Giving farmers more time to prepare and clean up their act is a good thing. I hope they don’t blow this opportunity and try to stall the process for as long as possible.
The 1st of November deadline is impractical, shit my crop paddocks at work were pooled with surface water till mid November.
And from what I've heard there slope mapping system is a shemozzle, I'm picking the government buying time so they can fix the problems and quietly let the daft bits fall away.
Formal Complaint to RNZ… not holding my breath that anything will happen, but you gotta do something, right?
Re; RNZ coverage of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
In a brief search I found over 20 RNZ headline stories from the period 8-22 April 2018 on the above subject.
In light of the recent letter titled "Statement of Concern" signed by five former OPCW officials, including the organization's founding leader, José Bustani, and others including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Tulsi Gabbard, John Pilger, Lord West of Spithead, as well two former senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, in which there are raised (with many supporting documents and witnesses) serious concerns over the validity of the finished OPCW report on the April 7th Douma incident, one would expect RNZ to inform the public of these new developments under Part 2 9a of the Radio Code Standards "In the event that a material error of fact has occurred, broadcasters should correct it at the earliest appropriate opportunity."
Please let me reiterate, now that creditable evidence has surfaced that sheds new light and information, and in many ways repudiates many of the assumptions guests and commentators were asserting on RNZ over the period RNZ covered this story in April 2018, RNZ surely now has a responsibility (Part2 9b) to inform the pubic of these new developments on this story, just as they rightly reported on the story well over 20 times in April 2018.
I will cite Part 2 Standard 8 at a later date if no measures are taken by RNZ in the near future to bring this new information it's audience, thereby through its own reporting, leaving an unbalanced description of the events of the Douma event in the pubic arena.
But of course, RNZ gets their overseas news from the US standard bearers and the likes of Reuters, recently implicated in FCO collusion to "weaken Russia " through it's charitable arm
RNZ doesn't bother to fact check or verify or seek a diversity of opinions because it has been brought up to believe the western press is free and good and would never lie , unlike those bastards beyond the pale.
Thanks francesca, a little while ago I meet an interesting young couple who used to work at RNZ. They informed me that the interesting emails (and I would assume complaints) often get handed around the offices, so who knows…planting seeds maybe?…and at the very least, it's cathartic for me.
I can't see Rio Tinto shifting all that stuff (ouvea). What's in it for them? They have more money than our virtual widespread city. We could fight them in a Court battle and film it and make some money perhaps if it could have a Boston Legal approach put on it. That might pay for our legal costs which would end up being high no matter what we do. Would we be like cities in the USA which have gone bankrupt? Flint was managed into ill health through toxic water fed to them by officials and leaders trying to save money, in a depressed city previously driven by the wealth of a now closed car manufacturer.
And shipping it away somewhere; a nasty taste in the mouth will be felt by us out of guilt, and the poor people in any other country that the ouvea, even some of it, is shipped to. That is unless it can be neutralised somehow. Has anybody ideas from known facts about managing chemicals – what have you learned as an engineer Red Logix? Or anyone with some real knowledge behind their statements. Waving our arms in the air and expressing concern can be taken for granted. Let's move past that and see if anyone knows anything definite and doable, even if it is costly.
Just what is ouvea premix and what is dross and is it merely playing with words and degrees of toxicity? Fertiliser firm apologises for dross dumping – HazTec
(haztec.co.nz › announcements › fertiliser-firm-apologis… 17/09/2014 — Ouvea premix had substantially different chemical characteristics than dross, was less hazardous and had different requirements under the …)
And a nasty little sting. Ouvea is actually the name of a place (in Loyalty Islands I think where Bauxite was found). It sounds pleasanter than ' bauxite trash'. I wonder how people in that area like having that name used for toxic waste? Perhaps it will end up being called Kiwi?
I searched on google using these words 'scholarly technical details about ouvea from aluminium process' – this seems to open up the listings beyond NZ's problems. This stuff must have piled up around the world. What has happened to it? What have other countries done with it?
It needs to be neutralised as it will result in an environmental disaster bigger than we have had to cope with out of cows bottoms and those of men thrusting their way into piles of credits that they can turn into anything that takes their fancy. Ultimately nothing does, or so I understand from reading about Howard Hughes. In the process of reaching nothingness these people spread harm like Sauron the beast of Mordor.
In our part of the world Rio Tinto extract bauxite near Weipa in the far north of Queensland, ship it to Gladstone (and some direct to China) where it is converted to alumina using the Bayer Process. The alumina is then shipped to refineries, four in Australia and I have to assume some winds up at Bluff.
The main waste stream of the Bayer Process is a material called 'red mud'. It's mainly a bunch of relatively non-toxic oxides (all of which occur naturally in large quantities) but it is very alkaline and uncontrolled discharges of it are highly undesirable. Considerable effort is being made to find better ways to handle and dispose of it.
However this ain't what is of concern here in NZ. What we have is a different waste stream resulting from the refinery process when the alumina is converted into aluminum metal. For some reason the term 'ouvea waste' seems specific to NZ and the Bluff smelter. It's not clear to me why this is.
The best article I've found so far is here. It quotes two expert opinions, which both agree on the composition of this waste, but slightly disagree on the possible consequences.
“Ouvea premix is a mixture comprising around 30% aluminium oxide, 30% aluminium nitride and 30% magnesium aluminate, together with, amongst other things, small amounts of metallic aluminium.
“Of these, the most potentially hazardous compound is aluminium nitride, which reacts with water to form ammonia, release of which into waterways could have significant effects on fish life and aquatic flora.
The aluminium oxide is chemically stable with a very low bioavailability. It essentially comprises the surface layer on every piece of aluminium you've ever touched. In it's powdered form you don't want to get on your skin as it's an irritant.
The magnesium aluminate is otherwise called 'spinel'. Again it's a naturally occurring mineral that's stable and seems to present no obvious hazard at least according to it's MDS sheet.
This leaves the aluminium nitride as the potential problem because it's less chemically stable, and according to this MDS it slowly hydrolyses in the presence of water to form among other things ammonia and hydrogen gas.
The unanswered question is just how fast does this happen? It's certainly not characterised anywhere as a fast, highly unstable, exothermic reaction that would produce a fire, explosion or large quantities of gas. Nor at the other extreme is it something very slow like iron rusting.
And while ammonia gas is definitely toxic if you get a lung full of it at high exposure, as anyone whose worked with ammonia based refrigeration can tell you, it dissipates fairly quickly and breaks down in the environment without any accumulation issues. Ammonia is a very common material that's widely used very safely.
However in very damp conditions the gas will become heavier than air and linger in low lying pockets and enclosed spaces. The good news is that the odour is extremely pungent and most people will smell it and get the hell out long before it becomes dangerous to them. It's really only a risk when you're trapped inside with it and you don't have a safe exit route.
The hydrogen gas is extremely mobile and will dissipate very quickly with no harm whatsoever, but again it's possible to imagine a scenario where sufficient quantity is trapped in an enclosed space with the real potential for an explosion. Again it's hard to judge the risk here not knowing the reaction rates and ventilation available.
Overall my conclusion is yes there is a hazard, but it's not a very severe one. It does seem a dumb idea to store large quantities of it in a location subject to flooding – that should certainly be dealt to. (Has it been removed from the old Mataura Paper mill yet?) But even in the event that such a stockpile was flooded, it's not clear just how much or how fast the ammonia gas would be released, and whether it would ever gather in sufficient intensity to cause a hazard to people nearby. It could conceivably be a problem for anyone entering the building – but it's an open question that probably no-one can give an authoritative answer to.
Excessive alarm and stress over it's presence is not justified in my view. However I also agree it must not be left in Southland indefinitely, there is a good case for Rio to take ownership of the problem and ship it back to an Australian site where they already have better options to store it remote from any possible harm.
I should add that I’m absolutely not a chemist, but I’ve made a best effort here based on open sources of information. If someone has better information I’m happy to stand corrected.
This is the link to some NZ expert opinions that are consistent with the information in RL's comment @5.1. One concern appears to be the potential downstream effects of ammonia gas dissolving in water and giving a nitrogen (ammonium –> nitrate) nutrient boost to the river, a bit like nitrogen run-off from fertiliser and farm animal urine/faeces contaminating waterways. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC2002/S00009/flooding-could-release-toxic-gas-expert-reaction.htm
8000 tonnes of aluminium dross, so say 2400 tonnes of aluminium nitride, containing ~800 tonnes of nitrogen; 'a drop in the Matura'. For comparison:
Is the aluminium dross byproduct of the Tiwai Point smelting process not suitable for recycling? In Iceland, "Around 7000 tonnes of aluminium dross is recycled annually", but maybe their aluminium dross is not the same as our dross? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43615-021-00010-7/tables/4
Excessive alarm and stress over it's presence is not justified in my view.
Excessive alarm is seldom justified, imho. How about proportionate alarm?
Aluminium nitride – Ecotoxicological Summary
Overall, the available data on the hydrolysis products of AlN suggest that aluminium nitride should be classified as “Aquatic Chronic 1, H410” (very toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects).
Still, the EU is notoriously risk averse about ecotoxicity – wonder why?
6. Accidental release measures Personal Precautions: Ensure adequate ventilation. Use personal protective equipment as required. Avoid dust formation. Environmental Precautions: Do not flush into surface water or sanitary sewer system. Do not allow material to contaminate ground water system. Prevent product from entering drains. Local authorities should be advised if significant spillages cannot be contained.
Understanding what the material actually is, and what the potential hazards are is the key to responding to it rationally. That I tried to provide above. My conclusion is that it doesn't represent an urgent or alarming risk to people. There is no need to catastrophise over this one.
The waterways are a somewhat different matter I agree, but that is something that can be readily managed in the short term at least. Long term it should go back to Australia where they're in a much better position generally to handle it.
It’s my understanding that one of the big constraints on Rio is that increasingly stringent regulations are making it impossible for them to move this material, even when it clearly makes sense for them to do so.
My conclusion is that it doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to people.
You might be right. One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me.
If some locals are skeptical, then they need to understand that’s just the cost of doing business – suck up those risks, OK?
Oops, maybe the problem is a bit bigger than we knew. This time it's "Spent Pot Lining" – makes 8,000 tonnes of aluminium dross look like pretty small beans!
SPL is the "most significant solid waste" to come from smelting, according to the aluminium industry's global body, the International Aluminium Institute.
Again if you read the article, Rio have made real efforts to sell this SPL material as it can be safely recycled in the cement making process.
But the one plant in NZ interested in doing it closed down and tightened regulations make it very hard to send overseas. Regulations intended to protect the environment apparently.
"When one reflects on other events, eg the recent fire in stockpiled tyres [in Canterbury], it is clear that we are all becoming much more aware of the impact of historic activities on environmental well-being," Hadley said.
If only that were true.
Again if you read the article
I did read the article – even linked to it. However, since you've only got good things to say about Rio Tinto's efforts, and seem to be placing the blame on those dastedly 'environmental regulators', it's difficult to believe that we read the same article
The aluminium smelter at Bluff has stockpiled more than 100,000 tonnes of cyanide-laced hazardous waste less than 100 metres from a fast-eroding Southland beach.
The smelter company will not reveal its plans for the hazardous waste, despite international industry guidelines it has signed up to that say it should.
At Tiwai Point, the smelter company now faces legal action over the SCL waste. Retired environmental engineer Carl Reller from Wairarapa is seeking an enforcement order from the Environment Court to force a clean-up.
Some of the Tiwai waste has been processed overseas into mineral wool insulation, or detoxified for use in cement, bricks and the like in Europe, according to the Aluminium Institute, though it gives no figures.
"Regulations intended to protect the environment" – you don't approve?
In other respects, hazardous substance regulations apply – but these have been faulted. WorkSafe cited them specifically when it told the government recently that some of the regulations it had to work with "are so old" they were no longer relevant.
doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me.
If you are imply that I'm willing to minimise the hazard because I'm not personally involved, then you really need to produce some evidence of this. I looked at the composition of the 'ouvea premix' and applied a reasoned analysis. If you think I got that wrong then produce your own case.
Speculating that I'm being dishonest is gutless.
If some locals are skeptical, then they need to understand that’s just the cost of doing business – suck up those risks, OK?
If the locals are being fed alarmist lies and are being misled into stressing about something that is unlikely to impact them – then exactly who is to blame do you think?
There is a lesson to be learned from Fukushima here – it’s now well accepted that some 2000 premature deaths were caused by the stress, despair, depression, drug use and suicides caused by unnecessary evacuations from around the plant. In the meantime deaths due to radiation = 0.
If you are imply [sic] that I'm willing to minimise the hazard because I'm not personally involved, then you really need to produce some evidence of this.
RL, clearly I've upset you and apologise for that. The hazard is what it is – expressing our opinions makes no difference to that.
In my opinion your conclusion ("My conclusion is that it doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to people.") is an opinion; one I can't entirely agree with.
Also, in my opinion, my response to your opinion began with a statement of fact: "One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me." Although, to be fair, I only know that's a factual statement as it applies to me; I'm just assuming that you're (still) domiciled in Australia.
If you would prefer, then I'm happy to amend my statement to read: 'One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me, and our comparative lack of proximity to said waste has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on our opinions of the risk(s) (or lack thereof) such waste might (or might not) pose to those living and/or working near the dross.'
Bit clumsy, but I hope that covers it.
Still, now that you've mentioned it, I can't help wondering if I'd be even more concerned about the risks (real and/or imagined) if I lived in Mataura. I mean, I like to think that I could be completely disinterested regardless, but then maybe I'm not the best person to judge that?
Therefore, and due to the relatively low release rate, classification of AlN for acute aquatic hazards based on the formation of NH3 is not possible.
This at least confirms what I concluded above, that the hydrolysis of AIN is so slow that the rate of ammonia and hydrogen production are very unlikely to cause a hazard.
As for the second part of that analysis around chronic toxicity, all of those calculations if I'm reading them correctly are based on the worst case scenario of high concentrations of AlN trapped in a fixed body of water, like a lake. And even then they only just manage to exceed the NOEC limits.
In a river system this would just not apply, everything would just get flushed out to sea within days or weeks. And by then the concentrations would be so low there would be zero impact of any kind.
There is an old saying that goes 'the solution to pollution is dilution'. And while it sounds dark – in many cases it's entirely true.
There is an old saying that goes 'the solution to pollution is dilution'.
Just as well it's an old saying. The capacity of spaceship Earth's atmosphere, and marine and terrestrial environments, to dilute the pollutants that civilisation churns out is vast, but not infinite – global warming makes that quite clear.
And yet, if it's water soluble then down the sink with lots of water it goes – no matter the toxicity. I wonder, does NZ test for PFAS in drinking water?
The situation in New Zealand is on a much smaller scale compared to Australia, both in terms of contamination area and substance concentration. A 2013 study found that New Zealanders generally had PFOS levels in their blood that were lower than concentrations found in the blood of individuals in the USA, Canada, Germany and Australia. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) levels were similar or lower. New Zealand has used PFAS compounds in consumer and industrial applications, but has not manufactured the substances.
I was careful to qualify my statement – dilution is certainly not a good solution in all cases.
Understanding chemical and radiological hazard is a very complex topic, but I can summarise the three most important ideas as – impact, volatility and bioaccumulation. Each one of these must be present before a particular material represents a hazard.
Impact – clearly different chemicals/isotopes have wildly differing biological outcomes, at hugely different concentrations. Understanding exactly how the material in question behaves in the body or environment is critical to evaluating the potential hazard.
In many cases, especially where a material is a naturally occurring mineral anyway, sufficient dilution almost always means there is no possible impact. What your reference called the NOEC limit.
Volatility relates to how easily the material moves around in the environment. The room you're in right now probably has hundreds of compounds that if they got into your body in sufficient quantity would be highly dangerous – but because they're immobile and can't get inside of you – they're perfectly safe.
And the final aspect that must be present is bioaccumulation. If a material can be excreted from your body faster than it's being ingested, it's unlikely to cause significant harm. This is pretty much what your kidneys, liver and skin do for you all the time.
Toxic hazard is really the aggregate of these three characteristics, and absent any one of them – there is no toxicity. And in the case of the oevea premix we were originally talking about – it looks like the toxic hazard is very low indeed.
But as you've now widened the discussion to all possible chemicals that can be found in the environment – and I'm going to have to decline to do a toxic hazard analysis on all of them – I fully accept that there are many chemicals which are very problematic indeed, even at very low levels.
One topic I've been following closely for some years now, is the alarming decline of male fertility observed worldwide that is not well understood. The most reasonable hypothesis is the presence of endocrine disruptors such a PABA in the environment. So by no means am I blind to the importance of understanding what we are putting into the environment.
And of course this would be one of the key drivers of a society with abundant energy and 100% closed loop resource use.
In reference to 6 1 2 1 – Something I have noticed before on this site is a tendency to stray from the point being examined, to include the situation in the rest of the world. While that should be in everybodys' minds, when thinking about N problems we have to think and act locally, and then take cognisance of the rest of the planet. Conflating all aspects of the problem may make it unmanageable.
You're right Grey, but imho storing aluminium dross (or SPL) in NZ is just one manifestation of a behavioural flaw. Many still don't/won't recognise the limited ability of natural ecosystems to buffer civilisation against its excesses.
It's pretty hopeless (not for me personally; I'm thinking about the living conditions we’ve bequeathed to future generations.)
Information that would allow linking the classification of ammonia to concentration levels relevant for classification of AlN [as an acute aquatic hazard]is not available. Therefore, and due to the relatively low release rate, classification of AlN for acute aquatic hazards based on the formation of NH3 is not possible.
Imho the thrust the quoted passage is that it is not possible to accurately classify AlN as an acute aquatic hazard because the necessary information is not available. This clearly differs from your assertion that the ammonia formed from the hydrolysis of AlN is "very unlikely to cause a hazard".
Tbh I'm struggling to understand how someone with your expertise and experience could make such an obvious mistake.
Aluminium nitride – Ecotoxicological Summary
Overall, the available data on the hydrolysis products of AlN suggest that aluminium nitride should be classified as “Aquatic Chronic 1, H410” (very toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects).
The document draws a clear distinction between 'acute' and 'chronic' effects. In a river system any release due to flooding of the oevea waste stockpile is going to be short lived. Floods are like that, they go up, they go down.
Under the acute section it concludes:
Read-across from other aluminium salts and from ammonia, as detailed above, suggests that AlN need not be classified for acute aquatic hazards.
Essentially the reason why they conclude this is that because the release of ammonia due to AlN hydrolysis is so slow, and it breaks down so quickly in the environment:
For ammonia, there is no harmonised classification for chronic aquatic hazards. However, joint entries into the CLP inventory claim a classification as “Aquatic Chronic 2, H411”. This is based on presumed rapid degradability (NH3, as a central element of the bio-geochemical nitrogen cycle, is constantly incorporated into biomass) …
In a flowing waterway this is the context that is relevant. The conclusion you're quoting is under the chronic effect section that would be only reasonably applicable if the AlN was continuously present in large quantities in a slow moving or static body of water like a lake.
When NH3 is released from AlN exposed to water, it's presumed rapid degradation and incorporation into biomass could be part of the problem.
My personal preference is to adhere to the precautionary principle when gauging the risks posed by storing thousands of tonnes of non-natural chemicals in a residential setting, and to keep an open mind.
The people of Mataura cannot wait to see the back of waste from the Tiwai aluminium smelter.
Finally, six years after the dross began to arrive at the former paper mill beside the Mataura River, agreement has been reached to fast-track its removal.
The work has begun, and it is supposed to be all trucked to Tiwai by the end of April. It will eventually be exported.
This is, of course, a saga that should never have occurred. It is staggering that a potentially toxic substance could be stored on the banks of a major river in the middle of a town. The ouvea premix can generate poisonous ammonia gas when exposed to water.
A total of 10,000 tonnes of the premix had been sitting in sacks in the mill.
Concerned residents will not believe their front-door peril has disappeared until it actually goes, given the history.
The dangers were especially apparent in February last year when water from the flooded river entered the mill, and again in July when a sprinkler burst. In 2018, Gore District Council chief executive Steve Parry said Mataura had come close to environmental disaster during a flash flood.
Mataura residents, understandably, were anxious every time it rained heavily.
The dross was taken over by Bahrain-based Taha Asia Pacific, and it began storing the premix in the mill in 2014 without resource consent.
Concerned locals heard about this, and retrospective consent was given subject to a $2.6million bond. Taha went into liquidation in 2016 and the bond was never paid.
If I lived in Matuara, then my preference would be to support the protesters.
When NH3 is released from AlN exposed to water, it's presumed rapid degradation and incorporation into biomass could be part of the problem.
None of the references looked at so far use the word 'rapid'.
Aluminium nitride (AlN) undergoes hydrolysis in contact with water, with a reaction half-life of 22 h.
Linky? If that's correct it's actually pretty slow, and aligns with everything I've been saying.
The point is that worst case if the Mataura River had flooded, and swept away the entire stockpile into the river – virtually all of the ammonia release would be done and gone within less than a week. This isn't going to be a chronic event that hangs around for decades.
And if it was confined to just soaking the stockpile in-situ the rate of ventilation in the old mill would be quite likely enough to disperse the ammonia gas in a reasonably controlled fashion, and pose only a moderate hazard locally. We're not talking an overwhelming cloud of gas expanding rapidly and out of control; there would almost certainly be time to respond to such an event in a safe manner.
And keep in mind I was quite clear that storing it in such a location where it was vulnerable to flooding was a mistake and fixing that was an obvious way to mitigate most of of an already modest hazard.
Precautionary principle is well and good when applied to unknown or novel threats – but it’s not an excuse for catastrophising either. Once we know what we’re up against we can act accordingly .
Precautionary principle is well and good when applied to unknown or novel threats – but it’s not an excuse for catastrophising either.
Agreed, it is indeed well and good – as far as I know the storage of thousands of tonnes of aluminium dross on the banks of a river that is prone to flooding, in the middle of a small town, represents a novel situation. Gore District Council chief executive Steve Parry certainly perceived a threat ("Mataura had come close to environmental disaster during a flash flood") – I wonder how he might respond to a suggestion that he was "catastrophising"?
Once we know what we’re up against we can act accordingly.
Is it really expecting too much of the owners/managers of Taha Asia Pacific, the (now bankrupt) Bahrain-based company responsible for storing aluminium dross in Matuara, that they might have foreseen this could be “a mistake“? Of course, if they had then they might have felt obliged to inform those pesky regulators – ignorance is business bliss.
Aluminium nitride (AlN) undergoes hydrolysis in contact with water, with a reaction half-life of 22 h.
Linky?
It's in the document linked to @6.1.2.2 (and before that @6.1). You yourself linked to this document @6.1.2. Just search the page for "22".
Hardly. There is nothing unknown about the materials and the hazard is pretty well understood. If you really wanted to be thorough I'd take a couple of bags of the stuff and dump it into a tank of water in order to see exactly what happened.
That should tell us fairly quickly whether or not we actually have the potential for a catastrophe here.
Great suggestion – then we might be closer to knowing. Being thorough is not always the most profitable option, so I apply the precautionary principle when availing myself of for-profit services.
– as far as I know the storage of thousands of tonnes of aluminium dross on the banks of a river that is prone to flooding, in the middle of a small town, represents a novel situation.
Your response – “Hardly“. Well I’ll take your word for it. You’re not by any chance a businessman?
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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 ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
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 ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
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 ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. 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 ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
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 ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
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 ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
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 ...
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Giving farmers more time to prepare and clean up their act is a good thing. I hope they don’t blow this opportunity and try to stall the process for as long as possible.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/124563172/government-delays-most-proposed-intensive-winter-grazing-regulations-for-a-year
The 1st of November deadline is impractical, shit my crop paddocks at work were pooled with surface water till mid November.
And from what I've heard there slope mapping system is a shemozzle, I'm picking the government buying time so they can fix the problems and quietly let the daft bits fall away.
Perhaps Grant Robertson will be the next MP to ditch Newstalk ZB after this interview.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/grant-robertson-defends-government-after-poll-results-travel-bubble-drama/
Hipkins and Nash both still turn up for ZB.
Formal Complaint to RNZ… not holding my breath that anything will happen, but you gotta do something, right?
Re; RNZ coverage of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
In a brief search I found over 20 RNZ headline stories from the period 8-22 April 2018 on the above subject.
In light of the recent letter titled "Statement of Concern" signed by five former OPCW officials, including the organization's founding leader, José Bustani, and others including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Tulsi Gabbard, John Pilger, Lord West of Spithead, as well two former senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, in which there are raised (with many supporting documents and witnesses) serious concerns over the validity of the finished OPCW report on the April 7th Douma incident, one would expect RNZ to inform the public of these new developments under Part 2 9a of the Radio Code Standards "In the event that a material error of fact has occurred, broadcasters should correct it at the earliest appropriate opportunity."
Statement of Concern: https://couragefound.org/2021/03/stat…
Please let me reiterate, now that creditable evidence has surfaced that sheds new light and information, and in many ways repudiates many of the assumptions guests and commentators were asserting on RNZ over the period RNZ covered this story in April 2018, RNZ surely now has a responsibility (Part2 9b) to inform the pubic of these new developments on this story, just as they rightly reported on the story well over 20 times in April 2018.
I will cite Part 2 Standard 8 at a later date if no measures are taken by RNZ in the near future to bring this new information it's audience, thereby through its own reporting, leaving an unbalanced description of the events of the Douma event in the pubic arena.
Regards
Adrian Thornton
Good on you Adrian
But of course, RNZ gets their overseas news from the US standard bearers and the likes of Reuters, recently implicated in FCO collusion to "weaken Russia " through it's charitable arm
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
RNZ doesn't bother to fact check or verify or seek a diversity of opinions because it has been brought up to believe the western press is free and good and would never lie , unlike those bastards beyond the pale.
Thanks francesca, a little while ago I meet an interesting young couple who used to work at RNZ. They informed me that the interesting emails (and I would assume complaints) often get handed around the offices, so who knows…planting seeds maybe?…and at the very least, it's cathartic for me.
Thank you and good luck
This is very likely unless NZ government can draw on help from specialist scientists around the world.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/438550/report-details-consequences-of-landfill-of-toxic-waste-at-tiwai-point
I can't see Rio Tinto shifting all that stuff (ouvea). What's in it for them? They have more money than our virtual widespread city. We could fight them in a Court battle and film it and make some money perhaps if it could have a Boston Legal approach put on it. That might pay for our legal costs which would end up being high no matter what we do. Would we be like cities in the USA which have gone bankrupt? Flint was managed into ill health through toxic water fed to them by officials and leaders trying to save money, in a depressed city previously driven by the wealth of a now closed car manufacturer.
And shipping it away somewhere; a nasty taste in the mouth will be felt by us out of guilt, and the poor people in any other country that the ouvea, even some of it, is shipped to. That is unless it can be neutralised somehow. Has anybody ideas from known facts about managing chemicals – what have you learned as an engineer Red Logix? Or anyone with some real knowledge behind their statements. Waving our arms in the air and expressing concern can be taken for granted. Let's move past that and see if anyone knows anything definite and doable, even if it is costly.
There may be something in this paper about bauxite. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1076b/report.pdf
Just what is ouvea premix and what is dross and is it merely playing with words and degrees of toxicity?
Fertiliser firm apologises for dross dumping – HazTec
(haztec.co.nz › announcements › fertiliser-firm-apologis… 17/09/2014 — Ouvea premix had substantially different chemical characteristics than dross, was less hazardous and had different requirements under the …)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/437445/full-removal-of-all-stored-southland-dross-and-ouvea-premix-likely-four-years-away-council
And a nasty little sting. Ouvea is actually the name of a place (in Loyalty Islands I think where Bauxite was found). It sounds pleasanter than ' bauxite trash'. I wonder how people in that area like having that name used for toxic waste? Perhaps it will end up being called Kiwi?
I searched on google using these words 'scholarly technical details about ouvea from aluminium process' – this seems to open up the listings beyond NZ's problems. This stuff must have piled up around the world. What has happened to it? What have other countries done with it?
It needs to be neutralised as it will result in an environmental disaster bigger than we have had to cope with out of cows bottoms and those of men thrusting their way into piles of credits that they can turn into anything that takes their fancy. Ultimately nothing does, or so I understand from reading about Howard Hughes. In the process of reaching nothingness these people spread harm like Sauron the beast of Mordor.
In our part of the world Rio Tinto extract bauxite near Weipa in the far north of Queensland, ship it to Gladstone (and some direct to China) where it is converted to alumina using the Bayer Process. The alumina is then shipped to refineries, four in Australia and I have to assume some winds up at Bluff.
The main waste stream of the Bayer Process is a material called 'red mud'. It's mainly a bunch of relatively non-toxic oxides (all of which occur naturally in large quantities) but it is very alkaline and uncontrolled discharges of it are highly undesirable. Considerable effort is being made to find better ways to handle and dispose of it.
However this ain't what is of concern here in NZ. What we have is a different waste stream resulting from the refinery process when the alumina is converted into aluminum metal. For some reason the term 'ouvea waste' seems specific to NZ and the Bluff smelter. It's not clear to me why this is.
The best article I've found so far is here. It quotes two expert opinions, which both agree on the composition of this waste, but slightly disagree on the possible consequences.
The aluminium oxide is chemically stable with a very low bioavailability. It essentially comprises the surface layer on every piece of aluminium you've ever touched. In it's powdered form you don't want to get on your skin as it's an irritant.
The magnesium aluminate is otherwise called 'spinel'. Again it's a naturally occurring mineral that's stable and seems to present no obvious hazard at least according to it's MDS sheet.
This leaves the aluminium nitride as the potential problem because it's less chemically stable, and according to this MDS it slowly hydrolyses in the presence of water to form among other things ammonia and hydrogen gas.
The unanswered question is just how fast does this happen? It's certainly not characterised anywhere as a fast, highly unstable, exothermic reaction that would produce a fire, explosion or large quantities of gas. Nor at the other extreme is it something very slow like iron rusting.
And while ammonia gas is definitely toxic if you get a lung full of it at high exposure, as anyone whose worked with ammonia based refrigeration can tell you, it dissipates fairly quickly and breaks down in the environment without any accumulation issues. Ammonia is a very common material that's widely used very safely.
However in very damp conditions the gas will become heavier than air and linger in low lying pockets and enclosed spaces. The good news is that the odour is extremely pungent and most people will smell it and get the hell out long before it becomes dangerous to them. It's really only a risk when you're trapped inside with it and you don't have a safe exit route.
The hydrogen gas is extremely mobile and will dissipate very quickly with no harm whatsoever, but again it's possible to imagine a scenario where sufficient quantity is trapped in an enclosed space with the real potential for an explosion. Again it's hard to judge the risk here not knowing the reaction rates and ventilation available.
Overall my conclusion is yes there is a hazard, but it's not a very severe one. It does seem a dumb idea to store large quantities of it in a location subject to flooding – that should certainly be dealt to. (Has it been removed from the old Mataura Paper mill yet?) But even in the event that such a stockpile was flooded, it's not clear just how much or how fast the ammonia gas would be released, and whether it would ever gather in sufficient intensity to cause a hazard to people nearby. It could conceivably be a problem for anyone entering the building – but it's an open question that probably no-one can give an authoritative answer to.
Excessive alarm and stress over it's presence is not justified in my view. However I also agree it must not be left in Southland indefinitely, there is a good case for Rio to take ownership of the problem and ship it back to an Australian site where they already have better options to store it remote from any possible harm.
I should add that I’m absolutely not a chemist, but I’ve made a best effort here based on open sources of information. If someone has better information I’m happy to stand corrected.
Well that is good toffee to chew on Red L. I can hardly get my teeth apart. That will keep me quiet for some time!
I was motivated by your own comment above that you clearly put both time and sincerity into.
Cheers
Much appreciated. It's all bad news I feel, but it has to be faced and it is good to know more than I have seen so far.
How sincere are the apologies for the toxic mess?
Even if sincere still not good enough, the waste is an environmental problem which requires the right solution to clean it up.
Like those tyres that went up in smoke; it's only the environment – she'll be right. /sarc
This is the link to some NZ expert opinions that are consistent with the information in RL's comment @5.1. One concern appears to be the potential downstream effects of ammonia gas dissolving in water and giving a nitrogen (ammonium –> nitrate) nutrient boost to the river, a bit like nitrogen run-off from fertiliser and farm animal urine/faeces contaminating waterways.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC2002/S00009/flooding-could-release-toxic-gas-expert-reaction.htm
8000 tonnes of aluminium dross, so say 2400 tonnes of aluminium nitride, containing ~800 tonnes of nitrogen; 'a drop in the Matura'. For comparison:
Is the aluminium dross byproduct of the Tiwai Point smelting process not suitable for recycling? In Iceland, "Around 7000 tonnes of aluminium dross is recycled annually", but maybe their aluminium dross is not the same as our dross?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43615-021-00010-7/tables/4
Excessive alarm is seldom justified, imho. How about proportionate alarm?
Still, the EU is notoriously risk averse about ecotoxicity – wonder why?
Understanding what the material actually is, and what the potential hazards are is the key to responding to it rationally. That I tried to provide above. My conclusion is that it doesn't represent an urgent or alarming risk to people. There is no need to catastrophise over this one.
The waterways are a somewhat different matter I agree, but that is something that can be readily managed in the short term at least. Long term it should go back to Australia where they're in a much better position generally to handle it.
It’s my understanding that one of the big constraints on Rio is that increasingly stringent regulations are making it impossible for them to move this material, even when it clearly makes sense for them to do so.
More unintended consequences.
You might be right. One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me.
If some locals are skeptical, then they need to understand that’s just the cost of doing business – suck up those risks, OK?
Oops, maybe the problem is a bit bigger than we knew. This time it's "Spent Pot Lining" – makes 8,000 tonnes of aluminium dross look like pretty small beans!
Again if you read the article, Rio have made real efforts to sell this SPL material as it can be safely recycled in the cement making process.
But the one plant in NZ interested in doing it closed down and tightened regulations make it very hard to send overseas. Regulations intended to protect the environment apparently.
If only that were true.
I did read the article – even linked to it. However, since you've only got good things to say about Rio Tinto's efforts, and seem to be placing the blame on those dastedly 'environmental regulators', it's difficult to believe that we read the same article
"Regulations intended to protect the environment" – you don't approve?
Pesky regulations!
doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me.
If you are imply that I'm willing to minimise the hazard because I'm not personally involved, then you really need to produce some evidence of this. I looked at the composition of the 'ouvea premix' and applied a reasoned analysis. If you think I got that wrong then produce your own case.
Speculating that I'm being dishonest is gutless.
If some locals are skeptical, then they need to understand that’s just the cost of doing business – suck up those risks, OK?
If the locals are being fed alarmist lies and are being misled into stressing about something that is unlikely to impact them – then exactly who is to blame do you think?
There is a lesson to be learned from Fukushima here – it’s now well accepted that some 2000 premature deaths were caused by the stress, despair, depression, drug use and suicides caused by unnecessary evacuations from around the plant. In the meantime deaths due to radiation = 0.
RL, clearly I've upset you and apologise for that. The hazard is what it is – expressing our opinions makes no difference to that.
In my opinion your conclusion ("My conclusion is that it doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to people.") is an opinion; one I can't entirely agree with.
Also, in my opinion, my response to your opinion began with a statement of fact: "One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me." Although, to be fair, I only know that's a factual statement as it applies to me; I'm just assuming that you're (still) domiciled in Australia.
If you would prefer, then I'm happy to amend my statement to read: 'One thing's for certain – the aluminium dross distributed around Southland doesn't represent a serious or alarming risk to you and me, and our comparative lack of proximity to said waste has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on our opinions of the risk(s) (or lack thereof) such waste might (or might not) pose to those living and/or working near the dross.'
Bit clumsy, but I hope that covers it.
Still, now that you've mentioned it, I can't help wondering if I'd be even more concerned about the risks (real and/or imagined) if I lived in Mataura. I mean, I like to think that I could be completely disinterested regardless, but then maybe I'm not the best person to judge that?
Also from your link above:
This at least confirms what I concluded above, that the hydrolysis of AIN is so slow that the rate of ammonia and hydrogen production are very unlikely to cause a hazard.
As for the second part of that analysis around chronic toxicity, all of those calculations if I'm reading them correctly are based on the worst case scenario of high concentrations of AlN trapped in a fixed body of water, like a lake. And even then they only just manage to exceed the NOEC limits.
In a river system this would just not apply, everything would just get flushed out to sea within days or weeks. And by then the concentrations would be so low there would be zero impact of any kind.
There is an old saying that goes 'the solution to pollution is dilution'. And while it sounds dark – in many cases it's entirely true.
Just as well it's an old saying. The capacity of spaceship Earth's atmosphere, and marine and terrestrial environments, to dilute the pollutants that civilisation churns out is vast, but not infinite – global warming makes that quite clear.
And yet, if it's water soluble then down the sink with lots of water it goes – no matter the toxicity. I wonder, does NZ test for PFAS in drinking water?
Phew!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/01/23/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-found-drinking-water-throughout-us/4540909002/
I was careful to qualify my statement – dilution is certainly not a good solution in all cases.
Understanding chemical and radiological hazard is a very complex topic, but I can summarise the three most important ideas as – impact, volatility and bioaccumulation. Each one of these must be present before a particular material represents a hazard.
Impact – clearly different chemicals/isotopes have wildly differing biological outcomes, at hugely different concentrations. Understanding exactly how the material in question behaves in the body or environment is critical to evaluating the potential hazard.
In many cases, especially where a material is a naturally occurring mineral anyway, sufficient dilution almost always means there is no possible impact. What your reference called the NOEC limit.
Volatility relates to how easily the material moves around in the environment. The room you're in right now probably has hundreds of compounds that if they got into your body in sufficient quantity would be highly dangerous – but because they're immobile and can't get inside of you – they're perfectly safe.
And the final aspect that must be present is bioaccumulation. If a material can be excreted from your body faster than it's being ingested, it's unlikely to cause significant harm. This is pretty much what your kidneys, liver and skin do for you all the time.
Toxic hazard is really the aggregate of these three characteristics, and absent any one of them – there is no toxicity. And in the case of the oevea premix we were originally talking about – it looks like the toxic hazard is very low indeed.
But as you've now widened the discussion to all possible chemicals that can be found in the environment – and I'm going to have to decline to do a toxic hazard analysis on all of them – I fully accept that there are many chemicals which are very problematic indeed, even at very low levels.
One topic I've been following closely for some years now, is the alarming decline of male fertility observed worldwide that is not well understood. The most reasonable hypothesis is the presence of endocrine disruptors such a PABA in the environment. So by no means am I blind to the importance of understanding what we are putting into the environment.
And of course this would be one of the key drivers of a society with abundant energy and 100% closed loop resource use.
In reference to 6 1 2 1 – Something I have noticed before on this site is a tendency to stray from the point being examined, to include the situation in the rest of the world. While that should be in everybodys' minds, when thinking about N problems we have to think and act locally, and then take cognisance of the rest of the planet. Conflating all aspects of the problem may make it unmanageable.
You're right Grey, but imho storing aluminium dross (or SPL) in NZ is just one manifestation of a behavioural flaw. Many still don't/won't recognise the limited ability of natural ecosystems to buffer civilisation against its excesses.
It's pretty hopeless (not for me personally; I'm thinking about the living conditions we’ve bequeathed to future generations.)
Let's just expand that quote a bit.
Imho the thrust the quoted passage is that it is not possible to accurately classify AlN as an acute aquatic hazard because the necessary information is not available. This clearly differs from your assertion that the ammonia formed from the hydrolysis of AlN is "very unlikely to cause a hazard".
Tbh I'm struggling to understand how someone with your expertise and experience could make such an obvious mistake.
The document draws a clear distinction between 'acute' and 'chronic' effects. In a river system any release due to flooding of the oevea waste stockpile is going to be short lived. Floods are like that, they go up, they go down.
Under the acute section it concludes:
Essentially the reason why they conclude this is that because the release of ammonia due to AlN hydrolysis is so slow, and it breaks down so quickly in the environment:
In a flowing waterway this is the context that is relevant. The conclusion you're quoting is under the chronic effect section that would be only reasonably applicable if the AlN was continuously present in large quantities in a slow moving or static body of water like a lake.
When NH3 is released from AlN exposed to water, it's presumed rapid degradation and incorporation into biomass could be part of the problem.
My personal preference is to adhere to the precautionary principle when gauging the risks posed by storing thousands of tonnes of non-natural chemicals in a residential setting, and to keep an open mind.
If I lived in Matuara, then my preference would be to support the protesters.
“…over the next four years.” Good – get a move on.
Aluminium nitride (AlN) undergoes hydrolysis in contact with water, with a reaction half-life of 22 h.
When NH3 is released from AlN exposed to water, it's presumed rapid degradation and incorporation into biomass could be part of the problem.
None of the references looked at so far use the word 'rapid'.
Aluminium nitride (AlN) undergoes hydrolysis in contact with water, with a reaction half-life of 22 h.
Linky? If that's correct it's actually pretty slow, and aligns with everything I've been saying.
The point is that worst case if the Mataura River had flooded, and swept away the entire stockpile into the river – virtually all of the ammonia release would be done and gone within less than a week. This isn't going to be a chronic event that hangs around for decades.
And if it was confined to just soaking the stockpile in-situ the rate of ventilation in the old mill would be quite likely enough to disperse the ammonia gas in a reasonably controlled fashion, and pose only a moderate hazard locally. We're not talking an overwhelming cloud of gas expanding rapidly and out of control; there would almost certainly be time to respond to such an event in a safe manner.
And keep in mind I was quite clear that storing it in such a location where it was vulnerable to flooding was a mistake and fixing that was an obvious way to mitigate most of of an already modest hazard.
Precautionary principle is well and good when applied to unknown or novel threats – but it’s not an excuse for catastrophising either. Once we know what we’re up against we can act accordingly .
Agreed, it is indeed well and good – as far as I know the storage of thousands of tonnes of aluminium dross on the banks of a river that is prone to flooding, in the middle of a small town, represents a novel situation. Gore District Council chief executive Steve Parry certainly perceived a threat ("Mataura had come close to environmental disaster during a flash flood") – I wonder how he might respond to a suggestion that he was "catastrophising"?
Is it really expecting too much of the owners/managers of Taha Asia Pacific, the (now bankrupt) Bahrain-based company responsible for storing aluminium dross in Matuara, that they might have foreseen this could be “a mistake“? Of course, if they had then they might have felt obliged to inform those pesky regulators – ignorance is business bliss.
It's in the document linked to @6.1.2.2 (and before that @6.1). You yourself linked to this document @6.1.2. Just search the page for "22".
represents a novel situation.
Hardly. There is nothing unknown about the materials and the hazard is pretty well understood. If you really wanted to be thorough I'd take a couple of bags of the stuff and dump it into a tank of water in order to see exactly what happened.
That should tell us fairly quickly whether or not we actually have the potential for a catastrophe here.
Great suggestion – then we might be closer to knowing. Being thorough is not always the most profitable option, so I apply the precautionary principle when availing myself of for-profit services.
Your response – “Hardly“. Well I’ll take your word for it. You’re not by any chance a businessman?
And in other Australian news – it's ridiculously fucking wet here on the East Coast.
The past month here in Brissy has already seen a lot of rain, the past three days have been particularly extensive – and now this.
Crazy country – either bone dry or up to your neck in it.
This will be a good test for the Mulloon Institute and their hydration systems. They are really taking off with this practice after a long gestation.
https://themullooninstitute.org/blog/2020/9/10/leaky-weirs-in-rising-floodwaters
Excellent linky – enjoyed that a lot!
Australian farmers are a tough and often adaptive bunch – they have to be.