10% for the next 25 years is an insane amount of money, and no way will it be cost effective.
We have a habit in NZ of completely over-speccing projects, then either cancelling them or never proceeding in the first place. It's what we did with the ferries, it's what we did with that idiotic cycle bridge idea, the Petone-Grenada road... And now this. Which will get binned the moment a Labour coalition takes over.
The spec for the Petone-Grenada road initially called for it to be 100 km/h end to end, which is completely over the top considering the terrain the road would traverse.
At least the Melling Link project seems to be moving.
Police were called after the run-in at a Tauranga skate park.
This guy sound like such an utter tosser.
I find it hard to imagine that being small change to anyone, but I can see someone writing it off as a loss.
You may be thinking of the cycle bridge across the harbour, they spent fifty mil or so on that, mostly on consultants.
Wellington light rail was to be run along existing streets, so the amount of land purchased was going to be very low, I think most of the land purchased wastes to be for the new tunnels.
I honestly can't explain what happened with Wellington light rail, they did public outreach and surveys almost ten years ago, had overwhelming support for both light rail and a secondary Terrace and Mt Vic tunnel. The council was taken to court over the flyover project, and then... Nothing happened for about a decade.
I'm honestly at a loss to explain it.
I disagree with you there, the sunk cost fallacy is a real problem, and we are very much prone to it. If light rail had been under construction already, there would have been a solid case to make for keeping it, but Wellington had been planning and consulting for nearly ten years without laying a single piece of track.
The ferries were perhaps less of a good idea to cancel, but the whole project was massively over speced, in my view. One vessel would have been almost the same size as their entire current fleet.
Between income tax and sales tax when they spend it, the government will probably see half of it anyway.
Exactly what I thought, nobody is going to own up and say it was theirs.
I'd love to know how that much cash ended up in a ceiling space though, someone must know it's there, but has decided it's not worth the risk to come back and get it. Or they're in prison.
Police say the money is probably "tainted" and should be handed to the Crown.
Police don't even know whose money it is, or where it came from. I think they should be able to keep it.
Police say a man had been shooting pigeons at his home - which borders the school - with a BB gun.
I'm guessing the author doesn't know the difference between a BB gun and a pellet gun/air rifle, because I doubt a BB would reliably kill a pigeon.
To be fair, Labour made an absolute pig's ear of almost every infrastructure project they had a go at during their term, it seems a bit churlish of them to complain about National turning around and building roads.
If they and our councils had actually been competent at delivering infrastructure, we'd have trams in Auckland and Wellington, new ferries arriving next year with new terminals waiting for them, as well as better rail infrastructure.
But no, that's not the world we live in unfortunately.
It's owned by Westland Mineral Sands Ltd, although I'm not sure if that means they are the legal owner, or lease the vessel. It's very odd, that's for sure.
Concerns had been raised about the Manahau's crew and flag before it came ashore at Carters Beach.
I'm quite surprised a vessel like this isn't NZ flagged, given it's operating exclusively in NZ waters.
Yes, the amount of excise added to fuel is public information.
Also, our fuel market is quite competitive, as long as you have one of the independent retailers in the area at least. Someone will be the first to move, and the others will follow.
I've got a diesel vehicle myself, I'd love a system that automatically pays RUCs. They exist, but are aimed at businesses with a fleet of vehicles.
With electric vehicles, while they operate purely on electricity, taxing it would be a nightmare as you can "refuel" an EV anywhere.
Given an ever increasing amount of vehicles are either plug in hybrid or EV, this is probably the best way to do this.
It's also an election promise, and part of the coalition agreement, so not really a surprise.
$3250 a year, which is steep, but that's the cost of doing business for a small council.
According the last census, there is roughly 200k residential dwellings in the Wellington region. I can't imagine you'd get much change out of 100k to do a bulk mail out like that.
Possibly, although if an identical envelope went out to every single address in the Wellington region, they'd know something was up.
I can't imagine sending out addressed mail like that would be cheap though. How many households are there in the Wellington region?
He says he does believe humans had a role in causing climate change.
I'm sure it was just a poorly thought out choice of words, but the Tsunami remark is kinda hilarious.
A Muslim leader says it's so far from the truth, when he first heard about it he thought he was being pranked. But a supporter of the flyer says otherwise.
Good on the postal union to tell them where to stick their pamphlet, I say.
Of course, David Seymour is upset about it.
A blind man's experience at the local Ministry of Social Development office has him worried about changes to disability services.
Yup.
The boy was the first to try the 'lollies' and then his mum, when she didn't believe his complaint about the taste.
A major update about the meth lollies, something got lost in translation with the police I think, they seem way too relaxed about class A drugs being out there in the community.
The Auckland City Mission was alerted when a parcel recipient reported "funny tasting" lollies.
Not long ago, I posted a story about someone's dog eating meth on a walk through Auckland, and now this?
Was this a smuggling operation gone wrong perhaps?
Staff have been rankled by suggestion they pay for costumes, but supermarket says it's voluntary.
Honestly, the fact they even asked is pretty bad, voluntary or not.
The troubled Interislander ferry was damaged berthing into Wellington Harbour this afternoon, Wellington's harbourmaster confirmed to RNZ.
God damn it, not again.
There's no chance Kiwis will be offered the lovely tiny apartments seen in the likes of Paris and Rome, a developer says.
Some quite out of touch comments in here, I think. Saying "unlikely they would imitate the stylish apartment blocks that can be seen in the likes of Paris or Rome." when a large chunk of our population currently don't have a hope of ever owning a home is pretty elitist, in my view.
They also mention 50m2 as being considered the minimum for banks to lend to you, I live in a three bedroom house that's 100, a living space for one person can definitely be less than half that.
I really hope we can get more dwellings built that are affordable for a single person, that's something currently missing from our market, I feel.
But more than 80 percent of survey respondents say the arts scene is rich and diverse.
Pretty grim result, but I think it's fair. I haven't felt the CBD is a particularly safe place to be for a long time, and the reason for that is some of the residents, who, to put it nicely, you can never quite predict what they will do next.
And, of course, there's the state of the infrastructure.
The tenant, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs staffer, had concerns about the Saudis being in his home.
Quite a fascinating series of events actually, it sounds like the landlord/realtor has let her attitude cost her a large amount of money, and will continue to do so if she appeals the case.
It's good to see her getting pulled up like this though.
Customs and police stumbled upon the factory when investigating a burglary of 80kg of tobacco.
Quite fascinating that illegally manufacturing cigarettes is now a worthwhile endeavour for someone.
The power pylon that fell last Thursday was due to contractors removing too many nuts, Transpower chief executive Alison Andrew says.
They undid the bolts, and it fell over.
The Interislander ferry only recently underwent wet dock maintenance, which included the replacement of its steering system.
There is an article linked within that one that goes into more detail, but the cause of the grounding has been confirmed as a steering failure.
She's a long way up the shore, so it will take a lot of force to get her off the beach, I think.
Northpower says most of its 65,000 customers have been affected by outages across nearly the entire region after a tower fell near Kumeū.
I've never seen an entire tower fall over like that, that's kinda terrifying.
An Auckland real estate agent is taking a principled stand that has consequences, her lawyer says.
This is such a strange thing to require someone to know, especially when she doesn't deal with Maori land, and all sale is the same legally regardless of the ethnicity of the buyer. And the justification given for making this mandatory is incredibly tenuous, in my view.