The Eastern Busway is a dedicated busway, similar to the Northern Busway, for the car-dependent eastern suburbs, which includes new bus interchanges at Pakuranga and Botany and the Reeves Rd flyover.
Once built – the completion date has been pushed out from 2025 to 2027 – it is expected to carry 30,000 people a day between the rapidly growing south-eastern suburbs and the rail network at Panmure.
One of Auckland's biggest transport projects, the $1.4 billion Eastern Busway from Panmure to Pakuranga and Botany, has been put back two years following a surprise cut to Auckland's Transport budget.
Auckland councillors yesterday learned the $940 million capital budget they signed off for Auckland last month in their long-term budget no longer exists. The new budget is $820m.
Well, maybe they could ask the government for some dosh, and rather then ask for a busway tell them that you need a bicycle lane or two on the motorway to combat climate change by getting people out of the car.
One is the electorate of the allegedly anointed new Leader of the National Party, the other one is the electorate with the largest National Party majority of all electorates in the country.
Good grief! Both Sabine and you are so bloody ignorant and yet so happy to parade your ignorance here in full view. You are such time wasters; your comments are full of venomous bile and bullshit.
In addition, are you sure you don’t want to make a comparison with the North Korean government?
"In addition, are you sure you don’t want to make a comparison with the North Korean government?"
You are certainly much closer to the Parties in Government that I am. Would you say it was appropriate to equate them or have you already told us too much about the way they operate?
You most certainly are much closer to the politicians than I am, so I’ll leave it to you to consult with them on your silly and irrelevant comparisons with other regimes. Meanwhile, please ignore and cover up your ignominious ignorance.
I might be ignorant to some who don't like what i have to say, and i have no issues with that, i do not endevour to please just for the sake of pleasing.
But that comment by Ad in regards to the many different people of these two electorates – that they simply don't care about public transport – is lazy at best, callous at worst.
But then maybe Labour is not disappointing the National voters in these electorates but rather their own voters. But then everyone knows that Papakura and Botany are the two
electorate with the largest National Party majority of all electorates
and thus it is good and ok to cancel a much needed Busway, and never mind the Labour voters. They just need to move to a more appropriate area were National MPs don’t get voted in.
I might be ignorant to you Incognito, but i am not willfully blind.
Stop digging and why don’t you read the NZH link in your own comment @ 1. You may not be wilfully blind, but blind nonetheless.
Ad doesn’t comment here to please either but he does provoke people in firing up their lazy ignorant brains. Some think he’s lazy and callous, but his comments just go over their head.
And who said that cancelling the Busway is “good and ok”, except you? You’re seeing and hearing things that don’t exist AKA strawmen and tilting at windmills.
Panmure station figures are up strong. Not Pakuranga. Maurice Williamson and the local board poisoned public opinion against pt for years. And was last Labour in 1969, and never will be.
Papakura is getting a big SH1 widening, plus massive subdivisions and town centres. Train pt is small but steady. Papakura has never, ever been Labour, and never will be.
Suppose I were to approach you with a suspicious substance and offer you the choice of sniffing it, touching it, tasting it, or having it injected directly into your body, I suspect few would choose the last option.
Indeed, this is the closest I’ve seen in a while that attempts to explain the visceral-emotional reaction of some to vaccination in general and against Covid vaccination in particular. To be clear, it is not phobia of needles per se, but fear of what’s in the syringe.
Unfortunately modern vaccines aren't the sort of thing where you can give people the recipe and let them make it for themselves.
It is new biotech with low, but significant, side-effect risks (and I certainly wouldn't be touching Sputnik 5!), so the hesitant who are waiting and seeing may be be persuaded by the lack of adverse effects as their peer groups are vaccinated over the coming months. I guess, once the willing team-members are fully vaccinated, vaccine-averse kiwis can be given a few vials to play with (I am thinking in a teaching lab to demonstrate that the contents are as stated – though if they want to rub it on their skin and see what happens, that'd be expensive, but sure; if it helps increase familiarity). Really we have to distribute any unused vaccines to our neighbours more urgently.
Yep, this link suggests that if 80% of NZers were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine (which is at least 85% effective against all COVID-19 variants that have evolved to date), then that would be sufficent to realise the benefits of herd immunity.
Note that herd immunity is just what it says – in the event of Covid-19 infection, unvaccinated individuals will still be at (much) greater risk of developing a life-threatening illness than their vaccinated conterparts.
Caveat – I'm just grabbing stuff off the Internet. The R0 of the original Covid-19 virus is 2.5; the Alpha variant has an R0 of 3.75, and the Delta variant has an R0 of 5.
Don't know what % of NZers would need to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine to achieve herd immunity against the Delta variant, but someone here will.
The over-simplistic formula just considering R0 and vaccine efficacy is that the proportion needed to be vaccinated for herd immunity is greater than (1-1/R0)/e.
So if the Delta variant has R0 of 5, and the Pfizer vaccine has 85% efficacy against it, herd immunity should be achieved when over 94% of the population is vaccinated. Or if the Pfizer vaccine has 90% efficacy, then the herd immunity threshold is 89% vaccinated.
Those thresholds appear unlikely to actually be achieved, particularly since the anti-social arsehole anti-vaxers do seem to be getting a small amount of traction. Particularly within specific communities.
Once everyone in NZ that wants vaccination has received it, it's very unlikely the borders will remain closed, or any restrictions on movements imposed. So a likely outcome is that there will be large pockets that don't reach herd immunity and will suffer local outbreaks.
Ta very much Andre; agreed it seems unlikely that NZ will achieve 94% or even 89% Pfizer vaccine coverage, but one can hope.
Depressing (although not surprising) that COVID-19 has already evolved an R0 sufficient to outsmart initial strategies to achieve herd immunity via vaccination. So it's possible that herd immunity will be achieved only once COVID variants have spread through the more concentrated pockets of unvaccinated NZers, hopefully without overwhelming public health services.
Nevertheless, those who choose to have the Pfizer vaccine will be largely protected against serious Covid-related illnesses, at least for now. which will spare our nurses and doctors. It's a no-brainer – get vaccinated people!
It was more in response to the linked newsroom piece than directly to your comment; Incognito. The WSJ is paywalled, so I can't see much on the needleless options for overcoming vaccine hesitancy. The potential (1 in 200,000) blood-clotting with the AstraZeneca vaccine in under-60s was mentioned in the linked piece, Pfizer and Moderna seem to increase heart inflammation risk in adolescents.
According to data from the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), there were 347 observed cases of heart inflammation in the week after the second vaccine dose in males aged 12 to 24. That compares with expectations of 12 or fewer cases for males in that age range based on US population background incidence rates, the CDC said.
So it's not like there is no rational reasons to be cautious of vaccines (though the risk-reward balance is firmly on the side of vaccination), despite what the link said:
Since the reasons for vaccine hesitancy are not rational – vaccines demonstrably work – they cannot be addressed by merely reiterating impressive statistics. It’s time to explore other factors making people reluctant to accept vaccines proven safe and effective.
I just didn't like the suggested fear tactics much, so suggested alternatives. And got a bit rambly too…
Rationality isn't assessed in a vacuum. If there was no benefit to taking a drug, no matter how small the risk, it would be irrational for anyone to take it.
In a country with half a million deaths from the disease, worrying about a few hundred non-fatal adverse events associated with the prevention is highly irrational.
Scenario:
You're being chased by a serial killer. The only route of escape is a footbridge over a gorge. the bridge is new, shiny, of apparently solid construction, and millions of other people fleeing the serial killer have run over it with barely a trip or stumble.
Question:
is it rational to demand an engineer's report on the bridge, demand to see the schematics and maintenance logs, spend hours youtube-searching bridge construction techniques, and generally express bridge-hesitancy while the serial killer is catching up to you?
One way to coax the vaccine hesitant might be to make deaths from the coronavirus seem more frightening. Something like that worked in the public health campaign against smoking
I wasn’t too sure whether you were referring to fear tactics by anti-vaxxers.
If only you had given the full quote of that thought:
But I suspect another strategy is likely to be more successful in coaxing the hesitant to vaccinate.
I’m not that keen either on fighting fire with fire and fear with fear. However, as we know, and as Agar mentioned, campaigns that confront people with the possible consequences of their bad behaviours can be quite effective in helping to change these behaviours. Agar mentioned anti-smoking campaign but equally drink-driving campaigns can be very confronting and upsetting.
In the early stages of the pandemic, Covid-19 was portrayed by some as just another flu or even a mild one compared the Spanish Flu Pandemic in 1918. Some fobbed off the fatalities as ‘old people who would have died soon anyway’. This was used in the context of the shocking fatalities in Lombardy-Italy but also Sweden. Interestingly, the same ‘dry wood’ metaphor has been used to bolster a vaccination strategy.
Anyway, much of Covid-19 was sometimes portrayed as mild, moderate, and almost benignly natural. The reality is that many people have suffered so-called long covid and some severe cases had their lungs destroyed to a point at which a lung transplant was the only option.
I can see some similarities with smokers dying of lung cancer except that smoking is a choice. Without necessarily pushing vaccines down people’s throats, we can at least be honest about the possible outcomes of this disease, which is still evolving, may I add.
The thing that annoys me is that private landlords have to ensure their properties are up to a certain standard (eg. heat pumps, insulation etc., often a higher standard than their own homes), whereas the government (the biggest landlord) do not.
"In a fiery exchange in Parliament yesterday, Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams confirmed just 11,345 of a total 66,000 state houses currently meet the standards."
The government has set the rules and should be the first to follow those showing how its done. It cannot be a case of do what I say not what I do. Absolutely.
However the article is about tax deduction of tax on interest. No one can do this when they have a mortgage. I would argue that, If this is right for landlords, it must be right for any owner of a home paying a mortgage.
The difference being, the landlord is producing assessible taxable income ie. the rent he's collecting, therefore, just like any business borrowing money to produce income that is taxable, they should be able to reduce the income by having the interest as a tax deduction.
Living in your own home and paying a mortgage, produces no taxable income. ie. it is a personal expense.
People who are not landlords, seem to get annoyed as some are actually running at a loss ie. the rent received is less than the mortgage interest (negative gearing).
Grant has now ring fenced this (that I agree with), ie. they cannot reduce their other taxable income by the loss.
I do not agree with the non-deductibility of interest though. If a guy borrows $500k and buys earth moving equipment and hires the equipment out, the interest is deductible. If a landlord borrows $500k for a house and rents it out, the interest is not deductible – seems wrong to me.
I maybe saw comments putting this forward when Robertson was justifying calling the usual standard of interest deduction a distortion. Its a complete piece of fiction however, I never saw any reasonable argument being made here.
Deducting interest is in virtually all cases of business legitimate. The main thing the NZ rule change favours is any business which can source funding without going directly to the bank, so larger businesses.
I agree about business. This was about pension fund investments – believe it may have been by Hickey or Easton or similar. No time to look today sorry.
One of the most important changes was little noticed at the time, but has had a huge impact over time. Before 1989 there used to be a tax break for putting money into private pension funds. Given there was no such tax break for capital gains on property and business assets, it was deemed an unfair advantage for pension funds and removed with the aim of creating a ‘level playing field’.
New Zealand is now almost completely on its own now in the western world as not providing any tax breaks or incentives for saving into managed or pension funds, which go on to invest in companies, bonds and other financial assets, and not taxing capital gains or wealth.
Thats a long bow to draw. Most business assets are depreciated. Several years ago you could depreciate your residential property too. If the intent is there to produce taxable income, eg. Rent then the business can deduct the costs including interest. Now that they have said no to residential tax deductions there is an anomoly.
All private rentals must comply within 90 days of any new or renewed tenancy after 1 July 2021, with all private rentals complying by 1 July 2024. All boarding houses must comply by 1 July 2021. All houses rented by Kāinga Ora (formerly Housing New Zealand) and registered Community Housing Providers must comply by 1 July 2023.
here is an interesting piece from the very good and reliable Consortium News on the current fracturing of the Left in the US…it is well worth a read.
"There’s been a new public fracturing of the intellectual left, typified by an essay last week from Nathan J. Robinson, editor of the small, independent, socialist magazine Current Affairs, accusing Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi of bolstering the right’s arguments. He is the more reasonable face of what seems to be a new industry arguing that Greenwald is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, setting the right’s agenda for it."
No worries, I to used to read a bit of Current Affairs and Robinson myself, but have to say I have been pretty shocked on his position on this particular important issue, his nuance on any Left/Right crossover and Left/Right populism can only be described as reactionary and short sighted…and that doesn't even get into his stand on cancel culture, which he staunchly defended, only to then promptly get cancelled himself….
Those were interesting reads, thank you. I skipped the video because I prefer written material.
I now also remember Robinson being ‘fired’ by The Guardian from his little gig.
It was hard to reconcile that both pieces were written by the same person and seemingly about the same person but then I realised that he used Robinson as a pivot for his own narrative.
I now also realise why Robinson and Current Affairs disappeared off my radar a while back. I might have a look to see if they warrant my time and attention.
President Biden appears to have figured out one big solution to Trumpism: split the hard right off and work with the centrists to get stuff done. Key players include Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona Democrat), Rob Portman (Ohio Republican), Jon Tester (Montana Democrat), and Mark Warner (Virginia (democrat).
Some highlights of what's been released so far are:
Roads and bridges: The plan includes $109 billion for roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. This is $50 billion less than Biden requested initially.
Public transit: The plan also provides $49 billion for public transit, $66 billion for rail, $25 billion for airports and $16 billion for ports and waterways.
Water and power systems: $55 billion will be invested in water infrastructure and $73 billion in the nation’s power structure. Some of this money would be used to eliminate the nation's lead service lines and pipes.
Broadband investment: The plan would provide $65 billion to make improvements to the country's broadband system. Originally, Biden wanted $100 billion to ensure citizens have reliable, high-speed internet. However, the President lowered his ask during negotiations.
Electric vehicles: The bipartisan plan also includes $7.5 billion to build a network of electric vehicle chargers along highways and in rural and disadvantaged communities. The goal is to build 500,000 electric vehicle chargers. Another $7.5 billion will go toward making thousands of school and transit buses electric.
It's not a cure for Trumpism, the package has got a bit to go, and it doesn't mean there's bipartisanship on immigration or Police or anything else. But it is Biden's promised new functioning Washington.
The established ruling elites know there is a crisis. They agreed, at least temporarily, to throw money at it with the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill known as American Rescue Plan (ARP). But the ARP will not alter the structural inequities, either by raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour or imposing taxes and regulations on corporations or the billionaire class that saw its wealth increase by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic.
…This act will, at best, provide a momentary respite from the country’s death spiral, sending out one time checks of $1,400 to 280 million Americans, extending $300 weekly unemployment benefits until the end of August and distributing $3,600 through a tax credit for children under the age of 6 and $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17 starting on July 1. Much of this money will be instantly gobbled up by landlords, lenders, medical providers and credit card companies. The act does, to its credit, bail out some 1 million unionized workers poised to lose their pensions and hands $31.2 billion in aid to Native communities, some of the poorest in the nation.
But what happens to the majority of Americans who get government support for only a few months? What are they supposed to do when the checks stop arriving at the end of the year? Will the federal government orchestrate another massive relief package? I doubt it. We will be back where we started.
…The Biden administration — and Biden was one of the principal architects of the policies that fleeced the working class and made war on the poor — is nothing more than a brief coda in the decline and fall, set against which is China’s rising global economic and military clout.
The loss of credibility has left the media, which serves as courtiers to the elites, largely powerless to manipulate public perceptions and public opinion. Rather, the media has divided the public into competing demographics. Media platforms target one demographic, feeding its opinions and proclivities back to it, while shrilly demonizing the demographic on the other side of the political divide. This has proved commercially successful. But it has also split the country into irreconcilable warring factions that can no longer communicate. Truth and verifiable fact have been sacrificed. Russiagate is as absurd as the belief that the presidential election was stolen from Trump. Pick your fantasy.
Well I guess he now works in the US prison system so gets to see first hand the direct result of a broken US model of governance still following blindly an ideology that relentlessly destroys the planet along with the living things that inhabit it through it's insatiable need for endless, unsustainable growth…before then worked extensively as a war correspondent, saw and experienced the result of western imperialism on the ground..so I assume that maybe those things shaped his writing and positions in his writing that we read today?
Maybe Rachel Maddow is more you cup of tea?
A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow’s Viewers Know She’s Not Offering Facts
Greed and what they can get away with is obviously the only rule here. No exemptions. In fact, given that there are no tourists to speak off its NZlanders themselves who are the perpetrators – no more excuses.
If the Russians fire warning shots to protect their maritime territory, that's fine.
If they fire warning shots to stop other nations entering the waters of a third party, that's generally called a "blockade" and is an act of war (which is why the US avoided the term "blockade" in the cuban Missile crisis).
So the Russians are claiming they fired warning shots, while the British are saying that there was just some coincidental noisiness as their ship travelled through Ukrainian waters.
Concern raising articles, especially given the profession of two of the authors…and it will be interesting to see if Mr Bradbury is as good as his word.
Reddit banned lesbian female only subreddits (those that exclude trans women, irrespective of content), but allows groups like this to stay. This is important for understanding why gender critical feminists are doing what they are doing. This stuff from Reddit is tech bro sanctioned misogyny, and is largely accepted by the left.
The plan is part of the government's work to strengthen social cohesion, in response to the Royal Commission of inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack.
Frankly I hate the sound of this. It is so stupid to try to control speech by suppressing it. The wrong words, even spoken in jest, could become a blackmailing tactic against people afraid to lose their jobs, shown up by our increasingly witch-hunting, puritan world. Nazi propaganda brought naive children in to their service, reporting on parents!
Our governments are so pathetic and irrational – we know this by previous Labour opening us up to laissez faire trading which in centuries before was disastrous for principled civilisation. They should have recognised this but no, steam ahead, was the call. Mark Twain should have been a counter-call, that's where the depth of the river was constantly checked to prevent running into a new sandbank in the ever-changing river. But we had no practical, knowledgeable pilot in 1984 and we appear to have newbies now putting forward their notions as policy with no allowance for the unintended consequences which come with all change. On this theme I have put link to Don McGlashan singing Anchor Me with memories of Helen Kelly.
And further I find that Mr Faafoi is in charge of not only Broadcasting but Justice and Immigration as well. Is he capable of looking at what we need for Just-us or is he inflated with a desire to look big in the world – making his mark etc. He is ex-journalist with BBC and TVNZ; if we got National back in, could we end up with Mike Hosking as Min. of Justice dealing out behavioural controls on all the unsatisfactory people he picks on! Oh lordie, lordie.
Here is Anchor Me played by Don McGlashan for Helen Kelly's memory on television.
I suggest you actually read the proposals and engage with them, rather than make sweeping generalisations and personal attacks to try and support your concerns.
I suggest Nordy you think about whether it is an appropriate proposal to bring in and about the lead politician involved. Why is it that citizens are constantly having to fight legislation that is poorly thought out and which once in will have huge ramifications? I suggest that you give us a break by not supporting such proposals. It wears out thinking citizens to have to monitor supposed intelligent well-meaning pollies.
Everybody is free to make a submission and nobody should be discouraged from exercising their democratic right to make a submission. I do hope that many will make submission and I don’t expect for one second that I’d agree with all of them, if I were to see and read them all, which is extremely unlikely. A proposal such as this needs input and feedback from many quarters. Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom (an oxymoron) and/or The Truth. This site values and encourages robust debate, not the exclusion of others and their opinions.
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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 ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
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 ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment of ...
The Boil Up’s Lucinda Bennett considers the oyster – from freshness to pearls to the joy of shucking your own. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. In Carmen Maria Machado’s short story ‘Eight Bites’, a woman begins her last supper before bariatric surgery with “a cavalcade ...
Asia Pacific Report A group of 65 Auckland University academics have written an open letter to vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater criticising the institution’s stance over students protesting in solidarity with Palestine. They have called on her administration to “support” the students who were denied permission to establish an “overnight encampment” by ...
The Student Volunteer Army is on the march, generating approximately 1.6 million hours of volunteering from roughly 35,000 secondary school students in just five years. For Rebekah Brown, the pathway to volunteering started with her singing coach. With a passion for the arts, the suggestion to volunteer at Acting Antics, ...
Keeping up with online communication can be exhausting, so Fran Barclay enlisted the help of Meta’s new ‘intelligent assistant’ to respond to all her messages. Could her mates tell the difference? For centuries, technology has ruled the ways in which we communicate. From the dawn of written language, to the ...
Jamie Arbuckle, a councillor who has become an member of parliament, says he has settled into having two roles so comfortably he's going to keep both pay cheques. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong Fifty years ago, Australian feminist Anne Summers denounced “the ideology of sexism” governing over so many women’s lives. Unfortunately, sexism is as lethal today as it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Senior Researcher in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work patterns it fostered have changed the way we think about office space, and central business districts in general. While fears ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney There’s a good reason your local volunteer-run netball club doesn’t pay tax. In Australia, various nonprofit organisations are exempt from paying income tax, including those that do charitable work, such as churches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
The workplace can be a minefield of bad comms and passive aggression. Kinksters can help you navigate it. A friend and colleague recently gave me a compliment I loved. They told me I’d always been good at emotional communication and making people feel comfortable. “But I feel like it’s really ...
Even if some students are now just texting on their laptops. Stewart Sowman-Lund writes in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
Renowned musician, advocate, and proud born and raised daughter of Tauranga, Ria Hall, is announcing her candidacy for Mayor of Tauranga and Pāpāmoa Ward for the upcoming election on July 20th. ...
The new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about ‘balance’ miss the mark, argues primary school teacher Jessie Moss. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students presented to parliament a petition signed by more than 10,000 people calling for a ...
For too long our so-called national bird has maintained its stranglehold on the economy of regional New Zealand. Thanks to the fast track legislation, we will have our revenge. Theories abound on what ails New Zealand’s economy. National leader Chris Luxon has posited that we’re negative, wet, whiny, and inward-looking; ...
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For the past 12 years, Georgia-Rose Brown has balanced on the brink of making an Olympic Games – but always landed gracefully on the wrong side. Reaching the Olympics is a dream the gymnast has harboured since she was a six-year-old; a dream that would dwindle every four years, yet ...
Late one afternoon in March 1860 a man in a thin green velveteen jacket and a wide-awake hat arrived on foot at a sheep station named Glenmark, about 65 kilometres north of Christchurch. The man was in his mid-fifties but he looked older. Several people who met him that day ...
If building one of Auckland’s possible waterfront stadiums was funded privately, it would need to hold a sold-out Ed Sherran concert every weekday for 25 years. That’s Rob Hamlin’s finding – he’s a senior marketing lecturer at the University of Otago. “It’s not going to happen; forget about it,” he ...
Comment: The debate over the future relationship between news and social media is bringing us closer to a long-overdue reckoning. Social media isn’t trying to kill journalism, because social media has never really cared about journalism. Social media is resolutely in the attention business. News propels some attention — perhaps ...
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. ...
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Well, maybe they could ask the government for some dosh, and rather then ask for a busway tell them that you need a bicycle lane or two on the motorway to combat climate change by getting people out of the car.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/aucklands-14b-eastern-busway-put-back-two-years-after-big-cut-to-auckland-transport-budget/IH2U62NFIG6LETBLNYGV427W6Y/
Botany and Pakuranga just don't care.
They haven't seen the pt benefits like North Shore have. Won't bother them.
Well, then, it is all good then. Labour surely won't need these votes come the next election. Next.
One is the electorate of the allegedly anointed new Leader of the National Party, the other one is the electorate with the largest National Party majority of all electorates in the country.
https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2020/electorate-details-04.html
https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2020/electorate-details-35.html
Both Ad and you are correct.
Next.
Well at least you are honest about the Government's approach.
If you don't vote for us you will get nothing. They are learning from the Singapore Government I see. They are notorious for this behaviour.
Good grief! Both Sabine and you are so bloody ignorant and yet so happy to parade your ignorance here in full view. You are such time wasters; your comments are full of venomous bile and bullshit.
In addition, are you sure you don’t want to make a comparison with the North Korean government?
"In addition, are you sure you don’t want to make a comparison with the North Korean government?"
You are certainly much closer to the Parties in Government that I am. Would you say it was appropriate to equate them or have you already told us too much about the way they operate?
You most certainly are much closer to the politicians than I am, so I’ll leave it to you to consult with them on your silly and irrelevant comparisons with other regimes. Meanwhile, please ignore and cover up your ignominious ignorance.
Not so fast, dear Incognito. Not so fast.
2020 election Papakura (https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/historical-electorate-profiles/electorate-profiles-data/document/DBHOH_Lib_EP_Papakura_Electoral_Profile/papakura-electoral-profile)
COLLINS, Judith (NAT) 20,266 55.63
PABLA, Jesse (LAB) 12,780 35.08
GREENING, Toa (NZF) 2,778 7.63
BHANA, Raewyn Teresa (MAOR)607 1.67
Botany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botany_(New_Zealand_electorate))
NationalChristopher Luxon 16,661 53.23
LabourNaisi Chen 11,890 38.0
I might be ignorant to some who don't like what i have to say, and i have no issues with that, i do not endevour to please just for the sake of pleasing.
But that comment by Ad in regards to the many different people of these two electorates – that they simply don't care about public transport – is lazy at best, callous at worst.
But then maybe Labour is not disappointing the National voters in these electorates but rather their own voters. But then everyone knows that Papakura and Botany are the two
and thus it is good and ok to cancel a much needed Busway, and never mind the Labour voters. They just need to move to a more appropriate area were National MPs don’t get voted in.
I might be ignorant to you Incognito, but i am not willfully blind.
sigh
Stop digging and why don’t you read the NZH link in your own comment @ 1. You may not be wilfully blind, but blind nonetheless.
Ad doesn’t comment here to please either but he does provoke people in firing up their lazy ignorant brains. Some think he’s lazy and callous, but his comments just go over their head.
And who said that cancelling the Busway is “good and ok”, except you? You’re seeing and hearing things that don’t exist AKA strawmen and tilting at windmills.
Panmure station figures are up strong. Not Pakuranga. Maurice Williamson and the local board poisoned public opinion against pt for years. And was last Labour in 1969, and never will be.
Papakura is getting a big SH1 widening, plus massive subdivisions and town centres. Train pt is small but steady. Papakura has never, ever been Labour, and never will be.
No loss either way.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/vaccines-and-our-irrational-natures
Indeed, this is the closest I’ve seen in a while that attempts to explain the visceral-emotional reaction of some to vaccination in general and against Covid vaccination in particular. To be clear, it is not phobia of needles per se, but fear of what’s in the syringe.
Unfortunately modern vaccines aren't the sort of thing where you can give people the recipe and let them make it for themselves.
It is new biotech with low, but significant, side-effect risks (and I certainly wouldn't be touching Sputnik 5!), so the hesitant who are waiting and seeing may be be persuaded by the lack of adverse effects as their peer groups are vaccinated over the coming months. I guess, once the willing team-members are fully vaccinated, vaccine-averse kiwis can be given a few vials to play with (I am thinking in a teaching lab to demonstrate that the contents are as stated – though if they want to rub it on their skin and see what happens, that'd be expensive, but sure; if it helps increase familiarity). Really we have to distribute any unused vaccines to our neighbours more urgently.
No one is safe until everyone is safe.
"No one is safe until everyone is safe." Is 80%, the so called herd immunity enough?
Maybe the anti vaxers would account to this option and leave more vaccine for 3rd world countries that might never be rid of covid19?
Yep, this link suggests that if 80% of NZers were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine (which is at least 85% effective against all COVID-19 variants that have evolved to date), then that would be sufficent to realise the benefits of herd immunity.
https://theconversation.com/covid-is-surging-in-the-worlds-most-vaccinated-country-why-160869
Note that herd immunity is just what it says – in the event of Covid-19 infection, unvaccinated individuals will still be at (much) greater risk of developing a life-threatening illness than their vaccinated conterparts.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808
Caveat – I'm just grabbing stuff off the Internet. The R0 of the original Covid-19 virus is 2.5; the Alpha variant has an R0 of 3.75, and the Delta variant has an R0 of 5.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/125530953/covid19-the-delta-variant-and-how-scarily-fleeting-encounters-can-allow-the-virus-to-spread
Don't know what % of NZers would need to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine to achieve herd immunity against the Delta variant, but someone here will.
The over-simplistic formula just considering R0 and vaccine efficacy is that the proportion needed to be vaccinated for herd immunity is greater than (1-1/R0)/e.
So if the Delta variant has R0 of 5, and the Pfizer vaccine has 85% efficacy against it, herd immunity should be achieved when over 94% of the population is vaccinated. Or if the Pfizer vaccine has 90% efficacy, then the herd immunity threshold is 89% vaccinated.
Those thresholds appear unlikely to actually be achieved, particularly since the anti-social arsehole anti-vaxers do seem to be getting a small amount of traction. Particularly within specific communities.
Once everyone in NZ that wants vaccination has received it, it's very unlikely the borders will remain closed, or any restrictions on movements imposed. So a likely outcome is that there will be large pockets that don't reach herd immunity and will suffer local outbreaks.
Ta very much Andre; agreed it seems unlikely that NZ will achieve 94% or even 89% Pfizer vaccine coverage, but one can hope.
Depressing (although not surprising) that COVID-19 has already evolved an R0 sufficient to outsmart initial strategies to achieve herd immunity via vaccination. So it's possible that herd immunity will be achieved only once COVID variants have spread through the more concentrated pockets of unvaccinated NZers, hopefully without overwhelming public health services.
Nevertheless, those who choose to have the Pfizer vaccine will be largely protected against serious Covid-related illnesses, at least for now. which will spare our nurses and doctors. It's a no-brainer – get vaccinated people!
I cannot make head nor tail of your comment, sorry.
It was more in response to the linked newsroom piece than directly to your comment; Incognito. The WSJ is paywalled, so I can't see much on the needleless options for overcoming vaccine hesitancy. The potential (1 in 200,000) blood-clotting with the AstraZeneca vaccine in under-60s was mentioned in the linked piece, Pfizer and Moderna seem to increase heart inflammation risk in adolescents.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/23/fda-warning-heart-inflammation-pfizer-moderna-vaccines
So it's not like there is no rational reasons to be cautious of vaccines (though the risk-reward balance is firmly on the side of vaccination), despite what the link said:
I just didn't like the suggested fear tactics much, so suggested alternatives. And got a bit rambly too…
Rationality isn't assessed in a vacuum. If there was no benefit to taking a drug, no matter how small the risk, it would be irrational for anyone to take it.
In a country with half a million deaths from the disease, worrying about a few hundred non-fatal adverse events associated with the prevention is highly irrational.
Scenario:
You're being chased by a serial killer. The only route of escape is a footbridge over a gorge. the bridge is new, shiny, of apparently solid construction, and millions of other people fleeing the serial killer have run over it with barely a trip or stumble.
Question:
is it rational to demand an engineer's report on the bridge, demand to see the schematics and maintenance logs, spend hours youtube-searching bridge construction techniques, and generally express bridge-hesitancy while the serial killer is catching up to you?
Sorry, but whose “fear tactics” are you talking about?
Agar's (in your original link at comment 2.0):
Ta
I wasn’t too sure whether you were referring to fear tactics by anti-vaxxers.
If only you had given the full quote of that thought:
I’m not that keen either on fighting fire with fire and fear with fear. However, as we know, and as Agar mentioned, campaigns that confront people with the possible consequences of their bad behaviours can be quite effective in helping to change these behaviours. Agar mentioned anti-smoking campaign but equally drink-driving campaigns can be very confronting and upsetting.
In the early stages of the pandemic, Covid-19 was portrayed by some as just another flu or even a mild one compared the Spanish Flu Pandemic in 1918. Some fobbed off the fatalities as ‘old people who would have died soon anyway’. This was used in the context of the shocking fatalities in Lombardy-Italy but also Sweden. Interestingly, the same ‘dry wood’ metaphor has been used to bolster a vaccination strategy.
Anyway, much of Covid-19 was sometimes portrayed as mild, moderate, and almost benignly natural. The reality is that many people have suffered so-called long covid and some severe cases had their lungs destroyed to a point at which a lung transplant was the only option.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-public/long-covid
Early outcomes after lung transplantation for severe COVID-19: a series of the first consecutive cases from four countries
I can see some similarities with smokers dying of lung cancer except that smoking is a choice. Without necessarily pushing vaccines down people’s throats, we can at least be honest about the possible outcomes of this disease, which is still evolving, may I add.
The vaccine averse could be left alone until they recognise it is safe, at which point they can pay for it.
Do landlords put pressure on to get exemption to find a ruse not to pay?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/renting/125552758/call-to-exempt-longterm-tenancies-from-new-rental-tax-rules
And this is in the news:
Another deal for the rich at the expense of the taxpayer. When will the government officials realize that the tax they collect is not their money.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/125551395/minister-waited-months-to-reveal-maximum-grant-given-to-amazon
The thing that annoys me is that private landlords have to ensure their properties are up to a certain standard (eg. heat pumps, insulation etc., often a higher standard than their own homes), whereas the government (the biggest landlord) do not.
"In a fiery exchange in Parliament yesterday, Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams confirmed just 11,345 of a total 66,000 state houses currently meet the standards."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/444486/govt-accused-of-double-standards-over-health-of-state-houses
The government has set the rules and should be the first to follow those showing how its done. It cannot be a case of do what I say not what I do. Absolutely.
However the article is about tax deduction of tax on interest. No one can do this when they have a mortgage. I would argue that, If this is right for landlords, it must be right for any owner of a home paying a mortgage.
The basis for the difference is that for a landlord the interest is a business expense.
The difference being, the landlord is producing assessible taxable income ie. the rent he's collecting, therefore, just like any business borrowing money to produce income that is taxable, they should be able to reduce the income by having the interest as a tax deduction.
Living in your own home and paying a mortgage, produces no taxable income. ie. it is a personal expense.
People who are not landlords, seem to get annoyed as some are actually running at a loss ie. the rent received is less than the mortgage interest (negative gearing).
Grant has now ring fenced this (that I agree with), ie. they cannot reduce their other taxable income by the loss.
I do not agree with the non-deductibility of interest though. If a guy borrows $500k and buys earth moving equipment and hires the equipment out, the interest is deductible. If a landlord borrows $500k for a house and rents it out, the interest is not deductible – seems wrong to me.
I recall reading that the fatal distortion happened when govt removed deductibility for pension funds compared with rental housing.
I maybe saw comments putting this forward when Robertson was justifying calling the usual standard of interest deduction a distortion. Its a complete piece of fiction however, I never saw any reasonable argument being made here.
Deducting interest is in virtually all cases of business legitimate. The main thing the NZ rule change favours is any business which can source funding without going directly to the bank, so larger businesses.
I agree about business. This was about pension fund investments – believe it may have been by Hickey or Easton or similar. No time to look today sorry.
Found one example from Hickey last year though I'm sure I read it in a few places now in more detail: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300175287/how-past-generations-pulled-up-the-property-ladder-on-todays-youth
Not a good analogy.
The thing is that earth moving equipment is depreciated.
And, if you sell it for more than the depreciated value, you are taxed on the difference.
Land appreciates, and, mostly isn't taxed on the gain. So long as you are careful about what you "intend".
An anomaly.
Thats a long bow to draw. Most business assets are depreciated. Several years ago you could depreciate your residential property too. If the intent is there to produce taxable income, eg. Rent then the business can deduct the costs including interest. Now that they have said no to residential tax deductions there is an anomoly.
Not at all.
You could depreciate, buildings, not land!
Yes I meant buildings only in my comment. But you can no longer depreciate residential rental buildings.
Land has never been depreciated.
https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/healthy-homes/about-the-healthy-homes-standards/
Link in RNZ article points to wrong article.
here is an interesting piece from the very good and reliable Consortium News on the current fracturing of the Left in the US…it is well worth a read.
"There’s been a new public fracturing of the intellectual left, typified by an essay last week from Nathan J. Robinson, editor of the small, independent, socialist magazine Current Affairs, accusing Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi of bolstering the right’s arguments. He is the more reasonable face of what seems to be a new industry arguing that Greenwald is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, setting the right’s agenda for it."
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/24/what-happened-to-glenn-greenwald/
Or watch the two main players debate their positions…
Ta
I lost sight of Robinson and I used to read Current Affairs on a regular basis. Maybe time to reacquaint myself with them again.
No worries, I to used to read a bit of Current Affairs and Robinson myself, but have to say I have been pretty shocked on his position on this particular important issue, his nuance on any Left/Right crossover and Left/Right populism can only be described as reactionary and short sighted…and that doesn't even get into his stand on cancel culture, which he staunchly defended, only to then promptly get cancelled himself….
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/12/guardian-reveals-its-true-face-sacking-progressive-columnist-nathan-robinson
Those were interesting reads, thank you. I skipped the video because I prefer written material.
I now also remember Robinson being ‘fired’ by The Guardian from his little gig.
It was hard to reconcile that both pieces were written by the same person and seemingly about the same person but then I realised that he used Robinson as a pivot for his own narrative.
I now also realise why Robinson and Current Affairs disappeared off my radar a while back. I might have a look to see if they warrant my time and attention.
President Biden appears to have figured out one big solution to Trumpism: split the hard right off and work with the centrists to get stuff done. Key players include Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona Democrat), Rob Portman (Ohio Republican), Jon Tester (Montana Democrat), and Mark Warner (Virginia (democrat).
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-senate-infrastructure-policing-06-24-21/index.html
Some highlights of what's been released so far are:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/24/how-the-infrastructure-deal-got-done-496121
It's not a cure for Trumpism, the package has got a bit to go, and it doesn't mean there's bipartisanship on immigration or Police or anything else. But it is Biden's promised new functioning Washington.
Don't worry Ad there is plenty of bipartisanship between Trumpism and Bidenism on immigration, The Police and funding Israel
Kamala Harris tells migrants 'do not come' during talks in Guatemala
Biden backs funding more police to fight crime wave
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57589416
Power Up: Biden administration approves $735 million weapons sale to Israel, raising red flags for some House Democrats
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/17/power-up-biden-administration-approves-735-million-weapons-sale-israel-raising-red-flags-some-house-democrats/
Well, that is one curated view of Biden.
Here is another: Bandaging the Corpse by Chris Hedges.
Good ol' Chris Hedges, never one to pull his punch's or get get suckered in by the centrist liberals masquerading as the Left…thanks for that link.
To that old catastrophist, everything is just bandage.
Well I guess he now works in the US prison system so gets to see first hand the direct result of a broken US model of governance still following blindly an ideology that relentlessly destroys the planet along with the living things that inhabit it through it's insatiable need for endless, unsustainable growth…before then worked extensively as a war correspondent, saw and experienced the result of western imperialism on the ground..so I assume that maybe those things shaped his writing and positions in his writing that we read today?
Maybe Rachel Maddow is more you cup of tea?
A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow’s Viewers Know She’s Not Offering Facts
https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/22/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddows-viewers-know-shes-not-offering-facts/
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/fishermen-filmed-with-thousands-of-pink-maomao-in-bins-in-tairua/TOLOSXOST56XJTYJSU5SKUEBSU/
Greed and what they can get away with is obviously the only rule here. No exemptions. In fact, given that there are no tourists to speak off its NZlanders themselves who are the perpetrators – no more excuses.
Yes, and who is the middle man and final market?
See the little Bulldog doing some agitating sailing of their little boat in Russian waters at the behest of Uncle Sam.
Better they put their money to better use at home where it's needed to fight Covid instead of playing Paper Tiger games.
I'm not up with the play Byd. Briefly who, what, are you referring to?
Sailing a UK Navy boat to agitate in Ukraine.
Geopolitical circlejerk between regional powers.
Can't let a good ferment go off the boil eh.
Well, bojo's a dick but so is Putin.
I found the wee dance amusing, though.
If the Russians fire warning shots to protect their maritime territory, that's fine.
If they fire warning shots to stop other nations entering the waters of a third party, that's generally called a "blockade" and is an act of war (which is why the US avoided the term "blockade" in the cuban Missile crisis).
So the Russians are claiming they fired warning shots, while the British are saying that there was just some coincidental noisiness as their ship travelled through Ukrainian waters.
Disturbingly wars often appear during the demise of economic systems
Yes, unfortunately true.
Full court (no intention) press over at the Daily Blog
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/06/25/guest-blog-marie-dyhrberg-qc-false-sexual-accusers-face-little-risk/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/06/24/guest-blog-my-son-has-been-wrongfully-convicted-of-rape-part-two/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/06/23/guest-blog-samira-taghavi-surviving-a-sexual-prosecution-in-21st-century-salem/
Concern raising articles, especially given the profession of two of the authors…and it will be interesting to see if Mr Bradbury is as good as his word.
Reddit banned lesbian female only subreddits (those that exclude trans women, irrespective of content), but allows groups like this to stay. This is important for understanding why gender critical feminists are doing what they are doing. This stuff from Reddit is tech bro sanctioned misogyny, and is largely accepted by the left.
https://twitter.com/lilithwon_fds/status/1408146058304126977
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/445495/hate-speech-govt-plans-new-law-tougher-penalties
The plan is part of the government's work to strengthen social cohesion, in response to the Royal Commission of inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack.
Frankly I hate the sound of this. It is so stupid to try to control speech by suppressing it. The wrong words, even spoken in jest, could become a blackmailing tactic against people afraid to lose their jobs, shown up by our increasingly witch-hunting, puritan world. Nazi propaganda brought naive children in to their service, reporting on parents!
Our governments are so pathetic and irrational – we know this by previous Labour opening us up to laissez faire trading which in centuries before was disastrous for principled civilisation. They should have recognised this but no, steam ahead, was the call. Mark Twain should have been a counter-call, that's where the depth of the river was constantly checked to prevent running into a new sandbank in the ever-changing river. But we had no practical, knowledgeable pilot in 1984 and we appear to have newbies now putting forward their notions as policy with no allowance for the unintended consequences which come with all change. On this theme I have put link to Don McGlashan singing Anchor Me with memories of Helen Kelly.
And further I find that Mr Faafoi is in charge of not only Broadcasting but Justice and Immigration as well. Is he capable of looking at what we need for Just-us or is he inflated with a desire to look big in the world – making his mark etc. He is ex-journalist with BBC and TVNZ; if we got National back in, could we end up with Mike Hosking as Min. of Justice dealing out behavioural controls on all the unsatisfactory people he picks on! Oh lordie, lordie.
Here is Anchor Me played by Don McGlashan for Helen Kelly's memory on television.
+100 Grey
We are a scoldingly litigious country.
Our intelligence +defense community should just do their jobs.
I suggest you actually read the proposals and engage with them, rather than make sweeping generalisations and personal attacks to try and support your concerns.
I suggest Nordy you think about whether it is an appropriate proposal to bring in and about the lead politician involved. Why is it that citizens are constantly having to fight legislation that is poorly thought out and which once in will have huge ramifications? I suggest that you give us a break by not supporting such proposals. It wears out thinking citizens to have to monitor supposed intelligent well-meaning pollies.
Everybody is free to make a submission and nobody should be discouraged from exercising their democratic right to make a submission. I do hope that many will make submission and I don’t expect for one second that I’d agree with all of them, if I were to see and read them all, which is extremely unlikely. A proposal such as this needs input and feedback from many quarters. Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom (an oxymoron) and/or The Truth. This site values and encourages robust debate, not the exclusion of others and their opinions.