He seems to think grandstanding is the best type of politics. I believe getting consensus decisions implemented works better. That's what the Greens are doing. I do agree that they could be representing the Green movement more effectively though. The Green caucus could do that by operating a different line of advocacy. Caucus being somewhat independent of the govt would help the dissidents to feel better about prospects.
Instead of suggesting this obvious strategy, Morgan merely recycles tired old tropes from the past that position the Greens as perpetual opponents. I suggest leftist Greenies demonstrate the courage of their convictions instead of trying to kneecap their co-leaders. They ought to resign & form the Constantly Radical Anarchist Party.
The sight of them marching in glorious unified solidarity in the streets chanting "We Need More CRAP" would stir the hearts of old radicals everywhere. Obvious banner slogans to carry would be Not Enough CRAP in Govt, CRAP on Centrism. Christian leftists could do Holy CRAP! Best option is probably Total CRAP Now!
I looked this up recently to see his research interests and instead found he was not academic staff but a research partnership manager role , which seemed to be more writing 'research grants' applications
Last year I checked academics reserach interests a lot to see if their expertise aligned with their claimed public comments.
The Medical Professor who was an expert on brain injuries who made public comments on infectious diseases and epidemiology. Or the woman research assistant in non medical xrays writing/twittering about transitioned sports women .
Okay, but just keep in mind that feeling similarly inclined tends to have little political effect. Leftists who write complaints about the politics of other leftists don't seem to realise that they exhibit impotence.
Which is why I suggested a pathway to independent political action for them. Helpful, not unkind. Do they really want to spend the rest of their lives complaining? Perhaps it would be better to grow up.
Then there's the ethics of stabbing your leader in the back to consider. They probably don't see themselves as doing that, right? Yet it does not seem to occur to them that plenty of others will see their behaviour as that. Sends an extremely distasteful signal out into the body politic!
My thoughts are that much of the capability of GP is lost in a fog of competing identity politics agendas.
It appears that environmental issues and social justice issues are either replaced or lensed through identity politics. I'm not saying that identity politics is bad or should be ignored.
And then there are a few individuals who display the naked grab for political power that would be at home in the National Party.
As to the agreement with Labour, I think that both parties would be better off if this arrangement was restruck to permit the GP to deliver more criticism and opposition. Next elections the GP need to be robust and identifiable as party not as a tack on to the LP.
It appears that environmental issues and social justice issues are either replaced or lensed through identity politics. I'm not saying that identity politics is bad or should be ignored.
That's a really good way of putting it.
Which MPs do you think are doing a power grab? Personally or for the party?
As to the agreement with Labour, I think that both parties would be better off if this arrangement was restruck to permit the GP to deliver more criticism and opposition. Next elections the GP need to be robust and identifiable as party not as a tack on to the LP.
this seems the least that should happen. I think something needs to change before then as well.
Interesting that you should say that. I know someone who campaigned for the Green Party last election and had numerous contact with March, and feels the same way.
Also, considers him to be less than his self-opinion puts him at.
Ball's now in the co-leaders' court so I'll be watching to see how they respond and if they attempt a reframe. If they disregard the challenge, it'll be a show of complacency & contempt for the leftist dissidents within – as if calling their bluff.
He seems to think grandstanding is the best type of politics. I believe getting consensus decisions implemented works better.
Why do you see public policy advocacy as grandstanding? My dictionary defines grandstanding as,
behave in a showy or ostentatious manner in an attempt to attract favourable attention from spectators or the media
Are you saying that this is the primary goal. Rather than say, speaking out on urgent and important social and environmental issues that are core to GP principles. See the difference.
Also, why can't both be done? Why can the Greens not be strong publicly on policy and build and maintain the good relationships necessary for the more subtle politics?
Needless to say, the Greens will work consensus, but Labour don't.
I do agree that they could be representing the Green movement more effectively though. The Green caucus could do that by operating a different line of advocacy. Caucus being somewhat independent of the govt would help the dissidents to feel better about prospects.
How? Please be specific, how this could be done, in the context of the current agreement and arrangement.
It's not simply about helping dissidents feel better, it's about whether the GP is more or less effective with each strategy.
They can – depends who does it & why. The structure & process of democracy require coalition-building to achieve policy goals at times, and we're in one of those times. So we got a center-left hybrid govt making incremental progress.
Grandstanding in the media when it comes across as a critique of a political party can be done for a range of personal reasons. I'm not personally acquainted with the young feller so am loath to guess his. Perhaps he's positioning himself as an alternative leader of a progressive Green political vehicle?
I decided not to comment on it this morning but feel it is authentic as a leadership stance in the environmental movement.
How?Please be specific, how this could be done, in the context of the current agreement and arrangement.
Too important to confine an answer like that! Caucus ought to thrash it out and produce their own solution. From a bystander position various options come to mind:
1. co-leaders agree to declare party unhappiness with progress provided this is quantified on particular policies
2. caucus decide they will individually speak publicly on issues where the interests of the broader Green movement diverge significantly from govt
3. co-leaders decide to authorise the party to create a designated spokesperson for the broader Green movement
Other permutations can be conceived but the above triad ought to serve for now…
Well, there is nothing concrete in terms of housing policy to reverse the disastrous trend over the last three decades of market dysfunction impoverishing NZers.
Neither the state of the rivers nor carbon emissions are being addressed in any serious way.
Nor are there plausible futurist endeavours toward a better, less extractive, less anomic, less hollowed-out society.
I'd've thought a Green perspective would have a few problems with BAU under those circumstances – but apparently we just want more 'centrists' kicking the can down the road and waving identity politics to stifle criticism.
that's not quite true. More likely is that the GP are taking a pragmatic approach based on the number of MPs and the amount of vote they get. I doubt very much that the state of policy from the government is what they want.
It’s seemingly very easy to criticise the only party in parliament that has stuck to it’s values and has been quietly achieving for decades, while still voting for the centrist, neoliberal capitalist ‘Labour’ party. It’s baffling.
A good strategy, will probably achieve more in the longer term than destroying the relationship with Labour. Taking 12 MPs into a coalition government would mean significantly more power and ministerial portfolios than a confidence and supply arrangement, and for mine, significantly more opportunity to get more done.
Also worth noting that their support for Trans legislation hasn't hurt their public polling one bit.
Also worth noting their support for trans legislation (?), was conducted amongst the party conformists and did not display the transparency and open debate they usually espouse.
So, of course, it didn't make a difference to polling. No-one on the fence would have any idea what was being proposed past the Be Kind talking points.
I don’t believe that those on The Standard want to have a true debate about gender ideology. Other than chanting the mantra, trans women are women and presenting scientific papers about 7 people who have mixed sexual characteristics fertilising their own ova, which has no relevance to the trans gender debate.
quite a number of people I know won’t be voting labour or Green because they believe these parties have been captured by gender ideology. It’s unlikely to lose Labour or Greens a huge number of votes.
it still is a very dangerous ideology and it is harming our children. Most people on this website are reasonably bright, so it astounds me that some have accepted this ideology uncritically
It's not an easy debate to have – and if you've been the focal point of a cone of insincere criticism you know that venturing opinion on it is buying into a buttload of spleen. But here goes:
It's about lying. Lying is sociopathic, it is a hostile act – something Kant was trying to nail down with his categorical imperative. In their enthusiasm for the humane act of treating the rainbow community with tolerance, that tolerance was, improperly, extended to telling lies. This led some of them astray, and de facto led them into habitual special pleading. But no gender group is so oppressed that lying is good for them, nor does it ultimately serve any of their interests, nor the interests of society at large. They need to stop lying.
I think the first time I became aware of this was reading something Tim Barnett said, that homosexuality was genetic. Now, I've done a bit of science in my day, and I thought that was interesting. But Google failed to turn up the replicable studies showing that this happened to be true (it is the subject of numerous inconclusive studies). It's interesting because it seemed a miss-speaking. Barnett meant to claim perhaps, that homosexuality was innate. The claim of genetics however, would have taken the claim out of the realm of personal belief, and into the realm of objective fact. It's not quite there.
There is a discipline, in the sciences, perhaps most concisely expressed by Grice's Maxims of Conversation, notably the maxim of quality:
Try to make your contribution one that is true.
Notice that this is first of all about maintaining the quality and thus the value of one's own utterances. This is clarified by
Do not say what you believe to be false.
And the practical consequence, which informs even discourse upon the Standard is:
Do not say that for which you lack evidence.
Barnett lacked evidence for his assertion, and might have done better to have confined himself to the truth, that he strongly believed it is innate. But, like communism in the heady days of its intellectual popularity, he wanted the support of "science". Why should it matter?
Well that would be because those who don't themselves experience the phenomena as innate might attribute it to heteronymous desires – those indisputable matters of taste which are morally neutral. Being morally neutral however, they would not be entitled to any particular presumption of tolerance – such as that that allows contemporary trans activists to force their way into gender segregated spaces, and to justify demonizing JK Rowling, who is a public intellectual who has tirelessly supported the rainbow community.
Debates over gender issues need to be truthful – but the custom of the community is not to deal in fact, but the heady and swaying currency of opinion. For the moment they can use that as a stick to beat the likes of JK Rowling, conscientious dissenters. But opinion washes in and out like the tide – it is only the truth that lasts.
Thank you for that succinct analysis Stuart Munro.
May I, for a moment, expand a bit on my experience which is related to truth telling although nothing to do with the subject in question.
For 24 years I was a staff member of the weather forecasting community of NZ. Our mantra at all times was to tell the truth although we were sometimes misled by the fickleness of some weather systems. However there was one occasion when I could not resist telling a lie. It was to a well known Air Commodore turned politician who I disliked (that's another story) and his mate, PM Rob Muldoon who I equally disliked.
They were planning a sailing holiday at a time when a cyclone was approaching NZ. The initial school of thought was that it would travel down the east coast of the NI and give us a battering. Our forecasts demonstrated as much. But we realised in time that it was going to slide down to the west of the NI and the effects were thus much reduced. I chose to stick with the former forecast and the pair cancelled their holiday.
At the time it gave me the greatest of pleasure I had ruined their sailing holiday. Yes, it was childish and I was burdened with guilt for a long time afterwards. So much for telling lies.
That is a truly wonderful reply Stuart Munro. One of the best comments I have read on The Standard. Yes gender ideology is about telling a lie and as you say "no gender group is so oppressed that lying is good for them" . It isn't. And it isn't good for women who have to put up with the lie that a male bodied swimmer creates a level playing field competiting with women.
The gender ideology movement gas lights women and girls. It is built on a lie, and woe betide those who don't accept and regugitate the lie
Thanks, Stuart. Sorry for the delay in acknowledging this well-considered comment. Your guidelines are ones I've tried to keep to on this topic, but without much success in creating a respectful dialogue.
Your comment re JK Rowling brought to mind this post which shows her tweets alongside some of the responses. You can clearly see the pattern of instant aggression and threats in response to her statements. What is noticeable is the violent and sexual nature of the threats. A recognisable masculine response towards women deemed troublesome.
I'm not really a fan of her books – though I used them with students who liked them – but she has often found herself on the right side of history, and I regard that as an accident – as Ambrose Bierce defines one:
ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.
Rowling finds herself in these conflicts because she is a mature and thoughtful person with an enviable clarity of expression. The clowns attacking her should be careful – if she novelizes them their cause is done.
This is always my favourite argument from "lefties" about left wing politics.
I feel that it boils down to "Don't speak up in defiance of the majority lefties, you'll hurt the movement from within, even if the majority is hurting you and your own."
I have always admired opal. That stemmed from a lady I knew who had a black opal set in a bracelet The colours were so vibrant they looked fake. All I knew was most opal comes from Australia and is mined by Aussies who live underground to escape the heat.
So it was with pleasure I came across a TV programme called Outback Opal Hunters that runs each weekday.
This programme has it all. Geology lessons, makeshift engineering, how to live on nothing, human relationship dramas, the art of haggling, old school ethics, how to mine, how to read the rocks, crime ( ratters – people who steal from mines) and good old Aussie mateship.
But the other reason I love this programme is there's no bloody wokeism. No trans males who are conflicted about their gender. No Greenies, climate change nutters or people who suck lattes while looking around to see who notices their new iPhone.
All you see is people with opal fever living in a 1950s time warp.
In this clip, old Les takes over the haggling. Les at 74 can still work like a young man.
I wondered about. Of course the camera crew cannot be on site while miners go weeks without finding anything. They are onsite only for the finds. So at the end of each programme the impression opal is found each week is of course not correct. But I think most people realise that.
I’m more into it for the education – especially staking a claim.
Outback Opal Hunters is on my must see list for TV viewing. Educational for children, the remoteness, getting stuff fixed, borrowing equipment, no money no diesel to dig for opal, how deals are done etc.
Usual slot is ch 12 Sunday night 7.30 pm – 8.30 pm, awaiting a new series as off air for now at that time.
I also like Jade Fever, think they will hit it big on the current series ch 12 7.30 pm – 8.30 pm on Wednesday night. There is a contrast in both programmes, cold and heat, the size of the rock/gem.
Yes, Ch 12 on Freeview is Choice TV. I’ve been watching the Jade Fever series off & on for a few years now. Also watched a few episodes of Outback Opal Hunters.
Both quite interesting for the personal dramas (Jade Fever’s about a family-based prospecting/mining operation), the extremely rugged conditions featured participants work in, the amount of time & effort they put in for no return before they hit a vein or boulder or outcrop that pays off but never seems to make them millionaires, & the risky things they sometimes do that would probably have Worksafe & other safety regulators having fits.
Being paid for appearing in these reality tv shows is probably a very handy source of additional funds. They never seem to have the money for anything but used trucks & other vehicles & mining equipment, which always seem to break down & add to the dramas.
I’ve also watched quite a few episodes of Ice Road Truckers & Outback Truckers which are similar shows.
I’ve sometimes wondered how much time the film crews put in, whether there’s always an off-screen camera operator or whether it’s a combination of camera crew & in-place cameras operated by the participants themselves (e.g. in truck cabs) & how they put the scenes together.
Larry is such a character in Jade Fever. His suspenders stop his pants from falling down at the back and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Larry's driving skills, his vehicle car parts and metal yard always something going on.
Have you seen Ice Gold, the location is either in Alaska or Greenland, very remote as helicoptered in?Looking for rubies and gold. A permit was not granted to retrieve a ruby find. Indigenous rights take precedence over mining. Money is made in miners paying for permits but money is lost from big finds.
Yeah, I watched a wee bit of Ice Cold Gold episodes about twice. But it doesn’t appeal to me as much as the others. Not exactly sure why – maybe because the participants fly in for short periods from the US so it seems a bit plastic. I don’t watch it.
''The amount of time & effort they put in for no return before they hit a vein or boulder or outcrop that pays off but never seems to make them millionaires.''
That seems to be the hook…they hit a vein, make some decent money that goes on the bills, and then the cycle starts again.
I would like to know what they are paid?
But it seems to me even if they were paid a million bucks, or found a million dollar opal, they would still be mining. It's an obsession coupled with a certain lifestyle.
I can talk about Ngai Tahu. All I will say is they have settled with the Crown four plus times since the 1800s. I have little time for them except to commend them for not wasting their final (?) settlement money and growing their enterprises.
The oddest thing around Coober Pedy, which is one of the main places for mining Opals, are the signs all over the land surrounding the town. They warn you not to walk backwards. People tend to do that when trying to get into just the right place to take a picture.
The problem is that the area is covered with uncapped holes. They are dug by miners looking for Opals and IIRC they are about 10 metres deep. If they don't find anything they just walk away from the hole and leave it. There must be thousands of them.
The signs warn you not to walk backward as you may step straight back into a very deep hole.
We visited a couple of times when we lived in Australia. We only stopped for a night each time. The first time was a trip to Alice and Uluru and the second was going up to Darwin. Coober Pedy is on the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to Darwin There isn't that much to see really. There was a home that had become a museum. When they wanted an extra bedroom they had started excavating and found a very rich source of Opals. It never did become a bedroom and they left it partially finished so people could see what a mine looked like.
The people didn't really live underground, The living areas were basically cut into a cliff, like caves and then windows were put into the front of the room which faced the outside. It was mostly done because there was nothing there to build houses from. No trees in the area. It did help with the summer heat though.
That was back in the 1990s though. We haven't been back that way for a long long time
No trees was a bit of an exaggeration. There is a bit of scrub but nothing that would give you any sort of timber you could build with. It isn't sandy desert or anything like that. The whole of the red centre is pretty much like that.
I remember seeing a map once that covered the area about 1000 km north from Coober Pedy. That would be about 300 km north of Alice Springs or 1200 km south of Darwin. It showed all the cattle stations in the area. They ranged, IIRC, from about 4,000 sq km to 11,000 sq km. That isn't hectares. That is sq km. I don't think I could live there but we loved touring the country. It is so vast and lovely.
I commented above that as I remembered them the shafts were 10 metres deep and there were thousands of them. I just looked at a story about the rescue crew for problems in the mines and there is a quote from the guy who runs it.
""There are 2 million 20-to-30-metre-deep mine shafts around here," he said."
I have been thinking about the post which Mickeysavage wrote on 1 January 2022 titled A Few Predictions for 2022.
@ 6.1 I wrote, I think by mid January the Omicron strain will already be established in NZ.
I have also thought about who will get the chocolate fish as Mickeysavage wrote, A chocolate fish will be awarded to the most outlandish prediction that proves to be correct.
There were no competition rules or a date given to award the chocolate fish.
The debate raging between those who deny the severity of the pandemic and insist it is 'coming towards the end' is fascinating, and perhaps this is just the usual division of society amongst optimists and pessimists.
Two interesting reads:
Watching the marches against mandatory vaccination for NHS staff and I'm angry.
I am trying to work out the best strategy to avoid getting Omicron. I was surprised to hear that N 95 masks need to be fitted properly and that a cotton one could be more effective than an unfitted N 95 mask. I will probably use a cotton mask and a blue one over the top when I go to the supermarket or the school.
My biggest risk of exposure is collecting the grandkids from school or when care is needed over the school holidays.
I saw a heading on stuff recently that ACC claims have gone up 300 per cent for home exercise injuries. A lot of time is now being spent in the home.
Yeah but from what base. It is really irritating when only percentages are reported. Big difference if it is 300% of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000…………… and over what time period.
Anyone wondering about the difference between semitic labels gets clarification here:
The terms Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews are close synonyms and are often used interchangeably. All three terms refer to those who have descended from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. The terms are used figuratively a few times in the New Testament in reference to the spiritual seed of Abraham. When speaking of the fleshly nation of Israel, the term Hebrew ties the people directly to Abraham; Israelite relates them to Jacob, or Israel, and Jew or Jews reminds us of this people's homeland and is used to distinguish the race from other people or to contrast them with others.
I was fascinated to discover some years ago that the terms semite or semitic actually relate to Middle Eastern languages & include not only Jews but Arabs, many of whom when criticising Israel are often accused of being anti-semitic.
Semitic adjective relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.
relating to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic.
I don’t know why the term semite has come to be commonly perceived as specific to Jews or Jewish Israelis.
I’ve been surprised to learn there is virtually no archaeological evidence of King David’s existence or of his royal city of Jerusalem (just two steles of two other local contemporary people’s rulers – whose inscriptions are believed by some to refer to the “House of David” but are disputed as to whether they actually do), & that even among scholars who accept his existence (seemingly most) there’s still dispute over whether he became a powerful king as described in the Old Testament’s Hebrew Bible or remained essentially just a local chieftan in Judah.
He’s such an important, iconic figure in Christianity I just assumed there was more strongly-supporting historical evidence than just the Bible narratives.
I guess when archaelogists do digs in Israel generally & Jeruslam specifically there’s always going to be the problem of turning up multiple layers of settlements & towns, segments of walls, wells from earlier times & peoples etc built on top of or near each other & debate as to whether these can be reliably attributed to the times figures in the Bible are calculated to have lived there.
Listening to Chris ‘Actually’ Luxon saying on morning report that he wasn’t criticising for criticising sake, but it sure sounded like that to me. Actually he sounded pretty useless all in all, but then that’s the Nature of Nats
"Despite encouragement from her tertiary mentors and family to do her PhD, Kataraina found her calling. She adores working in nature and applying her mātauranga (knowledge) to what she does now at the Ngāti Kea Ngāti Tuara Rūnanga Trust.
“Science is great and much more theory-based, which isn’t me,” she laughs.
“I’ve realised as I get older that working in the practice-space with people is more me. I find it so much more satisfying being on our tupuna Maunga (ancestral mountain), Horohoro, and seeing how we can make changes.”
Horohoro is a flat-topped maunga and the main feature of the rural farming community with the same name. It stands about 13km southwest of Rotorua. Its full name is Te Horohoroinga o ngā ringa o Kahumatamomoe and is part of the tribal boundary of Ngāti Kea Ngāti Tuara who’ve occupied the whenua (land) under their maunga for more than 500 years.
In her role at the rūnanga, Kataraina’s already compiled a list of what her aspirations are for her tribal rohe (boundary).
“I don’t want to be CEO or anything,” she says.
“Instead, I’ve got my sights set on more environmental aspirations such as working on our maunga. Creating and implementing pest control to create a natural corridor to Mokaihaha to bring our native kōkako back to Horohoro. So, I’ve given myself goals so I can stay on and keep contributing to improving our rohe (area) and this key goal."
I dont think so. You have appointed yourself the sole arbiter of COVID truth. Discussion is over.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[RL: Point proven. Your propensity to moderate on content has now gotten away on you. You consistently abuse your position of power here to bully, silence or diminish opinions you dont like. Oh yes you are very good at making it look deniable, but the pattern is clear over many years and many topics.
That's complete rubbish Red. Without Weka and Lprent ( who is obviously too busy to spend a lot of time here) countering the misinformation and amateur reckons around covid then this site would be a laughingstock.
I thought you would be more professional by using the back-end to air your grievance actually.
Personally I have nothing but admiration for the work Weka donates around here. She's a sensible, modern thinker and has helped teach many on critical issues facing us all.
It might have been my imagination, but if the mods are really at the stage of overwriting another mod's moderation in order to accuse them of bullying, there'll be a shitfight going on in the backend.
There are nowhere near enough voices that challenge thinking amongst the cheerleaders to be found round these parts.
I may not comment often or agree but I find your input to be thought provoking and I value that it tests what I think to be true. Not all enjoy having their beliefs and opinions questioned.
Oh I'd have preferred to have kept out of it, but I can't ignore an unwarranted attack on someone I admire ( same with the abuse of power against you the other day) who has made this place better.
If he's really gone then at least there will be less whataboutism whenever male on female violence is discussed.
I'd also add that I've never witnessed any bullying or abuse of power from Weka. She's always fair, considerate, and doesn't condescend in her moderating. When she has needed to give me a tune up for indiscretions I've always grown in maturity.
weka's roughed me up a couple of times (can't imagine why 🙂
I rate weka highly, for sincerity and patience. The Covid discussions have caused some serious wobbles here on TS, as they have in the wider community. I hope RedLogix reconsiders – this may take a day or two, I say from experience. These discussions here are worthwhile and far better than any I've found anywhere else and a lot of the credit for that must go to the various moderators, be they Bill *winces, RedLogix, weka or the others 🙂
The problem arises, not with people attacking moderators – though that must be irksome, but with this issue of public health where untrue claims could, perhaps damage the reputation of the site and create a misleading atmosphere of acceptance of untruths. The problem is, both parties believe they are on the right side of the issue and both are passionate about maintaining the integrity of the position they hold. It's very similar, I reckon, to the climate change issue, where media declared they would not publish denial comments. I laughed and enjoyed that move, but deniers, and freedom-of-speechers screamed blue murder. I don't know if there's a simple solution to these tensions – they seem to ebb and flow, depending on various factors. I'n any case, as Jacinda might say, be kind 🙂
At least no one has been impersonating moderators and writing moderation notes to themselves, as I did, many years ago, on Kiwiblog. I pretended to be David Farrar and gave myself a strop-up, in what I thought was a humorous manner, but David didn't laugh, instead, banned me for life (for the 3rd time).
If I'm wrong but what I want happens, we will incrementally and permanently lose freedom from state control (but we'll be alive to try to get them back).
If the covid-minimisers are wrong and we let omicron rip open the borders by ending MIQ, have no vax pass or check in app, and not bother with isolating infected people, then thousands of NZers will die.
And even when commenting crosses into moderating, the warnings have always been a reasonable take (regardless of whether I disagree), explicit, and in bold.
Yes Weka is special. Weka talks to the problem. There is a total lack of ego, and plenty of prods to think more about issues, and an openness to new ideas with substance. We are lucky on this blog. Being challenged is hard for some to accept.
Geez… that is a bit of an understatement. He gave me a kick up the backside once years ago. Have no idea now what it was about. Regardless, I enjoy his histrionics because the victim has always deserved it. 🙂
I'll miss you and would hope you would reconsider – maybe even just to return for a while as a commentator. Although we disagree on a lot we also agree on many things. You are one of the few voices that is optimistic and takes a world is overall better than to used to be view and nuclear power is a useful means of energy.
I do think the covid debates have tested people as people have quite firm positions.
People should do everything they can against Omicron, but it's likely large numbers will be infected, the Covid-19 Response Minister says.
…
But "the cat is out of the bag to some extent, and we know that we're that we're likely to see more cases, and potentially significant more cases associated with these ones.
"There's no silver bullet we are going to experience a large number of cases."
Individualising the public health response and arbitrarily ruling out the actual 'silver bullet' that previously saved us from widespread transmission, lockdowns. It's is baffling to think this is the same Labour party that achieved an outright majority based on their successful navigation of this crisis. They are happy to let business and media direct the response now, I feel for at-risk people some of whom feel they've been thrown to the wolves of BAU capitalism.
there would be more protests, as super spreader events given omicron, which would mean either allowing them, or mass arrests (which presents its own set of transmission issues)
political fallout
Then there is the issue of strategy. If we accept that it's unlikely that omicron can be eliminated, what's the timeframe for lockdowns? Is it until everyone is boostered? How does that work with a rolling vax schedule?
Is it until the new omicron vaccine is developed and made available to NZ and then given to the public (4 months?)
And in the meantime we would still likely have some community spread of omicron.
I think there are big gaps in the current strategy, and I think ruling out regional lockdowns as needed is unwise, but I'm struggling to see how lockdowns would work in this situation.
re individualising, this is where one of gaps is. A payout to beneficiaries so they can buy some extra food and medical supplies would be good. Doing the actual mahi of community building to make sure people are ok rather than just telling people to find a buddy in their neighbourhood.
But I do think the government is doing quite a lot for the collective.
Yes I don't disagree. I, like you, see the Govt response as good but it could be significantly better, especially in the realm of community building and direct payments to everybody. We have had 30 years of 'I've got mine, Jack', it would be nice to see the 'communitarian' approach we have been told that this Govt would be following.
…but it could be significantly better, especially in the realm of community building…
Agree.
For instance, when given the opportunity to look ahead and address current medical personnel shortages in response to a pandemic, did they include registered nurse training in their Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund?
No. They have missed a few opportunities during the pandemic to help those who need help, and provide further resilience to all.
Right, but so does 10,000 infections a day. Each one of those is required to isolate for 14 days, while their close contacts isolate for 10, these people won't be working/spending much during this isolation time, this has had an effect across the world in places who never bothered with lockdowns at all.
Ultimately lockdowns work, from a physical point-of-view, by preventing the transmission of the virus. They can't live outside a host, so isolation is highly effective of breaking the chain.
Targeted regional lockdowns, combined with direct payments to individuals, rather than employers, would be a better idea than the level 4 lockdowns of last year imo.
Admittedly this is all largely academic because the die is cast and we are where we are.
China is still following a zero-COVID strategy and their economy and public health system has been functioning better than elsewhere. 8.1% GDP growth in 2021.
It's not just the required isolation that hits the economy, it's the folks who isolate because they're not morons, and the folks who might consider going out but it's just not as appealing as it used to be.
The first level 4 lockdown in 2020 the energy payment was doubled. The food grant SNG needs to be doubled. When people are at home with children, children eat more, when at school some get access to a no cost lunch. Good nutrition is so important for the immune system.
Individualising the public health response and arbitrarily ruling out the actual 'silver bullet' that previously saved us from widespread transmission, lockdowns.
Lockdowns were a policy failure, unless you believe the following are indicative of success. And remember we've never had lockdowns for other viruses (including the seasonal flu which reportedly kills 500-600 people a year).
We have borrowed billions of dollars, including paying healthy workers to stay at home, which almost certainly will be met with cuts to services in the future. That means cuts to spending on health, education and welfare. Are we prepared for these cuts? Will we say they are necessary and we need to just suck it up?
Two months ago, it was reported that Christchurch Hospital had told GPs it will no longer accept referrals for general surgeries unless the condition is "life-threatening", as its waitlist has become "unmanageable". Some women will die as a result of not getting a mammogram as quickly as they should. Others will likely die from not being operated on in a timely manner.
According to Canterbury District Health Board chief of surgery Greg Robertson: “Our capacity to provide surgical care has been significantly affected by Covid-19 alert levels 3 and 4 that commenced on 17 August 2021″. From the same November 2021 article: "Between August 15 (two days before the first Delta case was reported) and October 24, an estimated 102,959 planned care (elective) procedures were cancelled due to the outbreak”. Why should the capacity to provide surgical care be compromised when the risk of harm from COVID is low?
The Health Ministry's 193-page pandemic plan (2017) made no mention of lockdowns. In fact, the word "lockdown" doesn't appear. That's interesting because the plan made some startling assumptions.
The New Zealand standard planning model assumes a severe pandemic wave in which 40 percent of the New Zealand population (more than 1.9 million people) become ill over an eight-week period. The peak incidence in the model occurs in weeks three to five, when about 1.5 million people – a third of New Zealand's population – would be ill, convalescing or just recovered. These figures are based on the New Zealand population statistics published by Stats New Zealand 2013 – 4,766,140.
The standard planning model assumes a total case fatality rate of 2 percent, within which about 38,000 deaths would occur over the eight-week period, peaking at about 23,500 in week four (compared with New Zealand's normal weekly death rate of around 599).
A third of our population affected? In fact, 15,400 people have contracted Covid (over a two year period). As a proportion of the team of 5 million, that represents 0.0031 (nearly a third of one percent).
By abandoning future lockdowns, the Government has essentially admitted they failed, though of course no politician would have the courage to admit it. Maybe we'll get an admission many years later.
An examination of over 100 Covid-19 studies reveals that many relied on false assumptions that over-estimated the benefits and under-estimated the costs of lockdown. The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths…It is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history.
According to Gibson:
Lockdowns are ineffective at reducing Covid-19 deaths. Variation amongst counties in the United States, where over one-fifth had no lockdown, shows no impact of lockdowns. Specifically, one cannot reject the hypothesis of zero difference in deaths between lockdown and non-lockdown counties. Using these results to inform a counterfactual of what would have happened if New Zealand had not gone into a Level 4 lockdown faces the criticism that the setting is different. Yet it is a universal force of human nature – privately taking steps to reduce exposure to a new risk – that likely makes lockdown superfluous. Moreover, evidence from elsewhere suggests that lockdowns were either superfluous or cause total deaths to rise because of non-Covid mortality.
Yes, seems you might be right Bill – " mandating injections for hospital staff had nothing to do with it"
Dunedin hospital has around 3,000 staff and 388 beds. 28 beds were unavailable due to staff unavailability (7.2% of beds).
They lost 30 staff to the mandate requirement (1% of staff). Of course, some may have since been replaced.
There may not be a 1:1 relationship between staff and beds available, but the mandate resignations seem small compared to the total staff shortfall.
In fact, the story you link to says the hospital was in a similar dire situation (actually worse), in March 2020 – before any mandate requirement. There is no doubt our health system features chronic staffing shortages, but you are trying to build an anti-mandate narrative with superficial "facts" it would seem to me.
Your link states seven doctors and eleven nurses were gone, and that three senior medical officers were on stand down alongside another seventeen nurses and thirteen 'other staff'. (Very rough calculation quickly gets beyond the 30 you mentioned)
How many on stand-down caved and 'took the plunge'? Dunno.
Odd thing to be kicking people out of an already buckling health service in a pandemic when the worry is that it might be overburdened, but hey.
Basic medical ethics that would demand treatment is a personal choice and subject to informed consent – implying then, free of inducement or coercion, is all that's required to oppose mandates. The doctors, nurses, and other health practitioners (psychiatrists, psycho-therapists, care workers….etc) who have been 'scrapheaped' by the mandates are consequential details worth mentioning – ie, they do not form the basis of a pro-autonomy/anti-mandate position.
Basic medical ethics that would demand treatment is a personal choice and subject to informed consent – implying then, free of inducement or coercion, is all that's required to oppose mandates.
Conflict of rights though. Are you thinking that nurses shouldn't be required to have any vaccinations right now, as a matter of personal choice? Or just the covid vax.
Other reasons, off the top of my head, for getting close to code black:
the closed border means less staff. Like many other industries, healthcare has long relied on imported labour
SDHB is still in a mess after a long history of mismanagement and financial fraud.
general rundown of the SDHB services because of neoliberalism
secondary effects of neoliberalism eg people using A and E because they can't afford to go to a doctor
people are presenting with more complex health issues
If the issue is code black, we can look at all the factors. If the issue is the vax mandate, then looking at that on its own makes sense for the mandate but not the code black.
In past years, and no matter the virulence of a particular strain, I'm not sure that nurses and caregivers in rest home facilities were required to have the flu vaccine at pain of losing their job. Encouraged, yes. But delivered an ultimatum? (Seems not)
And fully – Code Black likely always results from a suite of contributory factors.
The influenza virus is different from the COVID-19 one. Recall the initial estimates, based on the reproductive number (R0), to achieve so-called herd immunity (AKA population immunity), and how they went up with increasing R0 of the new variants such as Delta. Vaccination strategies should and do take those differences into account, to a degree, and one size does not fit all.
Indeed, which is why they go all out with fully vaccinating as many as possible, including children. Even when a better vaccine comes around this may stay the most appropriate strategy, but possibly only requiring one annual shot instead of the ‘needle cushion’ approach that’s followed at present.
Id suggest very little….short of a level 4 lockdown and even then with essential workers and supermarkets it will still spread. We are reliant on contact to survive as is the virus….remembering essential workers are whanau members…they are not hermits.
Nurses in hospitals are required, when starting training, to have a suite of vaccinations and to keep them current, they are sent reminders to do so. My flatmate is a nurse and has not yet heard of a colleague who has refused to have a booster or updated vaccine of the large number they started out with.
The covid vaccine misinformation campaign has seen a few at her hospital leave though none on her wards or her colleagues though she did say some have left.
Not just nurses, and not just in NZ. Vaccine mandates eh?
Health Science Screening
Student Health is responsible for managing immunity screening and vaccinations for all students entering a health sciences division course (Medicine, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Medical Laboratory Science, Dentistry, Dental Technology, and Oral Health.)
It's really not that unusual, and reflects the consensus expert medical opinion about the health benefits of vaccinations.
Vaccinations By law, medicine, nursing and physiotherapy (not pharmacy) students are classified as category A healthcare workers and must be screened for and protected against the following [nine] diseases:
…
This programme is designed to protect you, and the patients with whom you come into contact, against preventable illness.
…
Screening and immunisation are compulsory and failure to comply will result in discontinuation.
Well, it might not if our "red" is still more than most half-arsed lockdowns. And if the tests caught the Nelson cases once removed from the border, rather than 3 degrees of separation. And if we're going into it with a fully vax rate higher than many developed countries have yet achieved, let alone were at two months ago.
We're not dead yet, even if it does hurt.
100% vaccination will not be 'good enough'
Maybe. Still, it would suck if our vaccination level + red might have been good enough, (especially to delay catastrophe until after omicron-specific vaccines become available) but we never knew for sure because we decided that the merchants of doom were finally correct on their third prediction of the inevitability of failure (having failed dismally in 2020 and 2021).
I thimk you are being unfair to the health professionals and the gov….consider, Omicron showed up as an issue around a month or so ago and it spreads fast….no time to modify vaccines or introduce them….all the previous mitigations are largely ineffective.
Place yourself in the decision making position…what are your options?
Cut MIQ numbers
Go to red when it started turning up at miq
Go to L4 instead of red when it turned up in Nelson – even if just a regional L4.
Frankly, I'd also have considered rejecting bail if there was a reasonable case to be made someone broke lockdown restrictions, first time.
All options.
Most of them ruled out by opposition for the sake of opposition, and not just from the Opposition.
Is red enough to keep cases at manageable levels, with the assistance of personal efforts and widespread vaccination? Maybe. We'll get up to hundreds of cases a day in coming week or two, probably, but after that there will likely not be any plateau – it'll either come down again or keep skyrocketing and we're all fucked for months.
We have borrowed billions of dollars, including paying healthy workers to stay at home, which almost certainly will be met with cuts to services in the future. That means cuts to spending on health, education and welfare. Are we prepared for these cuts? Will we say they are necessary and we need to just suck it up?
A third of our population affected? In fact, 15,400 people have contracted Covid (over a two year period). As a proportion of the team of 5 million, that represents 0.0031 (nearly a third of one percent).
Yes, because lockdowns work. Until they don't provide meaningful improvement over the existing vaccination, masking, distancing, and so on.Try the rates of countries that didn't go to L4 for a decent length of time.
By abandoning future lockdowns, the Government has essentially admitted they failed
nope, they're admitting that circumstances change (and possibly that the morons have yelled loudly enough to get them to make a suboptimal decision).
The article you linked to talked about Auckland being in lockdown due to polio (some 80 years ago, so nothing more recent?), not the entire country. And despite 500-600 flu deaths each year, we don't have lockdowns for the flu. But this comment piqued my interest:
“New Zealand tends to go for the traditional public health measures just like most societies, so the tried-and-true isolation of the sick quarantine of people who might be infected – just like with the old days of smallpox and other diseases where they quarantined ships,” she said.
Isolation of the sick? No, we isolated the healthy. And to repeat, the pandemic plan published by the Health Ministry in 2017 made no mention of lockdowns, which perhaps isn't surprising as they don't work and impose significant costs.
We've done pretty well with disease control since the development of vaccines.
NZ has had lockdowns before. We imposed them as needed, especially if you take some US versions of the term. But we haven't really needed them since things like air travel or 100kph speed limits came into play. Communications took time, so devolved control made sense then.
But they've always been in the infectious disease control playbook, for the right sort of vector.
What's fascinating is that even if lockdowns were new, that doesn't mean they don't work.
They do, if implemented early, and hard. Otherwise we'd be like the US or anywhere else that failed or didn't attempt an early lockdown. A real one.
Which is one worry I have about the traffic light system. Is it a gamble the government is making just because the white-anters have eroded confidence in measures that work, is the government taking a gamble that
omicron really is mild and
that vaccination and social distancing will at least limit the speed of its spread?
Or is it basically pretty confident in those assumptions and the government and the modellers know what they're doing and shit won't snowball on them?
The question is whether they've rejected one possible option because it has diminished marginal protection for the population, or merely because two years of whicnging has made it unenforceable.
Thank you for clarifying…it was not a poke at spelling but a genuine query.
What option have they rejected?
As far as I can see their options are very limited but within those limitations I think they have made the wrong call, mandates will not improve the health outcomes ( and are detrimental to social cohesion )….ultimately the gov control is exceedingly limited….this version of the virus is going to proliferate no matter.
L4 lockdown use has been explicitly rejected, especially as a nationwide measure, if I recall correctly? I would be genuinely happy if it were still in the toolbox, at the very least.
I also reject the inevitability of defeat. Each day we slow it down or even beat it back a bit is a win for someone.
It often comes back to my mum. She's in her 80s now. She's active, volunteers, gets out and about. She still contributes. We meet regularly – today, as amatter of fact. And then I think of all the mums who have died from covid in the last couple of years, even if they were in their 80s. And the kids.
And yes, "from" not fucking "with".
So if omicron comes and she has a bad flip of the coin, she had a couple of years that millions of others did not because their governments did too little, too late, and thought GDP was more important than lives.
Those couple of years? That's a win. A couple more years? Another win.
Consider this…my mother has in home care including showering, medication etc and even before covid there was a dearth of in home carers…..if you gave her the choice of staying at home with unvaccinated carers v being placed in a rest home I can guarantee you what her choice would be….no contest.
Possibly (it is unclear yet with Omicron) however we have 94% working age double vaxed so we are unnecessarily excluding 6% of the potential workforce…a workforce that is understaffed and under pressure even before we have isolations and illnesses.
If they are disproportionately going to be the cause of the disruption, best to put them on notice now and sort out alternatives or give them a chance to get vaccinated, rather than have them just not come in one day.
everyone has has had ample opportunity to be vaccinated. (some under duress)…if they are not it is a choice they have made , and as we are seeing vaccination does not stop the spread of Omicron…..it may reduce severity of symptoms, but that has little impact on spread.
But what if there's an omicron vaccine in a few weeks rather than months? Or the booster does have significant protection against asymptomatic infection?
As for the vaccine, looking at the link I supplied for the claim, pfizer was saying March. Whether that's the start of trials from scratch, or whether the FDA says it's close enough to the previous one that it doesn't have to do everything from scratch, that's the question.
Then there's the production rollout, NZgov assessment, purchasing… sure, it might not be on NZ streets at the end of march. But we'll have a ticking clock, and all we need to do is slow the spread, not stop the spread with what we have.
And even if all your unicorns eventuate, consider this….the gov have approved the purchase and distribution of RATs…..sufficient shipments wont arrive for months, a product that has been manufactured for months.
Seems to me that let's say 8 weeks to the end of march, 2 week generation for the virus, R0 of 5.
That's 4 cycles.
We've probably barely got the tip of the current outbreak, ballpark 200 community omicron cases atm?
Gen. total
1000
5000
25000
125000 by end of march
BUT
add masks and boosters and distancing, say they halve the infection rate (illustrative):
Gen. total
500
1250
3275
like, 10 or 12k by end of march, it's a bit late to math
The point is that if we put the effort in now, we slow the pressure on the system regardless of whether an apparent hail mary throw comes about – but we give it more time to come about, too.
That means lowering the odds of spreading the disease by any way we can, including by requiring that people who have many close contacts as part of their jobs be vaccinated. It's good enough for a cup of coffee, and it's good enough for our mums.
It was late…..you have halved the infection rate for the entire population rather than realising that the infection rate may (possibly) halve for fully vaccinated as opposed to unvaccinated…..a very different calculation.
Look at the the daily numbers from NSW in a population with very similar vaccination rates and other public health measures, including masks, mandates and distancing and you will see a real world trajectory…..then remove mandates and decide what difference it would have made.
That Bloomberg piece explains how he seems to have the Republican party by the short'n'curlys. I'm curious to know what stuff he did that was of any good for the US or the world.
There's protecting borders and then there's treating refugees like scum.
The UN is far from perfect but its better to have nations around the table together than not. If an agreement wasn't being honored there must be consequences. But if some blowass makes demands over riding existing agreements it's hardly shirking of responsibility.
Treating international relations as a game to rark up support from airheads is dangerous for the whole world.
Any peoples can live side by side if they have respect for one another and have no hidden malicious intent.
The science is sound regarding our effect on our rock, don't be foolish.
You right wingers are a danger to our species and many others too.
''There's protecting borders and then there's treating refugees like scum.''
Yes, they turn them back, and guess what, they try again. Makes a mockery of officially applying for residency. I think you didn't get the ''home'' analogy.
''But if some blowass makes demands over riding existing agreements it's hardly shirking of responsibility.'
Talking of vetoes…
''Any peoples can live side by side if they have respect for one another and have no hidden malicious intent.''
If you are a TRUE adherent to the Islamic faith, that is not possible in thought or deed if the possibility exists to show your true self.
''The science is sound regarding our effect on our rock, don't be foolish.''
Please remember I have stated on numerous occasions that the climate is changing. But I have no time for man made climate change believers. Like weka, opposing views on the subject are not welcome.
''You right wingers are a danger to our species and many others too.''
"But I have no time for man made climate change believers."
This is great news! I suggest, Blade, that you compile a list of those "climate change believers" here on TS, blacklist them (us) and don't interact with them in any way – you have no time for them, as you say).
I'm top of the list and more than willing to be ignored by you.
It's a breakthrough day for reason on The Standard!
Good ole, Robert. He loves to be selective. Here's what I wrote:
''Please remember I have stated on numerous occasions that the climate is changing. But I have no time for man made climate change believers. Like weka, opposing views on the subject are not welcome.''
Making arbitrary statements without explaining your specific thinking and reasons for it is just acting like a dickhead.
You need to state why you don't think the current last century of climate change can't be attributed to humans. After all 4.5 billion years ago the 'climate` was most likely due to bits of space junk. We only recently in geological terms got out of a glacial likely to be primarily triggered by a point Milankovitch cycle. We probably entered a a ice-age about 45 million years ago after Antarctica drifted into the southern polar region and formed enough of an ice cap to act as a global deep freeze.
Then we have the most rapid known rise in CO2 in at least the last 3 million years happening over less than 200 years, and you're explaining a congruent rise in temperatures by the net equivalent if tapping your nose.
Makes you just look lazy, ignorant and too stupid to be able to argue a case.
Actually a lot like "Trumpy" – a person who never managed to do anything that actually works apart from increasing his debts and screwing people doing work for him.
Yet despite this supposed focus, the government records show that Border Patrol was observing more immigrants sneaking into the country than when President Trump took office. In fiscal year 2016, Border Patrol agents witnessed about 100,000 successful entries. By 2018, the number had risen to nearly 128,000. In 2019, it hit 150,000. Through four months of 2020, it was on pace to hit almost 156,000.
2- He pulled the US out of some United Nation agreements.
Weakening the international rules based order and increasing the risks of war, disease and poverty is not a good thing.
3- He supported miners, and slowed decline in their industry.
Meanwhile, industry income continues to plummet as year in year out coal consumption declines by more than 20%, mine closures have new highs and job losses continue to accelerate.
Jobs are being lost from the US coal industry at the fastest rate in decades as the fuel gets crowded out of an electricity market that is shrinking because of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of coal mining jobs dropped 12 per cent to 43,800 in April, the US labour department reported. The financial picture is darkening in coal districts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Wyoming.
4- He made freeloading Nato members pay their way.
Lie. NATO isn't a club, there are no dues and decisions made by member countries to up their spending were made years before tRump arrived on the scene.
6- Pulled the US out of the Global Climate Pact. That's a biggy for me.
So you're an anti-science loon, too. Good-oh.
7- He stood up to China.
Yeah, he sure did.
Key Findings
The Trump administration imposed nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products, which is equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades.
We estimate that retaining the tariffs put in place under the Trump administration would reduce economic output, income, and employment.
The Biden administration has kept most of the Trump administration tariffs in place, except for a five-year suspension of tariffs that were part of a WTO aircraft dispute.
The tariffs that are still in effect are estimated to reduce long-run GDP by 0.23 percent, wages by 0.15 percent, and employment by 176,800 full-time equivalent jobs.
So the Office of the Childrens' Commissioner is getting tweaked. A sole commissioner to be replaced by a board, oversight of the highly problematic Oranga Tamariki to be moved into a new organisation, and some other current OCC investigative powers moved to the Ombudsman.
The OCC has an important role, being both advocate and an investigator to protect some of our most vulnerable and at risk people. Frankly, I'm against devolving any of that responsibility away from the OCC – as the Spinoff points out in a much longer and more detailed article, a separate OT oversight body already exists and is not nearly as independent as the OCC currently is.
I also have suspicions that a panel of three will produce meetings minutes over months, while an individual commissioner can make a statement within hours.
Anyhoo – submissions close on Wednesday 26 Jan (the day after tomorrow).
Save the Children are against the changes, and also point out that there has been no work done on seeing what children actually want – something that the OCC might have been able to help the government out with, if the thought had occurred.
no work done on seeing what children actually want
Doesn't surprise me at all. Media are in collusion with govt in the ongoing effort to ensure that children have no say.
You may recall seeing children interviewed quite often on the news but I'm confident every single instance falls into the category of uncontraversial. The tacit psychology still universally operative is that children are seen but not heard – despite several generations of kids being heard plenty at home & in school the past half-century.
Since the seen but not heard thing is conventionally allocated to the Victorian era, it goes to show how powerful the inertial effect of brainwashing actually is!
But it probably didn't occur to anyone, yet when I was involved with a child-oriented project that also involved OCC, they were the party that suggested actually involving kids in ongoing development.
Yeah I did mean tacit collusion due to folks not thinking about it – convention does embed like that. I gather there's been steps in the direction of reform – kids are expected to report abuse nowadays? Dunno who to, when the abuse happens at home. Teachers??
But I see no reason why policy ought not to incorporate feedback from kids. Especially an entire class put to the question, with encouragement from teacher to respond to a visiting expert researcher. Kids like to volunteer opinions in a supportive social matrix.
"I voted against compulsory vaccinations for NHS staff and for covid passports. My worry is that it leads us in the direction of ID cards and formal identification of people for everything they want to do. This is the direction in which it goes."
His apprehension is reasonable. Big Brother seems to be in the pipeline in London, since all them outdoor cameras often record stuff that shows up in the news. However policy need not necessarily be driven by fear. Corbyn had the opportunity to advocate for a supervisory system that monitors the control system on behalf of the people. I bet he never did so. Typical leftist.
It's the ole who watches the watchers? thing. Parliament could enact legislation that specifies a supervision system that monitors usage of the control system. All systems are vulnerable to capture by vested interests, so the design challenge is to use lateral-thinking to prevent that.
For instance, supervisors could be public servants by default, or they could include parliamentarians, or even party hacks. Biodiversity spreads risk! You could use JPs, for instance. Anyone with mana & a track record of public service perhaps.
Corbyn's an a-typical leftist in these days
In some respects. Siding with Palestinians against Israelis was understandable, but it takes two to tango so triadic framing would have got him out of that hole & he's a typical leftist insofar as being too old-fashioned to do innovative thought to solve a problem…
I was listening to Chris Hipkins this morning. The more I listened the more I heard National I.D card on the way for us under the pretext of Covid health measures.
The more I listened the more I heard National I.D card on the way for us under the pretext of Covid health measures.
Ya think?! Here's a taster from cut and pastes from a link I provided in a post that (I suspect) no-one bothered to read because, y'know, the link crossed a blue line.
From the first reading for Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill
Eugenie Sage (Green)
“We note too that digital identity is potentially really important for our voting system. There has been provision made for online voting at local authority level for trials, but I don’t think any local authority took that up because of concerns about hacking and insecurity of information. So the work in this space may assist with that.
Glen Bennet (Labour)
“We are now having to ensure that this piece of legislation, which is around our digital footprint and our identity and the framework that it brings, is fit for standards in 2021 and beyond…
Simon Bridges (National)
We support the intent.
James McDowall (ACT)
I’m not sure, based on the bill, if Application Programming Interfaces are going to be used to share data between private and public organisations. […] but I think the direction of travel is right and we’re happy to commend this to the House.”
Terisa Ngobi, (Labour)
COVID-19 is a really good example of why this Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill is timely and critical […] Again, it’s really timely and I commend this bill to the House.
Ingrid Leary, (Labour)
It’s absolutely crucial that we are able to keep our digital identity safe so that we’re not exposed to fiscal issues around banking, that we can move freely and restrict movement where necessary, and just enjoy our freedoms in the non-digital world… So this is a very timely and important initiative, and I commend the bill to the House.”
Nicola Grigg, (National)
a framework that will ensure consistency in the basic principles of privacy and data protection is welcome by us on this side of the House, and indeed all sides of the House, and in a very quickly changing and evolving digital world, it is going to be essential to incorporate a framework that will engender trust in the public. So we are pleased to commend this bill to the House.”
Barbara Edmonds
I’m really keen to understand how the international interoperability works with Australia and the UK and whether other international country partners are going to it, in order to protect our Kiwis’ identification or information.
I can understand Labour lapping up this legislation . That would make for a tidy, and easily controlled hive.
As for National – these gin soaked wastes of space need to crawl down to the basement and dust off their party's constitution. Then they need to live by it. If that means 20 years of being a political joke, so be it.
Yes, with a touch of hate, envy and trying to fleece the taxpayer by putting money in one pocket and taking it out of the other. It's all smoke and mirrors. But it's a great act for the fiscally ignorant.
And in essence, didn't the requirement to produce ID for alcohol and set up driver licenses to be useful as ID, effectively give us something close to a national ID card anyway?
The problem comes from 'everything' about you being digitised and transited through a framework that's subject to a singular controlling authority.
I mentioned RealMe in the post I wrote, and the difference in scope and level of intrusion and control that a digital passport represents.
Our money is to be digital currency (NZ Reserve Bank is already exploring the introdution of a CBDC) held in digital wallets on the same device that will also hold vaccine status, other medical info, bio-metrics such as iris and/or fingerprint scans, location and movements, and a galaxy of financial info and behaviours sitting alongside (I dunno) a carbon credit tally?, social credit score?…
And all accessible by way of whatever "permissions" are inbuilt to apps developed by corporations (including permissions to pass info to other apps) and by whoever sits atop or at the centre of the Digital Framework who can then turn off access to society on the basis of the info they have. eg – late for booster shot, or guilty of some transgression = green pass turns red, and suddenly you can't buy certain services or physically participate in society.
It's already happening in areas of China, and India has a huge bio- digital system (co developed by Gates) that's supposedly voluntary ie, sign up for access to HIV meds or….no HIV meds type voluntary.
The shit coming down the pyke isn't of the same order as a library swipe card or a credit card.
As PM, Luxon would be spending an hour a day calling DHB heads in order to ask them about things that could just be in an excel file and things that are out of their control.
This dude obviously has no idea about politics. But, hold on, I've just read this:
''Clint Smith.
Director of Victor Strategy and Communications. Former Senior Policy & Communications Strategist for Jacinda Ardern and Ministerial Advisor. Opinions my own.''
That really explains a lot. Take away Jacinda and her spin and you are Left with something worse than the National Party… and that's saying something
It's all about staying relevant when you aren't. It's about suggesting stuff you probably won't have to follow up on. It's about PR.
So looking at Clint's credentials and then looking at what he wrote, he either has no idea about what his former job should have entailed… or he's just putting the boot in for the team.
Sure, it's all about anything other than the leader of the opposition wanting ministers to spend an hour a day calling CEOs about stuff that isn't even in the CEO's purview.
Staffed ICU beds is useful information, that's why the DHBs report on it regularly to the Ministry of Health. Not sure why the PM needs to personally call all the DHB CEs for this information when the Ministry could email the PM the report after they collate it.
The assumption is that lack of progress is due to the ministers or pm not nagging CEOs enough. Sure, as CEO Luxon might have ignored a board instruction until the chair started harrassing him daily, but NZ healthcare has been on decline for 30 years.
He could criticise the government for failing to up the pay of nurses and other healthcare workers. One of the things that has made recruitment hard is shite pay and shite staffing – both related to the ongoing and longstanding underfunding of public healthcare, and a self-perpetuating cycle.
But then there's the problem with the rest of healthcare underfunding, and the DHB "debts" accrued because DHBs happened to have more sick people than budgeted for.
Labour's regionalisation might address some of that… or it might just draw a veil over the same problem for another ten years. We'll have to wait and see, but my hopes aren't up.
And if Luxon, as a National party leader of the opposition, were to propose actually spending billions more of real money on healthcare, real pay rises for staff, real surgeries, not just the usual accounting "increase"… would that be believable? A massive public spending promise, especially one with equity in mind?
Nobody will take Lux seriously on that? Nobody unbiased and with a smidgen of commonsense in touch with reality.
Luxon wasn't speaking to them though. He's aiming for eejits who will saying, "He's a man of action, look at that, he's got his finger on it. I'm really impressed by him. He's way more onto it than the Government"
Looking at TV news tonight…and watching a confluence of negative factors coming together.., and listening to HDA, and Western Australian correspondent, Oliver Peterson, I would say by the end of the year you would have to be a halfwit to still support Labour.
Doesn't leave much of a choice does it?
Hell, apart from Chris, the rest of Labour used the Wellington anniversary to continue their holiday.
Btw – Western Australia and NZ will be a great watch given both have taken similar(?) approaches to Covid. I wonder who will go under fist?
ps- don’t take my comments too seriously. According to Weka I’m an exaggerator – what with predicting a lockdown and stuff.
I chose not to watch the network news tonight. I often jump between 1&3 to minimise the boredom, but that only works until I get the sense they're filling in. I have a good sense of media filling due to a decade spent in the TVNZ newsroom putting stories together.
My expectation for the year currently is random lines of infection in all directions that will take out unhealthy folk & tune-up the others. Darwinism as ecological process. Fast-food addicts that survived the first two waves ought to be the first group heading down the gurgler. They should exit declaring themselves happy to be victims of capitalism & singing I did it my way.
''I chose not to watch the network news tonight. I often jump between 1&3 to minimise the boredom.''
Great minds think alike. It's only the first 10 minutes for me. Then I switch off. Sometimes if I want to shock the system I will watch 'The Project' for the horror affect.
Sure. And that they would increase daily if the PM or minister called the CEOs about it daily. And something about drugs that has nothing to do with the CEOs.
But if the problem is more complex than CEOs not being motivated enough, it's Luxon being loose with the truth.
I expect anyone who called 20 CEOs every day would get to spend a whole lot of time listening to soothing muzak – just the thing after a morning wrangling the wrong-headed no-hopers and bad bargains that are National's best and brightest.
As I said above, the DHBs report those numbers regularly to the Ministry of Health. Not sure why the PM needs to personally call all the DHB CEs when the Ministry could email the PM the report after they collate it.
Technically they aren’t a union yet although hopefully they register soon. Also Unite for some related industries e.g. cinemas and fast food. Council of Trade Unions has a list of affiliate unions here which might be useful for workers in other industries.
Interesting. Counter-intuitive, so the devil's in the details:
Discovery’s lawyer Peter Kiely said O’Brien sought legal advice and spoke to her then-boss about the restraint of trade provisions before taking up her position as political editor in 2018. “That's what she negotiated, that’s what she agreed to.” Kiely said the wording of the contract referred to the type of business, not the type of role, and plainly included a news radio station.
He said evidence heard by the authority from media commentator Gavin Ellis made it plain that both organisations were competing for the same audience, the same talent and the same advertising dollars.
Still, it'd be good if her new employer takes it to appeal &/or Supreme Court. Law's an ass. Political editor on tv & radio show host are different creatures.
But: In her decision released on Monday, Authority member Marija Urlich determined the radio and television programmes were in competition and that the restraint of trade clause was enforcible.
“The evidence establishes if Ms O’Brien starts work with MWR [Mediaworks] she will be working in competition with Discovery.”
Would be good to see the full decision to read how that determination was arrived at.
True, the rationale used to produce the decision is the key. Until we see that, I suspect Ellis, who I quoted, got the leverage. As an ex-Herald editor, he could seem an expert to the judge. If his specification of the market carried the weight of evidence, I mean. Commercial law combined with contract law…
The Authority has also ordered O’Brien to pay $2000 for her breach of the conflict of interest clause in her contract. This relates to her providing Mediaworks a comment for their press release and taking part in a photoshoot while still employed by Discovery.
… Discovery’s head of news Sarah Bristow described it as “egregious”. O’Brien said video included about three seconds of her and the single quote remained in a story on Discovery’s own website. She apologised to Bristow.
She at least conceded that that was $2k worth of cheeky.
Indicative of a mind-set in the judiciary – ripping off taxpayers is cool because the effect is socialised. Nobody in that class of victims feels actual pain from the ripoff.
Smashing up a Pamure medical centre, aligning with fascists, threatening health workers, payiing a person to take ten vaccines in one day to gain false vaccine passports to pass themselves off as vaccinated at public venues.
Is there anything the anti-vaxxer conspiracists won't stoop to?
Canterbury DHB denies anti-vaxxers' claims child collapsed after COVID vaccine
William Hewett 1 hour ago
The Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) has shot down another anti-vaxx rumour claiming a child collapsed because of the COVID vaccine.
I reckon a "litmus test" here on TS would be: Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
Yes, I do. It would be next to impossible to conceal a real incident such as that.
I would ask you, mauī, do you believe the accounts that circulated, of children, collapsing as a result of their vaccination? That is, is there something in the vaccination that caused such serious reactions?
The question is how did christopher luxin get his job at Air New Zealand or is his case long range planning by nationals and yet another kiwi "MYSTERY CAREER". Was his job advertised?
[please stick to your pre-approved user name thanks – Incognito]
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
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 ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A new Commonwealth Prac Payment will provide students with $319.50 a week when they are on clinical and professional placements. The payment will be means tested and start from July 1 next year, which ...
Asia Pacific Report About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children. Marking the annual May 3 World Press ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, Sāmoa) is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago. He reckons the Greens ought to be opposing the govt: https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/the-deal-with-jacinda-arderns-labour-party-is-proving-toxic-for-new-zealands-greens
He seems to think grandstanding is the best type of politics. I believe getting consensus decisions implemented works better. That's what the Greens are doing. I do agree that they could be representing the Green movement more effectively though. The Green caucus could do that by operating a different line of advocacy. Caucus being somewhat independent of the govt would help the dissidents to feel better about prospects.
Instead of suggesting this obvious strategy, Morgan merely recycles tired old tropes from the past that position the Greens as perpetual opponents. I suggest leftist Greenies demonstrate the courage of their convictions instead of trying to kneecap their co-leaders. They ought to resign & form the Constantly Radical Anarchist Party.
The sight of them marching in glorious unified solidarity in the streets chanting "We Need More CRAP" would stir the hearts of old radicals everywhere. Obvious banner slogans to carry would be Not Enough CRAP in Govt, CRAP on Centrism. Christian leftists could do Holy CRAP! Best option is probably Total CRAP Now!
No need to hunt for a leader since the obvious contender is right here: http://www.nationwidebooks.co.nz/product/constant-radical-the-life-and-times-of-sue-bradford-9780994136008
Morgan Godfery a Senior lecturer ?
I looked this up recently to see his research interests and instead found he was not academic staff but a research partnership manager role , which seemed to be more writing 'research grants' applications
Last year I checked academics reserach interests a lot to see if their expertise aligned with their claimed public comments.
The Medical Professor who was an expert on brain injuries who made public comments on infectious diseases and epidemiology. Or the woman research assistant in non medical xrays writing/twittering about transitioned sports women .
Unkind Dennis. I,ll go with Morgan. Cheers Keith
Okay, but just keep in mind that feeling similarly inclined tends to have little political effect. Leftists who write complaints about the politics of other leftists don't seem to realise that they exhibit impotence.
Which is why I suggested a pathway to independent political action for them. Helpful, not unkind. Do they really want to spend the rest of their lives complaining? Perhaps it would be better to grow up.
Then there's the ethics of stabbing your leader in the back to consider. They probably don't see themselves as doing that, right? Yet it does not seem to occur to them that plenty of others will see their behaviour as that. Sends an extremely distasteful signal out into the body politic!
My thoughts are that much of the capability of GP is lost in a fog of competing identity politics agendas.
It appears that environmental issues and social justice issues are either replaced or lensed through identity politics. I'm not saying that identity politics is bad or should be ignored.
And then there are a few individuals who display the naked grab for political power that would be at home in the National Party.
As to the agreement with Labour, I think that both parties would be better off if this arrangement was restruck to permit the GP to deliver more criticism and opposition. Next elections the GP need to be robust and identifiable as party not as a tack on to the LP.
That's a really good way of putting it.
Which MPs do you think are doing a power grab? Personally or for the party?
this seems the least that should happen. I think something needs to change before then as well.
Of the MP's the one who I see as being more nakedly ambitious for power is Ricardo March.
I think that he sees himself as the male coleader in waiting.
Interesting that you should say that. I know someone who campaigned for the Green Party last election and had numerous contact with March, and feels the same way.
Also, considers him to be less than his self-opinion puts him at.
Ball's now in the co-leaders' court so I'll be watching to see how they respond and if they attempt a reframe. If they disregard the challenge, it'll be a show of complacency & contempt for the leftist dissidents within – as if calling their bluff.
Thanks Gristle.
Why do you see public policy advocacy as grandstanding? My dictionary defines grandstanding as,
Are you saying that this is the primary goal. Rather than say, speaking out on urgent and important social and environmental issues that are core to GP principles. See the difference.
Also, why can't both be done? Why can the Greens not be strong publicly on policy and build and maintain the good relationships necessary for the more subtle politics?
Needless to say, the Greens will work consensus, but Labour don't.
How? Please be specific, how this could be done, in the context of the current agreement and arrangement.
It's not simply about helping dissidents feel better, it's about whether the GP is more or less effective with each strategy.
why can't both be done?
They can – depends who does it & why. The structure & process of democracy require coalition-building to achieve policy goals at times, and we're in one of those times. So we got a center-left hybrid govt making incremental progress.
Grandstanding in the media when it comes across as a critique of a political party can be done for a range of personal reasons. I'm not personally acquainted with the young feller so am loath to guess his. Perhaps he's positioning himself as an alternative leader of a progressive Green political vehicle?
Dame Anne Salmond has a more substantial critique here: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/anne-salmond-nzs-climate-planting-asking-for-trouble
I decided not to comment on it this morning but feel it is authentic as a leadership stance in the environmental movement.
How? Please be specific, how this could be done, in the context of the current agreement and arrangement.
Too important to confine an answer like that! Caucus ought to thrash it out and produce their own solution. From a bystander position various options come to mind:
1. co-leaders agree to declare party unhappiness with progress provided this is quantified on particular policies
2. caucus decide they will individually speak publicly on issues where the interests of the broader Green movement diverge significantly from govt
3. co-leaders decide to authorise the party to create a designated spokesperson for the broader Green movement
Other permutations can be conceived but the above triad ought to serve for now…
Well, there is nothing concrete in terms of housing policy to reverse the disastrous trend over the last three decades of market dysfunction impoverishing NZers.
Neither the state of the rivers nor carbon emissions are being addressed in any serious way.
Nor are there plausible futurist endeavours toward a better, less extractive, less anomic, less hollowed-out society.
I'd've thought a Green perspective would have a few problems with BAU under those circumstances – but apparently we just want more 'centrists' kicking the can down the road and waving identity politics to stifle criticism.
that's not quite true. More likely is that the GP are taking a pragmatic approach based on the number of MPs and the amount of vote they get. I doubt very much that the state of policy from the government is what they want.
You remember that Labour talked about the failure of neoliberalism while doing nothing to change it, won a outright majority and then said they’d govern for all NZers, and to top it all off, the BDMRR bill that everyone was up in arms about vis-a-vis identity politics was a Labour bill, passed by a Labour Government, the Greens were supportive but not needed to pass the legislation.
It’s seemingly very easy to criticise the only party in parliament that has stuck to it’s values and has been quietly achieving for decades, while still voting for the centrist, neoliberal capitalist ‘Labour’ party. It’s baffling.
That bill passing unanimously and the brouhaha surrounding it, I haven't been able to reconcile.
Greens are at 10% and holding.
Keep that level of support to get more power in the form of Cabinet posts next time.
Also worth noting that their support for Trans legislation hasn't hurt their public polling one bit.
10% is not to be sneezed at for a small party with near-zero media profile, and fewer members than the New Lynn RSA.
May is their big month with the Carbon plan coming out same time as the Budget.
Put off throw-the-toys moves off until then.
A good strategy, will probably achieve more in the longer term than destroying the relationship with Labour. Taking 12 MPs into a coalition government would mean significantly more power and ministerial portfolios than a confidence and supply arrangement, and for mine, significantly more opportunity to get more done.
Also worth noting that their support for Trans legislation hasn't hurt their public polling one bit.
Also worth noting their support for trans legislation (?), was conducted amongst the party conformists and did not display the transparency and open debate they usually espouse.
So, of course, it didn't make a difference to polling. No-one on the fence would have any idea what was being proposed past the Be Kind talking points.
Even in the most liberal and gender-sensitive party in New Zealand, your agitation generated zero difference to the Green Party MPs vote.
You don't have to be grateful with 10% support, but if the Greens hold that number to Dec 2023 you will find many will be.
Even in the most liberal and gender-sensitive party in New Zealand, your agitation generated zero difference to the Green Party MPs vote.
I'm not agitated, just cognisant of their failure to be forthright about legislative change and unintended impacts on women's rights.
The response of many on TS seems in line with the #NoDebate stance GP took,
It's apparent that many who comment here have limited knowledge past TWAW. Which of course, is a false statement to start off with.
Of course, if you want to engage in a true discussion on the topic, I'm in
I don’t believe that those on The Standard want to have a true debate about gender ideology. Other than chanting the mantra, trans women are women and presenting scientific papers about 7 people who have mixed sexual characteristics fertilising their own ova, which has no relevance to the trans gender debate.
quite a number of people I know won’t be voting labour or Green because they believe these parties have been captured by gender ideology. It’s unlikely to lose Labour or Greens a huge number of votes.
it still is a very dangerous ideology and it is harming our children. Most people on this website are reasonably bright, so it astounds me that some have accepted this ideology uncritically
It's not an easy debate to have – and if you've been the focal point of a cone of insincere criticism you know that venturing opinion on it is buying into a buttload of spleen. But here goes:
It's about lying. Lying is sociopathic, it is a hostile act – something Kant was trying to nail down with his categorical imperative. In their enthusiasm for the humane act of treating the rainbow community with tolerance, that tolerance was, improperly, extended to telling lies. This led some of them astray, and de facto led them into habitual special pleading. But no gender group is so oppressed that lying is good for them, nor does it ultimately serve any of their interests, nor the interests of society at large. They need to stop lying.
I think the first time I became aware of this was reading something Tim Barnett said, that homosexuality was genetic. Now, I've done a bit of science in my day, and I thought that was interesting. But Google failed to turn up the replicable studies showing that this happened to be true (it is the subject of numerous inconclusive studies). It's interesting because it seemed a miss-speaking. Barnett meant to claim perhaps, that homosexuality was innate. The claim of genetics however, would have taken the claim out of the realm of personal belief, and into the realm of objective fact. It's not quite there.
There is a discipline, in the sciences, perhaps most concisely expressed by Grice's Maxims of Conversation, notably the maxim of quality:
Notice that this is first of all about maintaining the quality and thus the value of one's own utterances. This is clarified by
And the practical consequence, which informs even discourse upon the Standard is:
Barnett lacked evidence for his assertion, and might have done better to have confined himself to the truth, that he strongly believed it is innate. But, like communism in the heady days of its intellectual popularity, he wanted the support of "science". Why should it matter?
Well that would be because those who don't themselves experience the phenomena as innate might attribute it to heteronymous desires – those indisputable matters of taste which are morally neutral. Being morally neutral however, they would not be entitled to any particular presumption of tolerance – such as that that allows contemporary trans activists to force their way into gender segregated spaces, and to justify demonizing JK Rowling, who is a public intellectual who has tirelessly supported the rainbow community.
Debates over gender issues need to be truthful – but the custom of the community is not to deal in fact, but the heady and swaying currency of opinion. For the moment they can use that as a stick to beat the likes of JK Rowling, conscientious dissenters. But opinion washes in and out like the tide – it is only the truth that lasts.
Thank you for that succinct analysis Stuart Munro.
May I, for a moment, expand a bit on my experience which is related to truth telling although nothing to do with the subject in question.
For 24 years I was a staff member of the weather forecasting community of NZ. Our mantra at all times was to tell the truth although we were sometimes misled by the fickleness of some weather systems. However there was one occasion when I could not resist telling a lie. It was to a well known Air Commodore turned politician who I disliked (that's another story) and his mate, PM Rob Muldoon who I equally disliked.
They were planning a sailing holiday at a time when a cyclone was approaching NZ. The initial school of thought was that it would travel down the east coast of the NI and give us a battering. Our forecasts demonstrated as much. But we realised in time that it was going to slide down to the west of the NI and the effects were thus much reduced. I chose to stick with the former forecast and the pair cancelled their holiday.
At the time it gave me the greatest of pleasure I had ruined their sailing holiday. Yes, it was childish and I was burdened with guilt for a long time afterwards. So much for telling lies.
That is a truly wonderful reply Stuart Munro. One of the best comments I have read on The Standard. Yes gender ideology is about telling a lie and as you say "no gender group is so oppressed that lying is good for them" . It isn't. And it isn't good for women who have to put up with the lie that a male bodied swimmer creates a level playing field competiting with women.
The gender ideology movement gas lights women and girls. It is built on a lie, and woe betide those who don't accept and regugitate the lie
Thanks, Stuart. Sorry for the delay in acknowledging this well-considered comment. Your guidelines are ones I've tried to keep to on this topic, but without much success in creating a respectful dialogue.
Your comment re JK Rowling brought to mind this post which shows her tweets alongside some of the responses. You can clearly see the pattern of instant aggression and threats in response to her statements. What is noticeable is the violent and sexual nature of the threats. A recognisable masculine response towards women deemed troublesome.
I'm not really a fan of her books – though I used them with students who liked them – but she has often found herself on the right side of history, and I regard that as an accident – as Ambrose Bierce defines one:
ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.
JK Rowling attacks government as out of touch with poor people | JK Rowling | The Guardian
Rowling finds herself in these conflicts because she is a mature and thoughtful person with an enviable clarity of expression. The clowns attacking her should be careful – if she novelizes them their cause is done.
This is always my favourite argument from "lefties" about left wing politics.
I feel that it boils down to "Don't speak up in defiance of the majority lefties, you'll hurt the movement from within, even if the majority is hurting you and your own."
Stalin would be proud.
Opal – the king of gemstones.
I have always admired opal. That stemmed from a lady I knew who had a black opal set in a bracelet The colours were so vibrant they looked fake. All I knew was most opal comes from Australia and is mined by Aussies who live underground to escape the heat.
So it was with pleasure I came across a TV programme called Outback Opal Hunters that runs each weekday.
This programme has it all. Geology lessons, makeshift engineering, how to live on nothing, human relationship dramas, the art of haggling, old school ethics, how to mine, how to read the rocks, crime ( ratters – people who steal from mines) and good old Aussie mateship.
But the other reason I love this programme is there's no bloody wokeism. No trans males who are conflicted about their gender. No Greenies, climate change nutters or people who suck lattes while looking around to see who notices their new iPhone.
All you see is people with opal fever living in a 1950s time warp.
In this clip, old Les takes over the haggling. Les at 74 can still work like a young man.
From 3.40
I enjoy watching it too.
Opal finds and dilemmas' are staged of course for good .T.V.
I wondered about. Of course the camera crew cannot be on site while miners go weeks without finding anything. They are onsite only for the finds. So at the end of each programme the impression opal is found each week is of course not correct. But I think most people realise that.
I’m more into it for the education – especially staking a claim.
Outback Opal Hunters is on my must see list for TV viewing. Educational for children, the remoteness, getting stuff fixed, borrowing equipment, no money no diesel to dig for opal, how deals are done etc.
Usual slot is ch 12 Sunday night 7.30 pm – 8.30 pm, awaiting a new series as off air for now at that time.
I also like Jade Fever, think they will hit it big on the current series ch 12 7.30 pm – 8.30 pm on Wednesday night. There is a contrast in both programmes, cold and heat, the size of the rock/gem.
Must watch the Jade Fever programme, I haven't seen it yet.
I also saw on the news recently that the gold rush is on again down South.
Gold panning is on my to do list. I turned down an offer to do this 18 years ago when in Greymouth.
Yes, Ch 12 on Freeview is Choice TV. I’ve been watching the Jade Fever series off & on for a few years now. Also watched a few episodes of Outback Opal Hunters.
Both quite interesting for the personal dramas (Jade Fever’s about a family-based prospecting/mining operation), the extremely rugged conditions featured participants work in, the amount of time & effort they put in for no return before they hit a vein or boulder or outcrop that pays off but never seems to make them millionaires, & the risky things they sometimes do that would probably have Worksafe & other safety regulators having fits.
Being paid for appearing in these reality tv shows is probably a very handy source of additional funds. They never seem to have the money for anything but used trucks & other vehicles & mining equipment, which always seem to break down & add to the dramas.
I’ve also watched quite a few episodes of Ice Road Truckers & Outback Truckers which are similar shows.
I’ve sometimes wondered how much time the film crews put in, whether there’s always an off-screen camera operator or whether it’s a combination of camera crew & in-place cameras operated by the participants themselves (e.g. in truck cabs) & how they put the scenes together.
Looks like Jade Fever has ended though:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/07/22/popular-reality-show-jade-fever-pulls-the-plug-amidst-mining-controversy-with-northwest-bc-first-nation.html
Larry is such a character in Jade Fever. His suspenders stop his pants from falling down at the back and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Larry's driving skills, his vehicle car parts and metal yard always something going on.
Have you seen Ice Gold, the location is either in Alaska or Greenland, very remote as helicoptered in?Looking for rubies and gold. A permit was not granted to retrieve a ruby find. Indigenous rights take precedence over mining. Money is made in miners paying for permits but money is lost from big finds.
Looked it up Ice Cold Gold filmed in Greenland. Saw it a few times.
Yeah, I watched a wee bit of Ice Cold Gold episodes about twice. But it doesn’t appeal to me as much as the others. Not exactly sure why – maybe because the participants fly in for short periods from the US so it seems a bit plastic. I don’t watch it.
''The amount of time & effort they put in for no return before they hit a vein or boulder or outcrop that pays off but never seems to make them millionaires.''
That seems to be the hook…they hit a vein, make some decent money that goes on the bills, and then the cycle starts again.
I would like to know what they are paid?
But it seems to me even if they were paid a million bucks, or found a million dollar opal, they would still be mining. It's an obsession coupled with a certain lifestyle.
An Opal pineapple can fetch 500k.
Whitey is given the boot. Can't talk about this case because I don't have the facts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-22/aboriginal-traditional-owners-slam-mintabie-legal-action/11132932
Meanwhile in Aotearoa a few years back, greenstone gathering is a no -no.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/3000168/Greenstone-thiefs-jail-term-quashed
I can talk about Ngai Tahu. All I will say is they have settled with the Crown four plus times since the 1800s. I have little time for them except to commend them for not wasting their final (?) settlement money and growing their enterprises.
The oddest thing around Coober Pedy, which is one of the main places for mining Opals, are the signs all over the land surrounding the town. They warn you not to walk backwards. People tend to do that when trying to get into just the right place to take a picture.
The problem is that the area is covered with uncapped holes. They are dug by miners looking for Opals and IIRC they are about 10 metres deep. If they don't find anything they just walk away from the hole and leave it. There must be thousands of them.
The signs warn you not to walk backward as you may step straight back into a very deep hole.
Sorry. I meant to put a link. Try googling this and you will get lots of examples
coober pedy sign telling people not to step back
Have you been there in person, alwyn?
We visited a couple of times when we lived in Australia. We only stopped for a night each time. The first time was a trip to Alice and Uluru and the second was going up to Darwin. Coober Pedy is on the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to Darwin There isn't that much to see really. There was a home that had become a museum. When they wanted an extra bedroom they had started excavating and found a very rich source of Opals. It never did become a bedroom and they left it partially finished so people could see what a mine looked like.
The people didn't really live underground, The living areas were basically cut into a cliff, like caves and then windows were put into the front of the room which faced the outside. It was mostly done because there was nothing there to build houses from. No trees in the area. It did help with the summer heat though.
That was back in the 1990s though. We haven't been back that way for a long long time
Interesting- nothing like seeing something first hand. No trees is hard to imagine.
No trees was a bit of an exaggeration. There is a bit of scrub but nothing that would give you any sort of timber you could build with. It isn't sandy desert or anything like that. The whole of the red centre is pretty much like that.
I remember seeing a map once that covered the area about 1000 km north from Coober Pedy. That would be about 300 km north of Alice Springs or 1200 km south of Darwin. It showed all the cattle stations in the area. They ranged, IIRC, from about 4,000 sq km to 11,000 sq km. That isn't hectares. That is sq km. I don't think I could live there but we loved touring the country. It is so vast and lovely.
I commented above that as I remembered them the shafts were 10 metres deep and there were thousands of them. I just looked at a story about the rescue crew for problems in the mines and there is a quote from the guy who runs it.
""There are 2 million 20-to-30-metre-deep mine shafts around here," he said."
My memory was far too benign.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-03/coober-pedy-mine-rescue-squad-searches-for-life/100730594
Probably some people never made it out of a mine hole and have not been found.
"1950's time warp"
Got it.
Yep, knowing your penchant for vacuous comments, I made sure the chap in the clip was someone you could relate to.
3 cheers for the miners!
Dig, baby, dig!
I have been thinking about the post which Mickeysavage wrote on 1 January 2022 titled A Few Predictions for 2022.
@ 6.1 I wrote, I think by mid January the Omicron strain will already be established in NZ.
I have also thought about who will get the chocolate fish as Mickeysavage wrote, A chocolate fish will be awarded to the most outlandish prediction that proves to be correct.
There were no competition rules or a date given to award the chocolate fish.
I suggest 2022 would encompass…12 months.
I assumed that.
memes change so fast .
metaverse is so 2021 , now its YOUNIVERSE
The debate raging between those who deny the severity of the pandemic and insist it is 'coming towards the end' is fascinating, and perhaps this is just the usual division of society amongst optimists and pessimists.
Two interesting reads:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1484949709802332170.html
And
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1484574039557480453.html
I am trying to work out the best strategy to avoid getting Omicron. I was surprised to hear that N 95 masks need to be fitted properly and that a cotton one could be more effective than an unfitted N 95 mask. I will probably use a cotton mask and a blue one over the top when I go to the supermarket or the school.
My biggest risk of exposure is collecting the grandkids from school or when care is needed over the school holidays.
I saw a heading on stuff recently that ACC claims have gone up 300 per cent for home exercise injuries. A lot of time is now being spent in the home.
Yeah but from what base. It is really irritating when only percentages are reported. Big difference if it is 300% of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000…………… and over what time period.
Yes the total number of home exercise injuries needs to be known.
Anyone wondering about the difference between semitic labels gets clarification here:
Prior to this summary the page provides the historical/biblical origins of the three terms – seems a useful elucidation.
I was fascinated to discover some years ago that the terms semite or semitic actually relate to Middle Eastern languages & include not only Jews but Arabs, many of whom when criticising Israel are often accused of being anti-semitic.
Semitic
adjective
relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.
relating to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic.
I don’t know why the term semite has come to be commonly perceived as specific to Jews or Jewish Israelis.
Yeah, good point there Gezza. I actually discovered that myself years ago but had forgotten all about it…
Been reading a library book about archeology in the promised land, updating my overview. You may be interested: https://thamesandhudson.com/in-the-footsteps-of-king-david-9780500052013
I’ve been surprised to learn there is virtually no archaeological evidence of King David’s existence or of his royal city of Jerusalem (just two steles of two other local contemporary people’s rulers – whose inscriptions are believed by some to refer to the “House of David” but are disputed as to whether they actually do), & that even among scholars who accept his existence (seemingly most) there’s still dispute over whether he became a powerful king as described in the Old Testament’s Hebrew Bible or remained essentially just a local chieftan in Judah.
He’s such an important, iconic figure in Christianity I just assumed there was more strongly-supporting historical evidence than just the Bible narratives.
I guess when archaelogists do digs in Israel generally & Jeruslam specifically there’s always going to be the problem of turning up multiple layers of settlements & towns, segments of walls, wells from earlier times & peoples etc built on top of or near each other & debate as to whether these can be reliably attributed to the times figures in the Bible are calculated to have lived there.
I’ve been surprised to learn there is virtually no archaeological evidence of King David’s existence or of his royal city of Jerusalem
Likewise. Decoding of whatever different form of historical revisionism &/or mythologising different generations did is always a problem.
The author has a sophisticated approach: he identified five different paradigms that divide experts in this arena!
multiple layers of settlements
I read this morning where he mentioned 18 different settlements piled on top of each other in sequence, identified in a single tell!!
Listening to Chris ‘Actually’ Luxon saying on morning report that he wasn’t criticising for criticising sake, but it sure sounded like that to me. Actually he sounded pretty useless all in all, but then that’s the Nature of Nats
The best way of "de-risking" (Christopher has an ugly, C-suite cliché for everything) is to not vote National.
Making good decisions – Katrina George
https://sciblogs.co.nz/matau-taiao/2022/01/24/horohoro-is-my-passion-kataraina-george/
"Despite encouragement from her tertiary mentors and family to do her PhD, Kataraina found her calling. She adores working in nature and applying her mātauranga (knowledge) to what she does now at the Ngāti Kea Ngāti Tuara Rūnanga Trust.
“Science is great and much more theory-based, which isn’t me,” she laughs.
“I’ve realised as I get older that working in the practice-space with people is more me. I find it so much more satisfying being on our tupuna Maunga (ancestral mountain), Horohoro, and seeing how we can make changes.”
Horohoro is a flat-topped maunga and the main feature of the rural farming community with the same name. It stands about 13km southwest of Rotorua. Its full name is Te Horohoroinga o ngā ringa o Kahumatamomoe and is part of the tribal boundary of Ngāti Kea Ngāti Tuara who’ve occupied the whenua (land) under their maunga for more than 500 years.
In her role at the rūnanga, Kataraina’s already compiled a list of what her aspirations are for her tribal rohe (boundary).
“I don’t want to be CEO or anything,” she says.
“Instead, I’ve got my sights set on more environmental aspirations such as working on our maunga. Creating and implementing pest control to create a natural corridor to Mokaihaha to bring our native kōkako back to Horohoro. So, I’ve given myself goals so I can stay on and keep contributing to improving our rohe (area) and this key goal."
We require robust debate here.
I dont think so. You have appointed yourself the sole arbiter of COVID truth. Discussion is over.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[RL: Point proven. Your propensity to moderate on content has now gotten away on you. You consistently abuse your position of power here to bully, silence or diminish opinions you dont like. Oh yes you are very good at making it look deniable, but the pattern is clear over many years and many topics.
This site is no longer fit for purpose.]
I thought that was Bill?
That's complete rubbish Red. Without Weka and Lprent ( who is obviously too busy to spend a lot of time here) countering the misinformation and amateur reckons around covid then this site would be a laughingstock.
I thought you would be more professional by using the back-end to air your grievance actually.
Personally I have nothing but admiration for the work Weka donates around here. She's a sensible, modern thinker and has helped teach many on critical issues facing us all.
I'd keep the fuck out of this'n.
It might have been my imagination, but if the mods are really at the stage of overwriting another mod's moderation in order to accuse them of bullying, there'll be a shitfight going on in the backend.
No there will not be a shitfight in the backend. I am out.
Enjoy.
.
Hope you'll reconsider, Red … you're frequently a voice of common sense & sanity here.
You wont be missed by the dull turd polishers here. I will miss your insight and intellect, the site will be much poorer without your contributions.
I, too, hope you will rethink this.
There are nowhere near enough voices that challenge thinking amongst the cheerleaders to be found round these parts.
I may not comment often or agree but I find your input to be thought provoking and I value that it tests what I think to be true. Not all enjoy having their beliefs and opinions questioned.
Oh I'd have preferred to have kept out of it, but I can't ignore an unwarranted attack on someone I admire ( same with the abuse of power against you the other day) who has made this place better.
If he's really gone then at least there will be less whataboutism whenever male on female violence is discussed.
"I'd keep the fuck out of this'n."
And that is the most intelligent post of the day
I'd also add that I've never witnessed any bullying or abuse of power from Weka. She's always fair, considerate, and doesn't condescend in her moderating. When she has needed to give me a tune up for indiscretions I've always grown in maturity.
fender 9.2.2
Well said, I agree weka is a very good mod and must put a lot of her time in.
weka's roughed me up a couple of times (can't imagine why 🙂
I rate weka highly, for sincerity and patience. The Covid discussions have caused some serious wobbles here on TS, as they have in the wider community. I hope RedLogix reconsiders – this may take a day or two, I say from experience. These discussions here are worthwhile and far better than any I've found anywhere else and a lot of the credit for that must go to the various moderators, be they Bill *winces, RedLogix, weka or the others 🙂
The problem arises, not with people attacking moderators – though that must be irksome, but with this issue of public health where untrue claims could, perhaps damage the reputation of the site and create a misleading atmosphere of acceptance of untruths. The problem is, both parties believe they are on the right side of the issue and both are passionate about maintaining the integrity of the position they hold. It's very similar, I reckon, to the climate change issue, where media declared they would not publish denial comments. I laughed and enjoyed that move, but deniers, and freedom-of-speechers screamed blue murder. I don't know if there's a simple solution to these tensions – they seem to ebb and flow, depending on various factors. I'n any case, as Jacinda might say, be kind 🙂
At least no one has been impersonating moderators and writing moderation notes to themselves, as I did, many years ago, on Kiwiblog. I pretended to be David Farrar and gave myself a strop-up, in what I thought was a humorous manner, but David didn't laugh, instead, banned me for life (for the 3rd time).
Ah!
Those were the days!
Geez, Robert. A Lefties work is never done, eh!
The untruths are high stakes, too.
If I'm wrong but what I want happens, we will incrementally and permanently lose freedom from state control (but we'll be alive to try to get them back).
If the covid-minimisers are wrong and we
let omicron ripopen the borders by ending MIQ, have no vax pass or check in app, and not bother with isolating infected people, then thousands of NZers will die.Which is why getting things right is important.
Shorter timeframe than climate change, too.
true, that
And even when commenting crosses into moderating, the warnings have always been a reasonable take (regardless of whether I disagree), explicit, and in bold.
fender @ 9.2.2
And she doesn't bear grudges either.
Yes Weka is special. Weka talks to the problem. There is a total lack of ego, and plenty of prods to think more about issues, and an openness to new ideas with substance. We are lucky on this blog. Being challenged is hard for some to accept.
As someone put is, I'm not sure who, Bill and Redlogic have "an odd little kick in their gallop."
Entirely agree with you about Weka, a very moderate moderator. Lprent can be a bit direct at times, but also deserving respect.
"an odd little kick in their gallop."
Thanks, Tony, I'd not heard that one.
So good.
@Robert:
You like it? It's yours.
Now where have I heard that before? The Goon Show?
I remember!
The Ides of March – Wayne and Schuster? Big Julie!
"Lprent can be a bit direct at times,…"
Geez… that is a bit of an understatement. He gave me a kick up the backside once years ago. Have no idea now what it was about. Regardless, I enjoy his histrionics because the victim has always deserved it. 🙂
I'll miss you and would hope you would reconsider – maybe even just to return for a while as a commentator. Although we disagree on a lot we also agree on many things. You are one of the few voices that is optimistic and takes a world is overall better than to used to be view and nuclear power is a useful means of energy.
I do think the covid debates have tested people as people have quite firm positions.
Individualising the public health response and arbitrarily ruling out the actual 'silver bullet' that previously saved us from widespread transmission, lockdowns. It's is baffling to think this is the same Labour party that achieved an outright majority based on their successful navigation of this crisis. They are happy to let business and media direct the response now, I feel for at-risk people some of whom feel they've been thrown to the wolves of BAU capitalism.
what's that a quote from?
Apologies,
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/460067/covid-19-no-silver-bullet-against-omicron-expect-large-numbers-chris-hipkins
a few problems with lockdowns:
Then there is the issue of strategy. If we accept that it's unlikely that omicron can be eliminated, what's the timeframe for lockdowns? Is it until everyone is boostered? How does that work with a rolling vax schedule?
Is it until the new omicron vaccine is developed and made available to NZ and then given to the public (4 months?)
And in the meantime we would still likely have some community spread of omicron.
I think there are big gaps in the current strategy, and I think ruling out regional lockdowns as needed is unwise, but I'm struggling to see how lockdowns would work in this situation.
re individualising, this is where one of gaps is. A payout to beneficiaries so they can buy some extra food and medical supplies would be good. Doing the actual mahi of community building to make sure people are ok rather than just telling people to find a buddy in their neighbourhood.
But I do think the government is doing quite a lot for the collective.
Yes I don't disagree. I, like you, see the Govt response as good but it could be significantly better, especially in the realm of community building and direct payments to everybody. We have had 30 years of 'I've got mine, Jack', it would be nice to see the 'communitarian' approach we have been told that this Govt would be following.
…but it could be significantly better, especially in the realm of community building…
Agree.
For instance, when given the opportunity to look ahead and address current medical personnel shortages in response to a pandemic, did they include registered nurse training in their Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund?
No. They have missed a few opportunities during the pandemic to help those who need help, and provide further resilience to all.
Right, but so does 10,000 infections a day. Each one of those is required to isolate for 14 days, while their close contacts isolate for 10, these people won't be working/spending much during this isolation time, this has had an effect across the world in places who never bothered with lockdowns at all.
Ultimately lockdowns work, from a physical point-of-view, by preventing the transmission of the virus. They can't live outside a host, so isolation is highly effective of breaking the chain.
Targeted regional lockdowns, combined with direct payments to individuals, rather than employers, would be a better idea than the level 4 lockdowns of last year imo.
Admittedly this is all largely academic because the die is cast and we are where we are.
China is still following a zero-COVID strategy and their economy and public health system has been functioning better than elsewhere. 8.1% GDP growth in 2021.
Will China still go for a zero – Covid strategy once the Winter Olympics finish? The games start on 4 February 2022.
Beijing has a population of 20 million and already there have been Omicron cases there.
It's not just the required isolation that hits the economy, it's the folks who isolate because they're not morons, and the folks who might consider going out but it's just not as appealing as it used to be.
The first level 4 lockdown in 2020 the energy payment was doubled. The food grant SNG needs to be doubled. When people are at home with children, children eat more, when at school some get access to a no cost lunch. Good nutrition is so important for the immune system.
Individualising the public health response and arbitrarily ruling out the actual 'silver bullet' that previously saved us from widespread transmission, lockdowns.
Lockdowns were a policy failure, unless you believe the following are indicative of success. And remember we've never had lockdowns for other viruses (including the seasonal flu which reportedly kills 500-600 people a year).
We have borrowed billions of dollars, including paying healthy workers to stay at home, which almost certainly will be met with cuts to services in the future. That means cuts to spending on health, education and welfare. Are we prepared for these cuts? Will we say they are necessary and we need to just suck it up?
Two months ago, it was reported that Christchurch Hospital had told GPs it will no longer accept referrals for general surgeries unless the condition is "life-threatening", as its waitlist has become "unmanageable". Some women will die as a result of not getting a mammogram as quickly as they should. Others will likely die from not being operated on in a timely manner.
According to Canterbury District Health Board chief of surgery Greg Robertson: “Our capacity to provide surgical care has been significantly affected by Covid-19 alert levels 3 and 4 that commenced on 17 August 2021″. From the same November 2021 article: "Between August 15 (two days before the first Delta case was reported) and October 24, an estimated 102,959 planned care (elective) procedures were cancelled due to the outbreak”. Why should the capacity to provide surgical care be compromised when the risk of harm from COVID is low?
The Health Ministry's 193-page pandemic plan (2017) made no mention of lockdowns. In fact, the word "lockdown" doesn't appear. That's interesting because the plan made some startling assumptions.
A third of our population affected? In fact, 15,400 people have contracted Covid (over a two year period). As a proportion of the team of 5 million, that represents 0.0031 (nearly a third of one percent).
By abandoning future lockdowns, the Government has essentially admitted they failed, though of course no politician would have the courage to admit it. Maybe we'll get an admission many years later.
According to Gibson:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/126955421/christchurch-surgery-patients-turned-away-due-to-unmanageable-waitlist
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/08/more-people-reliant-on-morphine-as-waitlists-for-joint-replacement-surgeries-grows.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051?journalCode=cijb20"
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/influenza-pandemic-plan-framework-action-2nd-edn-aug17.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786
Might be worth adding Dunedin Hospital skirting with Code Black last December…
Code Black is a rarely invoked situation when the hospital is essentially full and patients need to be discharged so new cases can be admitted.
I'm sure mandating injections for hospital staff had nothing to do with it…hmm.
Fleming said 28 beds in Dunedin Hospital were not in use last week because staff were not available.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dunedin-hospital-close-to-code-black-full-capacity/L5LX3EXNSVDBFYCESSKB5GGDQM/
Yes, seems you might be right Bill – " mandating injections for hospital staff had nothing to do with it"
Dunedin hospital has around 3,000 staff and 388 beds. 28 beds were unavailable due to staff unavailability (7.2% of beds).
They lost 30 staff to the mandate requirement (1% of staff). Of course, some may have since been replaced.
There may not be a 1:1 relationship between staff and beds available, but the mandate resignations seem small compared to the total staff shortfall.
In fact, the story you link to says the hospital was in a similar dire situation (actually worse), in March 2020 – before any mandate requirement. There is no doubt our health system features chronic staffing shortages, but you are trying to build an anti-mandate narrative with superficial "facts" it would seem to me.
Your link states seven doctors and eleven nurses were gone, and that three senior medical officers were on stand down alongside another seventeen nurses and thirteen 'other staff'. (Very rough calculation quickly gets beyond the 30 you mentioned)
How many on stand-down caved and 'took the plunge'? Dunno.
Odd thing to be kicking people out of an already buckling health service in a pandemic when the worry is that it might be overburdened, but hey.
Basic medical ethics that would demand treatment is a personal choice and subject to informed consent – implying then, free of inducement or coercion, is all that's required to oppose mandates. The doctors, nurses, and other health practitioners (psychiatrists, psycho-therapists, care workers….etc) who have been 'scrapheaped' by the mandates are consequential details worth mentioning – ie, they do not form the basis of a pro-autonomy/anti-mandate position.
Conflict of rights though. Are you thinking that nurses shouldn't be required to have any vaccinations right now, as a matter of personal choice? Or just the covid vax.
Other reasons, off the top of my head, for getting close to code black:
If the issue is code black, we can look at all the factors. If the issue is the vax mandate, then looking at that on its own makes sense for the mandate but not the code black.
In past years, and no matter the virulence of a particular strain, I'm not sure that nurses and caregivers in rest home facilities were required to have the flu vaccine at pain of losing their job. Encouraged, yes. But delivered an ultimatum? (Seems not)
And fully – Code Black likely always results from a suite of contributory factors.
A more recent update on flu vaccine coverage in DHBs:
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/2020-dhb-health-care-worker-influenza-immunisation-coverage-feb21.pdf
And we didnt exclude a quarter of the employees from the health workforce….just as well i may add.
The influenza virus is different from the COVID-19 one. Recall the initial estimates, based on the reproductive number (R0), to achieve so-called herd immunity (AKA population immunity), and how they went up with increasing R0 of the new variants such as Delta. Vaccination strategies should and do take those differences into account, to a degree, and one size does not fit all.
And that is true…until omicron, with an estimated R factor of somewhere around 5..regardless of vaccination
Indeed, which is why they go all out with fully vaccinating as many as possible, including children. Even when a better vaccine comes around this may stay the most appropriate strategy, but possibly only requiring one annual shot instead of the ‘needle cushion’ approach that’s followed at present.
Time Incognito…..we have none.
None??
pretty much….its here and spreading, We will have to do the best we can with ALL the resources we can muster.
We have no control over how it’s spreading??
Id suggest very little….short of a level 4 lockdown and even then with essential workers and supermarkets it will still spread. We are reliant on contact to survive as is the virus….remembering essential workers are whanau members…they are not hermits.
Nurses in hospitals are required, when starting training, to have a suite of vaccinations and to keep them current, they are sent reminders to do so. My flatmate is a nurse and has not yet heard of a colleague who has refused to have a booster or updated vaccine of the large number they started out with.
The covid vaccine misinformation campaign has seen a few at her hospital leave though none on her wards or her colleagues though she did say some have left.
Not just nurses, and not just in NZ. Vaccine mandates eh?
It's really not that unusual, and reflects the consensus expert medical opinion about the health benefits of vaccinations.
Not just nurses #2.
https://archive.li/WUTKG
The 'mandate' makes no sense at all.
Over the past ten years there's been a growing call for health workers to themselves follow best practise.
In 2015 Waikato DHB fired 3 people for refusing to mask if they didn't vaccinate against the flu. Also note the 85% target they were failing to achieve, pretty sad compared to a 90% minimum for covid. And even 90% might not be good enough.
If Omicron behaves in NZ as it has done offshore (and why wouldnt it?) then 100% vaccination will not be 'good enough'
Well, it might not if our "red" is still more than most half-arsed lockdowns. And if the tests caught the Nelson cases once removed from the border, rather than 3 degrees of separation. And if we're going into it with a fully vax rate higher than many developed countries have yet achieved, let alone were at two months ago.
We're not dead yet, even if it does hurt.
Maybe. Still, it would suck if our vaccination level + red might have been good enough, (especially to delay catastrophe until after omicron-specific vaccines become available) but we never knew for sure because we decided that the merchants of doom were finally correct on their third prediction of the inevitability of failure (having failed dismally in 2020 and 2021).
I thimk you are being unfair to the health professionals and the gov….consider, Omicron showed up as an issue around a month or so ago and it spreads fast….no time to modify vaccines or introduce them….all the previous mitigations are largely ineffective.
Place yourself in the decision making position…what are your options?
Cut MIQ numbers
Go to red when it started turning up at miq
Go to L4 instead of red when it turned up in Nelson – even if just a regional L4.
Frankly, I'd also have considered rejecting bail if there was a reasonable case to be made someone broke lockdown restrictions, first time.
All options.
Most of them ruled out by opposition for the sake of opposition, and not just from the Opposition.
Is red enough to keep cases at manageable levels, with the assistance of personal efforts and widespread vaccination? Maybe. We'll get up to hundreds of cases a day in coming week or two, probably, but after that there will likely not be any plateau – it'll either come down again or keep skyrocketing and we're all fucked for months.
false
still better than many nations who "lived with" covid.
Yes, because lockdowns work. Until they don't provide meaningful improvement over the existing vaccination, masking, distancing, and so on.Try the rates of countries that didn't go to L4 for a decent length of time.
nope, they're admitting that circumstances change (and possibly that the morons have yelled loudly enough to get them to make a suboptimal decision).
Also, Gibson seems to take a binary approach to the term "lockdown" when even across the ditch we've seen hairdressers labelled "essential services".
The article you linked to talked about Auckland being in lockdown due to polio (some 80 years ago, so nothing more recent?), not the entire country. And despite 500-600 flu deaths each year, we don't have lockdowns for the flu. But this comment piqued my interest:
“New Zealand tends to go for the traditional public health measures just like most societies, so the tried-and-true isolation of the sick quarantine of people who might be infected – just like with the old days of smallpox and other diseases where they quarantined ships,” she said.
Isolation of the sick? No, we isolated the healthy. And to repeat, the pandemic plan published by the Health Ministry in 2017 made no mention of lockdowns, which perhaps isn't surprising as they don't work and impose significant costs.
We've done pretty well with disease control since the development of vaccines.
NZ has had lockdowns before. We imposed them as needed, especially if you take some US versions of the term. But we haven't really needed them since things like air travel or 100kph speed limits came into play. Communications took time, so devolved control made sense then.
But they've always been in the infectious disease control playbook, for the right sort of vector.
What's fascinating is that even if lockdowns were new, that doesn't mean they don't work.
They do, if implemented early, and hard. Otherwise we'd be like the US or anywhere else that failed or didn't attempt an early lockdown. A real one.
Which is one worry I have about the traffic light system. Is it a gamble the government is making just because the white-anters have eroded confidence in measures that work, is the government taking a gamble that
Or is it basically pretty confident in those assumptions and the government and the modellers know what they're doing and shit won't snowball on them?
Neither….they hsve no alternative, though they will be hoping it is as benign as indicated ( low death count)….they may be right.
Its a no win situation…there are so many when you are ultimately responsible.
There's always an alternative.
The question is whether they've rejected one possible option because it has diminished marginal protection for the population, or merely because two years of whicnging has made it unenforceable.
whicnging????
Whinging. Been a long day of computerizing. No idea how I randomly pressed "c".
Maybe I was wincing at the time?
Thank you for clarifying…it was not a poke at spelling but a genuine query.
What option have they rejected?
As far as I can see their options are very limited but within those limitations I think they have made the wrong call, mandates will not improve the health outcomes ( and are detrimental to social cohesion )….ultimately the gov control is exceedingly limited….this version of the virus is going to proliferate no matter.
L4 lockdown use has been explicitly rejected, especially as a nationwide measure, if I recall correctly? I would be genuinely happy if it were still in the toolbox, at the very least.
I also reject the inevitability of defeat. Each day we slow it down or even beat it back a bit is a win for someone.
It often comes back to my mum. She's in her 80s now. She's active, volunteers, gets out and about. She still contributes. We meet regularly – today, as amatter of fact. And then I think of all the mums who have died from covid in the last couple of years, even if they were in their 80s. And the kids.
And yes, "from" not fucking "with".
So if omicron comes and she has a bad flip of the coin, she had a couple of years that millions of others did not because their governments did too little, too late, and thought GDP was more important than lives.
Those couple of years? That's a win. A couple more years? Another win.
Understand ….my mother is approaching 90 and diabetic and naturally im concerned…though I may add she is less so, and in a way thats not surprising.
It's all the mums. And the kids. And the ones in between.
We can at least slow this prick down, give people more time. So we should.
Consider this…my mother has in home care including showering, medication etc and even before covid there was a dearth of in home carers…..if you gave her the choice of staying at home with unvaccinated carers v being placed in a rest home I can guarantee you what her choice would be….no contest.
Consider how much close contact an unvaccinated home carer has with how many people in a given week.
And one of them's your mum.
Yes, i know, but more importantly so does she….and yet…
There is nothing more important than autonomy….its worth thinking about.
An unvaccinated carer is also more likely to be rendered unable to work for weeks. Similar result, but more abrupt when it happens.
Yes there will be an acute shortage of carers….and the problems that will cause….vaccinated or not.
But the fewer people who are vaccinated, the bigger the problem.
Possibly (it is unclear yet with Omicron) however we have 94% working age double vaxed so we are unnecessarily excluding 6% of the potential workforce…a workforce that is understaffed and under pressure even before we have isolations and illnesses.
If they are disproportionately going to be the cause of the disruption, best to put them on notice now and sort out alternatives or give them a chance to get vaccinated, rather than have them just not come in one day.
everyone has has had ample opportunity to be vaccinated. (some under duress)…if they are not it is a choice they have made , and as we are seeing vaccination does not stop the spread of Omicron…..it may reduce severity of symptoms, but that has little impact on spread.
That's still unclear, it could well offer some protection against infection. Could even halve it. But even worst case of no slow in infection, the difference is some staff between being off work because positive test and off work for weeks because massively ill, maybe long covid, etc.
But what if there's an omicron vaccine in a few weeks rather than months? Or the booster does have significant protection against asymptomatic infection?
"May"….half of a big number is still a big number, especially with such a large R factor.
And seriously?. a new vaccine not only designed , tested and manufactured in weeks….but also administered……thats a shipload of straws being clutched.
Theres hope, and then there is delusion
A big number halved is more time.
As for the vaccine, looking at the link I supplied for the claim, pfizer was saying March. Whether that's the start of trials from scratch, or whether the FDA says it's close enough to the previous one that it doesn't have to do everything from scratch, that's the question.
Then there's the production rollout, NZgov assessment, purchasing… sure, it might not be on NZ streets at the end of march. But we'll have a ticking clock, and all we need to do is slow the spread, not stop the spread with what we have.
A big number with an R0 of 5
And even if all your unicorns eventuate, consider this….the gov have approved the purchase and distribution of RATs…..sufficient shipments wont arrive for months, a product that has been manufactured for months.
An R0 of only 5?
Seems to me that let's say 8 weeks to the end of march, 2 week generation for the virus, R0 of 5.
That's 4 cycles.
We've probably barely got the tip of the current outbreak, ballpark 200 community omicron cases atm?
Gen. total
BUT
add masks and boosters and distancing, say they halve the infection rate (illustrative):
Gen. total
The point is that if we put the effort in now, we slow the pressure on the system regardless of whether an apparent hail mary throw comes about – but we give it more time to come about, too.
That means lowering the odds of spreading the disease by any way we can, including by requiring that people who have many close contacts as part of their jobs be vaccinated. It's good enough for a cup of coffee, and it's good enough for our mums.
I'd just like to say, McFlock, you talk one hell of a lot of sense!
One of the best commentators on here. Keep it up, and look after your mum!
It was late…..you have halved the infection rate for the entire population rather than realising that the infection rate may (possibly) halve for fully vaccinated as opposed to unvaccinated…..a very different calculation.
Look at the the daily numbers from NSW in a population with very similar vaccination rates and other public health measures, including masks, mandates and distancing and you will see a real world trajectory…..then remove mandates and decide what difference it would have made.
hsve???
well spotted Grant
At least the s is next to the a..
so it is….but i am incapable of touch typing
Odd. Conservative media are already looking over the top of the Great White Hope, Christopher Luxon. Paywalled.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/national-party-deputy-leader-nicola-willis-prime-minister-in-waiting/656ZOQ3ITJYI4JGXN5BKVIJSNQ/
I saw the headline, "Great blue hope – is National's Nicola Willis a PM in waiting?"
He's just got into the office, put his pictures on the walls, his books in the bookshelf and they're thinking about calling the removal people? 😵
Hopefully the contents of his bookshelf don't include a MAGA cap.
Talking of MAGA caps, I'm a great fan of President Trumpy. And I'm a fan for one reason – he did stuff.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-16/can-trump-win-in-2024
That Bloomberg piece explains how he seems to have the Republican party by the short'n'curlys. I'm curious to know what stuff he did that was of any good for the US or the world.
1- He allowed border security to do their job. Obama had hamstrung them.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-welcome-patrol-how-some-border-agents-are-struggling-with-bidens-policy-shift-2021-05-14/
2- He pulled the US out of some United Nation agreements.
3- He supported miners, and slowed decline in their industry.
4- He made freeloading Nato members pay their way.
5- He would have stopped Muslims entering the country if he could have got past congress.
6- Pulled the US out of the Global Climate Pact. That's a biggy for me.
7- He stood up to China.
I can't remember the rest.
Remind me about what Biden has done?
Please understand Trump the man and Trump the President, are two different things in my book.
You think those are good things, right?
Yeah, but I meant good. That's a list containing regressive, racist, destructive and destablising things.
But if that's what you're into then that's unfortunate.
Protecting your border is not good? Would you let me walk into your house because I wanted your food and money?
You have respect for the United Nations? They are the people who stood by while men women and kids were slaughtered in Balkans.
You don't believe people should pay their fare share of an agreement?
Letting China laugh in your face and do nothing is good ( cue Jacinda)?
You believe Islam and Western culture can in the PRESENT live side by side. You know they have a name for you, right. You are an infidel.
You believe in Man Made Climate Change? If you believe that you believe bush fires and coral degradation is caused by the climate.
I'm sorry…but you Lefties are away with the fairies. America is finding that out at the moment.
There's protecting borders and then there's treating refugees like scum.
The UN is far from perfect but its better to have nations around the table together than not. If an agreement wasn't being honored there must be consequences. But if some blowass makes demands over riding existing agreements it's hardly shirking of responsibility.
Treating international relations as a game to rark up support from airheads is dangerous for the whole world.
Any peoples can live side by side if they have respect for one another and have no hidden malicious intent.
The science is sound regarding our effect on our rock, don't be foolish.
You right wingers are a danger to our species and many others too.
''There's protecting borders and then there's treating refugees like scum.''
Yes, they turn them back, and guess what, they try again. Makes a mockery of officially applying for residency. I think you didn't get the ''home'' analogy.
''But if some blowass makes demands over riding existing agreements it's hardly shirking of responsibility.'
Talking of vetoes…
''Any peoples can live side by side if they have respect for one another and have no hidden malicious intent.''
If you are a TRUE adherent to the Islamic faith, that is not possible in thought or deed if the possibility exists to show your true self.
''The science is sound regarding our effect on our rock, don't be foolish.''
Please remember I have stated on numerous occasions that the climate is changing. But I have no time for man made climate change believers. Like weka, opposing views on the subject are not welcome.
''You right wingers are a danger to our species and many others too.''
I would expect you to say that.
Blade says:
"But I have no time for man made climate change believers."
This is great news! I suggest, Blade, that you compile a list of those "climate change believers" here on TS, blacklist them (us) and don't interact with them in any way – you have no time for them, as you say).
I'm top of the list and more than willing to be ignored by you.
It's a breakthrough day for reason on The Standard!
Good ole, Robert. He loves to be selective. Here's what I wrote:
''Please remember I have stated on numerous occasions that the climate is changing. But I have no time for man made climate change believers. Like weka, opposing views on the subject are not welcome.''
Don't let the truth blind you, son.
Making arbitrary statements without explaining your specific thinking and reasons for it is just acting like a dickhead.
You need to state why you don't think the current last century of climate change can't be attributed to humans. After all 4.5 billion years ago the 'climate` was most likely due to bits of space junk. We only recently in geological terms got out of a glacial likely to be primarily triggered by a point Milankovitch cycle. We probably entered a a ice-age about 45 million years ago after Antarctica drifted into the southern polar region and formed enough of an ice cap to act as a global deep freeze.
Then we have the most rapid known rise in CO2 in at least the last 3 million years happening over less than 200 years, and you're explaining a congruent rise in temperatures by the net equivalent if tapping your nose.
Makes you just look lazy, ignorant and too stupid to be able to argue a case.
Actually a lot like "Trumpy" – a person who never managed to do anything that actually works apart from increasing his debts and screwing people doing work for him.
Climate crisis? What climate crisis?
Head . . . sand.
Of course he did. Bless.
Yet despite this supposed focus, the government records show that Border Patrol was observing more immigrants sneaking into the country than when President Trump took office. In fiscal year 2016, Border Patrol agents witnessed about 100,000 successful entries. By 2018, the number had risen to nearly 128,000. In 2019, it hit 150,000. Through four months of 2020, it was on pace to hit almost 156,000.
https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-border-policies-let-more-immigrants-sneak
Weakening the international rules based order and increasing the risks of war, disease and poverty is not a good thing.
Meanwhile, industry income continues to plummet as year in year out coal consumption declines by more than 20%, mine closures have new highs and job losses continue to accelerate.
Jobs are being lost from the US coal industry at the fastest rate in decades as the fuel gets crowded out of an electricity market that is shrinking because of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of coal mining jobs dropped 12 per cent to 43,800 in April, the US labour department reported. The financial picture is darkening in coal districts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Wyoming.
https://www.ft.com/content/39909dd4-7c6c-425e-8f05-4f6e63b60c43
Lie. NATO isn't a club, there are no dues and decisions made by member countries to up their spending were made years before tRump arrived on the scene.
https://www.nato.int/cps/ic/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm
Yup. And in a fit of pique the moron in chief jiggered legal migration, anyhow.
https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immigration-he-did-not-reduce-illegal-immigration
So you're an anti-science loon, too. Good-oh.
Yeah, he sure did.
Key Findings
https://taxfoundation.org/tariffs-trump-trade-war
Looks to me like you're lucky you can even remember your fucking name, sport.
''Looks to me like you're lucky you can even remember your fucking name, sport.''
What a nasty piece of work you are, Joey. Your post deserved a proper reply, but I can't be bothered.
One example:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm
Oh, by the way. Those supposed fact checking sites are themselves now under scrutiny.
Aww, sweary words upset semi-literate cretin. Poor wee petal.
He also got Kin Jong un to the bargaining table.
Yeah sure and he's the only one …who can …do it!
Well, I don't think Biden can do stuff.
Once I led an airline, made it run
Made it race against time
Once I ran an airline, now I'm done
Brother can you spare me a dime?
Once I was a brave CEO
Boldly going where no one dared
Now I’ve taken my big ego
To make the Government feel really scared
So the Office of the Childrens' Commissioner is getting tweaked. A sole commissioner to be replaced by a board, oversight of the highly problematic Oranga Tamariki to be moved into a new organisation, and some other current OCC investigative powers moved to the Ombudsman.
Only a couple of years ago the government was increasing the OCC budget.
The OCC has an important role, being both advocate and an investigator to protect some of our most vulnerable and at risk people. Frankly, I'm against devolving any of that responsibility away from the OCC – as the Spinoff points out in a much longer and more detailed article, a separate OT oversight body already exists and is not nearly as independent as the OCC currently is.
I also have suspicions that a panel of three will produce meetings minutes over months, while an individual commissioner can make a statement within hours.
Anyhoo – submissions close on Wednesday 26 Jan (the day after tomorrow).
Save the Children are against the changes, and also point out that there has been no work done on seeing what children actually want – something that the OCC might have been able to help the government out with, if the thought had occurred.
no work done on seeing what children actually want
Doesn't surprise me at all. Media are in collusion with govt in the ongoing effort to ensure that children have no say.
You may recall seeing children interviewed quite often on the news but I'm confident every single instance falls into the category of uncontraversial. The tacit psychology still universally operative is that children are seen but not heard – despite several generations of kids being heard plenty at home & in school the past half-century.
Since the seen but not heard thing is conventionally allocated to the Victorian era, it goes to show how powerful the inertial effect of brainwashing actually is!
Collusion?
Might be a bit far.
But it probably didn't occur to anyone, yet when I was involved with a child-oriented project that also involved OCC, they were the party that suggested actually involving kids in ongoing development.
I must confess, it hadn't occurred to me.
Yeah I did mean tacit collusion due to folks not thinking about it – convention does embed like that. I gather there's been steps in the direction of reform – kids are expected to report abuse nowadays? Dunno who to, when the abuse happens at home. Teachers??
But I see no reason why policy ought not to incorporate feedback from kids. Especially an entire class put to the question, with encouragement from teacher to respond to a visiting expert researcher. Kids like to volunteer opinions in a supportive social matrix.
"I voted against compulsory vaccinations for NHS staff and for covid passports. My worry is that it leads us in the direction of ID cards and formal identification of people for everything they want to do. This is the direction in which it goes."
Jeremy Corbyn
His apprehension is reasonable. Big Brother seems to be in the pipeline in London, since all them outdoor cameras often record stuff that shows up in the news. However policy need not necessarily be driven by fear. Corbyn had the opportunity to advocate for a supervisory system that monitors the control system on behalf of the people. I bet he never did so. Typical leftist.
Apparently the House of Lords voted no to the amendment to the Crimes bill that was going to lead to repression of protest.
Corbyn had the opportunity to advocate for a supervisory system that monitors the control system on behalf of the people.
Can you explain what you're referring to there?
Typical leftist.
Nah. Sadly, Corbyn's an a-typical leftist in these days.
It's the ole who watches the watchers? thing. Parliament could enact legislation that specifies a supervision system that monitors usage of the control system. All systems are vulnerable to capture by vested interests, so the design challenge is to use lateral-thinking to prevent that.
For instance, supervisors could be public servants by default, or they could include parliamentarians, or even party hacks. Biodiversity spreads risk! You could use JPs, for instance. Anyone with mana & a track record of public service perhaps.
Corbyn's an a-typical leftist in these days
In some respects. Siding with Palestinians against Israelis was understandable, but it takes two to tango so triadic framing would have got him out of that hole & he's a typical leftist insofar as being too old-fashioned to do innovative thought to solve a problem…
I was listening to Chris Hipkins this morning. The more I listened the more I heard National I.D card on the way for us under the pretext of Covid health measures.
The more I listened the more I heard National I.D card on the way for us under the pretext of Covid health measures.
Ya think?! Here's a taster from cut and pastes from a link I provided in a post that (I suspect) no-one bothered to read because, y'know, the link crossed a blue line.
From the first reading for Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill
Eugenie Sage (Green)
“We note too that digital identity is potentially really important for our voting system. There has been provision made for online voting at local authority level for trials, but I don’t think any local authority took that up because of concerns about hacking and insecurity of information. So the work in this space may assist with that.
Glen Bennet (Labour)
“We are now having to ensure that this piece of legislation, which is around our digital footprint and our identity and the framework that it brings, is fit for standards in 2021 and beyond…
Simon Bridges (National)
We support the intent.
James McDowall (ACT)
I’m not sure, based on the bill, if Application Programming Interfaces are going to be used to share data between private and public organisations. […] but I think the direction of travel is right and we’re happy to commend this to the House.”
Terisa Ngobi, (Labour)
COVID-19 is a really good example of why this Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill is timely and critical […] Again, it’s really timely and I commend this bill to the House.
Ingrid Leary, (Labour)
It’s absolutely crucial that we are able to keep our digital identity safe so that we’re not exposed to fiscal issues around banking, that we can move freely and restrict movement where necessary, and just enjoy our freedoms in the non-digital world… So this is a very timely and important initiative, and I commend the bill to the House.”
Nicola Grigg, (National)
a framework that will ensure consistency in the basic principles of privacy and data protection is welcome by us on this side of the House, and indeed all sides of the House, and in a very quickly changing and evolving digital world, it is going to be essential to incorporate a framework that will engender trust in the public. So we are pleased to commend this bill to the House.”
Barbara Edmonds
I’m really keen to understand how the international interoperability works with Australia and the UK and whether other international country partners are going to it, in order to protect our Kiwis’ identification or information.
Here's the link.
I can understand Labour lapping up this legislation . That would make for a tidy, and easily controlled hive.
As for National – these gin soaked wastes of space need to crawl down to the basement and dust off their party's constitution. Then they need to live by it. If that means 20 years of being a political joke, so be it.
At least you know Labour stands for something.
yup, BAU capitalism.
Yes, with a touch of hate, envy and trying to fleece the taxpayer by putting money in one pocket and taking it out of the other. It's all smoke and mirrors. But it's a great act for the fiscally ignorant.
Ignorant is right.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2021/0078/latest/whole.html is the Bill after its first reading. Digital identity services exist now e.g. Realme – surely some regulation would be useful rather than solely relying on the Privacy Act?
And in essence, didn't the requirement to produce ID for alcohol and set up driver licenses to be useful as ID, effectively give us something close to a national ID card anyway?
The drivers license thing has bothered me for years, the switch from "present it within 48 hours" to "carry it all the time".
The problem comes from 'everything' about you being digitised and transited through a framework that's subject to a singular controlling authority.
I mentioned RealMe in the post I wrote, and the difference in scope and level of intrusion and control that a digital passport represents.
Our money is to be digital currency (NZ Reserve Bank is already exploring the introdution of a CBDC) held in digital wallets on the same device that will also hold vaccine status, other medical info, bio-metrics such as iris and/or fingerprint scans, location and movements, and a galaxy of financial info and behaviours sitting alongside (I dunno) a carbon credit tally?, social credit score?…
And all accessible by way of whatever "permissions" are inbuilt to apps developed by corporations (including permissions to pass info to other apps) and by whoever sits atop or at the centre of the Digital Framework who can then turn off access to society on the basis of the info they have. eg – late for booster shot, or guilty of some transgression = green pass turns red, and suddenly you can't buy certain services or physically participate in society.
It's already happening in areas of China, and India has a huge bio- digital system (co developed by Gates) that's supposedly voluntary ie, sign up for access to HIV meds or….no HIV meds type voluntary.
The shit coming down the pyke isn't of the same order as a library swipe card or a credit card.
As PM, Luxon would be spending an hour a day calling DHB heads in order to ask them about things that could just be in an excel file and things that are out of their control.
https://twitter.com/ClintVSmith/status/1485094584648896514
This dude obviously has no idea about politics. But, hold on, I've just read this:
''Clint Smith.
Director of Victor Strategy and Communications. Former Senior Policy & Communications Strategist for Jacinda Ardern and Ministerial Advisor. Opinions my own.''
That really explains a lot. Take away Jacinda and her spin and you are Left with something worse than the National Party… and that's saying something
Even stuff seems to be waking from their slumber:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/127574650/nzs-failure-to-prepare-for-omicron-means-theres-a-shambles-to-come
Senior doctors also has a go at the gummint today.
,
Awww no, twitter dude has a bias.
Is making 20 calls a day to ask dhb heads about drug approval a good use of pm time? Or was Luxon full of shit?
It's all about staying relevant when you aren't. It's about suggesting stuff you probably won't have to follow up on. It's about PR.
So looking at Clint's credentials and then looking at what he wrote, he either has no idea about what his former job should have entailed… or he's just putting the boot in for the team.
Sure, it's all about anything other than the leader of the opposition wanting ministers to spend an hour a day calling CEOs about stuff that isn't even in the CEO's purview.
Staffed ICU beds is useful information, that's why the DHBs report on it regularly to the Ministry of Health. Not sure why the PM needs to personally call all the DHB CEs for this information when the Ministry could email the PM the report after they collate it.
full of shit
Seems like that. Everyone knows secretaries are for phone calls. There's a century of that reality behind us. Nobody will take Lux seriously on that.
It's got nothing to do with who makes the call.
The assumption is that lack of progress is due to the ministers or pm not nagging CEOs enough. Sure, as CEO Luxon might have ignored a board instruction until the chair started harrassing him daily, but NZ healthcare has been on decline for 30 years.
He could criticise the government for failing to up the pay of nurses and other healthcare workers. One of the things that has made recruitment hard is shite pay and shite staffing – both related to the ongoing and longstanding underfunding of public healthcare, and a self-perpetuating cycle.
But then there's the problem with the rest of healthcare underfunding, and the DHB "debts" accrued because DHBs happened to have more sick people than budgeted for.
Labour's regionalisation might address some of that… or it might just draw a veil over the same problem for another ten years. We'll have to wait and see, but my hopes aren't up.
And if Luxon, as a National party leader of the opposition, were to propose actually spending billions more of real money on healthcare, real pay rises for staff, real surgeries, not just the usual accounting "increase"… would that be believable? A massive public spending promise, especially one with equity in mind?
Their donors would have a fit.
lol: Luxon's solution to decades of systemic failure:
Nobody will take Lux seriously on that? Nobody unbiased and with a smidgen of commonsense in touch with reality.
Luxon wasn't speaking to them though. He's aiming for eejits who will saying, "He's a man of action, look at that, he's got his finger on it. I'm really impressed by him. He's way more onto it than the Government"
Yeah I got that he was aiming for that effect. Trouble is, thickos like that will already be voting for him. Won't impress any centrists.
Looking at TV news tonight…and watching a confluence of negative factors coming together.., and listening to HDA, and Western Australian correspondent, Oliver Peterson, I would say by the end of the year you would have to be a halfwit to still support Labour.
Doesn't leave much of a choice does it?
Hell, apart from Chris, the rest of Labour used the Wellington anniversary to continue their holiday.
Btw – Western Australia and NZ will be a great watch given both have taken similar(?) approaches to Covid. I wonder who will go under fist?
ps- don’t take my comments too seriously. According to Weka I’m an exaggerator – what with predicting a lockdown and stuff.
Shame National is such a cluster…though it is possible they could lead the next administration.
"It's the economy stupid" will be true again
Nationals best chance is to hide away until the next election. Otherwise their feet will gain more bullet holes as Luxon has shown.
Agree….keep a low profile and hope that the crash comes before Nov 2023…its a pretty safe bet.
don’t take my comments too seriously
I'll try to keep that in mind.
I chose not to watch the network news tonight. I often jump between 1&3 to minimise the boredom, but that only works until I get the sense they're filling in. I have a good sense of media filling due to a decade spent in the TVNZ newsroom putting stories together.
My expectation for the year currently is random lines of infection in all directions that will take out unhealthy folk & tune-up the others. Darwinism as ecological process. Fast-food addicts that survived the first two waves ought to be the first group heading down the gurgler. They should exit declaring themselves happy to be victims of capitalism & singing I did it my way.
''I chose not to watch the network news tonight. I often jump between 1&3 to minimise the boredom.''
Great minds think alike. It's only the first 10 minutes for me. Then I switch off. Sometimes if I want to shock the system I will watch 'The Project' for the horror affect.
Is Clint being thick or dishonest? Surely he understands that the point Luxon is making is that the number of EXTRA icu beds SHOULD be increasing.
still not a number that changes daily. I assume what Luxon means is that he will harass the DBH chairs daily until they meet his demands.
The constraint is the number of available beds in ICU,which is around 25 nationwide.
Most are used for emergency patients following surgery,accident etc.The white island stressed all ICU in NZ and some were transferred to OZ.
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/7471487/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/7471487
Sure. And that they would increase daily if the PM or minister called the CEOs about it daily. And something about drugs that has nothing to do with the CEOs.
But if the problem is more complex than CEOs not being motivated enough, it's Luxon being loose with the truth.
I expect anyone who called 20 CEOs every day would get to spend a whole lot of time listening to soothing muzak – just the thing after a morning wrangling the wrong-headed no-hopers and bad bargains that are National's best and brightest.
As I said above, the DHBs report those numbers regularly to the Ministry of Health. Not sure why the PM needs to personally call all the DHB CEs when the Ministry could email the PM the report after they collate it.
Micro-mismanagement!
DHB head – "Hello? Oh, Lux..um, yes, I've made those enquiries you deman…requested.
That's $5.50 in the staff cafe and $4.50 from the coffee-cart at the front entrance…yes, of course, critical information, Christopher.
Looking forward to tomorrow's call.
sighs
Hangs up.
Critical thread for those who may feel unsafe if they are forced to work in risky situations:
https://mobile.twitter.com/kvetchings/status/1485022923853565952
Here is the legislation around worker right to refuse unsafe work:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0070/latest/DLM5977016.html?search=sw_096be8ed81b87641_83_25_se&p=1&sr=3
Union for hospo workers.
Technically they aren’t a union yet although hopefully they register soon. Also Unite for some related industries e.g. cinemas and fast food. Council of Trade Unions has a list of affiliate unions here which might be useful for workers in other industries.
my bad – registered as a charity recently, I probably got confused with that.
Done bloody good in a few years to come up from nowhere in an industry that is difficult to organise, though.
Absolutely, and I think having got the incorporated society registration done, union registration is next on their (legal) agenda.
Seems like some restraints of trade are enforceable. Shows you need to be careful what you sign.
Tova O'Brien: Broadcaster must wait two months before beginning her new job | Stuff.co.nz
Interesting. Counter-intuitive, so the devil's in the details:
Still, it'd be good if her new employer takes it to appeal &/or Supreme Court. Law's an ass. Political editor on tv & radio show host are different creatures.
Yes – an interesting outcome.
Previous reporting from Stuff suggested that the restraint of trade provions in Tova O’Brien’s contract would likely be unenforceable:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/127540439/how-enforceable-are-restraints-of-trade?rm=a
But:
In her decision released on Monday, Authority member Marija Urlich determined the radio and television programmes were in competition and that the restraint of trade clause was enforcible.
“The evidence establishes if Ms O’Brien starts work with MWR [Mediaworks] she will be working in competition with Discovery.”
Would be good to see the full decision to read how that determination was arrived at.
True, the rationale used to produce the decision is the key. Until we see that, I suspect Ellis, who I quoted, got the leverage. As an ex-Herald editor, he could seem an expert to the judge. If his specification of the market carried the weight of evidence, I mean. Commercial law combined with contract law…
Tova O'Brien got a fine of $2,000.
Judge Urlich sent a useful signal there to further uses of that kind of clause.
Kinda bullshit now anyway: at a headline unemployment rate heading under 3%, everyone's just poaching like mad.
Yes, I saw that:
The Authority has also ordered O’Brien to pay $2000 for her breach of the conflict of interest clause in her contract. This relates to her providing Mediaworks a comment for their press release and taking part in a photoshoot while still employed by Discovery.
…
Discovery’s head of news Sarah Bristow described it as “egregious”. O’Brien said video included about three seconds of her and the single quote remained in a story on Discovery’s own website. She apologised to Bristow.
She at least conceded that that was $2k worth of cheeky.
Steal over $200k and no jail time! Seems like crime does pay.
Waikato DHB employee, friend avoid jail after $228K theft – NZ Herald
Indicative of a mind-set in the judiciary – ripping off taxpayers is cool because the effect is socialised. Nobody in that class of victims feels actual pain from the ripoff.
Dirty Rotten Liars
Smashing up a Pamure medical centre, aligning with fascists, threatening health workers, payiing a person to take ten vaccines in one day to gain false vaccine passports to pass themselves off as vaccinated at public venues.
Is there anything the anti-vaxxer conspiracists won't stoop to?
I reckon a "litmus test" here on TS would be: Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
Firstly I would go with, Do you have confidence the media would report on it if a child did collapse?
Yes, I do. It would be next to impossible to conceal a real incident such as that.
I would ask you, mauī, do you believe the accounts that circulated, of children, collapsing as a result of their vaccination? That is, is there something in the vaccination that caused such serious reactions?
I agree. But I think if you asked them straight out,
Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
They wouldn’t give you an answer.
(But probably still worth asking, just to see them all plead the fifth. Slimy dishonest scum that they are.)
The question is how did christopher luxin get his job at Air New Zealand or is his case long range planning by nationals and yet another kiwi "MYSTERY CAREER". Was his job advertised?
[please stick to your pre-approved user name thanks – Incognito]
Moderation note for you.