoDA following the Law Commission review, if you’re interested

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 5h

Currently, they’re holding us for ransom for Australian landlords and Australian tobacco companies, as everyone who can leave gets on a plane and does so

Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 10h

As OCR rates have come down, bank net interest margins have gone up - the OCR is at 2.5% and the NIM is at 2.6%. As a point of comparison, in Aussie the NIM is about 1.7%. So - as you say - mortgage rates are about 1% too high, solely due to profiteering

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 22h

It’d be great to catch up!

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

This is the sort of policy that can only exist at the nexus of power, incompetence, and bad faith

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

Not anywhere near Otago, but DM me when you’re Auckland-bound so we can catch up

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

Also: I’d love to figure out what the correct citation approach is when I quote your stuff in Serious Documents 😂

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

In the short term, take the excess dividends off the banks and the gentailers and use the proceeds to install solar PV+battery systems on every house in the country.

People pretend this stuff is hard and complex when in fact it’s a piece of piss

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

Break up the supermarkets and force divestment of wholesale from retail, nationalize the electronic card transaction system and reduce costs to zero, provide almost-free producer markets in every town and city via local councils

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 23h

Split banking into wholesale and retail, enable not for profit and Trustee banks, nationalize Payments NZ and the Swift gateways, and give RBNZ a well-deserved punch in the face for their prudential mismanagement and bank welfare:

www.bankingreform.nz

Banking Reform Coalition

www.bankingreform.nz

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

And while we’re on the subject of excessive bank profits, it looks like ANZ might have misled the Select Committee when they claimed they weren’t any more profitable than their peers. It appears the UBS analysts disagree

#nzpol

www.thepost.co.nz/business/360...

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

Sorry Sara, I missed the notice. So all the condolences in the world, and I’m sure your eulogy will be tears and laughter in exactly the right measure

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

To read Terry Pratchett’s books for the jokes is to miss the insights of one of the greatest practical philosophers of our era

Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 1d

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

Paul Haine @paulhaine.bsky.social · 1d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

Also: Kemi needs to read the last book, and perhaps have a bit of a think afterwards

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

In economic terms, landlords are parasites. They sit between housing demand and housing supply and make an excessive return on capital that is neither economically nor socially justifiable, whilst being subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars a year by taxpayers

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 1d

See also: the widening gap between the yellow line and the blue bars, also known as the bloated and excessive interest margins of the Australian-owned banks, now amongst the highest in the OECD. The area under the graph, minus the area under the yellow line, is more or less the exported profits

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 2d

I don’t know what you’re on about … National is definitely the party of business - providing your business is a bank, a power company or a supermarket, of course

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 2d

This is a huge defeat for the Bankers Association, who tried to get the law changed retrospectively to let them off the hook

#nzpol

www.interest.co.nz/banking/1355...

ASB to pay $135.6m to settle class action, ANZ case continues

ASB to cough up $135.6 million to settle class action relating to home and personal loans between 2015 and 2019

www.interest.co.nz

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 2d

“Kids just need to get off the sofa, raise $20 million in a few VC rounds for their AI startups, employ all their mates, take it global, then sell out to a sociopathic hedge fund for a couple of billion in tax-free capital gains”, says PM Luxon

www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

How many job hunters are there for each job ad?

Finding work may not be as easy as "getting off the PlayStation", data on jobs and job hunters shows.

www.rnz.co.nz

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 3d

… as a result of ingesting far too many extremely dodgy mind-altering substances sold by a weird looking guy wearing a button that says “I’m a true NZ Initiative believer”

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 3d

There does seem to be quite a lot of “we want this outcome”, followed by policies that are diametrically opposed to producing the outcome, followed by grumpiness at the country for not achieving the outcome

Abbie Jury 🌱 @tikorangi.bsky.social · 3d

'We want young people in work, in training or other ed' says the man whose government halved the apprenticeship boost allowance and moved fees free to year 3 along with destablising Polytech learning.

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 4d

“But it’s all Labour’s fault / Trump’s tariffs / the invasion of space aliens … plus the dog ate my homework and I can’t possibly be responsible!”

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 5d

Plus we have all the 20-something graduates leaving in droves - our major export industry has become our skilled young people

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 6d

There are >160,000 people unemployed, and last time I checked on Seek, about 12,000 jobs. The technical term for the gap between those two numbers is “economic mismanagement”

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Kent Duston @kentduston.bsky.social · 6d

That’s a very nice result. I sometimes wonder if the solution to achieving good film sim results on digital is to start with far worse sensors than the ones we’re using … your shot maybe makes that point

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