‘The aviation fuel crisis caused by a ruptured pipeline has suddenly become a central issue in a tight election contest, forcing the National Government to scramble in a bid to limit impact to the travelling public and to its own vote.
With just four days to go, Opposition parties piled into National with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern claiming that the failure of the infrastructure was a failure of leadership.
The unexpected headache has the potential to undermine one of National’s longstanding claims to being better managers than Labour.
But it is also an opportunity for the Government to show it can handle a crisis competently – and a test for no-nonsense Energy Minister Judith Collins in controlling the Government response….’
The minister for kauris response will probably be a quasi test for the leaders role.
Will she help the cause or help herself as they’re vulnerable due to the gutting of regulators, resources and rules in their adoration of ‘market knows best’.
Wonder if a scapegoat is being lined up for the ‘look how tough we are’ bs.
Winston Peters just said on Garner’s show that the damage done to the pipe was by a foreign owned organisation, operating out of the Cayman Islands and paying no tax.
Hope the media digs further on this – but with more precision that the foreign owned swamp kauri extractors.
I actually mind Labour getting back into power if HC and MC were back, house prices rose quicker under Labour than they did National so be good to make some real money
[care to explain why there are multiple pseudonyms using this IP address, especially after one of them got warned to pick a single name and stick to it? I’ll check in with Lynn to make sure I’m not missing anything here, but I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t cop a lengthy ban. If you don’t feel comfortable discussing this in the front end, then email Lynn – weka]
You are between a rock and a hard place weka with some moderation. But The Rock sounds awfully like a troll to me, or a flamer, amusing himself poking a stick in to the ant hill, pulling wings off flies etc. Have a good day weka, hope it’s not raining your way, and perhaps a nice cup of tea?
I asked him once where The Cayman Islands were. His reply, as far as could decipher it in the late night noise in the Green Parrot in Wellington, was something like.
“Listen Sunshine. I’ve been going there ever since I first went while working down a mine in Australia. I know everything about it and I’ll stop all those Chinese coming to New Zealand and buying up all our farms ………………”.
Dead drunk! How dare you Sir.
I am the last relic of the WCTU. The purest of the pure.
Depart. Get back to your dungeon before I take to you with my shillelagh.
I can’t speak for Winston though.
Ed dont get caught in the msm positioning on this. The gnats have let down a whole swathe of people and they are showing how useless they are. There is no good for them from this.
But it is also an opportunity for the Government to show it can handle a crisis competently
I’m pretty sure that the Rena stranding was as well – and they failed there. Seems that they’re maintaining the same failed policies for emergencies, a policy of simply not having anything in place to deal with it because it’s cheaper in the short term.
It might not be a good idea to mention the Rena wreck.
The Green Party are in favour of getting rid of pipelines and switching transport to coastal shipping. It probably isn’t a great thingt to remind people that there are vastly more accidents from shipping than there have been from pipelines.
[citation needed for that claim. It needs to be direct (e.g. not just a vague point at policy). You’ve got until the end of the day to produce that. I don’t know what the GP policy on this is, so maybe you can teach us something. – weka]
Sorry MSM your man got his ass kicked . And all those fake smiles you people come on you people are to easy to read yes I am defensive But like to see what you would do in my situation shit your pants and run .
Now trump he wants the United Nations to Pay america to pay for more for the dum ass war they are fighting and defense spend.
Lets look at this from my view most of the money would go to america the Americans
have all the army bases around the world and trump wants US to pay them for this what a load of crap we should give that idiot trump anything the rest of the World can see right through you the only trick trump has is bulling everyone that doesn’t agree
with his neo liberal bullshit Ideals and this idiot will fuck up the negotiations with North Korea . One needs more skills than being a bully to try and lead OUR WORLD .
The carrot works Better than the stick come on this is basic human Psychology not fucken rocket science . Or is it that trump is like all neo liberals and thinks Koreans or anyone not white is not human. It is obvious that the UN and trumps moves is not working. ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WOURLD NEED TO BE PUTTING ALL OUR RESOURCES INTO FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE NOT DUM ASS WARS WHICH IDIOTS START trump wants us to pay for the US war machine .
It would be nice if Draco T Bastard would post that you tube video on what motivates PEOPLE. This will help get our point to these people.
Nice one eco.
I would just point out that the Americans do not, and will not, negotiate with Nth Korea, and therein lies much of the problem. This goes back to the Korean war ,which is still a huge problem ( much of which America can’t be proud of, like Vietnam).
I didn’t see it as being so bad. He obviously wasn’t as well-informed as he perhaps should have been on how complex some similar taxes are already. He was also pointlessly combative on certain well-publicised details (apparently) not being on the Labour website, and pressed hard for some details that would probably best be finalised once the party had gained access to the Treasury benches and the advisory machinery of government. Overall, though, he posed some serious questions, and Ardern gave some decent answers. I don’t think too many voters are going to be put off by a politician acquitting herself well in a mildly hostile interview. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Hanswurst
A nice measured critique. It sometimes is hard not to damn the interviewer. But to get anywhere they may have to probe. Otherwise it’s all the same every day.
I thought him a nasty, negative spinner. At one point Jacinda said about the water tax that they had given 2 figures in a small range. Espiner immediately interrupted, saying, “Yes, but one figure is double the other.” That makes it sound like a big increase, exactly the vagueness and unpredictability that National are trying to play upon.
I wanted Jacinda to respond: “No, one figure is half the other.” (Making it sound small, spinning it the other way, and pointing out Espiner’s bias.)
Espiner does this to left-wing victims (sorry, interviewees) far more often than he does it to right-wing ones in my experience.
Yes I have heard Espiner pick on a point that he repeats over and over as if he is seeking the answer to the site of the Holy Grail. He decides what is important and it is more like a battle to assert victory over his victim (I mean interviewee). I was trying to be less prejudiced towards him, and have caught him sometimes doing a good job and thought he was improving.
I’d hate to be involved with him and all these opinionated hacks privately, his attitude is not just a persona he adopts and it would be a case of if he gives way on anything, he would keep score for the times he kindly gave in, and demand later balance.
Any half decent broadcaster knows their best interviewer is Kim Hill who takes no shit and gets questions answered.
Espinner is a tool of the right and needs to be removed if nact get turfed, you should always let the polly speak which he seems to only allow nat pollies spinning their BS.
Rubbish, lurgee. Kim Hill interrupts sometimes, but at others she lets people hang themselves by their own petards. She also creates really good, positive, non-combative interviews.
Susie and Guyon are your constant interrupter/talkover artists with scant thought or knowledge.
Heard guyon interviewing himself while driving this morning. He is downright intolerable when he resorts to bad mannered, shouting down methods of asserting his will and trying to direct the narrative to his desired outcome. He just fixates on something and will not let it drop until he either wears his interviewee down or it becomes clear he is not going to get his own way. He is quite irrational at times. At least Jacinda holds her own. Must annoy him no end.
The building of another pipeline is not cost effective for a small country like New Zealand. The real problem is the need for rules and regulations, which today are conveniently side-stepped by many businesses, eg. those looking for swamp kauri, where the Collins clan have a vested interest. Will a robust investigation in the rupture of the pipe line occur, or will it be another so-so investigation similar to that of the Pike River Coal Mine?
What about a large fuel silo at Auckland airport as a backup? You would think our largest airport would have a contingency like that and it wouldn’t be a huge expense in the scheme of things. Who knows they might already have one but it’s not big enough to help much.
It’s why the Greens should be in Government to apply some common sense. After the Rena disaster they were calling for cleanup crews to be based at our major ports just in case something went wrong.
We took 20 years to get rid of the sewerage ponds on the Manukau Harbour, and a whole bunch of people would object to that volume of toxic material being stored on the edge of the Manukau Harbour again.
I would rather see a heavy rail line from Puhinui to the airport as a supplement feeder of jet fuel only when needed for instances like now.
That seems odd. An A380 takes up to 323 cu m, a 250mm pipeline has a cross-sectional area of 0.05 sqm. So 323 cu m in 18000 seconds means it’s flowing at about 0.35 m/s. The guideline for maximum flow velocity for kerosene, diesel etc seems to be about 3 m/s.
To take a hand-waving order of magnitude guess at the capacity question, if the airport is taking 1.1 billion litres of jet fuel per year through the pipe, and take a wild guess at another billion litres of petrol and a billion litres of diesel (aroundabout 1500 litres petrol/diesel per capita per year for Aucklanders doesn’t look too absurd), then the pipe is carrying around 350 cu m per hour 365/24, which is about half its capacity. But then there’s downtime for product changeovers and maintenance etc.
I’m not confident about that 3 m/s flow velocity, pipe flows aren’t my thing. It’s just what most engineering tips web pages spit out. But a few of them claim higher flow rates.
NZ is a small vulnerable economy that is being marginalised annually, by geographic isolation, low volume trading, low wages and a narrow income base.
Further weakened by an at-risk demographic, eg on any given day up to a third of high school kids in south Auckland are absent. Just look at the High School passes of this group. Rank 30 th in the OECD. Also the crime Stats’ 50% of these folk occupy our prisons.
Gvt benefits payouts are the highest in the first world (Maori & P.I.)
Australia sees all this & is slowly closing its borders to Kiwi’s. Then this [deleted] Adern, standing for the Countries leadership, wants the Primary sector ( which is half of our international income) to pay out additional huge taxes.
Her 3-6 cents a pound for butter fat equals about $50,000 for many NZ Dairy farms. The remedy is dont vote for Labour its backward & communist. This system of Gvt has proven not to work.
[seeing as how we’re most likely heading for 3 years of Ardern as PM, I’m going to start pushing back against the inevitable casual sexism now. It’s unnecessary for the political points you want to make – weka]
[also edited for formatting so I can make sense of what is being said – weka]
I didn’t see the sexist statements that were moderated out, but there is still a hell of a lot of casual racism left in SB’s comment. For example, “Gvt benefits payouts are the highest in the first world. ( Maori & P.I.)”, without providing any any links to support that assertion (which would be difficult as the majority of benefits paid are superannuation, and Māori tend to be a bit too dead by that age to collect much of that). Then there are; “south Auckland” & “these folk”.
But in any case, what little there is of an argument is nonsensical (in as much as it is decipherable from the imprecise grammar). The remedy to current problems is to not change what you are doing?
As Mr English’s staff looked increasingly uncomfortable, Ms Lane argued low-wage workers were not getting the benefits of the growing economy that Mr English kept talking about.
Mr English told her a National-led government would continue to raise the minimum wage, but she said that was simply not enough.
“$3.75 [increase] over nine years – now how would you like it if your hourly rate went up $3.75 over a period of nine years?”
Mr English said that would be a challenge for him.
Thanks for pointing that out Dspare. I’ve reread the comment and agree about the casual racism. This is something useful to think about in terms off moderation, where the line is between removing content that is likely to put commenters off (or cause flame wars) vs allowing robust debate even where some of the content is gross.
I think there’s a line between personal attacks on politicians (e.g. had it been about say Turei and the personal comments had been ethnicity based rather than gender, then I would have removed those bits), and people making political arguments (e.g. their belief about ethnicity stats and what it means).
Generally the latter are left for people to argue over, and I certainly think it’s reasonable to ask people to back up claims of fact (I keep an eye out as a moderator for that). I need to have a think about that tolerance though. I draw a lot on the part of the Policy that’s about tone or language that excludes others, and am still trying to find the balance on that. Am open to feedback on this.
Please keep pointing these things out too, because it can be easy to miss especially when there is a lot going on.
I too agree with Dspare. To Stan Blanch I would say that you need to express yourself much more clearly and precisely. That last effort made me think you a semi-articulate right-wing redneck. You deserve the criticism and the moderation comments.
Theres much to attack her with so there’s no need to make it about her looks or gender or anything like that
Attack her flip-flopping, her lack of experience, the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”, her town v country divisive tactics, her smile and wave, attack all that
But leave the personal attacks out of it we’re better than that…or we should be
Lol. Heard english gloating the other day about how he was getting mobbed in schools and malls and excitedly said “they are coming, wanting photos. I am going to win!” ..
… Never trust the ankle biters Bill. They will turn on you at the drop of a lollipop.
Attack her flip-flopping, her lack of experience, the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”, her town v country divisive tactics,…
1) Her flip flopping? Just because voters make it clear they want to have a final say on changes to the outdated tax regime. That’s not flip flopping, that’s being sensible and heeding their concerns.
2) She’s been in parliament 9 years mate. Far longer than John Key was before becoming PM. Oh, I get it. He’s a man so he doesn’t need as long… right?
3) Lack of experience. She’s only headed a large international youth organisation… worked as an adviser and consultant in the Blair Government and she’s done other admirable things as well. She’s amply qualified for the job.
4) the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”…,. English spends equally as much time in schools and cuddling babies and animals . It represents around 20% of their campaign activity but its how the news teams like to portray them – the warm, fuzzy thing that attracts viewers.
5) her town v country divisive tactics,… You are not very insightful then. Anyone with a half a brain should be able to see who is the party creating the divisive tactics for political gain. NATIONAL.
Thanks Weka. I am SO SICK of the sexism already and she hasn’t even been elected PM yet. You don’t have to scratch too far in this country for rampant sexism and misogynism to be revealed. It disgusted me through the Helen Clark years and I can feel the same angry revulsion kicking in through this campaign.
I think it will be easy enough to knock the more blatant stuff on the head. The more subtle, Hooton-esque* stuff will be harder, but then that should be being dealt with in comments anyway (fingers crossed).
*e.g. his current line is that Ardern is incompetent, but he’s very careful to avoid any suggestion that it’s because of her gender. It’s still sexist as though.
” Her 3-6 cents a pound for butter fat equals about $50,000 for many NZ Dairy farms. ” Only for huge Corporate Dairy Farms but nonetheless please post your souce.
Oh, look, it’s a butt-hurt palagi whining bitterly about having to share this country with icky, icky, non-white people. Perish the thought that it could act upon the courage of its convictions, get off its fat lily-white arse and high-tail it back to England…
So the poor fellow might have to pay $1500 a year if the water tax is levied. Cry me a river. that’s pretty much the definition of negligible impact. It almost seems as though the only tax that some farmers would find acceptable would be one that cost nothing and that nobody had to pay.
The National Party organiser for the protest was a very poor advocate on Morning Report. Just shows how effective is English scaremongering.
“Labour wants to tax us for everything except the air we breathe.” http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201859018
Yep that racist thick farmer is a good example of a farmer that lets us all down. Good the gnats have their shithead mates to push their dirty agenda. What a joke.
Yes, he just came across as uninformed and bigoted. Also, what was that supposed to be yesterday about a “positive message“? Was anything concrete at all said about “what farmers have done for the environment”? Certainly, all Lloyd Downing talked about in that interview was his not wanting other farmers to pay taxes real and imaginary. Not wanting to do something is negative in and of itself. It’s like they’ve thought up one PR line, “We want to make a positive statement about how awesome we are,” and one attack line, “Labour want to tax everything,” and not given a single thought to anything else.
“Lloyd Downing acknowledges farming is having an impact, but look how far we’ve come, he says. When asked for evidence, he tells the story of his old dad, back when Lloyd was a lad, taking the farm’s rubbish and chucking it in the river.
I used to shoot at the used light bulbs, he says, as they floated away! Nobody does that any more! ”
Good to see the redneck bigots falling back on McCarthyism! Time they looked ahead more than one season and started worrying about how their kids are going to survive.
Selling basic milk powder to the Chinese is economic stupidity as is intensive dairying on totally unsuitable terrain.
Their entrenched and narrow view of the changing world is very harmful for all of us.
And the Chinese are getting the hang of NZ dairy expertise at home. They at least have some idea of how to maintain their economy in their own interests.
‘The entrenched and narrow view of the changing world [by farmers] is very harmful for all of us.’ Indeed. And most of us including farmers who are over-leveraged, over any sort of precautionary controls on their overweening ambitions, will all go down together.
For those who like Tom Lehrer’s sarcasm seems to fit
The farmers will like his Pollution song as it has a go at cities, just up their street really.
Pollution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz_-KNNl-no
and it is followed by We will all go together when we go –
His song refers to the bomb but being hit by a collapsed economy and perhaps a hurricane will have a similar effect, and both are as possible as another strong earthquake.
notice that the article did not mention the size of his farm or his herds, no perspective in that story, $1500 is peanuts judging from what we can see in the picture/video of the size of his operation.
” …. water consumption of New Zealand dairy farms is equivalent to the residential use of 60 million people.
This is on top of the often quoted figure that New Zealand’s dairy herd has the environmental footprint equivalent to 90 million people.
“The implication is if a water royalty was imposed on irrigators then over 80 percent of dairy farmers will be unaffected”
However, this message is not getting through to farmers.
“As illustrated by the farmer protest (sic) in Morrinsville, it is clear many farmers are being unduly worried by baseless scaremongering – especially as Morrinsville is hardly ‘ground zero’ for irrigated dairying.”
If you shuffle income around the whanau up to each persons no tax threshold then max the farm expenses you can end up with a loss on the farm and everybody still gets cash to splash.
IIRC they get generous depreciation and write downs not available ouside the Ag sector unsure how the rebate picture is.
Well, let’s not get carried away here – the article says ‘locals’, but actually only quotes one person, who may have his own good reasons for telling porkies. A good percentage of Northland runs like a banana republic!
A pipe hit by a digger is going to show physical damage. I’m going to assume that they found that damage first (when they found the leak) and looked to the history of the area.
To MSM lets not create a divide between TOWN and COUNTRY we are all on this WAKA
called EARTH together. So when it starts sinking no one is going to think about that divide YOU are letting national impose on US there neo liberal bullshit ideals it is so primeval .
There are some todd mclay sign wavers in Rotorua they are not getting any support .
Because we all Know who his father is and what he got up to and that Trade Deal is bullshit if all agriculture is not included in it Europe dosen’t need our FOOD.
Well said Eco 😀
All of us wanting/needing clean water and less pollution so we can keep the planet alive is not divisive, it’s inclusive, survival of the planet and all the inhabitants depends on it.
Nat and media driven town v’s country division does nothing to solve any problem
Sharing ideas will help so much with solutions, that’s why I’m so very supportive of the water forum, because it brings all sectors etc together to find solutions which will unite NZ to improve life for all.
Why has the neo liberal Rotorua Lakes Council got no NITROGEN OR EFFLUENT mitigation plans in place Why have they got Lakes in there name and they are sitting on there assess and not even trying to fix that problem .
national have cut our science funding and this is one of the main tools we have to fight Climate Change and create a beautiful future for OUR grandchildren so fucken DUM.
If Jacinda and Labour really wanted to put the boot into dairy farmers in particular they would point out that in a report last year, I think, (sorry too busy or incompetent to find the reference ) that dairy farmers are tax negative by a long way.
On that note I would like to see in a new tax regime the inability of the buyer of a business to acquire simply for the tax losses associated with the target company.
When it’s sold the losses are wiped not credited to arseholes.
Chris Trotter sums up the Morrinsville farmer furore nicely:
“When Andrew McGiven and Lloyd Downing encouraged their rural brethren gather under Morrinsville’s giant cow yesterday, they were simply adding another chapter to an already very long story of rural antagonism towards the needs and aspirations of New Zealand’s urban majority. The latter looked on, appalled, at the selfishness and ignorance which unfailingly follow the country into town.”
The problem with that framing is that if we want to uplift the needs and aspirations of the majority then we will end up with Auckland running the place. There are distinct problems with most NZers living in cities, and one of them is that their ideas about nature are often once removed. People in cities also tend to see city life as normal and to then normalise that outwards. Hence the idea that part of the solution to the Auckland housing crisis is to send a whole bunch of people to the provinces, presumably to turn them into mini Aucklands. I’m appalled 😉
Besides, this country living person looked on appalled at the protest as well. No need to create a false divide.
The Feds and National have created the divide, imo. They couldn’t see that the optics would be so bad, because they’re in a bubble (methane mainly). I don’t hold with the idea that city-folk are more divorced from the real world than country people; in the country, the wild world is being actively suppressed and most farming action are aimed at suppressing the return of a natural environment. In the city, it’s largely over but city folk aren’t personally, in the main, poisoning stuff, burning stuff, chainsawing down stuff, as many in the farming community are.
true, but I think that’s lack of opportunity as much as anything. Otherwise we’d have had a Green-led govt by now. Look at the kaupapa of poisoning as part of conservation. Those are values held as much by city folk as anyone else. And the need to develop and improve things all the time to the detriment of the environment is a town as well as country value.
It’s not that I think city people are more divorced from the real world, it’s that I think the less time you spend in nature the more your thinking about and experience of it changes. That’s a generalisation, there are still many people in cities that give a shit about nature. But they tend to visit nature rather than seeing themselves as part of it. That’s a problem. Living in the country and seeing nature as something to be tamed is also a problem. Different problems, both need acknowledging and responding to.
weka in my experience of ten years dairyfaming I did not witness any farmers seeing their land as part of nature. They saw their land as a means of converting grass into milk and to hell with everything else.
I must confess that was also our aim when sharemilking.
We were told in the eighties of strict impending environmental laws and 3 year time frame was given. What did the industry do? sfa.
They can’t, garibaldi. Their cultural framing makes wildness invisible to them. They can though, just sense something threatening “over there”, but that can be Rounded-Up, no worries, mate.
If asked i think many city folk would love this idea. People living in cities with nature everywhere else, where the majority of the world would be a conservation estate – one that wouldn’t need looking after much but would be easy to visit.
Whether or not my uncle and his siblings were loaded onto a cattle wagon and transported to Siberia or they were on the very first TikiTour to Siberia is the subject of scientific debate, too. Pricks.
I guess the unpublished part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which Germany and the USSR agreed to divide Poland up between them, must have been an invention of “the authors of biased historical narratives.”
“Four Auckland service stations ran out of 95 octane petrol yesterday – and more could run out today – as thousands of air passengers again face a day of cancelled flights.
Z Energy said it would be able to replenish the fuel today and told motorists there was no cause for concern.
Z’s corporate communications manager, Jonathan Hill, said in the first days after a pipeline from the Marsden Point Refinery ruptured, the company concentrated on delivering 91 octane petrol and diesel to Auckland.”
There is no cause for concern … except banner media headlines that freak voters out four days out from polling day.
Well. The locals do say there’s been no activity at the rupture site since it was built in 1981 and you’d think they would notice a digger pulling up Kauri, so…yeah.
I haven’t followed this side of it, but where I live it’s normal to have petrol supplied via tanker rather than a pipe. Is there some reason that isn’t happening enough? Is it simple physics (not enough tankers/time to meet demand)? Or am I missing something?
Auckland Airport say they supply 1.1 billion litres of jet fuel per year. That’s around 40,000 truckloads. That same pipe also delivers petrol and diesel to the Auckland region so local stations get supplied by truck from Wiri instead trucking it from Tauranga or Whangarei. At a guess that’s probably another couple billion litres of fuel down that pipe.
(that’s also around 1/270 of the world consumption of jet fuel at Auckland and NZ is 1/1600 of the world population)
The volume of fuel for auckland is somewhat high. It is about a third of the countries populaton. Similarly it is about 70% of the airplane fuel usage. It is also where most of the goods dispatched to the rest of nz come from. Auckland probably accounts for more than 40% of all fuelups.
The terrain between the refinery up north and auckland is difficult. They used to use coastal ships but it is likely that the unloading facility has been killed along with the tank farm at the harbour.
Truck tankers would fill an already full road and be pretty dangerous on some of the sharp corners in hill roads. Not to mention that we probably don’t have enough tanker trucks unless we use some milk tankers.
The State Services Commission has just put out a note to every single government Department that all flights by the public service into or out of Auckland are stopped until further notice.
I still haven’t had time to catch up properly, but it does seem very odd that people in general aren’t being advised to use less over the coming few weeks.
Would it be true that the rest of country is ok in terms of supply and supply chain?
Folks in Northland , Bay of Plenty & Waikato need to be aware that the primary focus of :
Ensuring the critical reduced volumes of Jet Fuel are delivered by Truck to Auckland
Ensuring that Diesel and 91 Octane petrol supply to Auckland is maintained
will result in negligible tanker deliveries in those regions.
Safe Gnat seats will get the least.
It’s unfortunate that the Pipeline outage occurred , even more unfortunate , IMO , that it didn’t occur a week earlier.
Wrong login. This pro-National post should have been under the light blue avatar.
[leave it alone please. Ad is an author, and anyone can comment from different devices and/or internet connections and end up with a different avatar. – weka]
No, we’ll take it up with you. You know that the avatar is created by Gravata via an algorithm shaped by the email address. Therefore the problem is you changing the email address.
But you must have changed/misspelled it on one of your devices so that it changes the avatar when you post on it. The one with the misspelling needs correcting.
There are approximately zero cars in New Zealand that need 95 octane petrol and won’t run perfectly happily on 91.
A large number of stations in Auckland don’t seem to have 95 anyway. Whenever I visit Auckland I seem to stop at stations that stock 91 and 98 instead.
I guess it is all the Ferraris and Porsches that seem to exist there.
91 and diesel supplies look like they will be fine for a while.
There will only be noticeable political impact if that changes by polling day.
Corin Dann will cover it on TVNZ news tonight – but it’s not yet a vote-turner.
Whenever one of my rellies mistakenly fills my Daihatsu Sirion 1.3 with 91, there’s nearly continual light knocking and fuel consumption noticeably increases.
Z don’t seem to try to foist overpriced 98 onto their customers, around here they all sell 95. Last time I checked into it, the 98 being sold had a lot of ethanol, so the energy content is low and fuel consumption would probably increase. So I avoid Gull, Mobil and BP.
Anyone who thinks policy analysis is the basis determining votes need only to listen to this interview to understand the base level at which the electorate determines what direction this country takes
It would also be pertinent to remind ourselves the history and origins of the National Party and we may then have a realistic expectation of the level of public discourse around rural issues
That interview was full of whining entitlement, the like of which you only ever hear from a certain sector of the farming community. Well done Peter Fraser for his rebuttal. Chris Trotter has a good post on the long history of farmer activism on his blog.
Has anyone else seen the full-page ad in today’s DomPost from the totally non-partisan (sarc) Taxpayers’ Union that claims that spending by a Labour/Greens/NZF government will cost every NZ household $229.41 per week over the next three years?
National/ACT at $22.05/week looks like a real bargain.
Kia Kaha Jacinda Ardern. Tough, tough time to lose a grandmother.
If there is poetic justice in this, it’s on Suffrage Day: 124 years after NZ led the world in granting women the vote. We are on the eve of electing a female Prime Minister for the second time….a time to remember we stand on the shoulder of giants and giantesses.
Always amazes me that people still think that National are telling the truth when they say that they manage the economy better. Decades of their mismanagement proves otherwise.
Could be msm isn’t pursuing the company which damaged the fuel pipeline at Ruakaka, while harvesting swamp kauri, because it might cause some embarrassment to Natz. If any issue needs some investigative journalism, this one certainly does! But to date, nothing at all!
NZ is definitely not being served by a free and open media, acting as a proxy for the people. Disgraceful!
Well for once in his career he has done the right thing – and about time – who would have believed it. Paddy has seen through their lies and corruption – am still shaking my head over it.
Now we no that the only thing that trump raised was a pile of cash and no mater how much shit that gets poured on money one can wash money clean.
My point is if he raised his children he would know that when you don’t give a child a healthy balanced diet they will get sick and in my view all living things are basically chemical factories and we have to make sure that the stock or vegetation and trees every living organism gets the right balanced diet to much of one chemical and the shit hits the fan.
OUR EARTH IS A LIVING ENTITY AND WE ARE PUT TO MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE INTO OUR LIVING MOTHER AND THE SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN THIS IS A FACT.
So I say fuck Dum ass Wars or money spent on war everyone on our EARTH has to work together to Heal OUR MOTHER EARTH OR WE ARE FUCKED Ka Pai.
Why not concentrate on our country. Trump is just part of the USA that looms and overshadows us all and makes our lives seem insignificant. Like a Hollywood sit com with big dark patches. NZ IS IMPORTANT. And we people here are important and our life here is important. We want to have one, and when we get it we want it to be better than just able to feed and house ourselves, just!
We have to watch the others but keep our eyes on us, and if we don’t no-one else will care. We need to care for all of us in our country 80% and 20% have kindness and interest in the rest of the world.
Trumpet can doodle out his own song in his own time, not take all of our time.
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
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 ...
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The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
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Hope the high early vote turnout means high overall turnout as that’s what changes govts.
The national billboards have acquired yellow party vote overlays obscuring the warm fuzzy images in part now. When do they come down ?
‘The aviation fuel crisis caused by a ruptured pipeline has suddenly become a central issue in a tight election contest, forcing the National Government to scramble in a bid to limit impact to the travelling public and to its own vote.
With just four days to go, Opposition parties piled into National with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern claiming that the failure of the infrastructure was a failure of leadership.
The unexpected headache has the potential to undermine one of National’s longstanding claims to being better managers than Labour.
But it is also an opportunity for the Government to show it can handle a crisis competently – and a test for no-nonsense Energy Minister Judith Collins in controlling the Government response….’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11923737
The minister for kauris response will probably be a quasi test for the leaders role.
Will she help the cause or help herself as they’re vulnerable due to the gutting of regulators, resources and rules in their adoration of ‘market knows best’.
Wonder if a scapegoat is being lined up for the ‘look how tough we are’ bs.
Winston Peters just said on Garner’s show that the damage done to the pipe was by a foreign owned organisation, operating out of the Cayman Islands and paying no tax.
Hope the media digs further on this – but with more precision that the foreign owned swamp kauri extractors.
! Glad team Winston are on the case
Well if Winston said it and with no proof to back it up then it must be true
You must hate National this campaign then.
I actually mind Labour getting back into power if HC and MC were back, house prices rose quicker under Labour than they did National so be good to make some real money
[care to explain why there are multiple pseudonyms using this IP address, especially after one of them got warned to pick a single name and stick to it? I’ll check in with Lynn to make sure I’m not missing anything here, but I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t cop a lengthy ban. If you don’t feel comfortable discussing this in the front end, then email Lynn – weka]
moderation note above for you to read and respond to.
You are between a rock and a hard place weka with some moderation. But The Rock sounds awfully like a troll to me, or a flamer, amusing himself poking a stick in to the ant hill, pulling wings off flies etc. Have a good day weka, hope it’s not raining your way, and perhaps a nice cup of tea?
I asked him once where The Cayman Islands were. His reply, as far as could decipher it in the late night noise in the Green Parrot in Wellington, was something like.
“Listen Sunshine. I’ve been going there ever since I first went while working down a mine in Australia. I know everything about it and I’ll stop all those Chinese coming to New Zealand and buying up all our farms ………………”.
That was about when he, and I fell asleep.
Both dead drunk?
Dead drunk! How dare you Sir.
I am the last relic of the WCTU. The purest of the pure.
Depart. Get back to your dungeon before I take to you with my shillelagh.
I can’t speak for Winston though.
Ed dont get caught in the msm positioning on this. The gnats have let down a whole swathe of people and they are showing how useless they are. There is no good for them from this.
Roll on Rma reform, if they don’t get consent now and this happens, what happens when they don’t even have to bother with consent.
I’m pretty sure that the Rena stranding was as well – and they failed there. Seems that they’re maintaining the same failed policies for emergencies, a policy of simply not having anything in place to deal with it because it’s cheaper in the short term.
It might not be a good idea to mention the Rena wreck.
The Green Party are in favour of getting rid of pipelines and switching transport to coastal shipping. It probably isn’t a great thingt to remind people that there are vastly more accidents from shipping than there have been from pipelines.
[citation needed for that claim. It needs to be direct (e.g. not just a vague point at policy). You’ve got until the end of the day to produce that. I don’t know what the GP policy on this is, so maybe you can teach us something. – weka]
really? Got a source for the Greens wanting to ditch pipelines and replace them with coastal shipping?
Well here is their proposal to shift stuff by coastal shipping.
25% is the number by 2027 for shipping.
https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/policy-pdfs/SaferCleaner%20Freight.pdf
And here is an opinion about the pipeline caused damage.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1709/S00213/fuel-pipeline-debacle-puts-environment-at-risk.htm
By the way do you have a citation for your own views that I have enquired about?
https://thestandard.org.nz/is-nzf-positioning-itself-for-a-4th-term-national-government/#comment-1382486
You need to cut and paste the relevant bits, I’m not going to trawl links trying to figure out what you are referring to.
Don’t bother. It doesn’t say anything about fuel transport. Just another made up assertion by resident troll de jour, alwyn.
That’s what I’m guessing, but he needs to do the legwork before I moderate.
Nothing about pipes in your first link.
The second points out that we need stronger enforcement of existing laws to protect the environment.
At no point is there anything about ripping up pipelines.
And your third point: Large majorities of NZ First voters would prefer coalition deal with Labour
Sorry MSM your man got his ass kicked . And all those fake smiles you people come on you people are to easy to read yes I am defensive But like to see what you would do in my situation shit your pants and run .
Now trump he wants the United Nations to Pay america to pay for more for the dum ass war they are fighting and defense spend.
Lets look at this from my view most of the money would go to america the Americans
have all the army bases around the world and trump wants US to pay them for this what a load of crap we should give that idiot trump anything the rest of the World can see right through you the only trick trump has is bulling everyone that doesn’t agree
with his neo liberal bullshit Ideals and this idiot will fuck up the negotiations with North Korea . One needs more skills than being a bully to try and lead OUR WORLD .
The carrot works Better than the stick come on this is basic human Psychology not fucken rocket science . Or is it that trump is like all neo liberals and thinks Koreans or anyone not white is not human. It is obvious that the UN and trumps moves is not working. ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WOURLD NEED TO BE PUTTING ALL OUR RESOURCES INTO FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE NOT DUM ASS WARS WHICH IDIOTS START trump wants us to pay for the US war machine .
It would be nice if Draco T Bastard would post that you tube video on what motivates PEOPLE. This will help get our point to these people.
Nice one eco.
I would just point out that the Americans do not, and will not, negotiate with Nth Korea, and therein lies much of the problem. This goes back to the Korean war ,which is still a huge problem ( much of which America can’t be proud of, like Vietnam).
Espiner ffs stfu
Jacinda maybe try this – so guyon you want our children to swim in shit do you?
I’d like some drug testing at rnz /sarc
She never gets Susie does she?
Guyon’s “interview” of Jacinda was appalling! He talked over the top of her and didn’t wait for the answers. It was embarrassingly bad.
I didn’t see it as being so bad. He obviously wasn’t as well-informed as he perhaps should have been on how complex some similar taxes are already. He was also pointlessly combative on certain well-publicised details (apparently) not being on the Labour website, and pressed hard for some details that would probably best be finalised once the party had gained access to the Treasury benches and the advisory machinery of government. Overall, though, he posed some serious questions, and Ardern gave some decent answers. I don’t think too many voters are going to be put off by a politician acquitting herself well in a mildly hostile interview. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Hanswurst
A nice measured critique. It sometimes is hard not to damn the interviewer. But to get anywhere they may have to probe. Otherwise it’s all the same every day.
I thought him a nasty, negative spinner. At one point Jacinda said about the water tax that they had given 2 figures in a small range. Espiner immediately interrupted, saying, “Yes, but one figure is double the other.” That makes it sound like a big increase, exactly the vagueness and unpredictability that National are trying to play upon.
I wanted Jacinda to respond: “No, one figure is half the other.” (Making it sound small, spinning it the other way, and pointing out Espiner’s bias.)
Espiner does this to left-wing victims (sorry, interviewees) far more often than he does it to right-wing ones in my experience.
Yes I have heard Espiner pick on a point that he repeats over and over as if he is seeking the answer to the site of the Holy Grail. He decides what is important and it is more like a battle to assert victory over his victim (I mean interviewee). I was trying to be less prejudiced towards him, and have caught him sometimes doing a good job and thought he was improving.
I’d hate to be involved with him and all these opinionated hacks privately, his attitude is not just a persona he adopts and it would be a case of if he gives way on anything, he would keep score for the times he kindly gave in, and demand later balance.
Any half decent broadcaster knows their best interviewer is Kim Hill who takes no shit and gets questions answered.
Espinner is a tool of the right and needs to be removed if nact get turfed, you should always let the polly speak which he seems to only allow nat pollies spinning their BS.
KIm Hill is an awful interviewer. She interrupts constantly and never lets the interviewees speak.
Rubbish, lurgee. Kim Hill interrupts sometimes, but at others she lets people hang themselves by their own petards. She also creates really good, positive, non-combative interviews.
Susie and Guyon are your constant interrupter/talkover artists with scant thought or knowledge.
Heard guyon interviewing himself while driving this morning. He is downright intolerable when he resorts to bad mannered, shouting down methods of asserting his will and trying to direct the narrative to his desired outcome. He just fixates on something and will not let it drop until he either wears his interviewee down or it becomes clear he is not going to get his own way. He is quite irrational at times. At least Jacinda holds her own. Must annoy him no end.
The building of another pipeline is not cost effective for a small country like New Zealand. The real problem is the need for rules and regulations, which today are conveniently side-stepped by many businesses, eg. those looking for swamp kauri, where the Collins clan have a vested interest. Will a robust investigation in the rupture of the pipe line occur, or will it be another so-so investigation similar to that of the Pike River Coal Mine?
What about a large fuel silo at Auckland airport as a backup? You would think our largest airport would have a contingency like that and it wouldn’t be a huge expense in the scheme of things. Who knows they might already have one but it’s not big enough to help much.
It’s why the Greens should be in Government to apply some common sense. After the Rena disaster they were calling for cleanup crews to be based at our major ports just in case something went wrong.
We took 20 years to get rid of the sewerage ponds on the Manukau Harbour, and a whole bunch of people would object to that volume of toxic material being stored on the edge of the Manukau Harbour again.
I would rather see a heavy rail line from Puhinui to the airport as a supplement feeder of jet fuel only when needed for instances like now.
To fill the A380 that flies direct to Dubai requires 5 hours pumping Jet A1 down that [damaged] 10 inch/250mm diameter pipe at 200 bar/2800psi .
The Fuel consumed/carbon footprint of our Tourism industry is enormous.
That’s insane – how close to capacity must it have been running?
That seems odd. An A380 takes up to 323 cu m, a 250mm pipeline has a cross-sectional area of 0.05 sqm. So 323 cu m in 18000 seconds means it’s flowing at about 0.35 m/s. The guideline for maximum flow velocity for kerosene, diesel etc seems to be about 3 m/s.
that’s still a solid half hour for one plane
Yep.
To take a hand-waving order of magnitude guess at the capacity question, if the airport is taking 1.1 billion litres of jet fuel per year through the pipe, and take a wild guess at another billion litres of petrol and a billion litres of diesel (aroundabout 1500 litres petrol/diesel per capita per year for Aucklanders doesn’t look too absurd), then the pipe is carrying around 350 cu m per hour 365/24, which is about half its capacity. But then there’s downtime for product changeovers and maintenance etc.
I’m not confident about that 3 m/s flow velocity, pipe flows aren’t my thing. It’s just what most engineering tips web pages spit out. But a few of them claim higher flow rates.
The outlay would be huge for a second line but so is the cost huge when the line fails.
Something else that wont be known til post election, but that is ok cos it is National.
NZ is a small vulnerable economy that is being marginalised annually, by geographic isolation, low volume trading, low wages and a narrow income base.
Further weakened by an at-risk demographic, eg on any given day up to a third of high school kids in south Auckland are absent. Just look at the High School passes of this group. Rank 30 th in the OECD. Also the crime Stats’ 50% of these folk occupy our prisons.
Gvt benefits payouts are the highest in the first world (Maori & P.I.)
Australia sees all this & is slowly closing its borders to Kiwi’s. Then this [deleted] Adern, standing for the Countries leadership, wants the Primary sector ( which is half of our international income) to pay out additional huge taxes.
Her 3-6 cents a pound for butter fat equals about $50,000 for many NZ Dairy farms. The remedy is dont vote for Labour its backward & communist. This system of Gvt has proven not to work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYjLvlcnzPk
[seeing as how we’re most likely heading for 3 years of Ardern as PM, I’m going to start pushing back against the inevitable casual sexism now. It’s unnecessary for the political points you want to make – weka]
[also edited for formatting so I can make sense of what is being said – weka]
Good moderation there Weka.
Hard to attract female commenters – and as Lyn notes in his post today, it’s a hard won democratic gain.
I didn’t see the sexist statements that were moderated out, but there is still a hell of a lot of casual racism left in SB’s comment. For example, “Gvt benefits payouts are the highest in the first world. ( Maori & P.I.)”, without providing any any links to support that assertion (which would be difficult as the majority of benefits paid are superannuation, and Māori tend to be a bit too dead by that age to collect much of that). Then there are; “south Auckland” & “these folk”.
But in any case, what little there is of an argument is nonsensical (in as much as it is decipherable from the imprecise grammar). The remedy to current problems is to not change what you are doing?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/election-2017/339416/bill-english-grilled-on-wages-in-gisborne
Good points – stan the man is a sham despite his shit he needs a plan cos he’s a fuckwit gnat gland.
If the racism was cut stan would have nothing to say. Typical gnat – so thick he couldn’t fit in the toaster.
“If the racism was cut stan would have nothing to say.”
This is true. I did stumble a bit on the Labour are communists bit though. We wish.
true lol
That’ll be my new quick Gnat put-down – he/she’s a muffin ie too thick to fit in the toaster.
Thanks for pointing that out Dspare. I’ve reread the comment and agree about the casual racism. This is something useful to think about in terms off moderation, where the line is between removing content that is likely to put commenters off (or cause flame wars) vs allowing robust debate even where some of the content is gross.
I think there’s a line between personal attacks on politicians (e.g. had it been about say Turei and the personal comments had been ethnicity based rather than gender, then I would have removed those bits), and people making political arguments (e.g. their belief about ethnicity stats and what it means).
Generally the latter are left for people to argue over, and I certainly think it’s reasonable to ask people to back up claims of fact (I keep an eye out as a moderator for that). I need to have a think about that tolerance though. I draw a lot on the part of the Policy that’s about tone or language that excludes others, and am still trying to find the balance on that. Am open to feedback on this.
Please keep pointing these things out too, because it can be easy to miss especially when there is a lot going on.
I too agree with Dspare. To Stan Blanch I would say that you need to express yourself much more clearly and precisely. That last effort made me think you a semi-articulate right-wing redneck. You deserve the criticism and the moderation comments.
To Stan
Theres much to attack her with so there’s no need to make it about her looks or gender or anything like that
Attack her flip-flopping, her lack of experience, the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”, her town v country divisive tactics, her smile and wave, attack all that
But leave the personal attacks out of it we’re better than that…or we should be
Attack her for smiling?
Yeah, go on…
Smile and wave, smile and wave…reminds me of someone but I can’t remember who
Maybe HRH the Queen?
Lol. Heard english gloating the other day about how he was getting mobbed in schools and malls and excitedly said “they are coming, wanting photos. I am going to win!” ..
… Never trust the ankle biters Bill. They will turn on you at the drop of a lollipop.
Attack her flip-flopping, her lack of experience, the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”, her town v country divisive tactics,…
1) Her flip flopping? Just because voters make it clear they want to have a final say on changes to the outdated tax regime. That’s not flip flopping, that’s being sensible and heeding their concerns.
2) She’s been in parliament 9 years mate. Far longer than John Key was before becoming PM. Oh, I get it. He’s a man so he doesn’t need as long… right?
3) Lack of experience. She’s only headed a large international youth organisation… worked as an adviser and consultant in the Blair Government and she’s done other admirable things as well. She’s amply qualified for the job.
4) the amount of time she spends campaigning in schools, her “captains calls”…,. English spends equally as much time in schools and cuddling babies and animals . It represents around 20% of their campaign activity but its how the news teams like to portray them – the warm, fuzzy thing that attracts viewers.
5) her town v country divisive tactics,… You are not very insightful then. Anyone with a half a brain should be able to see who is the party creating the divisive tactics for political gain. NATIONAL.
Well said Anne. Thank you!
kia ora
Noho ora mai ra
Thanks Weka. I am SO SICK of the sexism already and she hasn’t even been elected PM yet. You don’t have to scratch too far in this country for rampant sexism and misogynism to be revealed. It disgusted me through the Helen Clark years and I can feel the same angry revulsion kicking in through this campaign.
I think it will be easy enough to knock the more blatant stuff on the head. The more subtle, Hooton-esque* stuff will be harder, but then that should be being dealt with in comments anyway (fingers crossed).
*e.g. his current line is that Ardern is incompetent, but he’s very careful to avoid any suggestion that it’s because of her gender. It’s still sexist as though.
He really must have hated almost the entire Cabinet post election 2008 with all those who had never been in cabinet before.
it is playing on sexist attitudes but Hooten is simply doing a Joyce and sowing doubt, I doubt he believes half the crap he spouts
+111
Why should agriculture get our resources for nothing?
Why should they get to pollute without consequence?
Really, your argument seems to be: Don’t vote Labour because it’s actually taking into account economics.
We havent used pounds since 1967.
” Her 3-6 cents a pound for butter fat equals about $50,000 for many NZ Dairy farms. ” Only for huge Corporate Dairy Farms but nonetheless please post your souce.
In Europe the closeness of 500gm to 1lb means that the term pound (livre in French) has actually survived. But I am not sure if that helps Stan..
No. No, I dont think it does
Oh, look, it’s a butt-hurt palagi whining bitterly about having to share this country with icky, icky, non-white people. Perish the thought that it could act upon the courage of its convictions, get off its fat lily-white arse and high-tail it back to England…
So the poor fellow might have to pay $1500 a year if the water tax is levied. Cry me a river. that’s pretty much the definition of negligible impact. It almost seems as though the only tax that some farmers would find acceptable would be one that cost nothing and that nobody had to pay.
The National Party organiser for the protest was a very poor advocate on Morning Report. Just shows how effective is English scaremongering.
“Labour wants to tax us for everything except the air we breathe.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201859018
Yep that racist thick farmer is a good example of a farmer that lets us all down. Good the gnats have their shithead mates to push their dirty agenda. What a joke.
Yes, he just came across as uninformed and bigoted. Also, what was that supposed to be yesterday about a “positive message“? Was anything concrete at all said about “what farmers have done for the environment”? Certainly, all Lloyd Downing talked about in that interview was his not wanting other farmers to pay taxes real and imaginary. Not wanting to do something is negative in and of itself. It’s like they’ve thought up one PR line, “We want to make a positive statement about how awesome we are,” and one attack line, “Labour want to tax everything,” and not given a single thought to anything else.
“Lloyd Downing acknowledges farming is having an impact, but look how far we’ve come, he says. When asked for evidence, he tells the story of his old dad, back when Lloyd was a lad, taking the farm’s rubbish and chucking it in the river.
I used to shoot at the used light bulbs, he says, as they floated away! Nobody does that any more! ”
FFS
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/96918129/alison-mau-morrinsville–where-the-politics-is-getting-dirtier-than-the-worst-farm-stream
Good to see the redneck bigots falling back on McCarthyism! Time they looked ahead more than one season and started worrying about how their kids are going to survive.
Selling basic milk powder to the Chinese is economic stupidity as is intensive dairying on totally unsuitable terrain.
Their entrenched and narrow view of the changing world is very harmful for all of us.
And the Chinese are getting the hang of NZ dairy expertise at home. They at least have some idea of how to maintain their economy in their own interests.
‘The entrenched and narrow view of the changing world [by farmers] is very harmful for all of us.’ Indeed. And most of us including farmers who are over-leveraged, over any sort of precautionary controls on their overweening ambitions, will all go down together.
For those who like Tom Lehrer’s sarcasm seems to fit
The farmers will like his Pollution song as it has a go at cities, just up their street really.
Pollution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz_-KNNl-no
and it is followed by We will all go together when we go –
His song refers to the bomb but being hit by a collapsed economy and perhaps a hurricane will have a similar effect, and both are as possible as another strong earthquake.
notice that the article did not mention the size of his farm or his herds, no perspective in that story, $1500 is peanuts judging from what we can see in the picture/video of the size of his operation.
Informative piece from economist Peter Fraser and agricultural consultant Dr Alison Dewes.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1709/S00523/dairy-farms-using-same-amount-of-water-as-60-million-people.htm
” …. water consumption of New Zealand dairy farms is equivalent to the residential use of 60 million people.
This is on top of the often quoted figure that New Zealand’s dairy herd has the environmental footprint equivalent to 90 million people.
“The implication is if a water royalty was imposed on irrigators then over 80 percent of dairy farmers will be unaffected”
However, this message is not getting through to farmers.
“As illustrated by the farmer protest (sic) in Morrinsville, it is clear many farmers are being unduly worried by baseless scaremongering – especially as Morrinsville is hardly ‘ground zero’ for irrigated dairying.”
The truth isnt getting through… hmm Audrey Young is writing that artie right now…
Or John Roughan …
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11252504
Don’t waste your time reading the article. But the picture’s good, (and paints a thousand words…)
See below @ 9.1111
I’ve had two family members in accounting with experience with farmers accounts and both tell me that farmers don’t pay tax.
So, the only tax that farmers seem to approve of is one that they don’t pay.
You mean they don’t pay income tax? Or business tax?
Probably both as they’re already GST exempt.
If you shuffle income around the whanau up to each persons no tax threshold then max the farm expenses you can end up with a loss on the farm and everybody still gets cash to splash.
IIRC they get generous depreciation and write downs not available ouside the Ag sector unsure how the rebate picture is.
The Otago University Students Association comes out specifically for Labour:
https://www.critic.co.nz/issuu-archives/issuu/199/
They also state that it was imperative for the Green Party to be a part of government.
Which is in turn reported by the Otago Daily Times:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/election-2017/student-magazine-endorses-labour-party
Well done Otago, Canterbury on the other hand…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/96907663
Locals say there’s never been any digging there. Perhaps Refinery NZ hasn’t been doing its maintenance program properly and the whole pipe is at risk.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/96941407/digger-scraped-and-cut-crucial-jet-fuel-pipeline-affecting-thousands-of-auckland-airport-travellers
Well, let’s not get carried away here – the article says ‘locals’, but actually only quotes one person, who may have his own good reasons for telling porkies. A good percentage of Northland runs like a banana republic!
Here’s one local’s view…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11923669
Hopefully this will all become clearer today!
$140k profit for waterblasting it, millions more for a couple of planks – swamp kauri seems to have drug-level markups.
Lets hope a few journos start digging! And unearth the dealer!
The Jackal just put a post if if you haven’t seen it…
http://thejackalman.blogspot.co.nz/2017/09/collins-and-swamp-kauri-petrol-crisis.html
Wow – so there is a swamp kauri business 2kms away that has connections to Oravida !!! Can one smell some very large rats here?
Yes.
This one I believe…
https://opencorporates.com/companies/nz/3518811
See also:
https://thestandard.org.nz/nick-smith-thick-as-a-short-plank/
Although correlation does not imply causation… !
Looks like theres’ a good journo digging…
https://twitter.com/MichaelFieldNZ/status/909629530494574592
Something an adequately resourced regulator should be able to prove by referring to their latest compliance audit.
There’s nact cue to show NZild what a fantastic job of managing the economy they’ve been doing….don’t hold your breath.
A pipe hit by a digger is going to show physical damage. I’m going to assume that they found that damage first (when they found the leak) and looked to the history of the area.
Yup and the digger tracks and bucket marks around it will be a smoking gun.
To MSM lets not create a divide between TOWN and COUNTRY we are all on this WAKA
called EARTH together. So when it starts sinking no one is going to think about that divide YOU are letting national impose on US there neo liberal bullshit ideals it is so primeval .
There are some todd mclay sign wavers in Rotorua they are not getting any support .
Because we all Know who his father is and what he got up to and that Trade Deal is bullshit if all agriculture is not included in it Europe dosen’t need our FOOD.
+1
Lots of idiots in the town and country.
Well said Eco 😀
All of us wanting/needing clean water and less pollution so we can keep the planet alive is not divisive, it’s inclusive, survival of the planet and all the inhabitants depends on it.
Nat and media driven town v’s country division does nothing to solve any problem
Sharing ideas will help so much with solutions, that’s why I’m so very supportive of the water forum, because it brings all sectors etc together to find solutions which will unite NZ to improve life for all.
Why has the neo liberal Rotorua Lakes Council got no NITROGEN OR EFFLUENT mitigation plans in place Why have they got Lakes in there name and they are sitting on there assess and not even trying to fix that problem .
national have cut our science funding and this is one of the main tools we have to fight Climate Change and create a beautiful future for OUR grandchildren so fucken DUM.
If Jacinda and Labour really wanted to put the boot into dairy farmers in particular they would point out that in a report last year, I think, (sorry too busy or incompetent to find the reference ) that dairy farmers are tax negative by a long way.
On that note I would like to see in a new tax regime the inability of the buyer of a business to acquire simply for the tax losses associated with the target company.
When it’s sold the losses are wiped not credited to arseholes.
Seems like the herald are putting fuel shortage scares out .Nothing like a good panic buying splurge about NOW.
#fillupforchange
He he Mutton, Lets do this now—-fill up all.
It’s good for the economy… didn’t you know?
Chris Trotter sums up the Morrinsville farmer furore nicely:
“When Andrew McGiven and Lloyd Downing encouraged their rural brethren gather under Morrinsville’s giant cow yesterday, they were simply adding another chapter to an already very long story of rural antagonism towards the needs and aspirations of New Zealand’s urban majority. The latter looked on, appalled, at the selfishness and ignorance which unfailingly follow the country into town.”
I heard the farmer on the rnz. The one speaking was just an ignorant racist thick wanker exactly the sort of farmer that should not be in farming imo.
The problem with that framing is that if we want to uplift the needs and aspirations of the majority then we will end up with Auckland running the place. There are distinct problems with most NZers living in cities, and one of them is that their ideas about nature are often once removed. People in cities also tend to see city life as normal and to then normalise that outwards. Hence the idea that part of the solution to the Auckland housing crisis is to send a whole bunch of people to the provinces, presumably to turn them into mini Aucklands. I’m appalled 😉
Besides, this country living person looked on appalled at the protest as well. No need to create a false divide.
The Feds and National have created the divide, imo. They couldn’t see that the optics would be so bad, because they’re in a bubble (methane mainly). I don’t hold with the idea that city-folk are more divorced from the real world than country people; in the country, the wild world is being actively suppressed and most farming action are aimed at suppressing the return of a natural environment. In the city, it’s largely over but city folk aren’t personally, in the main, poisoning stuff, burning stuff, chainsawing down stuff, as many in the farming community are.
true, but I think that’s lack of opportunity as much as anything. Otherwise we’d have had a Green-led govt by now. Look at the kaupapa of poisoning as part of conservation. Those are values held as much by city folk as anyone else. And the need to develop and improve things all the time to the detriment of the environment is a town as well as country value.
It’s not that I think city people are more divorced from the real world, it’s that I think the less time you spend in nature the more your thinking about and experience of it changes. That’s a generalisation, there are still many people in cities that give a shit about nature. But they tend to visit nature rather than seeing themselves as part of it. That’s a problem. Living in the country and seeing nature as something to be tamed is also a problem. Different problems, both need acknowledging and responding to.
weka in my experience of ten years dairyfaming I did not witness any farmers seeing their land as part of nature. They saw their land as a means of converting grass into milk and to hell with everything else.
I must confess that was also our aim when sharemilking.
We were told in the eighties of strict impending environmental laws and 3 year time frame was given. What did the industry do? sfa.
Fonterra will be telling Lloyd Downing to shut up! All that money they spent on PR – they’ll have to bring back Richie McCaw.
LOL
They can’t, garibaldi. Their cultural framing makes wildness invisible to them. They can though, just sense something threatening “over there”, but that can be Rounded-Up, no worries, mate.
If asked i think many city folk would love this idea. People living in cities with nature everywhere else, where the majority of the world would be a conservation estate – one that wouldn’t need looking after much but would be easy to visit.
Agree @ false divide
Whether or not my uncle and his siblings were loaded onto a cattle wagon and transported to Siberia or they were on the very first TikiTour to Siberia is the subject of scientific debate, too. Pricks.
//
I guess the unpublished part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which Germany and the USSR agreed to divide Poland up between them, must have been an invention of “the authors of biased historical narratives.”
Z Energy reporting that petrol stations are beginning to run out:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11923771
“Four Auckland service stations ran out of 95 octane petrol yesterday – and more could run out today – as thousands of air passengers again face a day of cancelled flights.
Z Energy said it would be able to replenish the fuel today and told motorists there was no cause for concern.
Z’s corporate communications manager, Jonathan Hill, said in the first days after a pipeline from the Marsden Point Refinery ruptured, the company concentrated on delivering 91 octane petrol and diesel to Auckland.”
There is no cause for concern … except banner media headlines that freak voters out four days out from polling day.
Um, are there likely to be people without petrol on Saturday?
My thoughts exactly. That would be a deep, dark ploy indeed. Unlikely, but grist to the paranoid-rumour mill 🙂
Well. The locals do say there’s been no activity at the rupture site since it was built in 1981 and you’d think they would notice a digger pulling up Kauri, so…yeah.
Actually, I wouldn’t expect anything like that. Personal observations are notoriously inaccurate.
No one is saying that yet.
TVNZ hasn’t really picked up on this story, but I can see it building all week.
I haven’t followed this side of it, but where I live it’s normal to have petrol supplied via tanker rather than a pipe. Is there some reason that isn’t happening enough? Is it simple physics (not enough tankers/time to meet demand)? Or am I missing something?
Auckland Airport say they supply 1.1 billion litres of jet fuel per year. That’s around 40,000 truckloads. That same pipe also delivers petrol and diesel to the Auckland region so local stations get supplied by truck from Wiri instead trucking it from Tauranga or Whangarei. At a guess that’s probably another couple billion litres of fuel down that pipe.
(that’s also around 1/270 of the world consumption of jet fuel at Auckland and NZ is 1/1600 of the world population)
Great stat there. We and the people who come here are massive users of aviation gas.
that is a great stat.
Did you see that Bill?
The volume of fuel for auckland is somewhat high. It is about a third of the countries populaton. Similarly it is about 70% of the airplane fuel usage. It is also where most of the goods dispatched to the rest of nz come from. Auckland probably accounts for more than 40% of all fuelups.
The terrain between the refinery up north and auckland is difficult. They used to use coastal ships but it is likely that the unloading facility has been killed along with the tank farm at the harbour.
Truck tankers would fill an already full road and be pretty dangerous on some of the sharp corners in hill roads. Not to mention that we probably don’t have enough tanker trucks unless we use some milk tankers.
ok, so given that, why aren’t they rationing already?
The State Services Commission has just put out a note to every single government Department that all flights by the public service into or out of Auckland are stopped until further notice.
Now leads front page of NZHerald:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11923945
Corin Dann will pick it up on TVNZ news tonight.
It’s definitely not Business As Usual any more.
I still haven’t had time to catch up properly, but it does seem very odd that people in general aren’t being advised to use less over the coming few weeks.
Would it be true that the rest of country is ok in terms of supply and supply chain?
Stay Calm and keep voting early!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/96983542/four-z-energy-stations-have-no-95-after-company-focuses-on-regular-and-diesel
Folks in Northland , Bay of Plenty & Waikato need to be aware that the primary focus of :
Ensuring the critical reduced volumes of Jet Fuel are delivered by Truck to Auckland
Ensuring that Diesel and 91 Octane petrol supply to Auckland is maintained
will result in negligible tanker deliveries in those regions.
Safe Gnat seats will get the least.
It’s unfortunate that the Pipeline outage occurred , even more unfortunate , IMO , that it didn’t occur a week earlier.
Might be good to figure out how to use less petrol over the next week or so too.
Wrong login. This pro-National post should have been under the light blue avatar.
[leave it alone please. Ad is an author, and anyone can comment from different devices and/or internet connections and end up with a different avatar. – weka]
If you are having problems with the symbols for comments take it up with the site editor.
He’s busy. It’s not the symbols I’m interested in anyway, it’s the wild swings in the content of your posts.
see moderation note above please.
No, we’ll take it up with you. You know that the avatar is created by Gravata via an algorithm shaped by the email address. Therefore the problem is you changing the email address.
Pick one and stick with it.
I only have one email address. So suck it up.
If you are that bothered by the colour and shape of a little magic square, take it up with the site manager.
But you must have changed/misspelled it on one of your devices so that it changes the avatar when you post on it. The one with the misspelling needs correcting.
Either that or post on your login account.
The email login is automatic on my devices.
So, no.
I know that you can deal with different swirly shapes.
For instance, this.
And this.
There are approximately zero cars in New Zealand that need 95 octane petrol and won’t run perfectly happily on 91.
A large number of stations in Auckland don’t seem to have 95 anyway. Whenever I visit Auckland I seem to stop at stations that stock 91 and 98 instead.
I guess it is all the Ferraris and Porsches that seem to exist there.
91 and diesel supplies look like they will be fine for a while.
There will only be noticeable political impact if that changes by polling day.
Corin Dann will cover it on TVNZ news tonight – but it’s not yet a vote-turner.
Whenever one of my rellies mistakenly fills my Daihatsu Sirion 1.3 with 91, there’s nearly continual light knocking and fuel consumption noticeably increases.
Z don’t seem to try to foist overpriced 98 onto their customers, around here they all sell 95. Last time I checked into it, the 98 being sold had a lot of ethanol, so the energy content is low and fuel consumption would probably increase. So I avoid Gull, Mobil and BP.
My car can take 91 but doesn’t accelerate or tackle steep hills well unless its on 95. It’s a safety issue (accelerate out of danger).
And my car is more economical on 95.
“There are approximately zero cars in New Zealand that need 95 octane petrol and won’t run perfectly happily on 91.”
citation – coz Im calling bullshit.
There are plenty of cars that are recommended to run on 95+ and they are not all ferraris etc.
Anyone who thinks policy analysis is the basis determining votes need only to listen to this interview to understand the base level at which the electorate determines what direction this country takes
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201859018/farm-protest-organiser-rural-economist-debate-water-tax
It would also be pertinent to remind ourselves the history and origins of the National Party and we may then have a realistic expectation of the level of public discourse around rural issues
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/nz-national-party-founded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Reform_Party
That interview was full of whining entitlement, the like of which you only ever hear from a certain sector of the farming community. Well done Peter Fraser for his rebuttal. Chris Trotter has a good post on the long history of farmer activism on his blog.
The Blenheim chapter of the National
FrontParty sound like lovely blokes.http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/09/labour-candidate-s-dramatic-gatecrashing-of-english-s-campaign.html
Thanks Muttonbird. Janette must be pretty brave to bowl into the middle of a motley Nat mob. Bill English ran pretty quickly.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/09/labour-candidate-s-dramatic-gatecrashing-of-english-s-campaign.html
Wouldn’t it have been a “run walk”
Has anyone else seen the full-page ad in today’s DomPost from the totally non-partisan (sarc) Taxpayers’ Union that claims that spending by a Labour/Greens/NZF government will cost every NZ household $229.41 per week over the next three years?
National/ACT at $22.05/week looks like a real bargain.
Yes Grey Try
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-man-who-will-do-anything-for-power/#comment-1387029 from 4 onwards.
Thanks. Busy so I couldn’t cover every thread.
If you are on a desktop, have a look at the replies tab on the right.
2008 exclusive bretheren replaced by 2017 inbred nevermen.
Unverified I assume? What happens when thd Taxpayers Union wastes the money of Taxpayer Union members.
Kia Kaha Jacinda Ardern. Tough, tough time to lose a grandmother.
If there is poetic justice in this, it’s on Suffrage Day: 124 years after NZ led the world in granting women the vote. We are on the eve of electing a female Prime Minister for the second time….a time to remember we stand on the shoulder of giants and giantesses.
Not the wife of the grandfather discharged at midnight?
Not sure. Quite possibly. She died in Hamilton hospital (from Herald report).
The official graph has been updated for yesterday’s voting:
http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2017-general-election/advance-voting-statistics
They haven’t given the actual number, but it’s well over 100,000. That’s massive!!
551482. As of 2pm today
Mobilised early to save the government or change it? What seems more plausible?
I’m betting change.
Woo hoo!
What a frigging shambles.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/97009580/air-new-zealand-refueling-long-haul-planes-in-wellington-as-auckland-jet-fuel-crisis-deepens
A good reason to vote Labour
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/97012680/labour-promises-to-boost-teina-poras-compensation-if-elected
Surely a police investigation should be launched to bring the person/s who caused the damage to the pipeline to account.
Not holding my breath.
Muttonbird, I wouldn’t mind betting the surviving relations of the 900 sheep flown to Saudi Arabia are behind the damage to the pipeline.
New poll just came across my desk……..Cant agree with the economy bit as when nats came in
labour had virtually no crown debt @ $8 billion
National crown debt now stands @ $96 billion.
https://horizonpoll.co.nz/page/479/labour-best?gtid=3031264578076XWC
Labour best to manage most issues, but not the economy overall
19 Sep 17
Always amazes me that people still think that National are telling the truth when they say that they manage the economy better. Decades of their mismanagement proves otherwise.
+ 1 Exactly – I too wish their record was scrutinised in more detail – they seem to just get a free ride on that
Exactly. For a start our hospitals are in crisis like no time I can recall.
Hoots the spin merchant is twittering on about latest UMR polls show Labour vote fading. Anything in this?
Children being hospitalized due to malnutrition rockets….yes in NZ
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11923626
Could be msm isn’t pursuing the company which damaged the fuel pipeline at Ruakaka, while harvesting swamp kauri, because it might cause some embarrassment to Natz. If any issue needs some investigative journalism, this one certainly does! But to date, nothing at all!
NZ is definitely not being served by a free and open media, acting as a proxy for the people. Disgraceful!
Patrick Gower calls out Nats spreading false information about Labour’s income tax policy.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/opinion/2017/09/patrick-gower-national-guilty-of-biggest-campaign-lie.html
Well for once in his career he has done the right thing – and about time – who would have believed it. Paddy has seen through their lies and corruption – am still shaking my head over it.
Now we no that the only thing that trump raised was a pile of cash and no mater how much shit that gets poured on money one can wash money clean.
My point is if he raised his children he would know that when you don’t give a child a healthy balanced diet they will get sick and in my view all living things are basically chemical factories and we have to make sure that the stock or vegetation and trees every living organism gets the right balanced diet to much of one chemical and the shit hits the fan.
OUR EARTH IS A LIVING ENTITY AND WE ARE PUT TO MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE INTO OUR LIVING MOTHER AND THE SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN THIS IS A FACT.
So I say fuck Dum ass Wars or money spent on war everyone on our EARTH has to work together to Heal OUR MOTHER EARTH OR WE ARE FUCKED Ka Pai.
Why not concentrate on our country. Trump is just part of the USA that looms and overshadows us all and makes our lives seem insignificant. Like a Hollywood sit com with big dark patches. NZ IS IMPORTANT. And we people here are important and our life here is important. We want to have one, and when we get it we want it to be better than just able to feed and house ourselves, just!
We have to watch the others but keep our eyes on us, and if we don’t no-one else will care. We need to care for all of us in our country 80% and 20% have kindness and interest in the rest of the world.
Trumpet can doodle out his own song in his own time, not take all of our time.