Tomorrow is a long time, as Bob Dylan once said, and while Dylan wasn’t singing about our prospects of economic recovery, the mood of frustrated anticipation seems apt. Supposedly, economic growth is just around the corner but so far, what’s around the corner is always just another corner.
Meanwhile, the belt-tightening and the job losses and the spending and hiring freezes are doing nothing for public confidence. Guess what? When the cost of living remains stubbornly high, when real wages are losing ground against inflation, and unemployment is at pandemic levels, people don’t feel much like going out on a spending spree. Most households also don’t have the headroom to spend, to borrow more, or to save. All up, that’s why retailers continue to suffer, as the recession rolls on for most of us.
Regardless…the bad news in this week’s fiscal update has been met with calls for further cuts to government spending. Although austerity hasn’t worked so far, the outlook seems to be for more austerity, and harsher forms of it. The options being floated include cutting national superannuation and taking an axe to health, education and to what remains of the welfare safety net.
This week, this is already being manifested in over $500 million of new “efficiencies” ( aka spending cuts) in regional health spending. Weirdly, spending on Defence (more frigates!) and law and order (more prisons!) is again being exempted from these disciplines.
The courage to inflict pain on others
Allegedly, it is once again time for politicians to make some tough calls, provided these decisions are tough only on other people. (The pundits and bank economists fond of calling for tough decisions seem to have a limited appetite for personal pain. Help to balance the books by raising their taxes? Heaven forbid.)
These calls for economic reform are being made so that we can “get the books back into surplus” sooner than the year 2030 being predicted by Treasury. Evidently, “getting the books back into surplus” is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. A pearl to be sought at any price. So long as it doesn’t involve raising taxes, which is verboten under the current ideological settings. Actually…if history is anything to go by, any surplus that we do eventually achieve will be frittered away on another round of tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. So much pain, to so little end purpose.
Paradoxically though…at the same time, we’re also being told that green shoots are appearing, and the economic recovery is nigh. If it is, then what’s the rush? Surely, once the economy picks up gear, and people start to feel able and confident enough to spend, and the tax revenues start rolling back into the government coffers…hey, we’ll be back in surplus by natural means before you know it. No need for big changes.
Conversely….if all of that is just a mirage, you have to ask the question. Why on earth would stronger doses of the same failed austerity medicine be likely to produce a miracle cure ? IMO, the real alternative is one whereby the state sensibly embraces its dominant role in the economy, backs its ability to invest in growth (and in the job creating parts of the economy) and actively uses its balance sheet accordingly. Just like other, more successful small economies (Ireland, Denmark) have done.
Footnote: As always, the yellow brick road to economic prosperity is said to require us to boost our productivity. Otherwise those green shoots of demand currently being glimpsed will soon overwhelm the supply side of the economy and trigger more inflationary pricing -which, in turn, will result in another round of the Reserve Bank jacking up interest rates.
Supposedly, productivity gains are the only way of avoiding this inflationary doom cycle, but…how are we to achieve this blessed state of virtue? According to this RNZ interview with former bank economist Cameron Bagrie, we can get there only by investing in new technology, by upskilling, and by “getting more out of the inputs into goods and services.”
Right. If you say it quickly, that sounds reasonable. Except… we are touting this as desirable at the same time as AI is about to cut a swathe through the services sector that comprises 2/3 of the NZ economy, and provides the bulk of our existing jobs. In which case, fewer people with steady jobs will be working harder.
In other words, investing in AI may well boost productivity and spruce up the GDP numbers. In all likelihood though, there will be a serious socio-economic price to be paid for those gains, and it is not being acknowledged. We can’t say we didn’t see it coming. Already, we have seen the impact that job cuts in the public service have had on the Wellington retail economy and on house prices in the capital. Are we really aiming to do the same thing on steroids to the entire country, in the pursuit of the productivity gains that AI and other tech innovations might deliver?
If we truly are set “on getting more from the inputs into goods and services’ then it is worth keeping in mind that the most costly “inputs” are the labour costs. If we “reduce” those, who will be left to buy the stuff in our shops, cafes and restaurants, beyond the bare essentials? Not to mention the longer term impacts on the ability to save for retirement. That’s hard to do, when ChatGTP-5 has eaten your ability to buy lunch.
In sum, a lot of the rhetoric around boosting productivity via new technology simply ignores the social costs this is likely to involve, and the boomerang effects that those costs will have on the wider economy. Ultimately, we need state investment in stable, well-paying jobs, and not merely in the technology likely to consign more people to the scrap heap.
Objectionable sentencing
December 17, 2025 : Jevon McSkimming was sentenced to nine months home detention for possessing objectionable images, including those of child porn and bestiality. McSkimming will not be required to register as a child sex offender.
December 16, 2025: An (un-named) 35-year-old Auckland man was sentenced in the Auckland District Court…for importing material relating to child sexual abuse and bestiality. He received a sentence of three years and nine-and-a-half months’ imprisonment.
December 15, 2025: Storm Uriah Constable-Carter, 22, was sentenced to five years and five months in jail or possessing and uploading thousands of objectionable images including those of child porn. The sentencing judge explicitly rejected the argument that this was a “victimless crime”.
20 May 2025. Donald James Sarratt, 35, was sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment after being found guilty of possessing objectionable material relating to children and knowingly making/and or copying objectionable material relating to the sexual exploitation of children.
September 25, 2025 Lee Irving Musham was sentenced to nine months home detention after pleading guilty to possessing child sexual exploitation material. Musham was not required to register as a child sex offender. As Stuff reported:
Forensic examination revealed material depicting child sexual abuse involving victims as young as five, as well as bestiality, computer-generated files promoting bestiality. “Collecting and viewing this material is not passive offending. It condones the abuse and children suffer to satisfy the market for these images,” said Tim Houston, of the [Police] child exploitation team. “One way we work to put an end to this form of child abuse is to stop those who create, collect and distribute this material.”
Obviously, no two cases are the same. The scale of the offence and the extent of active dissemination of the images may be taken into account. However, and as was clearly stated by the sentencing judge cited above, the possession of such images is not a victimless crime. One factor in the home detention outcomes may have been if/when the accused pleads guilty to possessing only a small number (e.g one, or three) of the many objectionable images in question. If that is the case, such a loophole would seem to undermine the deterrent purpose.
In the wake of Bondi
When Donald Trump initially tweeted praise for the hero who had disarmed one of the Bondi shooters, this was before news had got out that the hero’s name was Ahmed al-Ahmed, and that his family had come to Australia from Syria. How, I wondered, would the MAGA universe cope with such compelling evidence that (a) an immigrant and (b) a Muslim were the good guys here? Easy. Elon Musk’s Chatbot circulated a bogus story online that Ahmed al-Ahmed was a white Australian in disguise, called Edward Crabtree.
Among the other social media falsehoods was a claim that Muslims in Sydney had celebrated the Bondi massacre with fireworks. (After 9/11, Donald Trump made a similar bogus claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey had celebrated the fall of the Twin Towers.) In reality, the Sydney fireworks display had been part of a Carols by Candlelight event occurring at the same time, across town.
Why has the Bondi massacre received so much more coverage, and so many more outpourings of public sympathy than the carnage still happening in Gaza? Probably, terrorist acts will always hit harder when they’re committed in familiar surroundings, close to home. For many New Zealanders, Bondi is familiar territory. Moreover, its sun, sand and surf are part and parcel of the ideal image that most of us have of Australia. Having Bondi turned into a killing ground has felt, for many, like a personal violation. Much more so than when the same sort of atrocities are being perpetrated on the other side of the world.
The younger shooter’s allegiance to Islamic State makes the motivation for the massacre seem obvious. However, the fact the security services knew beforehand about his IS sympathies makes the family’s ability to legally amass an arsenal of weapons seem inexplicable. Apparently, Jewish Australian civilians were targeted in retribution for the kind of actions being taken half a world away by the Israeli government and its armed forces. If anything, that disconnect makes the massacre even more horrifying.
Point being: unarmed men, women and children should never be the targets of deadly force. Bondi, alas, is not a unique example of this kind of de-humanisation. In the two years since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and – according to Save the Children – on average, one Palestinian child has been killed every hour over the past 23 months, or some 20,000 in all. Since a “truce” was declared on October 10, 2025, nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.
I mention these figures not to downplay the Bondi massacre but to underline the horror of civilians being treated as targets by anyone. (The deliberate targeting of children by the shooters in Bondi, and by IDF snipers in Gaza, is particularly abhorrent.) Obviously, Jewish Australians are not responsible for the decisions taken by Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates. Similarly, Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the actions taken by Hamas. New Zealanders know this. In the Christchurch shootings, Muslims gathered for Friday prayers – just like the Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi – were targeted for their faith, and not for any actions for which they were remotely culpable.
What these outrages share in common is the use of a faith or a nationality as a reason for inflicting collective punishment. This is never justified. In denouncing the indiscriminate acts of violence committed against the Jewish citizens at Bondi, we have to be equally prepared to denounce the indiscriminate violence being committed against Palestinian citizens in Gaza. Our common humanity demands it.
Just as we can (and should) criticise Hamas while maintaining that its actions do not justify treating Palestinian civilians as targets, we can (and should) criticise the Israeli government without treating Jewish people as being collectively culpable for its actions. It has never been more important to retain the ability to make such distinctions. In the wake of the Bondi massacre, any criticism of Israel now seems at risk of being described as anti-Semitism.
For example: in the UK at least, to publicly suggest that the actions of the Netanyahu government may be even partially responsible for the global rise in anti-Semitism is now – apparently – totally unacceptable. This seems dangerously misguided. To equate all criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism is an attack on academic freedom, free speech and the right to protest. It also erodes the basic principle that civilians should never be the targets of deadly force by, in effect, seeking to exempt Israel from the need to observe any such restraints.
That is not just a personal opinion. The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism explicitly rejects the suggestion that criticism of Israel is equivalent to anti-Semitism. As Guideline 12 says:
12. Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.
And here’s Guideline 14 :
14. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.
In its preamble, the Jerusalem Declaration also makes a useful distinction between criticism of the actions of the Israeli state, and anti-Semitism. It states “Hostility to Israel could be an expression of anti-Semitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or … the emotion that a Palestinian person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State.” In sum, criticism of the Israeli state is not necessarily (or often, primarily) motived by sentiments of anti-Semitism.
In sum, the sympathy due to the Bondi victims and to the Jewish community in Australia cannot end up giving one side of the Middle East conflict a free pass, when it comes to the targeting of innocent civilians.