Content supplied by Roy Morgan
In June 2015, Economic issues 44% (up 4% since March 2015) are still clearly the most important problems facing New Zealand and the biggest problems facing the World today are once again Economic Issues 32% (up 7%) according to the latest Roy Morgan Research conducted in June 2015.
New Zealand views on Problems facing New Zealand
When asked about the most important problem facing New Zealand, 44% of New Zealanders mention some kind of Economic issue. This is up 4% from March 2015 and well ahead of Government/ Public policy/ Human rights issues 29% (up 3%), Social issues 13% (down 2%) and Environmental issues 5% (down 2%).
The most important Economic issues facing New Zealand include Poverty / The gap between the rich and the poor 21% (up 3%), Economy/ Financial crisis/ Recession/ High dollar 10% (up 5%), Unemployment/ Job security 5% (down 3%) and Cost of living/ Inflation/ Financial hardship/ Household debt 4% (down 1%).
There has also been a significant increase in New Zealanders mentioning Housing shortage/ Housing affordability 14% (up 4%) as a problem facing New Zealand – this is at a new record high, while other important issues include Government/ Politicians/ Leadership/ Government spending 8% (down 1%), Social apathy/ Lack of values/ Lack of empathy/ Intolerance 3% (unchanged) and Child abuse 3% (unchanged).
Economic issues are most prominent amongst older New Zealanders – 48% of those aged 35-49yrs old and 50+yrs old mention Economic issues compared to 45% of those aged 25-34yrs old while only 27% of 14-24yr olds mention Economic issues. Younger New Zealanders are most likely to mention the Housing shortage/ Housing affordability as the biggest problem – 18% of 14-24yr olds compared to 13% of 25-34yr olds; 14% of 35-49yr olds and only 11% of those aged 50+yrs old.
New Zealand views on Problems facing the World
The biggest World problems are now Economic issues 32% (up 7% since March 2015) followed by War & Terrorism/ Security (29%, down a large 12%) and both are well ahead of Environmental Issues 15% (up 6%) and Social Issues 12% (down 1%).
Of the Economic issues facing the World mentioned by New Zealanders the most important are Poverty/ The gap between rich & poor/ Imbalance of wealth 19% (up 5%), Economy/ Financial crisis/ Recession 4% (up 1%), Cost of living/ Inflation/ Financial hardship/ Household debt 3% (unchanged) and Over-population 3% (up 1%).
Among the War & Terrorism/ Security issues facing the World mentioned by New Zealanders are Wars and Conflicts/ Unrest 12% (unchanged), Terrorism 11% (down a large 12%), and Religious Conflict 4% (up 1%).
Other important issues are Climate change/ Global warming/ Ozone layer/ Greenhouse effect 8% (up 3%), Social apathy/ Lack of values/ Lack of empathy towards others/ Intolerance 5% (unchanged), Greed 4% (up 1%) and Famine/ Hunger/ Starvation 3% (up 1%).
Michele Levine, Chief Executive Officer, Roy Morgan says:
“Economic issues dominate in New Zealand – 44% (up 4% since March 2015) of New Zealanders say the biggest problems facing New Zealand are economic and 32% (up 7%) say economic issues are also the biggest problems facing the World. These results are similar to those recorded across the Tasman in Australia where 49% of Australians in April mentioned Economic issues as the biggest problem facing Australia and 27% mentioned Economic issues as the biggest problem facing the Worldalongside Terrorism/ Wars/ Security issues (also 27%).
“In New Zealand the biggest economic issue is Poverty/ The gap between the rich and the poor/ Imbalance of wealth 21% (up 3%) followed by Economy/ Financial crisis/ Recession/ High dollar 10% (up 5%), Unemployment/ Job security 5% (down 3%) – clearly lower than across the Tasman in Australia (13%), and Cost of living/ Inflation/ Financial hardship/ Household debt 4% (down 1%).
“Housing shortage/ Housing affordability 14% (up 4%) is a huge problem facing New Zealand – now at a record high. The soaring housing prices in Auckland are the largest driver of this issue which is most prominent amongst Auckland respondents (21%) and also younger New Zealanders – 18% of 14-24yr olds. Many Kiwis also view Government/ Politicians/ Leadership/ Government spending 8% (down 1%) as a significant problem. These issues are part of the Government/ Public policy/ Human rights issues now at a total of 29% (up 3%).
“The biggest economic issues facing the World are Poverty/ The gap between the rich & poor/ Imbalance of wealth 19% (up 5%) and Economy/ Financial crisis/ Recession 4% (up 1%). War/ Terrorism & Security issues have fallen back to 29% (down 12%) after spiking early in 2015 following the atrocities in France – the two most mentioned sub-issues are Wars & Conflicts 12% (unchanged) and Terrorism 11% (down 12%).
“Environmental issues have jumped to 15% (up 6%) in June – the highest this set of issues has been for more than 2 ½ years since January 2013. Clearly the most important environmental issue New Zealanders mention is Climate Change/ Global Warming/ Greenhouse effect 8% (up 3%) – a record high for this problem since Roy Morgan first asked this question in 2010. Later this year a gathering of world leaders in Paris will discuss the issue at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Conference – the follow-up to the Copenhagen Conference in 2009.”
These findings come from a special New Zealand Roy Morgan survey conducted with New Zealanders aged 14+ asked what are the most important issues facing New Zealand and the World today.
In New Zealand, a cross-section of 1,000 men and women aged 14 or over were interviewed by telephone in June 2015. Respondents were asked: “Firstly, what do you think is the most important problem facing the World today?” and “What do you think is the most important problem facing New Zealand today?” The research conducted was both qualitative (in that people were asked to use their own words) and quantitative (in that the ‘open-ended’ responses were analysed and ‘coded’ so that the results could be counted and reported as percentages).
73 Comments
That's not cheap, the New Zealand median income is about $45K.
Limited job options in the provinces, especially if you want to make your student loan funded education pay. The provinces only look cheap relative to Auckland, one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, of all time.
New Zealand has a housing affordability problem.
famers earn poor money.
Police and Teachers are government paid, not workers
the salespeople figure is select few based on target, many earn far less.
lawyers and accountant and doctors have fish in the pond so their victims have no choice in what they pay.
orchardists, not from what the pickers tell me, and given that even imported labourers complain amount the money, I think you're telling porkies.
farmers: consider it vs asset holdings, hours worked, source of income, and time involved. many do over 10 hours a week, reinvested, compound, with partners income, much of the older ones had a time when their labour was direct into the business and untaxed. and as I say compounded for 20 - 60 years, often with free or subsided entry... and take home what yield this year? (after deducted retained earnings)
Ok, well let's say you ring-fenced all provincial cities, and left out beneficiaries/seasonal workers, left out small rural towns, your salary/wage earners average would look OK. So, a two income household in Palmerston N e.g. Teacher and a assistant manager buying the 400k house is a lot better off than living in Auckland with a 500k mortgage and extra car costs.
yes teacher salaries are high in provinces.
And 400k is quite an impressive house in PN - get some pretty good 3bd + section + parking for 200k-270k.. you could own two houses for your 400k if your missus aint some high maintenance snob.
but there aren't a large volume assistant manager jobs in PN, and it's a challenge getting into those or even entry level positions, due to shrink provincial incomes since the place is ring fenced with net money going out of the area rather than in.
And for that reason there is also less other higher paying careers (most of the top lay is in Auckland or Wellington) and what there is tends to pay less (not so much competition to set higher market price)
Regional recruitment is up according to this story
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=150346…
The point is - unless you are running a 2-income, 2 Professionals household and have strong family ties in Auckland, you will be much better off financially, better off lifestyle-wise, better prepared for retirement by getting out of Auckland and moving to a provincial city. Your housing costs will be greatly reduced, your transport costs will be reduced, etc.
The Auckland housing situation will stay in the same category of Vancouver, Sydney, Singapore etc. - only a place for high income professionals. Average families cannot survive in those environments.
Since Bernards article doesn't have comments enabled I will say it here. Whether or not offshore real estate buyers are killing our economy matters little. What matters now is that Labour have found a political football to play with and National, having played it wrong, are now playing into the wind.
I'm going to kick in with a comment about Mr Ng's article (sorry mate forgot your first name)
Not quite following the 1% of population = 1% of house buying. Just because someone is resident doesn't limit them to one or more or less houses, or even imply they live in NZ.
Not to sure if you addressed that point, or if that was the point about "slippery numbers" you were making.
My concern is not so much Chinese but any foreign money.
Although I expect more risk from segments of Chinese population and descendant, than Sudanese and their descendents; based on incomes. that why labelling country of origin (from the money bringers aspect) is probably worth investigate.
the problem from the money is it distorts the local economy.
If 10 rich Germans buy into NZ, getting 3 houses apiece; it will lift the prices across Auckland.
If 10 rich Greeks -then- turn up in Auckland wanting and able to buy 3 houses a piece, it will lift Auckland prices up even faster - and the moneied demand is not a function of the local NZ economy, it's inflationary, not sustained, not trade profit (it's injected).
But the action of the Greeks, will inflate all the property that was bought by the Germans short term ago. that short term capital gain, makes the property perform exceedingly well as an investment...powered by injected foreign finance, not by NZ market conditions.
Any NZer of any source, or even foreigner who was Holding property prior to the first German wave, is winning the lottery investment-wise compared to any other NZ based investment - which massively depresses any other NZ based or source investments, ie kills the NZ economy. No big deal for those buying in.
but some of are just asking the question the Maori's should have asked. Just how many are you going to bring with you? 50 or 100 Europeans wouldn't have made much difference and could have naturalise quite nicely, but I doubt the Maori were expecting 1,000,000 .
Re Nick Smiths comments - only one company has 45% of the Auckland market and sold nearly 4,000 homes in that three month period - Barfoots, so there is no mystery around where the data came from. Of course Barfoots will try to play this down. They now have more than 50% of the salespeople in many of their offices who are Chinese and the company has become the powerhouse of Chinese buyer activity in the Auckland market - what we really need to see is how many Chinese have become resident in NZ in each of the last three years - the main reason for Auckland prices escalating is because the National Government have given a massive number of Chinese very easy access to New Zealand. If the economic crisis developing in China worsens you may see sale volumes in Auckland plummet and Chinese pulling out of the market - alternatively more may pour into NZ.
Oh for feckssakes. So spineless. And how many times has it been stressed that race is an irrelevant red herring, and that citizenship status is what matters. How much of this bubble is even related to demand for houses as dwellings, as opposed to houses as speculative tokens and sinkholes for stashing criminal funds? A market this tiny can't be opened up to every investor, tax evader and money launderer on Earth without some serious distortions and consequences, and that's a fact whatever the nationality of the buyers.
They appear to have many ways (unsure if they are legal) of taking more than the $50K out.........I have an enormous issue if it is illegal money entering NZ and then buying NZ houses......if the Kiwi fruit growers can take the Government to court for allowing the PSA in then I'm thinking bringing illegal funds in must come under the jurisdiction of some bureaucracy so NZ FHB might try a legal avenue against the Government for allowing this money in.
And the Herald have provided a Chinese translation of the article;
https://zen.nzherald.co.nz/media/webcontent/document/pdf/201528/Chinese…
Why not put a "All racist comments will be removed " notice on the thread and open it up and have someone monitor it - I am sure there will be plenty of discussion that is non racist on that thread. It is the most major issue that has lead to house price increases in Auckland and the National government is responsible. It needs to be discussed. Auckland is full - we cannot handle the number of migrants pouring in, the housing industry cannot keep up, the roads are clogged and the council rates will have to double to cope with infrastructure requirements.
because that is the default - hence DC put up a "forward email to him" for possible listing.
It was the follow-up that had no comment section, assuming because it was originally forwarded to DC?
Why would a Kiwi need the normal rules re-listed for a particular article since many of us won't listen anyway.
You are right bb. No one should first blame individual Chinee (even if they do turn out to be crooks) for taking advantage of slack NZ rules to secure their wealth (I mean who in their right mind would not want to be out of that communist hell-hole); it's the Kiwi ticket-clippers filling their pockets out of it that deserve our abuse.
Heck no - we really don't want the Auckland bubble to spread. The highest price paid always sets the market where RE is concerned. It results in NZers borrowing more locally;
http://www.interest.co.nz/charts/credit/housing-credit
When house and land price inflation runs above CPI inflation - it puts the whole country at risk.
Apparently the provinces are too quiet anyway!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11478720
Internal immigration has been out of Auckland for a long time. http://statisticsnz.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/Migration/inter…
I see no great evidence that Aucklanders have greater incomes that the rest of New Zealand. Employment if as hard or as easy to get as in the rest of New Zealand.
And given the rents and house prices Aucklanders have less than money in their pockets.
And don't forget the Zombie suburbs of the outskirts.
Re the 'My Last Name is Chinese' article which just came up, also apparently with no comments allowed, wouldn't it be useful if real data on buying by non-citizens and non-residents was collated, so that in order to quantify the problem we could use fact, rather than clumsy proxies like surnames? Bonus: would stop all the unfair focus on Chinese buyers.
As things are, the whole situation's obscured with layers of prejudice and speculation and conspiracy theories.
It's quite possible that Chinese buyers are the majority of foreign buyers now, but even if that's true, it's still a huge red herring. Even if every Chinese buyer leaves the NZ market tomorrow, we'd still have a giant economy-endangering weakness in our legislation which can be exploited by anybody who chooses to.
There also needs to be some really heavy scrutiny of the weaknesses in our company registration legislation which are wide open to abuse.
And now another blog post on Public Address in response to Keith Ng's one;
http://publicaddress.net/speaker/house-buying-patterns-in-auckland/
Wonder if David will pick up that one as well?
Seems a bit silly to disallow comments here when the commentary on Public Address has not gone horribly racist. But perhaps interest.co.nz and public address represent a different 'type' of commentator? Maybe David just needs to put a bit more faith in his 'community'?
That's a reasonable post refuting the racism objection.
"Can you conclude on the preponderance of all available evidence from the aggregate data that there is likely a large impact of offshore investment from China in Auckland’s real estate market? Yes"
The problem with open, liberal, democratic western countries is that their very openness and fair treatment of all people groups is that they then are vulnerable to exploitation themselves.
as usual the race card comes up, just because one or two races are taking advantage of our slack laws is not the point.
the point is that the market is being feed by offshore buyers whom have no interest in NZ or its future and it should be stopped.
we should have laws that ownership of NZ land to NZ residents and citizens..
and for foreign investors in buildings they need to pay GST on the purchase with no ability to claw back that can then be used to fund infrastructure
they should also pay on GC when they sell,
Those measures would get rid of those buying to hold for GC, give an advantage back to locals and for big business not be too much of a disincentive to invest
At least an attempt has been made to investigate the foreign property buying scandal. Despite the data/methodology being less than robust.
Interesting that the NZ Herald had to have all this handed to it on a plate - where is the investigative journalism in NZ?
Surely the banks would be able to trace where the money is coming from? If a NZ mortgage is not being raised, where is the money coming from to buy the house? If all Auckland properties bought with no NZ mortgage were investigated then the next question is to trace the supply chain of the money. Or perhaps they are clever enough to raise a modest mortgage to provide a cover in case all of this is fully investigated.
Who has the legal right to check the property titles?
Perhaps if the banks, legal profession, AucklNd council and RE agents shared data then the true story could be further told.
Property titles are easy to get individually. All you need is a Terranet account and a credit card. But Immigration and citizenship information on individuals is likely to be a lot more problematic, because generally for agencies to release that information, there has to be grounds for suspicion of criminal offending against various Acts for the Privacy Act to be superseded, and the information can only be used for that specific purpose. That isn't the case here, so retrospective compilation of information could be difficult and expensive. So sooner the information's collected at the purchase/title stage, the better.
From Basel Brush in 2012 - 3 years ago
New Zealand has a significant investor visa program requiring an investment of $1½ million
With hindsight you could see (and so could the authorities at that time) what was going on
An off-shore buyer pays $1½ million for a house worth $800k without blinking or inspecting the property
That is an outright purchase of NZ citizenship an NZ passport and NZ residency
Without regard to the over-flow consequences into other property
Basel Brush III July 2012
I was told today of a local Asian RE agent buying on behalf of a China buyer, sight-unseen, a property in Botany area. The price negotiated is $1.6m for a property with a CV of $800k
http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/60396/thursdays-top-10-10-japanese-pe…
Screaming the word 'racism' is just another way of shooting the messenger. Chinese buying has only just started....
China's rich seek shelter from stock market storm in foreign property
...
http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-rich-seek-shelter-stock-market-storm-forei…
Legally, we are responsible for our "acts" and our "omissions". It is illegal to sit back and let someone die, when you could have safely helped them. Why is our government omitting to gather simple data so that we can discuss our housing situation in a helpful manner???? To me, it is not a "racial" issue, it is an issue of sovereignty. Our homes and land should be for our citizens and residents, not outsiders. Who those outsiders are, or where they are from, is irrelevant.
In other words, I am fine with Chinese/American/English/French/African origin, NZ citizens/permanent residents buying houses/land in NZ. I am strongly opposed Chinese/American/English/French/African origin NON NZ citizens/permanent residents buying houses/land in NZ. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with race, and everything to do with resident/citizenship status.
People from all over the world (tourists) are just flying into NZ, and buying houses, land and farms. Some people have got sooooo much money that they can just buy a farm on a whim, like buying a pair of shoes. If we permit non-resident people who are rich and bored (killing time because they don't want to go bungy jumping that afternoon) to buy up NZ, then we are opening ourselves up to collapse as a nation. We will end up being being another international homogeneous slum with some special enclaves for the international rich to safely hang out, while the rest of us are serfs.
We saw this destruction of small nationalities in the old Soviet Union. It is the awful march towards "one world". Destroy the complex rain forrests and plant radiata pine plantations.
Really, the withholding of information about who is buying what, is the crime. They want us to be distracted by ridiculous "racial" arguments. Or the flag??? This is nothing to do with race and everything
to do with NZ sovereignty. If anybody wants to honour our fallen soldiers, now is the time, and this is an issue.
Cheers, you just gave me another reason to want to defend NZ sovereignty, given that globalization is the biggest crock of do-dos we've been sold since almost forever. There is only one obvious end game for that, and it is one world government, now whose system of governance are you putting your money on to prevail?
"How Pickpockets work"
COMPASSION AND DISTRACTION
"Just as in a magic show, the major method at work here is distraction. Human beings usually focus their attention on one thing, so if you give them anything interesting to focus on, they won't pay attention to their money and valuables.
In the pickpocketing world, distraction can get pretty elaborate. Two members of a team might stage a fight while the third member takes advantage of the inattentive crowd. Child pickpockets may try to show something to a mark, like a drawing or a toy, while other children sneak up from behind. Another common trick is to surreptitiously spray someone with bird droppings, or a convincing facsimile, and then offer to help clean it off."
http://money.howstuffworks.com/pickpocket1.htm
We are getting our collective pockets picked. Don't fall for the "racism" scam, or the bull faeces patriotism of a "new flag". These are some of the oldest tricks in the book.
" It is illegal to sit back and let someone die, when you could have safely helped them."
Please indicate the law, and any (if you know) case where it is been used.
It is tort law to leave a hazard, but I know of none that state the unsigned members of public must give aid - otherwise terminally sick people could just rock up to private hospitals or the homes of nurses and doctors/consultants. (or politicians)
Hi Cowboy. The point I was trying tp make is that we are supposedly judged by our acts AND omissions. It is like dealing with drunken teenagers. "Why are you asking me? I don't know anything!" We see this a lot now. Ignorance as a defence. 150 Dunedin City Council cars were stolen recently, but nobody noticed anything. End of story.
Here is a search of "omission" in the NZ Crimes Act.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/resultsin.as…
It comes up 83 times.
One hit is
157 Duty to avoid omissions dangerous to life
Every one who undertakes to do any act the omission to do which is or may be dangerous to life is under a legal duty to do that act, and is criminally responsible for the consequences of omitting without lawful excuse to discharge that duty.
Thanks for your great comments!
Just like comments cannot be completely done away with, overseas buyers, including the Chinese cannot be completely done away with. The government needs to have better data collection in property buy/sell transactions and make them public to avoid such speculative use of limited statistics. Even Labour could have initiated such a measure when they ruled, because earlier also Auckland house inflation became a hot topic. Successive governments have avoided such measures, at the cost of the average NZ citizen. Epic phail.
And now you can compete against the government when it comes to housing http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=114…
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