President Obama is in the Middle East – and it’s complicated.
So here’s a cartoon primer of the entire history of the region, captured in 3.5 minutes and set to a catchy tune that will have you humming along.
NewstalkZB: Fair and Balanced
NewstalkZB, Friday 22 March 2013, 7:45 a.m.
This radio station is the closest thing we’ve ever had in this country to a dedicated government mouthpiece. Day in, day out, hour after hour after hour, host after host, anybody stupid or unfortunate enough to listen to this station for any length of time is subjected to pretty much unremitting pro-government propaganda. Most NewstalkZB hosts don’t even bother to try to hide their overt bias. One of the most flagrant is that dedicated toady Mike Hosking, AKA the King of Contra….
SIMON BRIDGES: Oh look it’s evidence-based. Youth rates lead to more jobs. It’s evidence-based.
MIKE HOSKING:[fervently] EX-ACTLY!!!
Later that day, one Larry “Lackwit” Williams, an extraordinarily dimwitted ex-traffic cop, presides over one of the most unpleasant ten minutes on radio, “The Huddle”, unkindly referred to by sneering sophisticates as “The Muddle”…
LARRY “LACKWIT” WILLIAMS: Kevin Rudd turned down a poisoned chalice didn’t he? Labor is GONE!
ELLEN READ: There’s something about that guy I don’t like! He’s just so horrible and creepy. I don’t know what it is.
LARRY “LACKWIT” WILLIAMS: Gillard is a tough cookie though! I don’t know what it is, but she’s TOUGH!
ELLEN READ: She’s one tough cookie!
TIM WATKIN: She’s a tough cookie all right! She’s tougher than Helen Clark! She’s tough as old boots! [snickers nervously]
The rest of the discussion was equally dire and uninteresting, but there was one highly pertinent (and telling) confession….
ELLEN READ: I haven’t been in a bookshop for a long, long time.
Armstrong in the NZHerald this morning gives 10 reasons why National remain so popular. The biggest remains the popularity of PM John Key. Is this just intergenerational luck that, comparatively, they have a leader with such skill?
One other point he raises is that Labour have not yet put “hands on” economic management into broad New Zealand discourse, so in the MSM and in the home and office there remains no economic question mark hanging above the Beehive for the government to answer. Does anyone know if Labour have more housing-type speeches coming up that seek to tilt public discourse?
Yeah, theres a side story to that in the Herald as well, Armstrong,Trevit, and Dann give their ‘ideas’ about why Slippery is so popular as the Prime Minister,
Armstrong and Trevit just do the gushy thing that if it belongs in print at all it aint a supposed serious daily newspaper as what the Herald would consider it’self to be,
Dann gets a little closer to the truth with His little essay on ‘it’s the economy’ and ‘when all is said and done people vote with their pockets’
i have to presume Dann is talking there of the Tory vote where i am sure the majority do vote National based upon economics, (not the economy as Dann suggests), personal economics of course is the nature of the National Party economic voter and i would dare suggest that that vote has held up as the ‘tax switch’ for 40% higher up in the economy is still delivering for ‘them’ sizable gains in their weekly income, the rest of them would be the ‘fanclub’ type voter hearts all a flutter as Slippery does one of His public dances like a loon displays…
Is this just intergenerational luck that, comparatively, they have a leader with such skill?
Nah, bullshit it’s intergenerational luck.
A group within National saw the talent and opportunity that John Key represented, talked (bought, strong-armed) the rest of the National caucus and associated powerbrokers in to it, and put him in there.
In other words, superior networking, initial talent indentification, recruitment and internal political management.
Many deals were cut…and notice how Bill English came back with a second life after his disastrous defeat as DPM. Again part of the deal making which happened to bring the National caucus together.
Compare and contrast the Labour approach: who’s the next Wellington staffer we can promote.
Plenty of cash left to put up more suicide nets at their factories.
Maybe peter dunne could prepare some legislation that stops these crooks from ripping off our system, instead of pissing about with smart phones and laptops.
30% of 571mil, puts into context the alleged robbery committed by beneficiaries, living the dream.
And while he’s at it, get the class b and c drugs out of our sweetshops, like you promised.
A bit of passion like the ‘retort’ you gave on back benches will do.
Where were you?
Tax is of course levied on profits, not on sales – we do not tax banks for example on every deposit. It would be interesting to see the profit on an equivalent wholly New Zealand successful company with sales of $500 million . . .
Even reducing such tax rorts will be difficult – what could the left do that the IRD are not already being asked to do?
“Tax is of course levied on profits, not on sales ”
Of course it is, I misread, but still, knowing how overpriced apple stuff is, their margins would be pretty huge. 30% of 100m, 200m, 300m is still lots and lots of inadequately taxed income.
That’s an awfully good tax break they’ve got themselves.
“Even reducing such tax rorts will be difficult – what could the left do that the IRD are not already being asked to do?”
So NZ needs new legislation to combat mega corps dodgy dealings. Must be doable, but obviously not by dunne.
What they going to do? Withdraw from the market and turn down half a billion in sales, especially when android is overtaking (overtaken?) as market leader.
Take our fair share or tell them to fuck off, but doing nothing is almost as criminal and complicit in intent.
“….but still, knowing how overpriced apple stuff is, their margins would be pretty huge. ”
They make sure their margins are very low. There’s two basic methods for keeping the margins down; transfer pricing and royalties. Not sure about Apple but most of the other big corporates have been using the royalty scam, tax collectors starting wising up to transfer priciing and put the bite on.
The NZ operation pays a royalty to the parent company for the right to use the brand in this country. The royalty fee goes on the books as an expense and it’s so high they don’t make much profit. The parent that collects the royalties is located in a tax haven.
It’s bizarre that they get away with paying themselves a royalty but that’s the way it works.
So NZ needs new legislation to combat mega corps dodgy dealings.
Yep and the best way to do it is to design an all new tax system from the ground up and implement it in the next financial year. None of this tinkering around that we’re seeing from the political parties at the moment.
Unless you’re on PAYE in which case you’re taxed on your full income and not profit which is what would be left after all expenses have been taken out.
Maybe the IRD should consider applying some version of the thin cap rules for interest to royalties, management fees and other overseas service fees and maybe even payments for products – some sort of a sliding scale for some of them perhaps.
I think that’s what they’re looking at. I prefer mikesh’s view but I doubt you could write specific enough laws to cover that. It clashes with the likes of franchising and paying for the right to use an established brand is pretty common business practice that’s not intrinsically wrong in itself. These corporates are just abusing a working system for their own benefit.
They could probably use the likes of the sharemarket to work out an average profit margin on turnover and tax them at that rate as the default minimum. They certainly need to do something, and soon.
But the gst on sales is paid for by the purchaser and in this case apple just collect the tax on behalf of the govt and then on the following 28 th of the month pay the tax to the govt. the way you phrased it appears IMO that apple has incurred a tax, which they haven’t.
For those interested the IRD are taking interest in land transactions and developers, pity this was not 12 years ago with the result that the govts books would have been even more healthy. a
Think how this untaxed income would have assisted say, health, supporting those in need, pity those in power have self interest over riding what is best for nz.
CORRUPT ‘CONFLICTS OF INTEREST’ INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASE BY AUCKLAND COUNCIL OF THE FORMER ASB BUILDING?
On 21 March 2013, Auckland Councillors discussed at a workshop whether or not to move into the former ASB building at 135 Albert St.
In the interests of TRANSPARENCY and DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY – how about we ‘back up the truck’ and look at how exactly it was decided to spend a stray $100 million (without full public consultation) on the purchase of this property, and for what reason?
Peter Wall, Director of Auckland Council Property Ltd CCO, is a member of the ‘invitation-only’ / $10.000 per year membership fee private lobby group – the Committee for Auckland, along with Auckland Council CEO – Doug McKay.
“Peter George Wall
BCA – Bachelor of Commerce and Administration
ACA – Associate Chartered Accountant
Peter has enjoyed over 30 years in the Property industry participating in development, investment management and the acquisition and disposal of some $1.2 billion of Property assets. He has held CEO roles in public property companies, operated in UK, France and Canada and for 3 years was Managing Director, Property for Brookfield Multiplex in NZ and he continues to provide consulting services to this company.
Peter is a past National President of the Property Council in NZ, President and Trustee of the North Harbour Charitable Trust, Trustee of the Graeme Dingle Foundation trust and Chair of the Harbour Access Trust which has as its responsibilities the development of the National Ocean Water Sports Centre at Takapuna and ferry services to Takapuna and Browns Bay.”
Council eyes $122m ASB tower for new HQ
By Anne Gibson
5:30 AM Thursday Jun 28, 2012
The Auckland Council plans to buy new upmarket headquarters so it can quit a civic high-rise block tentatively earmarked for demolition.
The council has entered private negotiations to buy the ASB Bank Centre, valued by an Australian institutional fund at $112 million, substantially upgrading it for its staff and housing many of them under one roof.
………………………………..
ASB Bank Centre, 135 Albert St.
Valued at $112 million, owned by Brookfield Multiplex
31 levels with extensive carparking.”
____________________________________________________________
Company number:886938
Incorporation Date:17 Dec 1997
Company Status:Registered
Company Addresses:Registered Office
Level 8, 66 Wyndham St, Auckland , New Zealand
Address for service
Level 8, 66 Wyndham St, Auckland , New Zealand
View all addresses
Directors Showing 2 of 2 directors
George KOSTAS
36 Johnston St,, Annandale, Nsw 2038, Australia ,
Peter George WALL
233 Beach Road, Campbells Bay, North Shore City, 0630 , New Zealand ”
_________________________________________
What role did Peter Wall, Director of Brookfields Multiplex Constructions (NZ) Ltd; member of the ‘Executive Team of Auckland Council CCO, Auckland Council Property Ltd, play in the purchase of the former ASB building, owned by Brookfields Multiplex?
How DODGY (corrupt?) is THIS?
Auckland Council – $UPERCITY for the 1%?
Run by big business and property developers FOR big business and property developers?
Unless you bought your house or flat 15 years ago or more, then you are priced out of existence in the U.K.
People need to fucking LEAVE: I left, in 2008. Come to Sweden. You can buy a house here in the countryside for between £15k and £40 (for a REALLY nice one).
Fucking just up, and LEAVE.
I don’t regret leaving one fucking bit. The more I see of Britain, the more I realise that it is fucking FINISHED.
BRITIAN. IS FUCKING FINISHED. YOUR CHILDREN HAVE NO FUTURE THERE. LEAVE.
· 25 in reply to 1984Nareik (Show the comment)
Van Couver
Van Couver 6 hours ago
YOU, my friend, taxi driver, NEED TO BE ON THE MAINSTREAM NEWS EVERY SINGLE DAY! This news needs to be played over and over again on every single channel on tv. If people can’t see the writing on the wall by now they might as well just walk to the extermination camps and get it over with.”
A good example of the elitist NeoLiberal Washington Concensus mind f*ck that John Yankee has signed up to:
“Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers”
“Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):” :
“Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”
Chavez was a world leader. Unlike US politicians, Chavez was respected throughout the non-western world. He was awarded honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford.
Chavez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chavez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.”
Shows the unbelievable meanness of spirit and money grubbing darkness of John Yankee not to have gone to Chavez’s funeral.
“President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that security for the rich required economic security for the underclasses. Roosevelt established in the US a weak form of social democracy that European politicians had already understood was necessary for social cohesion and political and economic stability.
The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes set about undermining the stability that Roosevelt provided, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and the current prime minister of the UK undermined the social agreement between classes in the UK. Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.
Gerald Celente predicts that the elites will not survive the hatred and anger that they are bringing upon themselves. I suspect that he is correct. The American middle class is being destroyed. The working class has become a proletariat, and the social welfare system is being destroyed in order to reduce the budget deficit caused by the loss of tax revenues to jobs offshoring and the expense of wars, overseas military bases, and financial bailouts. The American people are being compelled to suffer in order that elites can continue with their agendas.”
“Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.”
The NeoLiberal disaster in the U$K by George Monbiot
“The model is dead; long live the model. Austerity programmes are extending the crises they were meant to solve, yet governments refuse to abandon them. The United Kingdom provides a powerful example. The cuts, the coalition promised, would hurt but work. They hurt all right – and have pushed us into a double dip recession(1).
This result was widely predicted. If you cut government spending and the income of the poor during an economic crisis, you are likely to make it worse. But last week David Cameron insisted that “we will go on and finish the job”(2), while the chancellor maintained that the government has a “credible plan, and we’re sticking to it.”(3)”
“A programme that promised freedom and choice has instead produced something resembling a totalitarian capitalism, in which no one may dissent from the will of the market and in which the market has become a euphemism for big business. It offers freedom all right, but only to those at the top. ” Got that John Yankee!?
I sometimes wonder if the elites have made a conscious decision that their forces of repression are so strong and technically sophisticated that they no longer need to scatter any welfare crumbs around to keep the peasants happy. They certainly like loosening the leash on their attack dogs now and then, presumably to teach us all our place via routine bashings of John Minto, the piracy against Elvis Teddy, and the invasion of Tuhoe land.
An invalid beneficiary from Gore died from burns after he tried to light a cigarette while connected to an oxygen supply, an Otago-based coroner has found….
The headline on the top of the front page of the herald right now.
Could they have whistled that dog any harder than they have?
Apparently his beneficiary status was so relevant that it needed to be stated twice in the first six words.
I have been showing one all day. But most likely it is a missing box. That is likely to a bad cached copy of the jQuery javascript. Try pressing Shift when hitting the Refresh button. That will cause the cached items will load.
The RSS all gets redirected through Feedburner because they do a single pickup and feed it out to multiple readers. This causes a major reduction on the load on the database server because on average we have a RSS pickup from either a human or more commonly a bot every few seconds. But we don’t control their pickup schedule.
The e-mails are off because I moved the server at the start of the year and didn’t have time to put them back on or test them. My work project finished a few weeks back. So I’ve been working through the backlog of maintenance tasks that have accumulated from the last year..
I checked. The comment RSS seems to pick up about every 15 minutes.
The email is a pain as I want to keep the actual server locations anonymous behind cloudflare. Looks like I will have to build an internal vpn network so I can spool messages at the local server level, transport to and release from a public network. Digging my way to simpler solution.
“FFS yeah time to target the “mentally ill” again, that’s a good old canard to trot out, guns don’t kill people, mentally ill people do etc.”
I would suggest that most if not all the mass killings are done by those who are mentally ill.
I would also suggest that part of the problem is if anyone suggests taking away a right from the mentally ill (like maybe the right to bear arms…) then you got a lot of well meaning idiots piping up and saying how bad it is…
But I do agree with you on one thing and that is guns don’t kill people.
I would also suggest that part of the problem is if anyone suggests taking away a right from the mentally ill (like maybe the right to bear arms…) then you got a lot of well meaning idiots piping up and saying how bad it is…
You still on about this “Mentally ill” bullshit?
Do people who keep assault weapons in their bedroom along with several thousand rounds of ammo, automatically count in your criteria?
“I would also suggest that part of the problem is if anyone suggests taking away a right from the mentally ill (like maybe the right to bear arms…) then you got a lot of well meaning idiots piping up and saying how bad it is…”
Citation needed 🙄
To get a firearms licence, you need a medical certificate. If you have a psychiatric condition then your doctor has to put that on the certificate. That’s not an automatic disqualification, but it will make the scrutiny much closer. In NZ I think this is as much about preventing suicide as anything.
I mentioned somewhere else that NZ has almost a million firearms. And very very little problem with deliberate shootings. (Accidental and self harm are another issue).
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Karl du Fresne writes – There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering ...
I don’t normally send out two newsletters in a day but I figured I’d say something about… the news. If two newsletters is a bit much then maybe just skip one, I don’t want to overload people. Alternatively if you’d be interested in sometimes receiving multiple, smaller updates from me, ...
Buzz from the Beehive David Seymour and Winston Peters today signalled that at least two ministers of the Crown might be in Wellington today. Seymour (as Associate Minister of Education) announced the removal of more red tape, this time to make it easier for new early learning services to be ...
Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. Our political system is suffering from the ...
David Farrar writes – The Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled: Comments by radio host Kate Hawkesby suggesting Māori and Pacific patients were being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity were misleading and discriminatory, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has found. It is a fact such patients are prioritised. ...
PRC and its proxies in Solomons have been preparing for these elections for a long time.A lot of money, effort and intelligence have gone into ensuring an outcome that won’t compromise Beijing’s plans. Cleo Paskall writes – On April 17th the Solomon Islands, a country of ...
Is speeding up the trip to and from Wellington airport by 12 minutes worth spending up more than $10 billion? Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me in the last day to 8:26 am today are:The Lead: Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced ...
You're a fraud, and you know itBut it's too good to throw it all awayAnyone would do the sameYou've got 'em goingAnd you're careful not to show itSometimes you even fool yourself a bitIt's like magicBut it's always been a smoke and mirrors gameAnyone would do the sameForty six billion ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy. Mexico is the ...
2024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?When I say 2024 I really mean the state of humanity in 2024.Saturday night, we watched Civil War because that is one terrifying cliff we've ...
Buzz from the Beehive A pet project and governmental tunnel vision jump out from the latest batch of ministerial announcements. The government is keen to assure us of its concern for the wellbeing of our pets. It will be introducing pet bonds in a change to the Residential Tenancies Act ...
A recent report generated from a Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) survey of 1,224 rangatahi Māori aged 11-12 found: Cultural connectedness was associated with fewer depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms and better quality of life. That sounds cut and dry. But further into the report the following appears: Cultural connectedness is ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: From the gory details of job-cuts news, you’d think the public service was being eviscerated. While the media’s view of the cuts is incomplete, it’s also true that departments have been leaking the particulars faster than a Wellington ...
Remember the good old days, back when New Zealand had a PM who could think and speak calmly and intelligently in whole sentences without blustering? Even while Iran’s drones and missiles were still being launched, Helen Clark was live on TVNZ expertly summing up the latest crisis in the Middle ...
Costello did not pass on analysis of the benefits of the smokefree reforms to Cabinet, emphasising instead the extra tax revenues of repealing them. Photo: Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images TL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me at 7:26 am today are:The Lead: Casey Costello never passed on ...
True loveYou're the one I'm dreaming ofYour heart fits me like a gloveAnd I'm gonna be true blueBaby, I love youI’ve written about the job cuts in our news media last week. The impact on individuals, and the loss to Aotearoa of voices covering our news from different angles.That by ...
While commentators, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, are noting a subtle shift in New Zealand’s foreign policy, which now places more emphasis on the United States, many have missed a key element of the shift. What National said before the election is not what the government is doing now. ...
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. ...
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. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Changes to minimum wage and benefit indexation means many New Zealanders will get less this year, as the Government gives a big tax break to landlords instead. ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further New Zealand cooperation with the United States in the Pacific Islands region through $16.4 million in funding for initiatives in digital connectivity and oceans and fisheries research. “New Zealand can achieve more in the Pacific if we work together more urgently and ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
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Opinion: With maths understanding at 42 percent for Year 8 students, there’s no doubt something has to be done. But how? The post Financial literacy should be on all of us appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Hineaupounamu ‘Missy’ Nuku has been scaling mountains in Canada for her college basketball team, the Lakeland Rustlers. Alberta is currently home for the 20-year-old point guard, who is in her first year of a scholarship at Lakeland College, where she is studying for a business degree. She has certainly made ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When ASIO boss Mike Burgess delivered his annual threat assessment earlier this year, he stressed the rising danger posed by espionage and foreign interference. “In 2024, threats to our way of life have surpassed ...
The Tribunal had called on Minister for Children Karen Chhour to provide evidence at an urgent inquiry into the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University Midjourney image by T.J. Thomson As more than half of Australian office workers report using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for work, we’re starting to see this technology affect every ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Nicole Sharwood, Injury epidemiologist | Expert Witness, UNSW Sydney Sergey Novikov/Shutterstock Injuries are the leading cause of disability and death among Australian children and adolescents. At least a quarter of all emergency department presentations during childhood are injury-related. Injuries can ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Di Winkler, Adjunct Associate Professor, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University Shutterstock/Ground PictureMany Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Salman Shooshtarian, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University Salman Shooshtarian Asbestos has been found in mulch used for playgrounds, schools, parks and gardens across Sydney and Melbourne. Local communities naturally fear for the health of their ...
Family First says that the latest abortion statistics make grim and upsetting reading, with a 25% increase in abortions since the decriminalisation of abortion in March 2020. According to an Official Information Act request received by Right to Life ...
Ipsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study on populism reveals a pervasive sense of societal and economic decline among New Zealanders. MORE DETAILS AND FULL REPORT HERE Ipsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study ...
President Obama is in the Middle East – and it’s complicated.
So here’s a cartoon primer of the entire history of the region, captured in 3.5 minutes and set to a catchy tune that will have you humming along.
http://blog.ninapaley.com/2012/10/01/this-land-is-mine/
Sorry about the clumsy link paste, I’m working from an ipad and I just couldn’t make it nice.
NewstalkZB: Fair and Balanced
NewstalkZB, Friday 22 March 2013, 7:45 a.m.
This radio station is the closest thing we’ve ever had in this country to a dedicated government mouthpiece. Day in, day out, hour after hour after hour, host after host, anybody stupid or unfortunate enough to listen to this station for any length of time is subjected to pretty much unremitting pro-government propaganda. Most NewstalkZB hosts don’t even bother to try to hide their overt bias. One of the most flagrant is that dedicated toady Mike Hosking, AKA the King of Contra….
SIMON BRIDGES: Oh look it’s evidence-based. Youth rates lead to more jobs. It’s evidence-based.
MIKE HOSKING: [fervently] EX-ACTLY!!!
Later that day, one Larry “Lackwit” Williams, an extraordinarily dimwitted ex-traffic cop, presides over one of the most unpleasant ten minutes on radio, “The Huddle”, unkindly referred to by sneering sophisticates as “The Muddle”…
LARRY “LACKWIT” WILLIAMS: Kevin Rudd turned down a poisoned chalice didn’t he? Labor is GONE!
ELLEN READ: There’s something about that guy I don’t like! He’s just so horrible and creepy. I don’t know what it is.
LARRY “LACKWIT” WILLIAMS: Gillard is a tough cookie though! I don’t know what it is, but she’s TOUGH!
ELLEN READ: She’s one tough cookie!
TIM WATKIN: She’s a tough cookie all right! She’s tougher than Helen Clark! She’s tough as old boots! [snickers nervously]
The rest of the discussion was equally dire and uninteresting, but there was one highly pertinent (and telling) confession….
ELLEN READ: I haven’t been in a bookshop for a long, long time.
NewstalkZB: Tune Your Mind.
Top notch, morrissey, thanks.
So, pray tell me, who owns the Herald ?
Thanks M. Keep it up, love your posts.
Armstrong in the NZHerald this morning gives 10 reasons why National remain so popular. The biggest remains the popularity of PM John Key. Is this just intergenerational luck that, comparatively, they have a leader with such skill?
One other point he raises is that Labour have not yet put “hands on” economic management into broad New Zealand discourse, so in the MSM and in the home and office there remains no economic question mark hanging above the Beehive for the government to answer. Does anyone know if Labour have more housing-type speeches coming up that seek to tilt public discourse?
Yeah, theres a side story to that in the Herald as well, Armstrong,Trevit, and Dann give their ‘ideas’ about why Slippery is so popular as the Prime Minister,
Armstrong and Trevit just do the gushy thing that if it belongs in print at all it aint a supposed serious daily newspaper as what the Herald would consider it’self to be,
Dann gets a little closer to the truth with His little essay on ‘it’s the economy’ and ‘when all is said and done people vote with their pockets’
i have to presume Dann is talking there of the Tory vote where i am sure the majority do vote National based upon economics, (not the economy as Dann suggests), personal economics of course is the nature of the National Party economic voter and i would dare suggest that that vote has held up as the ‘tax switch’ for 40% higher up in the economy is still delivering for ‘them’ sizable gains in their weekly income, the rest of them would be the ‘fanclub’ type voter hearts all a flutter as Slippery does one of His public dances like a loon displays…
Nah, bullshit it’s intergenerational luck.
A group within National saw the talent and opportunity that John Key represented, talked (bought, strong-armed) the rest of the National caucus and associated powerbrokers in to it, and put him in there.
In other words, superior networking, initial talent indentification, recruitment and internal political management.
Many deals were cut…and notice how Bill English came back with a second life after his disastrous defeat as DPM. Again part of the deal making which happened to bring the National caucus together.
Compare and contrast the Labour approach: who’s the next Wellington staffer we can promote.
FFS, Labor did exactly the same thing except you picked a retired UN wanker.
They must have stopped teaching comprehension by the time you got to school. Or did you only go to laugh at the poor kids?
The Hearald:
“Apple’s New Zealand division made sales of $571 million last year but paid only 0.4 per cent of that in tax.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10873068
Plenty of cash left to put up more suicide nets at their factories.
Maybe peter dunne could prepare some legislation that stops these crooks from ripping off our system, instead of pissing about with smart phones and laptops.
30% of 571mil, puts into context the alleged robbery committed by beneficiaries, living the dream.
And while he’s at it, get the class b and c drugs out of our sweetshops, like you promised.
A bit of passion like the ‘retort’ you gave on back benches will do.
Where were you?
Tax is of course levied on profits, not on sales – we do not tax banks for example on every deposit. It would be interesting to see the profit on an equivalent wholly New Zealand successful company with sales of $500 million . . .
Even reducing such tax rorts will be difficult – what could the left do that the IRD are not already being asked to do?
“Tax is of course levied on profits, not on sales ”
Of course it is, I misread, but still, knowing how overpriced apple stuff is, their margins would be pretty huge. 30% of 100m, 200m, 300m is still lots and lots of inadequately taxed income.
That’s an awfully good tax break they’ve got themselves.
“Even reducing such tax rorts will be difficult – what could the left do that the IRD are not already being asked to do?”
So NZ needs new legislation to combat mega corps dodgy dealings. Must be doable, but obviously not by dunne.
What they going to do? Withdraw from the market and turn down half a billion in sales, especially when android is overtaking (overtaken?) as market leader.
Take our fair share or tell them to fuck off, but doing nothing is almost as criminal and complicit in intent.
“….but still, knowing how overpriced apple stuff is, their margins would be pretty huge. ”
They make sure their margins are very low. There’s two basic methods for keeping the margins down; transfer pricing and royalties. Not sure about Apple but most of the other big corporates have been using the royalty scam, tax collectors starting wising up to transfer priciing and put the bite on.
The NZ operation pays a royalty to the parent company for the right to use the brand in this country. The royalty fee goes on the books as an expense and it’s so high they don’t make much profit. The parent that collects the royalties is located in a tax haven.
It’s bizarre that they get away with paying themselves a royalty but that’s the way it works.
Royalties should be treated as profit since they don’t actually contribute to production. and profit earned in this country should be taxed.
Yep and the best way to do it is to design an all new tax system from the ground up and implement it in the next financial year. None of this tinkering around that we’re seeing from the political parties at the moment.
Unless you’re on PAYE in which case you’re taxed on your full income and not profit which is what would be left after all expenses have been taken out.
Maybe the IRD should consider applying some version of the thin cap rules for interest to royalties, management fees and other overseas service fees and maybe even payments for products – some sort of a sliding scale for some of them perhaps.
Just make them non-deductible. That’d have to be done at the political level though and I doubt if any party would be brave enough to do it.
I think that’s what they’re looking at. I prefer mikesh’s view but I doubt you could write specific enough laws to cover that. It clashes with the likes of franchising and paying for the right to use an established brand is pretty common business practice that’s not intrinsically wrong in itself. These corporates are just abusing a working system for their own benefit.
They could probably use the likes of the sharemarket to work out an average profit margin on turnover and tax them at that rate as the default minimum. They certainly need to do something, and soon.
This is horrendous.
Import levies on all Apple products please. They do not have a right to sell their product in this country.
By the way, I presume 15% GST was paid on that $571M sales figure. It would be hard for them to escape that.
But the gst on sales is paid for by the purchaser and in this case apple just collect the tax on behalf of the govt and then on the following 28 th of the month pay the tax to the govt. the way you phrased it appears IMO that apple has incurred a tax, which they haven’t.
For those interested the IRD are taking interest in land transactions and developers, pity this was not 12 years ago with the result that the govts books would have been even more healthy. a
Think how this untaxed income would have assisted say, health, supporting those in need, pity those in power have self interest over riding what is best for nz.
Ahhh thanks you are correct of course.
CORRUPT ‘CONFLICTS OF INTEREST’ INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASE BY AUCKLAND COUNCIL OF THE FORMER ASB BUILDING?
On 21 March 2013, Auckland Councillors discussed at a workshop whether or not to move into the former ASB building at 135 Albert St.
In the interests of TRANSPARENCY and DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY – how about we ‘back up the truck’ and look at how exactly it was decided to spend a stray $100 million (without full public consultation) on the purchase of this property, and for what reason?
Let’s also have a good, hard look at who has been involved…….
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/auckland-council-headquarters-move-vy-124051
Any untoward conflicts of interest between those who bought this property and those from whom this property was bought?
Where are the publicly-available ‘Registers of Interest’?
WHO IS CHECKING?
I did some checking.
This is what I found…………….
AND IT STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN WITH THE STENCH OF ‘CORRUPT CRONY CAPITALISM’!
http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/member-organisations
Peter Wall, Director of Auckland Council Property Ltd CCO, is a member of the ‘invitation-only’ / $10.000 per year membership fee private lobby group – the Committee for Auckland, along with Auckland Council CEO – Doug McKay.
Peter Wall is also:
EXECUTIVE TEAM OF AUCKLAND COUNCIL PROPERTY LTD
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/ABOUTCOUNCIL/REPRESENTATIVESBODIES/CCO/Pages/council_property.aspx
“Peter George Wall
BCA – Bachelor of Commerce and Administration
ACA – Associate Chartered Accountant
Peter has enjoyed over 30 years in the Property industry participating in development, investment management and the acquisition and disposal of some $1.2 billion of Property assets. He has held CEO roles in public property companies, operated in UK, France and Canada and for 3 years was Managing Director, Property for Brookfield Multiplex in NZ and he continues to provide consulting services to this company.
Peter is a past National President of the Property Council in NZ, President and Trustee of the North Harbour Charitable Trust, Trustee of the Graeme Dingle Foundation trust and Chair of the Harbour Access Trust which has as its responsibilities the development of the National Ocean Water Sports Centre at Takapuna and ferry services to Takapuna and Browns Bay.”
________________________________________________
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10816011
Council eyes $122m ASB tower for new HQ
By Anne Gibson
5:30 AM Thursday Jun 28, 2012
The Auckland Council plans to buy new upmarket headquarters so it can quit a civic high-rise block tentatively earmarked for demolition.
The council has entered private negotiations to buy the ASB Bank Centre, valued by an Australian institutional fund at $112 million, substantially upgrading it for its staff and housing many of them under one roof.
………………………………..
ASB Bank Centre, 135 Albert St.
Valued at $112 million, owned by Brookfield Multiplex
31 levels with extensive carparking.”
____________________________________________________________
http://www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/886938
_______________________________________________________
BROOKFIELD MULTIPLEX CONSTRUCTIONS (NZ) LIMITED (886938)
Last updated on 14 Dec 2011
Company number:886938
Incorporation Date:17 Dec 1997
Company Status:Registered
Company Addresses:Registered Office
Level 8, 66 Wyndham St, Auckland , New Zealand
Address for service
Level 8, 66 Wyndham St, Auckland , New Zealand
View all addresses
Directors Showing 2 of 2 directors
George KOSTAS
36 Johnston St,, Annandale, Nsw 2038, Australia ,
Peter George WALL
233 Beach Road, Campbells Bay, North Shore City, 0630 , New Zealand ”
_________________________________________
What role did Peter Wall, Director of Brookfields Multiplex Constructions (NZ) Ltd; member of the ‘Executive Team of Auckland Council CCO, Auckland Council Property Ltd, play in the purchase of the former ASB building, owned by Brookfields Multiplex?
How DODGY (corrupt?) is THIS?
Auckland Council – $UPERCITY for the 1%?
Run by big business and property developers FOR big business and property developers?
Anyone else got concerns about this?
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption campaigner’
2013 Auckland Mayoral Candidate
Thanks Penny. I want to say that I really appreciate your work on corruption. Keep it up.
Another dispatch from the artist taxi driver on the U$K’s austerity class war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3uAPwn3t9Y&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A&index=1
OMFG!!!! The BBC Sucks O Cocks news *Exclusive News*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rraACARjgMk&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A
BBC Sucks O Cocks News Budget+Obama in Isra-hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AelV-U0m1hk&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A&index=2
The Government the dream snatchers
”
MorallyBankruptUK 4 hours ago
Unless you bought your house or flat 15 years ago or more, then you are priced out of existence in the U.K.
People need to fucking LEAVE: I left, in 2008. Come to Sweden. You can buy a house here in the countryside for between £15k and £40 (for a REALLY nice one).
Fucking just up, and LEAVE.
I don’t regret leaving one fucking bit. The more I see of Britain, the more I realise that it is fucking FINISHED.
BRITIAN. IS FUCKING FINISHED. YOUR CHILDREN HAVE NO FUTURE THERE. LEAVE.
· 25 in reply to 1984Nareik (Show the comment)
Van Couver
Van Couver 6 hours ago
YOU, my friend, taxi driver, NEED TO BE ON THE MAINSTREAM NEWS EVERY SINGLE DAY! This news needs to be played over and over again on every single channel on tv. If people can’t see the writing on the wall by now they might as well just walk to the extermination camps and get it over with.”
A good example of the elitist NeoLiberal Washington Concensus mind f*ck that John Yankee has signed up to:
“Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers”
“Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):” :
“Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”
Paul Craig Roberts:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/03/12/hugo-chavez-paul-craig-roberts-4/
“Chavez was a friend of truth and justice, and this made him unpopular throughout the Western World where every political leader regards truth and justice as dire threats.
Chavez was a world leader. Unlike US politicians, Chavez was respected throughout the non-western world. He was awarded honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford.
Chavez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chavez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.”
Shows the unbelievable meanness of spirit and money grubbing darkness of John Yankee not to have gone to Chavez’s funeral.
“President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that security for the rich required economic security for the underclasses. Roosevelt established in the US a weak form of social democracy that European politicians had already understood was necessary for social cohesion and political and economic stability.
The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes set about undermining the stability that Roosevelt provided, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and the current prime minister of the UK undermined the social agreement between classes in the UK. Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.
Gerald Celente predicts that the elites will not survive the hatred and anger that they are bringing upon themselves. I suspect that he is correct. The American middle class is being destroyed. The working class has become a proletariat, and the social welfare system is being destroyed in order to reduce the budget deficit caused by the loss of tax revenues to jobs offshoring and the expense of wars, overseas military bases, and financial bailouts. The American people are being compelled to suffer in order that elites can continue with their agendas.”
“Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.”
The NeoLiberal disaster in the U$K by George Monbiot
“The model is dead; long live the model. Austerity programmes are extending the crises they were meant to solve, yet governments refuse to abandon them. The United Kingdom provides a powerful example. The cuts, the coalition promised, would hurt but work. They hurt all right – and have pushed us into a double dip recession(1).
This result was widely predicted. If you cut government spending and the income of the poor during an economic crisis, you are likely to make it worse. But last week David Cameron insisted that “we will go on and finish the job”(2), while the chancellor maintained that the government has a “credible plan, and we’re sticking to it.”(3)”
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/07/30/scorched-earth-economics/
“A programme that promised freedom and choice has instead produced something resembling a totalitarian capitalism, in which no one may dissent from the will of the market and in which the market has become a euphemism for big business. It offers freedom all right, but only to those at the top. ” Got that John Yankee!?
I sometimes wonder if the elites have made a conscious decision that their forces of repression are so strong and technically sophisticated that they no longer need to scatter any welfare crumbs around to keep the peasants happy. They certainly like loosening the leash on their attack dogs now and then, presumably to teach us all our place via routine bashings of John Minto, the piracy against Elvis Teddy, and the invasion of Tuhoe land.
The headline on the top of the front page of the herald right now.
Could they have whistled that dog any harder than they have?
Apparently his beneficiary status was so relevant that it needed to be stated twice in the first six words.
Cruel, hateful stuff.
Some Employers Finally Get It (alas not in NZ):
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/03/economic-case-paying-your-cashiers-40k-year/5037/
Will I be able to see my past comments in future? I can’t at moment even though I ticked the comment button.
Top right of the page, search field, tick comments and freshness, enter prism and click search.
It should work but at the moment that returns no results. Problems with search – lprent, if you’re about?
Was me. Accident doing an upgrade. Fixed now.
Fixed. I managed to upgrade the search plugin that I modded for the site. Overwrote the mods.
Hi lprent
Now there is no recent comments list. Still – just saying – Don’t worry be happy.
I have been showing one all day. But most likely it is a missing box. That is likely to a bad cached copy of the jQuery javascript. Try pressing Shift when hitting the Refresh button. That will cause the cached items will load.
Does the box show up, or is it just old comments?
more from “the machine”; The details of 9700 EQC homeowner claiments e-mailed externally.
Anno Domini- 16000dead pigs recovered from the river tributaries supplying water to Shanghai.
Welcome to the Patriarchy, part [depressingly large-number here]:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/22/adria-richards-did-everything-exactly-right/
T_T
Somedays…
Jesus Wept; some of these techy types can be vicious predators.
CRIME WATCH
It appears that burglars in the Bay of Plenty are targeting the particularly stupid….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10873122
The REAL New World Order
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russia-china-build-world-order-18787492
and one for The Left
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/europe/italys-president-asks-democratic-party-to-form-a-government.html?_r=0
(chalice anyone?)
ON THE PERILS OF WORKING FOR SLY JUDY
There was a girl called Sue
Sport gave her endless fame
In fact she was so very good
They made of her a Dame
Then ‘long came Sly Old Judy
Offering big flash earn
Said Susy Girl I’ll do it Ma’am
But really I must learn
Don’t worry girl you’re sporty
The people love your name
Race relations ain’t no thing
It’s just my shitty game
Now Susy she worked very hard
And she hit her straps
She respected every race
Sly Judy thought that crap
Bugger bugger bugger shit
Fumed Sly One nearly cracking
I’ll bloody well finish this
She’ll get a public smacking
Never trust a sporting girl
I yearn for bum so skinny
I’ll dash her off a nasty note
And chuck her in the Binnie !
Don’t give up your day job.
Comments RSS question. I go to the end of http://thestandard.org.nz/the-human-cost/ and click on the “Comments RSS” link http://thestandard.org.nz/the-human-cost/feed/ . That takes me to http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommentsForTheStandard which has comments for all articles but doesn’t seem up to date. So what do I do to get comments on a specific article?
One reason I’m asking is that email notifications didn’t work when I left a comment some weeks ago.
The RSS all gets redirected through Feedburner because they do a single pickup and feed it out to multiple readers. This causes a major reduction on the load on the database server because on average we have a RSS pickup from either a human or more commonly a bot every few seconds. But we don’t control their pickup schedule.
The e-mails are off because I moved the server at the start of the year and didn’t have time to put them back on or test them. My work project finished a few weeks back. So I’ve been working through the backlog of maintenance tasks that have accumulated from the last year..
Right OK I’ll just check back for comments. Thanks a lot for all your work on this site.
I checked. The comment RSS seems to pick up about every 15 minutes.
The email is a pain as I want to keep the actual server locations anonymous behind cloudflare. Looks like I will have to build an internal vpn network so I can spool messages at the local server level, transport to and release from a public network. Digging my way to simpler solution.
Colonial Viper …
23 March 2013 at 7:31 pm
“FFS yeah time to target the “mentally ill” again, that’s a good old canard to trot out, guns don’t kill people, mentally ill people do etc.”
I would suggest that most if not all the mass killings are done by those who are mentally ill.
I would also suggest that part of the problem is if anyone suggests taking away a right from the mentally ill (like maybe the right to bear arms…) then you got a lot of well meaning idiots piping up and saying how bad it is…
But I do agree with you on one thing and that is guns don’t kill people.
well, that’s a “no sane scotsman” argument if ever there was one.
lol.
TBF, I know Scotsmen and ‘sanity’ is a sassenach tool of oppression.
You still on about this “Mentally ill” bullshit?
Do people who keep assault weapons in their bedroom along with several thousand rounds of ammo, automatically count in your criteria?
People who store rifles to fight the US government? Yep, totally sane. *side-eye*
Where is the original comment that chris quotes? Can’t find it on this page.
THat’s odd. I do remember writing the comment. I may have edited it and its gone into a black hole…
Yesterday’s OM
Do people who keep assault weapons in their bedroom along with several thousand rounds of ammo, automatically count in your criteria?
Do you think people who commit these mass killings are sane or have a mental illness?
“I would also suggest that part of the problem is if anyone suggests taking away a right from the mentally ill (like maybe the right to bear arms…) then you got a lot of well meaning idiots piping up and saying how bad it is…”
Citation needed 🙄
To get a firearms licence, you need a medical certificate. If you have a psychiatric condition then your doctor has to put that on the certificate. That’s not an automatic disqualification, but it will make the scrutiny much closer. In NZ I think this is as much about preventing suicide as anything.
I mentioned somewhere else that NZ has almost a million firearms. And very very little problem with deliberate shootings. (Accidental and self harm are another issue).
Thats my point from earlier in the discussion. They don’t need to ban firearms so much as they need to start enforcing the laws they already have.
2243 additional US gun deaths since Newtown shootings 98 days ago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-us-newtown_n_2935686.html
In contrast, we’ve probably had around 100 road fatalities in that same timeframe.
Hmmm. Cyprus has just passed banking and capital controls, irrespective of what the powers that be in the EU and Russia decide.
This is going to be a very interesting (and not in a good way) year.