Winston booed at Waitangi

[SueDonim]

Yes, I think Winston's experience gives him the history and background to handle it but I'm sure Seymour will learn. The things that everyone needs to remember are that there is no attack on the treaty happening, just a desire to quite rightly define and reset how it is applied in a modern world that no one could begin to have dreamed of in 1840. And that it's really only a few activists screaming for the sake of screaming because they are worried that their gravy train might get derailed. The shame will be if they sway too many other people along the way and cause more hardship than we already have. Now is a good time to question the status quo while 2/3 government party leaders are Maori and can look at how we should move forward so that everyone receives agreed entitlements fairly and equitably.

I expect you'll be equally scathing about the new government's intention to reenergise the speculator and landlord gravy train?

I have always been most scathing about the implementation of the so-called "bright-line" crap because it was so totally unnecessary. As is the capital gains tax that always gets mentioned in the same sentence - so I have saved you the bother. The bottom line is that we have ALWAYS had income tax rules that mean that any transaction where an item was bought for re-sale is subject to income tax. So all speculators should have ALWAYS been charged income tax when they make a profit. It just seems that those trading in property benefitted from previous governments' failure to apply the tax rules that were always there. And of course the whole point of speculators is the fact that while many might make money - sometimes large amounts - when the markets are right, they can never predict the moment the markets will turn so there are always a lot who get hurt as well. Sometimes very badly. That's the risk of speculation and trading and one reason we chose to stick to investment. Buy, hold and provide a service to the customers (tenants) who need the service to be provided. Keep working for the first 20-25 years to cover the losses and hope that in the next year or two we can hang up the hammer, as it were, with enough income to be comfortable in retirement and enjoy some reward for the decades of working up to 60 hours a week.

As far as landlord rules go, I do hope to see reversal of some of the silly stuff that has had no benefit to anyone and has caused droves of landlords to exit the business, which is a large part of the housing shortage and high rents we are currently seeing. You can hardly call anything a gravy train when the only business that can't claim legitimate expenses to stay in business is one where the customers are people who are often - not always - hard up. The sooner they sort the interest deductibility issues the better. There is certainly no gravy train for landlords.