Around the traps...

I've not had a lot of time for blogging over the past week, but you can catch a few bits from me around the traps:

• Of course there was always going to be a surge of purchases by 'foreigners' in advance of the stupid foreign buyer ban. Anybody living here on a work visa would be rushing like hell to get their house sorted before the ban hits. 


• But Labour seems to be successful in scaring away foreign investors. Most places want to attract foreign investment and have to work hard to do it. Scaring it away, that's pretty easy. If you have an Overseas Investment Office application in for buying a farm property and then have to worry about whether you're able to live in a house on the property or rebuild it when the time comes, perhaps easier just to find some other place to live where the government doesn't hate foreigners as much.  


• The zero-percent student loans scheme was bad enough. Switching to fees-free study is worse. Folks on twitter got mad about this one and thought I was making numbers up, but it's right there on the darned Education Counts website. The government last year wrote off $0.4452 on every dollar it lent out. That's $662 million that could do a lot more in improving access to tertiary study if shifted over to means-tested student assistance and help for secondary schools in improving preparation for tertiary study. 


• I don't like film subsidies. Will have a post on this later.