NZ Politics

I don't think we've ever had such a sharp change in public opinion as we've had over the last decade or so, certainly not in the MMP era.

Labour went from an outright majority to barely 25% of the vote in one term, and now we're set to have our very first single term government in a very long time.

It's enough to give you whiplash.

Investors will only have to remain in New Zealand for 21 days over three years to gain residency under changes to the so-called 'golden visa' to attract wealthy investors to New Zealand, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says.

From 1 April, the Active Investor Plus visa will be replaced with two, simplified investment categories.

The first, the 'Growth' category, will focus on higher-risk investments, including direct investments in New Zealand businesses.

It will require a minimum investment of $5 million for a minimum period of three years.

The second, the 'Balanced' category, will focus on mixed investments, with the ability to choose ones that are lower risk.

There will be a minimum investment of $10 million over five years.

Health New Zealand's new strategy to "fail early, fail often, succeed over time" when it comes to crucial data and digital operations has been labelled "unacceptable" by a union.

Te Whatu Ora has proposed to cut almost half its data and digital positions - more than 1000 of them.

PSA assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said New Zealanders would not accept that Health NZ could ever fail early when it came to health records.

"The stakes are too high. I think it's quite shocking."

But the feedback leaked to RNZ displayed a lot of fear and consternation. Staff had got letters about the proposed jobs being cut.

"My letter has the wrong job title and I am not even from that team," responded one.

Looks like Peters is getting upset the Cook Islands are about to pen a deal with China.

The new Minister of Transport has opened the door for public consultation on at least some of the speed limit changes the government said would be automatic.

Announcing the changes to speed limits last week, Transport Minister Chris Bishop issued two lists - one containing 49 stretches of state highway where there would be public consultation on whether to up the limits and one of 38 areas that would automatically return to higher speed limits.

Can you imagine the uproar is China agreed to help them?

National campaigned on a proposal to adjust the existing tax thresholds, but as part of coalition negotiations with ACT last year, it agreed to consider whether the "concepts" of ACT's tax policy could be incorporated "subject to no earner being worse off than they would be under National's plan".

In simple terms, ACT would immediately axe the lowest tax threshold of 10.5 percent, meaning the government would collect more revenue from all income earners.

Some of that extra revenue would then be returned to low-and-middle income earners through a targeted tax credit to ensure they were not worse off.

The money left over would allow the government to reduce the higher tax rates at the top of the income scale - dropping the 33 percent rate to 30, and the 39 percent rate to 33