So, the DoS thing – attributed loosely to blackmail type operations, and likely by operators enjoying a degree of state support.
It is believed the criminals claimed in ransom notes sent to some victims ahead of attacks that they were associated with a notorious Russian group called Fancy Bear, but Little believed that was “a decoy”.
It's a brave call – Fancy Bear are serious players, a cut above the ordinary, given to using multiple tools in any given attack. Insofar as markers of their activity are available, they are more prone to choosing political targets than other hackers.
If proximity to our elections, or the potential to embarrass Trump are factors, Fancy Bear may have chosen to become involved.
…the Green School which received nearly $12 million in Government funding hosted a 'sacred ceremony' run by a school parent who believes COVID-19 is a manufactured natural disaster.
I'm all for teaching a sustainable future but it doesn't include healing crystals.
Well, if the healing crystals thing is part of a module titled "Nonsense shit people just make up with zero evidence or rational basis and get other gullible people to believe", then fine.
Lol, I bet you think meditation is superstitious nonsense too. By all means get hung up on being literal, but if people want to use crystals as a way of focusing their behaviour into something more peaceful I think there are far more important things to be worrying about right now.
(my own objection would be to the unsustainable nature of bring mined minerals from all over the world and burying them at the school. There's a massive consumerist culture around crystal users).
Out of curiosity, do you object to Māori teaching traditional Māori spirituality in alternative schools? Remove all karakia?
Remember those crystal radios? Receiving invisible waves in which voices were embedded: what right-minded person would believe that!!! Woo woo to the max!
This is why we have Independent schools of various types, to accommodate families with a diversity of beliefs and values.
The system has been working well for many decades, the schools must conform to a certain minimum core curiculum and there are boundaries on what is acceptable teaching. But as a system it encompasses a pretty broad church and does so reasonably well. And by and large the kids they produce fit in just fine into the wider world once they move onto adulthood.
Indeed, RedLogix and you can bet your bottom dollar that the parent of a child at one independent school could swiftly find something being taught at another, or in any state school, that the didn't agree with, could mock and ridicule, or get het up about (as is the case here). This crystal issue is just National looking to undermine confidence in The Greens.
Crystals are woo woo. Every Science class grows beautiful crystals from a solution. How magical is that? Some people believe that crystals might have been at the basis of the origin of life. Woohoo!
I heard this song on a crystal radio set in 1964, top of the Hit Parade for weeks.
It is still a song for our times, about a decision that has to be made about changing our lives, changing for the better or going back to live out our lives in sin and misery in
The House of the Rising Sun.
We've got one foot on the platform, the other on the train…………
edit
Oh damn I thought it was going to about sustainability, and regenerative agriculture and planning future homes for fire resistance, coolness in heat waves and warmth-absorbing mass in winter etc. Forward-looking, problem-solving is what we need, nice people with skills, not flakey types which I have come into contact with and don’t trust.
Now there is talk about crystals; that isn't green education, that's cult stuff. Those people are practised at putting their theme of peace, love and vegetarianism over in such a way that they can attract funding or at least confuse the funders enough to give it to them
Pretty much – it's woo, but I shudder to think what some "mainstream" religious schools teach their kids – particularly regarding sex.
My basic position is that the Greens shouldn't have touched it with a bargepole, and Shaw's done his apology for that. But even with the woo-iness and private school issues, it's a construction project and probably not even the most "neoliberal" project that got money. I'd be looking for something even more fucky fucky like a stripmine, or a slumlord's "property development", or maybe a weapons project (maybe our budding private military contractor wants a new rocket launch facility?)
you throw money around, maybe some distasteful people pick it up. The point is that even distasteful people spend money and folks need jobs at the moment.
“what some “mainstream” religious schools teach their kids – particularly regarding sex.”
I went to one such. They taught us nothing which was probably a good thing. My sole education was a visiting journalist who told us, “Beware of cars, boys, they’re bedroom on wheels!” Later, I became a teacher of sex and relationships, and I told my students that story, and then said I was certainly going to do better than that.
We got the Jesus walks on water stuff, but in the secular education we got logic, science, clarity of expression. That college produced many lawyers but few artists.
solkta. My son writing an essay at varsity discovered that in the translations way back then, the word for "on" was the same as "by." So what Jesus actually said to Simon was, "Come walk with by the water (beach)." So if true a whole incredible myth has evolved and is believed by many.
So it is OK to encourage the students to do the same thing? (Or has the teacher warned them that the guy may be a crank? I wonder..)
Sorry to argue against you again (normally very unusual) but you still seem to be justifying the arguments of supporters of Charter schools, as I felt you were doing in the Kia Kaha Greens thread.
We're speculating wildly about some minutiae that concerns us not one whit!
Crop circles, UFO, the tweets of somebody's husband; I'm hanging out for a post on Billy Te Kahika so we can all let loose with the gormless reckoning; I reckon it'd be a cracker!
(As an aside, In Vino, our seeming off-sidedness with each other is not real; it's a consequence of the quirkiness of language and the limitations of blog-communication. These things happen and are hellish difficult to unravel, so let's not try to parse each other to pieces
Aye, and again Pat has already subtly suggested that subtle suggestions may be better than overt argument. (Or is that just my perception?)
Nevertheless – I don't quite agree that language and blog should limit things in the way you describe.
We still have a brain, and in any debate we should try to cleave to the central point at issue, and put that priority in all argument, rather than let peripheral issues take over. (Which is what seems to happen on blogsites.)
To my mind the central issue in the school funding debate was the privatisation of Education, which I see as a public good, which the state should keep well away from profit-gougers.
But I think I was rather alone in that. Most, including you, Robert, were concerned only with avoiding damage to Green party, and in doing so you started to sound quite right-wing at times to me from my viewpoint. Peripheral issues, basically, that should always be viewed with the central issue in mind…
Maybe I am a dying breed. But I also noticed comments by Pat, Drowsy F Kram, Solkta, etc, that made me think that I just need to cool down, and try their more subtle ways.
In Vino – "To my mind the central issue in the school funding debate was the privatisation of Education"
I agree that the privatisation of Education is a central issue in the school funding debate.
In the "James picks a shovel-ready project" situation though, Education was only a bystander, imo. The criteria around the decision did not involve "Education", they were about construction, economic stimulation, support for local businesses and industries.
The furore that resulted obscured what I believe was the critical aspect of the issue. The private/public/charter school debate is a seperate one and need not have been invoked at all. This latest flare-up (the crystals, the beliefs of two of the parents) is similarly disconnected from the process James and Co undertook; I bet there was nothing in the selection criteria that covered such trifles.
It's clear, In Vino, that you see the issues of Education and Covid Response projects as intertwined, but I do not and this is where our views diverged. I expect your view and my view on Charter Schools, as promoted by National in the recent past, are very similar indeed; I argued vociferously against them at the time, as I am won't to do.
Does this inelegant attempt to explain help at all? Most efforts of this sort create greater friction, experience tells me, but you're a rational man and I can be also, though I've not yet had my morning coffee.
Meanwhile back in the very successful Iceland, there are no Private schools. Every school is set out to be equal. No elite schools. No poor schools so they just get on with the education.
Shadow Minister for Crystals and Dream-catchers, Nicola Willis said, :"Maybe it's the crystals that ensured this school miraculously got almost $12 million out of the Government."
I'm glad she has a problem with crystals, but the right does have this trickle down theory , and belief in the undeserving poor, and righteous wealth. Dives ergo bonus sum.
mac1 – could you check your spelling of that Latin please? I studied Latin to the point where I found it not too hard to read Caesar's Gallic wars, and Google doesn't help.
U love the diversity of thinking that shows up here. But please can you remember about learning about climate change and how to go forward, ie thinking, planning and doing towards preparing for climate change, growing protests in the streets from people desperate for some action on the standards of living and encouraging people in their own agency to work on their resilience and their relationships. It's all one sentence because it is all connected. Some will fall by the way with crystals and magic mushrooms, but the wise, earnest, and good-humoured work of committed people will have such an enormous effect for all.
Please don't spend your time on minutiae and picking this green education establishment to bits. Find a way to open up the narrow criteria for worthy things, find a way to differ from funding culty things, evangelical christianity, meditative and prayerful communities that don't teach for action and relevant education; all possibilities. There needs to be a question, something like, will it provide useful backgrounding and training in practical measures that show up in good results in growing, in good soil, designs of resilient structures etc?
When people hear about greenies burying cow's horns filled with some probiotic? stuff and saying it helps in regeneration and fertility promoting, then you don't reject them as loonies, as long as other widely recognised practical methods are being followed and the more esoteric are trialled. monitored, measured and reviewed before being promulgated.
hmmm – but they don't get to go into the school and have a session expounding their views – unless it’s part of a debate about source of disease and epidemiology etc.
Manufactured, engineered, synthetic, artificial, modified, altered, et cetera. I have to confess that I don’t know what a scarier prospect is: Covid-19 is somehow man-made or it happened entirely naturally and spontaneously.
Some quite damaging themes are playing out in the media for the Greens. I imagine ol' Greenpeace Russel probably is in a constant face palm or head desk pose.
West Coast Regional Council chairman Allan Birchfield has vowed to bar ecologists from his land if they come looking for significant natural areas (SNAs).
The SNA process is one all councils in the country must undertake to protect dwindling indigenous habitat as part of the government's freshwater and biodiversity reforms.
Are birches in a field regarded the same as wilding pines?
(I notice he has a photo of Donald Trump on his china cabinet.)
Perfunctory. Didn't sensationalise, portrayed his posts evenhandedly, ask Collins what she thought. Hard to get across on radio what the problem was perhaps, the visual nature of memes and FB posts.
I could elaborate on the gasses formed during the decay of a dead cat but I won’t. Let’s go with an inflated inflatulent feline flung on furniture by a ferocious femme fatale.
Watching on ABC a particularly grim program Surviving the Virus, My Brother and I.
Follows a UK doctor and his twin brother, working in care homes and hospitals through the COVID crisis. Tough watching.
At one point they're talking to a doctor explaining how terrifying it is working with a disease that has so many ways to attack the body, and causes so much damage that is incredibly hard to control. You can see it in the eyes of the medical people how helpless and vulnerable they felt.
"Brownlee, who is the MP for Ilam in Christchurch, added that if there's "any good" that comes from the mosque attacks, it's that everyone realised "we're just all people."
Brownlee was no doubt surprised to discover this, but the problem he has is that he won't be able to remember it.
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
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Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
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On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
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Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
This episode of A View From Afar was recorded LIVE on May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, May 5, 2024 at 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Taylor, Assistant Professor, Bond University Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures At the crux of the critical response to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers is one word: “sexy”. The film charts a love triangle between three up-and-coming tennis players: Tashi (Zendaya), ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW Sydney For years, First Nations people have been telling governments they want to be listened to. In particular, they want more ownership of the programs and services that are supposed to help them. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Why do trees have bark? Julien, age 6, Melbourne. This is a great question, Julien. We are so familiar with bark on trees, that most of us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Nasser, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an important ligament in the knee. It runs from the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia) and helps stabilise ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne I covered the May 2 United Kingdom local government elections for The Poll Bludger. The Blackpool South parliamentary byelection was also held, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Grant-Smith, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast The federal government has announced a “Commonwealth Prac Payment” to support selected groups of students doing mandatory work placements. Those who are studying to be a teacher, nurse, midwife or social ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love a dark comedy: Bodkin (Netflix, May 9)An English podcaster, an Irish podcaster and American podcaster walk into a pub and…make a TV show? ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment of ...
The Boil Up’s Lucinda Bennett considers the oyster – from freshness to pearls to the joy of shucking your own. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. In Carmen Maria Machado’s short story ‘Eight Bites’, a woman begins her last supper before bariatric surgery with “a cavalcade ...
Asia Pacific Report A group of 65 Auckland University academics have written an open letter to vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater criticising the institution’s stance over students protesting in solidarity with Palestine. They have called on her administration to “support” the students who were denied permission to establish an “overnight encampment” by ...
The Student Volunteer Army is on the march, generating approximately 1.6 million hours of volunteering from roughly 35,000 secondary school students in just five years. For Rebekah Brown, the pathway to volunteering started with her singing coach. With a passion for the arts, the suggestion to volunteer at Acting Antics, ...
Keeping up with online communication can be exhausting, so Fran Barclay enlisted the help of Meta’s new ‘intelligent assistant’ to respond to all her messages. Could her mates tell the difference? For centuries, technology has ruled the ways in which we communicate. From the dawn of written language, to the ...
Jamie Arbuckle, a councillor who has become an member of parliament, says he has settled into having two roles so comfortably he's going to keep both pay cheques. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong Fifty years ago, Australian feminist Anne Summers denounced “the ideology of sexism” governing over so many women’s lives. Unfortunately, sexism is as lethal today as it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Senior Researcher in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work patterns it fostered have changed the way we think about office space, and central business districts in general. While fears ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney There’s a good reason your local volunteer-run netball club doesn’t pay tax. In Australia, various nonprofit organisations are exempt from paying income tax, including those that do charitable work, such as churches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
The workplace can be a minefield of bad comms and passive aggression. Kinksters can help you navigate it. A friend and colleague recently gave me a compliment I loved. They told me I’d always been good at emotional communication and making people feel comfortable. “But I feel like it’s really ...
Even if some students are now just texting on their laptops. Stewart Sowman-Lund writes in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
Renowned musician, advocate, and proud born and raised daughter of Tauranga, Ria Hall, is announcing her candidacy for Mayor of Tauranga and Pāpāmoa Ward for the upcoming election on July 20th. ...
The new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about ‘balance’ miss the mark, argues primary school teacher Jessie Moss. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students presented to parliament a petition signed by more than 10,000 people calling for a ...
For too long our so-called national bird has maintained its stranglehold on the economy of regional New Zealand. Thanks to the fast track legislation, we will have our revenge. Theories abound on what ails New Zealand’s economy. National leader Chris Luxon has posited that we’re negative, wet, whiny, and inward-looking; ...
If building one of Auckland’s possible waterfront stadiums was funded privately, it would need to hold a sold-out Ed Sherran concert every weekday for 25 years. That’s Rob Hamlin’s finding – he’s a senior marketing lecturer at the University of Otago. “It’s not going to happen; forget about it,” he ...
Comment: The debate over the future relationship between news and social media is bringing us closer to a long-overdue reckoning. Social media isn’t trying to kill journalism, because social media has never really cared about journalism. Social media is resolutely in the attention business. News propels some attention — perhaps ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Monday 6 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
For the past 12 years, Georgia-Rose Brown has balanced on the brink of making an Olympic Games – but always landed gracefully on the wrong side. Reaching the Olympics is a dream the gymnast has harboured since she was a six-year-old; a dream that would dwindle every four years, yet ...
Late one afternoon in March 1860 a man in a thin green velveteen jacket and a wide-awake hat arrived on foot at a sheep station named Glenmark, about 65 kilometres north of Christchurch. The man was in his mid-fifties but he looked older. Several people who met him that day ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A new Commonwealth Prac Payment will provide students with $319.50 a week when they are on clinical and professional placements. The payment will be means tested and start from July 1 next year, which ...
Asia Pacific Report About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children. Marking the annual May 3 World Press ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
So, the DoS thing – attributed loosely to blackmail type operations, and likely by operators enjoying a degree of state support.
It is believed the criminals claimed in ransom notes sent to some victims ahead of attacks that they were associated with a notorious Russian group called Fancy Bear, but Little believed that was “a decoy”.
It's a brave call – Fancy Bear are serious players, a cut above the ordinary, given to using multiple tools in any given attack. Insofar as markers of their activity are available, they are more prone to choosing political targets than other hackers.
If proximity to our elections, or the potential to embarrass Trump are factors, Fancy Bear may have chosen to become involved.
WTF, Green School?
I'm all for teaching a sustainable future but it doesn't include healing crystals.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/couple-who-called-covid-19-manufactured-natural-disaster-held-dna-activation-event-at-green-school.html
Why not? I'm way more concerned that they spend two days with students talking about covid and future tech in a conspiracy theory context.
Well, if the healing crystals thing is part of a module titled "Nonsense shit people just make up with zero evidence or rational basis and get other gullible people to believe", then fine.
Lol, I bet you think meditation is superstitious nonsense too. By all means get hung up on being literal, but if people want to use crystals as a way of focusing their behaviour into something more peaceful I think there are far more important things to be worrying about right now.
(my own objection would be to the unsustainable nature of bring mined minerals from all over the world and burying them at the school. There's a massive consumerist culture around crystal users).
Out of curiosity, do you object to Māori teaching traditional Māori spirituality in alternative schools? Remove all karakia?
Remember those crystal radios? Receiving invisible waves in which voices were embedded: what right-minded person would believe that!!! Woo woo to the max!
This is why we have Independent schools of various types, to accommodate families with a diversity of beliefs and values.
The system has been working well for many decades, the schools must conform to a certain minimum core curiculum and there are boundaries on what is acceptable teaching. But as a system it encompasses a pretty broad church and does so reasonably well. And by and large the kids they produce fit in just fine into the wider world once they move onto adulthood.
Indeed, RedLogix and you can bet your bottom dollar that the parent of a child at one independent school could swiftly find something being taught at another, or in any state school, that the didn't agree with, could mock and ridicule, or get het up about (as is the case here). This crystal issue is just National looking to undermine confidence in The Greens.
I remember the first quartz watches, it was huge.
Were they woo? They sound woo. Surely no one bought into the fantasy that crystals measure time, did they
Crystals are woo woo. Every Science class grows beautiful crystals from a solution. How magical is that? Some people believe that crystals might have been at the basis of the origin of life. Woohoo!
Robert. Yes to crystal radios and the pesky cat's whisker probing for a better signal. And no electricity needed in any form. A miracle!
I heard this song on a crystal radio set in 1964, top of the Hit Parade for weeks.
It is still a song for our times, about a decision that has to be made about changing our lives, changing for the better or going back to live out our lives in sin and misery in
The House of the Rising Sun.
We've got one foot on the platform, the other on the train…………
edit
Oh damn I thought it was going to about sustainability, and regenerative agriculture and planning future homes for fire resistance, coolness in heat waves and warmth-absorbing mass in winter etc. Forward-looking, problem-solving is what we need, nice people with skills, not flakey types which I have come into contact with and don’t trust.
Now there is talk about crystals; that isn't green education, that's cult stuff. Those people are practised at putting their theme of peace, love and vegetarianism over in such a way that they can attract funding or at least confuse the funders enough to give it to them
there are even schools out there who teach that there was once a man who could walk on water.
Are they certified green?
Pretty much – it's woo, but I shudder to think what some "mainstream" religious schools teach their kids – particularly regarding sex.
My basic position is that the Greens shouldn't have touched it with a bargepole, and Shaw's done his apology for that. But even with the woo-iness and private school issues, it's a construction project and probably not even the most "neoliberal" project that got money. I'd be looking for something even more fucky fucky like a stripmine, or a slumlord's "property development", or maybe a weapons project (maybe our budding private military contractor wants a new rocket launch facility?)
you throw money around, maybe some distasteful people pick it up. The point is that even distasteful people spend money and folks need jobs at the moment.
“what some “mainstream” religious schools teach their kids – particularly regarding sex.”
I went to one such. They taught us nothing which was probably a good thing. My sole education was a visiting journalist who told us, “Beware of cars, boys, they’re bedroom on wheels!” Later, I became a teacher of sex and relationships, and I told my students that story, and then said I was certainly going to do better than that.
We got the Jesus walks on water stuff, but in the secular education we got logic, science, clarity of expression. That college produced many lawyers but few artists.
Hey, to be fair, we were given in the early 1960s a very good explanation about how flowers regenerate, and how important wind pollination can be.
solkta. My son writing an essay at varsity discovered that in the translations way back then, the word for "on" was the same as "by." So what Jesus actually said to Simon was, "Come walk with by the water (beach)." So if true a whole incredible myth has evolved and is believed by many.
Bloody hippies. \sarc
I wonder if they canvassed that measles is caused by concrete telephone poles. Well only concrete telephone poles made in factories facing the south.
It's the word 'manufactured' in that sentence that bothers me above all else.
Most likely there are " parents who believes COVID-19 is a manufactured natural disaster." in every school.
So it is OK to encourage the students to do the same thing? (Or has the teacher warned them that the guy may be a crank? I wonder..)
Sorry to argue against you again (normally very unusual) but you still seem to be justifying the arguments of supporters of Charter schools, as I felt you were doing in the Kia Kaha Greens thread.
We're speculating wildly about some minutiae that concerns us not one whit!
Crop circles, UFO, the tweets of somebody's husband; I'm hanging out for a post on Billy Te Kahika so we can all let loose with the gormless reckoning; I reckon it'd be a cracker!
(As an aside, In Vino, our seeming off-sidedness with each other is not real; it's a consequence of the quirkiness of language and the limitations of blog-communication. These things happen and are hellish difficult to unravel, so let's not try to parse each other to pieces
"We're speculating wildly about some minutiae that concerns us not one whit!"
So in effect its another day at the office
Everyone needs a hobby.
Aye, and again Pat has already subtly suggested that subtle suggestions may be better than overt argument. (Or is that just my perception?)
Nevertheless – I don't quite agree that language and blog should limit things in the way you describe.
We still have a brain, and in any debate we should try to cleave to the central point at issue, and put that priority in all argument, rather than let peripheral issues take over. (Which is what seems to happen on blogsites.)
To my mind the central issue in the school funding debate was the privatisation of Education, which I see as a public good, which the state should keep well away from profit-gougers.
But I think I was rather alone in that. Most, including you, Robert, were concerned only with avoiding damage to Green party, and in doing so you started to sound quite right-wing at times to me from my viewpoint. Peripheral issues, basically, that should always be viewed with the central issue in mind…
Maybe I am a dying breed. But I also noticed comments by Pat, Drowsy F Kram, Solkta, etc, that made me think that I just need to cool down, and try their more subtle ways.
Sorry – it is in my nature to parse.
"Parse gratia partis"?
Which reminds me – where has that bloody cat gone? Must get it back in before it kills something… (Lion roaring with Ars etc..)
In Vino – "To my mind the central issue in the school funding debate was the privatisation of Education"
I agree that the privatisation of Education is a central issue in the school funding debate.
In the "James picks a shovel-ready project" situation though, Education was only a bystander, imo. The criteria around the decision did not involve "Education", they were about construction, economic stimulation, support for local businesses and industries.
The furore that resulted obscured what I believe was the critical aspect of the issue. The private/public/charter school debate is a seperate one and need not have been invoked at all. This latest flare-up (the crystals, the beliefs of two of the parents) is similarly disconnected from the process James and Co undertook; I bet there was nothing in the selection criteria that covered such trifles.
It's clear, In Vino, that you see the issues of Education and Covid Response projects as intertwined, but I do not and this is where our views diverged. I expect your view and my view on Charter Schools, as promoted by National in the recent past, are very similar indeed; I argued vociferously against them at the time, as I am won't to do.
Does this inelegant attempt to explain help at all? Most efforts of this sort create greater friction, experience tells me, but you're a rational man and I can be also, though I've not yet had my morning coffee.
Meanwhile back in the very successful Iceland, there are no Private schools. Every school is set out to be equal. No elite schools. No poor schools so they just get on with the education.
How similar, ianmac, is their education programme, to our state-school programme, do you know?
Does Iceland get so much right because of its size?
All good, Robert
Shadow Minister for Crystals and Dream-catchers, Nicola Willis said, :"Maybe it's the crystals that ensured this school miraculously got almost $12 million out of the Government."
Best line yet!
I'm glad she has a problem with crystals, but the right does have this trickle down theory , and belief in the undeserving poor, and righteous wealth. Dives ergo bonus sum.
Heh! I deleted a comment about the trickle down school of thought 😀
You have more self control than Judith's husband.
mac1 – could you check your spelling of that Latin please? I studied Latin to the point where I found it not too hard to read Caesar's Gallic wars, and Google doesn't help.
Or please just explain?
I am rich, therefore I am good!
My motto for the blessed of the prosperity theology.
ergo bonus sum certainly means I am good. But I think you have got Dives wrong. No way can that mean 'I am rich.'
'Sum' applies to both adjectives. The verb comes at the end of the sentence. As in “Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
Ok, have now found that 'dives' does mean 'rich/talented' in Latin.
Thanks for that. Might have been able to read Caesar 50 years ago, but haven't actually done much Latin since then…
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, aren’t they?
Wouldn't they actually need to be singular?
Depends on the setting.
Incognito, priceless.
U love the diversity of thinking that shows up here. But please can you remember about learning about climate change and how to go forward, ie thinking, planning and doing towards preparing for climate change, growing protests in the streets from people desperate for some action on the standards of living and encouraging people in their own agency to work on their resilience and their relationships. It's all one sentence because it is all connected. Some will fall by the way with crystals and magic mushrooms, but the wise, earnest, and good-humoured work of committed people will have such an enormous effect for all.
Please don't spend your time on minutiae and picking this green education establishment to bits. Find a way to open up the narrow criteria for worthy things, find a way to differ from funding culty things, evangelical christianity, meditative and prayerful communities that don't teach for action and relevant education; all possibilities. There needs to be a question, something like, will it provide useful backgrounding and training in practical measures that show up in good results in growing, in good soil, designs of resilient structures etc?
When people hear about greenies burying cow's horns filled with some probiotic? stuff and saying it helps in regeneration and fertility promoting, then you don't reject them as loonies, as long as other widely recognised practical methods are being followed and the more esoteric are trialled. monitored, measured and reviewed before being promulgated.
hmmm – but they don't get to go into the school and have a session expounding their views – unless it’s part of a debate about source of disease and epidemiology etc.
Seems like National is making hay over this.
Manufactured, engineered, synthetic, artificial, modified, altered, et cetera. I have to confess that I don’t know what a scarier prospect is: Covid-19 is somehow man-made or it happened entirely naturally and spontaneously.
Some quite damaging themes are playing out in the media for the Greens. I imagine ol' Greenpeace Russel probably is in a constant face palm or head desk pose.
Russel dealt with, "Give me back my flag", so he knows what "political beat-up" is like.
How's this for political and one form of beat-up.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/424886/no-ecologists-on-my-land-west-coast-regional-council-chair
West Coast Regional Council chairman Allan Birchfield has vowed to bar ecologists from his land if they come looking for significant natural areas (SNAs).
Cr Birchfield is a member of the Te Tai o Poutini Committee, which has just commissioned the first stage of the SNA research as it works on a combined district plan for the Buller, Grey and Westland councils.
The SNA process is one all councils in the country must undertake to protect dwindling indigenous habitat as part of the government's freshwater and biodiversity reforms.
Are birches in a field regarded the same as wilding pines?
(I notice he has a photo of Donald Trump on his china cabinet.)
Helen Clark and Chloe Swarbrick live on IG talking cannabis law reform.
https://www.instagram.com/chloe.swarbrick/live/?hl=en
I see that Judith Collins' husband has taken over from Slater in nasty posts about the PM.
Well, we know Clarke would not do that to Judith, as the PM and her partner keep out of the political dirty politics.
Will any reporters comment on this disparity? Or just enjoy the "Take down?" Because…
Checkpoint had two pieces on it tonight.
I missed that Weka. What was the tone?
Perfunctory. Didn't sensationalise, portrayed his posts evenhandedly, ask Collins what she thought. Hard to get across on radio what the problem was perhaps, the visual nature of memes and FB posts.
Shub managed to make the oafish arsehole into the victim: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/judith-collins-husband-david-wong-tung-subject-of-racist-comments-after-sharing-anti-jacinda-ardern-social-media-posts.html
Did they make him cry? I think that’s just mean.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12361020
Just imagine the furore if Clarke Gayford did this to Judith Collins!
Yes the furore would be never-ending.
Good of that pig to illustrate that just like his wife the pair of them are unfit to represent our country in any way whatsoever.
That is just horrid. What a disgusting man.
Common sense in spades…..Raj Chakraborti on The Panel….maybe we should require MPs to be authors…at least we'd have plenty of libraries.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thepanel
Watch for a dead cat from Collins tomorrow…
But will it bounce?
Depends on how wild Collins swings it.
and whether it is an inflatable one..
I could elaborate on the gasses formed during the decay of a dead cat but I won’t. Let’s go with an inflated inflatulent feline flung on furniture by a ferocious femme fatale.
Fabulously fertile fecundity of phrase, O confidential fellow.
melodiously mellifluous manipulation of consonants..
Watching on ABC a particularly grim program Surviving the Virus, My Brother and I.
Follows a UK doctor and his twin brother, working in care homes and hospitals through the COVID crisis. Tough watching.
At one point they're talking to a doctor explaining how terrifying it is working with a disease that has so many ways to attack the body, and causes so much damage that is incredibly hard to control. You can see it in the eyes of the medical people how helpless and vulnerable they felt.
"Brownlee, who is the MP for Ilam in Christchurch, added that if there's "any good" that comes from the mosque attacks, it's that everyone realised "we're just all people."
Brownlee was no doubt surprised to discover this, but the problem he has is that he won't be able to remember it.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/christchurch-mosque-attack-gerry-brownlee-labels-brenton-tarrant-s-sentence-empty.html