LazyKiwi

Category: Government

  • Online charity lotteries extended

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    Registered charities can continue to advertise online lotteries. The current change in legislation allowing charities to run online lotteries was set to expire at the end of October. This is a permanent change in legislation which will enable the charities to continue advertising and selling via online channels.  There are currently 46 organisations licensed to…

  • AI Safety in NZ

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    The NZ government is joining the UK’s Bletchley Declaration on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety. This is an international agreement around the potential benefits AI offers for society. To ensure this is done in a safe manner, AI must be designed, developed, deployed and used responsibly and safely. It must also be people focused and ensure…

  • Cut price Lunches

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    The government has announced the cost of providing school lunches will now cost $3 per student. Previous costs of providing lunches were up to $8.68 per student. This is an annual saving of $130 million and is more than was expected in the budget release. They have managed to make these savings by using supply…

  • Making land acquisition easier

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    The government is considering a review of the Public Works Act which has recommended lowering the thresholds for acquiring land. The current rules require a high standard of national and regional significance before allowing the land acquisition to take place.  By making this process simpler, the infrastructure projects will enable a lift in productivity as…

  • Benefit Sanctions

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    There was a 133.3% increase in the number of benefit sanctions being issued over the last year.  The September quarter saw 18,516 people cancel a main benefit, an increase of 12.7% on last year. At the end of September, the benefit snapshot shows 391,224 people were receiving a main benefit. This is 12% of the…

  • Cutting the red tape

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    Regulatory changes. The government is in the process of reforming and relaxing the AML rules (Anti-Money Laundering). The aim is to cut the red tape to streamline the process of applying the AML for simple transactions. The reforms will be implemented in three steps. These measures should reduce wasted time form filling for the sake…

  • Driving nowhere fast

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    People going through the driver licence regime are having a decent wait on their hands. It currently takes 35 days of waiting to sit a full driver licence test. The restricted test wait times are worse at 46 days. The target is to have 90% of people sitting their test within 30 days. After the previous…

  • IRD Social Media Update

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    The IRD have released more information in relation to the social media lists that generated media attention recently. They have paused the usage of custom audience lists since 12 September. They will reconsider their stance after an internal review. The Chief Information Security Office (CISO) is currently performing the internal review of the hashing. They…

  • IRD and the Hashing of taxpayer data

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    It has recently been revealed that the IRD has been sharing taxpayer data with major social media platforms such as Google and Facebook. This has caused concern among taxpayers, as they were neither informed of nor able to opt-out of this data sharing. Many people expect the information collected by the IRD to remain confidential…