Watched ShonKey try very hard to explain his security council mtg, just did his yeah, nah, she’ll be right mate. He’s really good at filling up airtime with nothing but blah blah.
Coming our way with the National government – having to compete with multinationals to buy our own water…
“A small town in Ontario, Canada, has prompted fresh scrutiny of the bottled-water industry after its attempt secure a long-term water supply through the purchase of a well was outbid by the food and drinks multinational Nestlé.
When authorities in Centre Wellington, population of about 30,000, learned that Nestlé had put a bid on a spring water well in their region, they scrambled over the summer to counter with a competing bid. The goal was to safeguard a water supply for the township’s fast-growing population, Kelly Linton, the mayor, told the Guardian. “By 2041, we’ll be closer to 50,000 so protecting our water sources is critical to us.”
wtf. Farmer groups want to be able to use wayer, gm, etc, to make money, it does not matter other frmers aquifers dry up, or gm escapes, as long as the corp farmer can make profit oblivious of effects… ..just like shitty rivers.
why would any farmer lobby argue for gm and against regional efforts to grow value? Is the farming lobby a talk fest for big corp?
This is already happening in the north, unfortunately.
A small iwi is battling the Northland Regional Council to retain its long-held rights in the Poroti Springs which the NRC is busily selling off water rights to overseas companies – including Nestles which has been looking at Poroti Springs too. I’m not sure how far along Nestles has got with its resource consent application to withdraw water from the Springs.
There is the Freshwater site set up by Forest and Bird. Maybe it could be expanded to be an advocacy site for local water rights as so many are being hawked off by the National government and clueless councils around the country.
@b waghorn – name and shame. There has already been a case in the US where the judge ruled, water is not a human right. NZ needs to get active to nip water selloffs in the bud before there is no drinkable water left. It’s no coincidence corporates are buying up water. Everyone needs water – very profitable – especially when sold so cheaply in NZ with the help of the cronies.
Food for thought (I think some of it applies across the spectrum).
The left now suffer from closed minds and moral smugness. They are moribund and backward-looking.
They run from ideas. Opposing philosophies distress them.
They pillory dissenters as stupid or immoral and often both. There’s no debating or explaining, just abuse for those who step outside received wisdom.
The left have taken to social media with gusto. It only takes 140 characters to abuse and attack.
They fill Twitter and blogs with their righteousness and smugness, puffed up by their own perceived moral and intellectual superiority.
There’s no allowance that a person with a differing view might offer an opportunity to learn and to strengthen your ideas and perhaps, just perhaps, to change them.
That’s never allowed as a possibility.
Their minds are closed and they gasp and take offence at any idea or opinion different to their own.
Indeed, ganging up against dissenters on social media is what binds them. Their attacks on others proves to them their correctness and superiority.
The left are puzzled about why they’re politically marginalised but never trouble themselves to listen to those who have turned away from them. They look down on them and despise them.
The left view their political failure as the fault of voters who must be hoodwinked, stupid, selfish, or suffering some other ethical or intellectual shortcoming. Why else would they not be supporting the left when they are so good and true?
The problem is never with the left or their doctrine.
They are a self-reinforcing sect who in their wretchedness and anger are becoming ever smaller. Their narrow and insular outlook prevents them reaching out. Little wonder it’s not attractive to new recruits.
Labour is the narrow party that has shut itself off from the great bulk of New Zealanders.
Rodney Hides opinion? Fuck off.
I have just read through yesterdays Open Mike…. wow. Well done all the contributors , esp CV and Paul and Adrian, for ably fending off the narrow minded, ignorant defenders of ‘ pax Americana ‘ or , to put it more bluntly, those who are basically backing Zionism.
For me all the hypocrisy of the USA can be summed up in one word….. Vietnam.
Yes, we can really listen to Rodney – ACT last election getting less than 1% of votes. Bit like at the amount of voters who actually take ACT seriously and soon to be the amount of people who take the Herald seriously.
Even die hard Natz supporters know that Granny is not really a news organisation anymore and you can’t trust news from Granny – sponsor-an-article cum crony-alert-reporting style. Have MR less than 1% Hide as a commentator just reinforces their dying readership.
Yep – and revolutionary as the idea might seem to the likes of Pete George, a country with 300 000 children in poverty and an entire generation consigned to homelessness has no particular need to slide further to the right. It has significant and pressing pragmatic problems that paying lip service to the bloody idols of neoliberalism will not address.
and an entire generation consigned to homelessness has no particular need to slide further to the right.
Labour will have the first affordable $600,000 homes ready by 2019. So the Aucklanders priced out of the housing market today only need to put their lives on hold until then.
(By which time the prices of the “affordable” homes will be more like $700,000).
It is of course optimistic, but the hope is that when they get their paws on the reins of power they will begin to govern, part of which will necessarily include addressing such problems. Better that they have a local Corbynist lobby to encourage them probably, or a community housing initiative to show them the way.
One of the outcomes of the last election for Labour was to notice that the Gnats produced no policy. The Gnats have no intention of being lampooned in public for their gross dishonesty and manifest stupidity. This is a lesson Labour has learned. We will only see a general picture of what they might do – but if you want genuine growth and reform that will need to come from a community base. Produce a working model & Labour might be very happy to fund and proliferate it. But thus far it doesn’t seem to be how they choose to fight their corner.
One of the outcomes of the last election for Labour was to notice that the Gnats produced no policy. The Gnats have no intention of being lampooned in public for their gross dishonesty and manifest stupidity. This is a lesson Labour has learned.
Labour has been facing off against the National tories since the 1930s.
You can’t tell me that they’ve only just figured out how Tories think.
The Tories changed their presentation. Under Bill English they represented themselves honestly as the crooked and unambiguously backward set of chumps they actually are. Key brought in the Crosby Textor thing – and the MSM decided they could embrace bias without any proximate prospect of comeuppance. Now the media are locked in – they will be reformed when the Gnats leave power and they know it.
Nevertheless a strong press is believed to be one of the pillars of a healthy democracy – and I think we are feeling the lack. But yes, the LP isn’t setting speed records. Partly this is that feature of organisations that they grow to do the opposite of what they were established for. This is where a large activist membership is supposed to apply corrective feedback.
There are some curiosities in reform movements in that they require a receptive environment to develop new ideas – an incubator or as the trolls would have it an echo chamber. The Beijing student uprising resembled nothing so much as a magnetron – the ring of university campuses acting as the circulating amplifying chambers feeding the centre.
If you react badly to that you may well be proving Rodney’s point.
Pete George is moribund and backward-looking. He suffers from a closed mind and moral smugness. He runs from ideas and opposing philosophies distress him.
If he reacts badly to that he may well be proving my point.
The good thing about Rodders is. He’s full of shit and everyone knows it.
Aucklander’s want his testicles danglin from the sky tower in recognition of his superb super city idea.
I imaging stepping out in public is wonderful for him. Wondering if someone will dent his face.
As for the article. It’s actually a reflection of their own closed minds, they(people like him) think everyone else is behaving like they do themselves.
Rodney telling the left they have closed minds is more so outrageous that it will click bait people into A reading his article,. B push up ratings at the Herald which thankfully is diving like a Stuka!
I used to read the Herald, now it’s a third rate click bait celebrity mag. They lost the plot. If the Herald doesn’t turn it around soon it’ll be gone.
Sacking Rodney and actually reporting news would help.
As for the article. It’s actually a reflection of their own closed minds, they(people like him) think everyone else is behaving like they do themselves.
Yep, pure bloody projection and we see it from the RWNJs all the time as they use their own actions to justify keeping things the way they are and even to make things worse instead of making things better.
“Willem Wiskerke, a spokesman for Greenpeace Netherlands said: “He is a climate denier like Donald Trump, nothing more, nothing less, a rightwing, fact-free populist who denies the climate crisis and will not put any effort into solving it.”
“You will like me very much” – the Don to fossil fuel execs:
“The same day as a new report highlighted the carbon emissions calamity that would accompany new fossil fuel extraction, Donald Trump promised an audience of fossil fuel executives that is the very agenda he would pursue if elected to the White House.
” “Oh, you will like me so much,” the Republican presidential candidate said in his address to the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
“He promised to lift regulations, open up more federal lands for fossil fuel extraction—including coal and fracking—and ease the way for new fossil fuel infrastructure projects including pipelines.
From your Stuff link:
“A large chunk of Canterbury’s coast will again be offered up for oil and gas exploration, under a Government proposal described as “lunacy” by Christchurch’s deputy mayor.
“The Government wants to set aside nearly 300,000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s east coast for oil and gas companies as part of its 2017 block offer.
“The annual block offer allows companies to compete for exploration permits.
“This year’s proposed offer would open up the largest area near Canterbury yet.
“It includes a space near the Banks Peninsula Marine Mammal Reserve, home to the endangered Hector’s dolphin.”
“Last year’s offer was deeply unpopular with the Christchurch City Council and environmental groups.
“They argued that deep-sea drilling could threaten the region with a catastrophic oil spill for little economic gain.”
“Under Hide’s leadership, the vote in the September 2005 elections severely reduced ACT’s party parliamentary representation. ACT’s share of the party vote dropped from over 7% of the total in 2002 to around 1.5%; its representation in Parliament fell from nine MPs to two. Despite this reduction, the party remained in parliament due to Hide winning the Epsom seat. As a consequence of its reduced share of the vote, ACT received a significant cut in taxpayer-funded Parliamentary resourcing and Hide shifted his electorate office in Remuera to Newmarket, the same location as that of ACT’s head office”
wiki
now that Rodney’s (and by extension, ACT’s) popularity/support has been bought up it occurs to me if you want to measure the publics appetite for neoliberal theory you only need to examine the level of support for ACT, which I believe peaked at around 7% and now languishes within the MoE
It is quite amazing that ACT got 7% as we always beleived that there were only 5% intelligent enough to vote ACT. Now some 4% are looking elsewhere …. NZF ?
Sorry that is trolling but I couldn’t resist 🙂
I was showing that ‘save nz’ is wrong, Hide has had many people voting for him in an electorate, especially when compared to Little.
I said nothing about ‘his popularity alone’, it was more complex than that but Hide worked hard in Epsom. I don’t think anyone gets all their votes on popularity alone.
In 2008 ACT got 85,496 votes, that had little to do with National and quite a lot to do with Hide’s efforts.
@Peter George – save the spin. We all know that they were National voters told to vote for him to prop up the Natz. Not many people would willingly vote for Hide. He’s a joke, as is his ideology.
You’re claiming that 78% of Epsom voters acted under instruction from National. Confirmation your comment wasn’t ‘a colloquial euphemism’, you were making thing things up.
In the old Newspaper days letters to the editor would have curtailed them from posting to much of fringe politicians crap like Rodney.
The complaints and stinging letters he received would have told him that. The editors letters would have also put the dickhead back where he belongs, talking fringe politics to nutters in a mental health ward.
Take this little fact in, someone born since 1980 doesn’t know truth or proper politics like us older people. They have never heard dissention. They have never seen proper protests(springboks tour someone born 1980 ain’t going to remember) They don’t know what unions can do, all they know is wall street, greed is good, consumerism and having the latest phone and trainers is important.
” talking fringe politics to nutters in a mental health ward.”
By this I assume you mean the way a senile old fool like Geoffrey Palmer on his ideas for a written Constitution?
Now there is someone who really should be ignored.
alwyn the list of people who enter representative politics with completely the wrong mental attitude, and who have not been scarred in some way by their nurture is tiny. Most of them who seek the halls of power, do it for fame, and ego.
It’s the one field I think psychological evaluation should be completed on, that is anyone seeking public office. IMHO.
Start with John Key, and many questions about his mum, and how long he breast fed for. Did he find it comforting gently pulling her hair whilst he was feeding on the nipple at 10, or did he think it felt a little strange at that age.
That’s what the media tells us, Richard Rawshark, but I do keep coming across young people who are thinking about other things – not just worried about not being able to own a home, but worried about climate change, dirty waters, oil drilling, and NZ (their home) being taken over by multitudes of others.
I just hope there are enough of these younger people to carry on dissension and protests when the time comes for those things.
sadly I did the one thing there I hate most, I stereo typed. Sorry. Their are a lot of good youth out there don’t get me wrong. barring the stereotyping i’m sure you all get the gist of what I said though.
I consider the youth of the greens Genter etc, an example of youth excelling beyond what we could back in my day. But they seem fewer.
US RWNJ’s doing the Trumps going to win thing when Hillary will clearly pass the post, is an old trick they employ when it’s looking bad for their guy. In that it’s to stop the rot and keep voters and try to gain the undecided.
Hope i’m right on that, even though Hillarys donkey deep in it too(war mongering), Trumps scarier and a big gamble. Better the devil you know.
Good to see the latest attempt to spread CCOs and forced local government amalgamations has been shelved.
Glad to have helped.
Seen this?
‘Activists – get things done’
Unlike ALL the other Auckland Mayoral candidates – I successfully petitioned Parliament for an urgent inquiry into Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
The following information I made available to Mayors in other parts of NZ to assist in their fight back against the continued corporate takeover of our local democracy, our assets and our public property.
The following proves that I already have an effective working relationship with central government.
Petition 2014/33 of Penelope Mary Bright and 55 others, and Report from the Controller and Auditor-General, Governance and accountability of council- controlled organisations
Nuclear Power and Climate Change – excerpt:
“Overall, the idea that atomic power is “clean” or “carbon free” or “emission free” is a very expensive misconception, especially when compared to renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation. Among conservation, efficiency, solar and wind power technologies, there are no global warming analogs to the heat, carbon, and radioactive waste impacts of nuclear power. No green technology kills anywhere near the number of marine organisms that die through reactor cooling systems.
“Rooftop solar panels do not lose ten percent of the power they generate to transmission, as happens with virtually all centralized power generators. S. David Freeman, former head of numerous large utilities and author of All Electric America: A Climate Solution and the Hopeful Future, says: “Renewables are cheaper and safer. That argument is winning. Let’s stick to it.”
Financially it seems pretty clear that renewables are the cheapest option for utility-scale new builds, even without a carbon tax. So worldwide I doubt we’ll see many more nuclear new builds, at least in western countries.
But it seems to me the appropriate comparison for nuclear is against fossil fuels. In that comparison, nuclear still looks pretty favourable to coal/gas/oil (and actually even hydro) in terms of land area ruined and human health/mortality footprints, even considering the worst case projections from Chernobyl, Fukushima etc. So to me, it looks like an environmental setback when a nuclear plant is closed prematurely while fossil plants feeding the same grid are still running and polluting.
Current production is far from ideal, but it’s still a lot better than fossil fuels. Most of the problems with current production are fairly easy to manage and eliminate, if the producers are incentivised to actually do it.
Interesting comments by Rodney Hide on the left in the herald this morning, expresses much commentary you see on this site
“The left view their political failure as the fault of voters who must be hoodwinked, stupid, selfish, or suffering some other ethical or intellectual shortcoming. Why else would they not be supporting the left when they are so good and true?
The problem is never with the left or their doctrine.
They are a self-reinforcing sect who in their wretchedness and anger are becoming ever smaller. Their narrow and insular outlook prevents them reaching out. Little wonder it’s not attractive to new recruits.
It’s astonishing that National is now the vibrant party looking to the future and open to diverse views.
Labour is the narrow party that has shut itself off from the great bulk of New Zealanders.”
He does have point Paul no matter how much you may not like it, the lefts failure can’t be all externally afflicted, ie msm, dumb voters and other conspiracies
““The left view their political failure as the fault of voters who must be hoodwinked, stupid, selfish, or suffering some other ethical or intellectual shortcoming. Why else would they not be supporting the left when they are so good and true?
The problem is never with the left or their doctrine.”
meanwhile – if you talk to people on the left you quickly find the above assertion to be based on a deliberate over simplification of actual arguments made
We had a wander around MOTAT on Friday and came across a potted history of Radio in New Zealand. This is what I read –
“On New Year’s Day in 1932 the Government took over the responsibility of the Radio Broadcasting Company in providing a national service. This was done under a three man Broadcasting Board who was also given the power to impose restrictions on the private stations. By 1937 most of the private stations had been bought by the New Zealand Government. Two distinct systems were then set up – one NATIONAL and one COMMERCIAL.
The first Director of Broadcasting was Professor James Shelley. He saw radio as an instrument of real democracy based on a sympathetic understanding of all points of view.
In 1946 the commercial and non-commercial branches of the national radio system were amalgamated under the name New Zealand Broadcasting Service.”
My words – the poor sod Professor Shelley will be turning in his grave at the state of our airways these days – so much for “a sympathetic understanding of all points of view.” There isn’t one jot of balance in anything we listen to on Radio or TV – just adoration for a corrupt Government which is sickening.
Tend to agree nutters on both sides of the phone , the medium attracts them like moths to a flame Albeit I do find Paul Henry entertaining you just need to take him with a grain of salt
I didn’t realise they went right through to Holyoake’s time in the early 1960s. If it was early in his second term that he got rid of it, it would seem that he didn’t approve of the practice. He was only there for about 3 months in 1957 before the election and he wouldn’t really have time to change very much.
Was Nash also doing it? From what you say it sounds as if he must have been.
Actually I can tolerate Fraser if it was about anything to do with the war.
However I highlighted Savage because he was the PM when Shelley was primarily involved in broadcasting and it was Shelley that WK was talking about.
As per your link – in 1947 things were relaxed to allow controversial broadcasts to be aired but Prime Ministerial approval was required until restrictions were abolished in 1962.
If you want to hear an out of touch ex pollie who actually dislikes democracy making a complete fool of himself, tune in to Natrad and listen to doddery old Geoffrey Palmer play with his constitutional toy soldiers.
Well said. He would tie us up in expensive knots for years trying to nut out a constitution. The main benefits of the monarchy are its distance and saving us from yet another self-important ex-pollie (like Geoffrey?) pretending to be our head of state.
It’s a esotreic academic law professors hobby horse, law lecturers blather on about it in 101 law since the the beginning of time The rest of us don’t really give a monkeys, status quo is fine, bigger issues to deal with
+100 rhino…lol…we live in a time of profound bullshit, trivia …and wasted time and white collar technological trickery and bankster fraud and usury…driven by materialism and venal mindless greed
“President Barack Obama used a pseudonym when communicating with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by email, while her IT company referred to her email deleting as a “cover-up”, new FBI documents reveal….
During the interview with Huma Abedin, who served as deputy chief of staff under Clinton, the FBI reportedly presented her with an email exchange between Clinton and a person she did not recognize. The FBI then revealed the unknown person’s name was believed to be a pseudonym used by Obama. Abedin reacted by saying, “How is this not classified?”
This exchange could expose Obama as having mislead the public on the issue, given his 2015 statement that he found out about Clinton’s use of a private email server “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”…
Cops, a lot of talk about cops lately, underfunded, understaffed, ignoring things, skewing stats..
If Key remained PM lets say for another decade god forbid, how long do the standardista”s think it will be before a police surcharge to come out, comes along.
What was it 25 police stations to close, but a little while ago they close a load down too.
Why do we pay tax under national, they have pretty much driven everything under.
Anyone can talk about moving left of the centre; where is the left wing action, the left wing policy and the left wing personnel from Labour to back it up?
He would be silly to show all his cards to early , but going on clarkes performance on the tpp and praising of shit key, having Little publicly slap her down speaks volumes.
He is the right man for the next pm.
More crap neoliberal advice from last century. Thanks but no thanks Aunty Helen. Little was right to distance himself from Helen’s divisive legacy.
Anyway, Key currently rules the “centre” and won’t be budged. Labour’s only chance to get it back is if FJK makes a huge ballsup like David Cameron, but I reckon Key is more self aware
John Key is an exceptional politician. As cunning as Fraser, as likable as Lange. But his set piece, 'statesman' speeches are bloddy shite— Morgan Godfery (@MorganGodfery) September 21, 2016
Aunty Helen was right and is always right. She was smart to quickly dump any left-wing policies unpalatable to the centre so that she could appeal to the ‘middle’ voters.
Wrong, she lost the 2008 election because she wasted her political capital on pet social policies that alienated most voters. And she failed to address inequality and the growing housing bubble.
I respect her as a well-intentioned and highly intelligent person, her government was excellent on foreign policy, but she bought into the “Third Way” Blairite bullshit on economic matters, a betrayal of all workers & class struggles of the last century
In the next election I will be voting Green Party(not Labour ) for the first time in what will be my 12th election.
The last time I voted National was for Muldoon, and I honestly believe that was the last time a National Party leader gave a shit for the ordinary kiwi.
Key spoke as if he were more interested in his own speech rather than any solution for the Syrian people.
That neither the US nor Russia batted an eyelid at Key’s weak pleas to ‘hold hands’ over the matter, and indeed doubled their strikes immediately says a lot about how the rest of the world views him.
I’m loving the DPRK News Service. (yes, it’s a parody account)
As expected, oily cave troll Ted Cruise offers endorsement of shouting rotting papaya Donald Trump, to applause of idiot racists across US. pic.twitter.com/5PyU7G1l2g— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) September 23, 2016
I Imagine Clinton’s heard about Gennifer Flowers’ appearance at the first debate so I guess she’s out and about organising a front row seat for Trump’s former mistress.
A well written rant, shame Trotter didn’t get his facts straight, some reactions from Spinoff/GenZero author here (the whole thread on twitter is longer)
Never seen anyone get this pissed over a b-. If I publish my academic transcript will you stop calling us corrupt?— Leroy Beckett (@LeroyBeckett) September 25, 2016
saying we have been paid for our opinions or anything GZ do is laughable and kinda offensive to the ridiculous amount of work we do for free— Leroy Beckett (@LeroyBeckett) September 25, 2016
For what it's worth, scorecards and UP campaigns funded entirely from small donations from our supporters. All that went to promotions— Leroy Beckett (@LeroyBeckett) September 25, 2016
i know nothing of Lee but the endorsement of Ralston was what caused the enquiry…and as you note, they didn’t defend their endorsements merely their funding.
That said I think Trotter is right about the UP being twisted by property developers & speculators for their own ends, it is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Need to close the immigration floodgates, penalise speculation & McMansions, and implement proper rates/LVT based on unimproved land value.
A major problem with Millennials is they have no concept of life outside of the market oriented neoliberal narratives. From TDB:
Underlying this debate is the mute acceptance of the government’s ‘more is always better’ mantra by so many. Anyone who dissents is attacked overtly and covertly. Huge population increase is being pursued solely to line the pockets of the already rich and will be detrimental to NZ in most respects. We should be growing quality, not numbers. We would not have to build hundreds of thousands of homes over productive horticultural land if we accepted pursued a small, high quality niche approach.
“A while back, Mikhail Gorbachev famously said: ‘The most puzzling development in modern politics is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.’
Gorbachev wasn’t referring to the European Union’s hunger to expand eastwards, but instead the bloc’s top-heavy governance, where smaller states are increasingly dominated by larger members.
This was evident last year, when Angela Merkel pretty much unilaterally imposed a liberal migration policy on the confederation, which has led to massive division…
You’re very welcome. And this one also sometime at the end of last month:
“Market Economy – Reinvent or Reboot?”
Yanis Varoufakis versus Clemens Fuest, at the Alpbach Forum, along the lines of the proposition: “The market economy is the best model. It will also successfully manage the challenges faced in the future.” Agree or disagree with this statement?”
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Bryce Edwards writes – Why aren’t politicians taking more action on the housing affordability crisis? The answer might lie in the latest “Register of Pecuniary Interests.” This register contains details of the various financial interests of parliamentarians. It shows that politicians own real estate in significant numbers. The ...
I built a time machine to see you againTo hear your phone callYour voice down the hallThe way we were back thenWe were dancing in the rainOur feet on the pavementYou said I was your second headI knew exactly what you meantIn the country of the blind, or so they ...
Why aren’t politicians taking more action on the housing affordability crisis? The answer might lie in the latest “Register of Pecuniary Interests.” This register contains details of the various financial interests of parliamentarians. It shows that politicians own real estate in significant numbers. The register published on Tuesday contains a ...
Microsoft’s transparency about its failure to meet its own net-zero goals is creditable, but the response to that failure is worrying. It is offering up a set of false solutions, heavily buttressed by baseless optimism. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in ...
Another Friday, another Rāmere Roundup! Here are a few things that caught our eye this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday, our new writer Connor Sharp roared into print with a future-focused take on the proposed Auckland Future Fund, and what it could invest in. On ...
Still Waiting: Māori land remains in the hands of Non-Māori. The broken promises of the Treaty remain broken. The mana of the tangata whenua languishes under racist neglect. The right to wear the huia feather remains as elusive as ever. Perhaps these three transformations are beyond the power of a ...
Posters opposing the proposed Fast-Track Approvals legislation were pasted around Wellington last week. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: One of the architects of the RMA and a former National Cabinet Minister, Simon Upton, has criticised the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals bill as potentially disastrous for the environment, arguing just 1% ...
There was less sharing of the joy this week than at the Chinese New Year celebrations in February. China’s ambassador to NZ (2nd from right above) has toldLuxon that relations between China and New Zealand are now at a ‘critical juncture’ Photo: Getty / Xinhua News AgencyTL;DR: The podcast ...
The importance of New Zealand’s relationship with China was surely demonstrated yesterday with the surprise arrival in the capital of top Chinese foreign policy official Liu Jianchao. The trip was apparently organized a week ago but kept secret. Liu is the Minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) International Liaison ...
With a crushing 20-plus point lead in the opinion polls, all the signs are that Labour leader Keir Starmer will be the PM after the general election on 4 July, called by Conservative incumbent Rishi Sunak yesterday. The stars are aligned for Starmer. Rival progressives are in abeyance: the Liberal-Democrat ...
We returned last week from England to London. Two different worlds. A quarter of an hour before dropping off our car, we came to a complete stop on the M25. Just moments before, there had been six lanes of hurtling cars and lorries. Now, everything was at a standstill as ...
Buzz from the Beehive A triumvirate of ministers – holding the Agriculture, Environment and RMA Reform portfolios – has announced the introduction of legislation “to slash the tangle of red and green tape throttling development in key sectors”, such as farming, mining and other primary industries. The exact name of ...
The Social Services and Community Committee has called for submissions on the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill. Submissions are due by Wednesday, 3 July 2024, and can be made at the link above. And if you're wondering what to say: section 7AA was enacted because Oranga Tamariki ...
Michael Reddell writes – The Reserve Bank doesn’t do independent fiscal forecasts so there is no news in the fiscal numbers in today’s Monetary Policy Statement themselves. The last official Treasury forecasts don’t take account of whatever the government is planning in next week’s Budget, and as the Bank notes ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – We know the old saying, “Never trust a politician”, and the Charter School debate is a good example of it. Charter Schools receive public funding, yet “are exempt from most statutory requirements of traditional public schools, including mandates around .. human capital management .. curriculum ...
How Do We Silence Them? The ruling obsession of the contemporary Left is that political action undertaken by individuals or groups further to the right than the liberal wings of mainstream conservative parties should not only be condemned, but suppressed.WEB OF CHAOS, a “deep dive into the world of disinformation”, ...
Muriel Newman writes – As the new Government puts the finishing touches to this month’s Budget, they will undoubtedly have had their hands full dealing with the economic mess that Labour created. Not only was Labour a grossly incompetent manager of the economy, but they also set out ...
Today the British PM, Rishi Sunak, called a general election for the 4th of July. He spoke of the challenging times and of strong leadership and achievements. It was as if he was talking about someone else, a real leader, rather than he himself or the woeful list of Tory ...
This post marks the return of an old format: Photo of the Day. Recently I was in an apartment in one of those new buildings on Great North Road Grey Lynn at rush hour, perfect day, the view was stunning, so naturally I whipped out my phone: GNR 5pm Turns ...
The Government may struggle with the political optics of scrapping assistance for first home buyers while also cutting the tax burden on landlords, increasing concerns over the growing generational divide. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government confirmed it will dump first home buyer grants in the Budget next ...
Yesterday, the Reserve Bank confirmed there will be no free card for the economy to get out of jail during the current term of the Government. Regardless of what the Budget next week says, we are in for three years of austerity. Over those three years, we will have to ...
It doesn’t inspire confidence when politicians change their minds. But you must give credit when a bad idea is dropped. Last year, we reported on the determination of British PM Rishi Sunak to lead the world in regulating the dangers of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps he changed his mind after meeting ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Is carbon dioxide removal - aka "negative emissions" - going to save us from climate change? Or is it just a ...
Headed for the legislative wastepaper basket… Buzz from the Beehive It looks like this government is just as ready as its predecessor to dip into the public funds it is managing to dispense millions of dollars to finance – and favour – the parties it fancies. Or ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – National and Labour and ACT have at various times waxed on about their “vision” of NZ as a high value-added world tech centerWhat subject is tech based upon? Mathematics. A Chicago mathematician just told me that whereas last decade ...
Eric Crampton writes – Danyl McLauchlan over at The Listener on the recent shift toward more contestability in public policy advice in education: Education Minister Erica Stanford, one of National’s highest-ranked MPs, is trying to circumvent the establishment, taking advice from a smaller pool of experts – ...
Ele Ludemann writes – That Kāinga Ora is a mess is no surprise, but the size of the mess is. There have been many reports of unruly tenants given licence to terrorise neighbours, properties bought and left vacant, and the state agency paying above market rates in competition ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s being explained as an “inadvertent error”. However, National MP David MacLeod’s excuse for failing to disclose $178,000 in donations for his election campaign last year is not necessarily enough to prevent some serious consequences. A Police investigation is now likely, and the result ...
The scathing “independent” review of Kāinga Ora barely hit the table before the coalition government had acted on it. The entire Kāinga Ora board will be replaced, and a new chair (Simon Moutter) has been announced. Hmm. No aspersions on Bill English, but the public would have had more confidence ...
I'll light the fireYou place the flowers in the vaseThat you bought todayA warm dry home, you’d think that would be bread and butter to politicians. Home ownership and making sure people aren’t left living on the street, that’s as Kiwi as Feijoa and Apple Crumble. Isn’t it?The coalition are ...
Politics is about compromise, right? And framing it so the voters see your compromise as the better one. John Key was a skilful exponent of this approach (as was Keith Holyoake in an earlier age), and Chris Luxon isn’t too bad either. But in politics, the process whereby an old ...
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 ...
It’s being explained as an “inadvertent error”. However, National MP David MacLeod’s excuse for failing to disclose $178,000 in donations for his election campaign last year is not necessarily enough to prevent some serious consequences. A Police investigation is now likely, and the result of his non-disclosure could even see ...
The relentless drone coming out of the Prime Minister and his deputy for a million days now has been that the last government was just hosing money all over the show and now at last the grownups are in charge and shutting that drunken sailor stuff down. There is a word ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to riot-torn New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. Today’s flight will carry around 50 passengers with the most ...
Precious declaration saysYours is yours and mine you leave alone nowPrecious declaration saysI believe all hope is dead no longerTick tick tick Boom!Unexploded ordnance. A veritable minefield. A National caucus with a large number of unknowns, candidates who perhaps received little in the way of vetting as the party jumped ...
Rex Ahdar writes – The Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, likes to trace his political lineage back to the pioneers of parliamentary Maoridom. I will refer to these as the ‘big four’ or better still, the Four Knights. Just as ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper ...
That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? ...
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and spoke about the upcoming US elections and what the possibility of another Trump presidency means for the US role in world affairs. We also spoke about the problems Joe … Continue reading → ...
Hi,Two years ago I briefly featured in Justin Pemberton’s Web of Chaos documentary, which touched on things like QAnon during the pandemic.I mostly prattled on about how intertwined conspiracy narratives are with Evangelical Christian thinking, something Webworm’s explored in the past.(The doc is available on TVNZ+, if you’re not in ...
The Government is leaving the entire construction sector and the community housing sector in limbo. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government released the long-awaited Bill English-led review of Kāinga Ora yesterday, but delayed key decisions on its build plan and how to help community housing providers (CHPs) build ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Farmers who can’t sleep, worrying they’ll lose everything amid increasing drought. Youth struggling with depression over a future that feels hopeless. Indigenous people grief-stricken over devastated ecosystems. For all these people and more, climate change is taking a clear toll ...
New Zealand’s relationship with China is becoming harder to define, and with that comes a worry that a deteriorating political relationship could spill over into the economic relationship. It is about more than whether New Zealand will join Pillar Two of Aukus, though the Chinese Ambassador, more or less, suggested ...
Been hoping we would see something like this from Sir Geoffrey Palmer. This is excellent.The present Bill goes further than the National Development Act 1979 in stripping away procedures designed to ensure that environmental issues are properly considered. The 1979 approach was not acceptable then and this present approach is ...
He’s Got The Moxie: Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.IT’S ONE OF THE ...
Tree-huggers may well accuse the Government of giving them the fingers, after Energy Minister Simeon Brown announced new measures to protect powerlines from trees, rather than measures to protect trees from powerlines. It can be no coincidence, surely, that this has been announced at the same as Fisheries Minister Shane Jones ...
Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect New Zealanders' right of free speech. The “Protection of Freedom of Expression Bill” will ensure that no organisation or individual, when acting within the law, is unreasonably denied use of a public venue for an organised event or ...
The Green Party unequivocally condemns the governing parties’ attempts to limit the public’s say on the controversial Māori wards legislation, after the select committee considering the legislation set a deadline for submissions of just five days. ...
Disabled children and families nationwide have recently found out they’re no longer able to use disability support funding for programmes during school hours in another quiet update from the Government. ...
Following a horrific case of stalking that ended in tragedy, Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Andersen has drafted a bill that would add stalking to the Crimes Act. ...
The Rt Hon Winston Peters, joined by Mike King, has announced $24 million over four years for the ‘I Am Hope Foundation’, and will provide young people aged between 5 to 25 years with free mental health counselling services. This funding will help I Am Hope’s ‘Gumboot Friday’ initiative give ...
Te Pāti Māori have launched a petition to stop the repeal of Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act. This announcement comes prior to the first reading of the Section 7AA repeal bill in Parliament today. “Section 7AA forces the Government to adhere to Te Tiriti o Waitangi with respect ...
The Government has yet again failed to do the one thing that needs to happen to ensure houses can be built – commit to ongoing funding, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Over the next four years, Budget 24 will support the training and recruitment of 1,500 teachers into the workforce, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced today. “To raise achievement and develop a world leading education system we’re investing nearly $53 million over four years to attract, train and retain our valued ...
1. New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Rt Hon Winston Peters; Minister of Health and Minister for Pacific Peoples Hon Dr Shane Reti; and Minister for Climate Change Hon Simon Watts hosted Cook Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration Hon Tingika Elikana and Minister of Health Hon Vainetutai Rose Toki-Brown on 24 May ...
The Government has approved two-year extensions for four New Zealand Defence Force deployments to the Middle East and Africa, Defence Minister Judith Collins and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced today. “These deployments are long-standing New Zealand commitments, which reflect our ongoing interest in promoting peace and stability, and making active ...
The Climate Change Commission Chair, Dr Rod Carr, has confirmed his plans to retire at the end of his term later this year, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Prior to the election, Dr Carr advised me he would be retiring when his term concluded. Dr Rod Carr has led ...
Nine highly respected experts have been appointed to the inaugural board of the new Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, Sport & Recreation Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission is a new independent Crown entity which was established under the Integrity Sport and Recreation Act last year, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed today that Vote Foreign Affairs in Budget 2024 will balance two crucial priorities of the Coalition Government. While Budget 2024 reflects the constrained fiscal environment, the Government also recognises the critical role MFAT plays in keeping New Zealanders safe and prosperous. “Consistent with ...
New social housing funding in Budget 2024 will ensure the Government can continue supporting more families into warm, dry homes from July 2025, Housing Ministers Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka say. “Earlier this week I was proud to announce that Budget 2024 allocates $140 million to fund 1,500 new social ...
Introduction Today, we are sharing a red-letter occasion. A Blackball event on hallowed ground. Today we underscore the importance of our mineral estate. A reminder that our natural resource sector has much to offer. Such a contribution will not come to pass without investment. However, more than money is needed. ...
Increasing national and regional prosperity, providing the minerals needed for new technology and the clean energy transition, and doubling the value of minerals exports are the bold aims of the Government’s vision for the minerals sector. Resources Minister Shane Jones today launched a draft strategy for the minerals sector in ...
The coalition Government’s legislation to restore the rights of communities to determine whether to introduce Māori wards has passed its first reading in Parliament, Local Government Minister Simeon Brown says. “Divisive changes introduced by the previous government denied local communities the ability to determine whether to establish Māori wards.” The ...
The coalition Government has today introduced legislation to slash the tangle of red and green tape throttling some of New Zealand’s key sectors, including farming, mining and other primary industries. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop says the Government is committed to unlocking development and investment while ensuring the environment is ...
The decision by Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to approve the continued use of hydrogen cyanamide, known as Hi-Cane, has been welcomed by Environment Minister Penny Simmonds and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay. “The EPA decision introduces appropriate environmental safeguards which will allow kiwifruit and other growers to use Hi-Cane responsibly,” Ms ...
Kia ora, Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kātoa Tāmaki Herenga Waka, Tāmaki Herenga tangata Ngā mihi ki ngā mana whenua o tēnei rohe Ngāti Whātua ō Ōrākei me nga iwi kātoa kua tae mai. Mauriora. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the EMA for hosting this event. Let me acknowledge ...
The coalition Government is investing in social housing for New Zealanders who are most in need of a warm dry home, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. Budget 2024 will allocate $140 million in new funding for 1,500 new social housing places to be provided by Community Housing Providers (CHPs), not ...
Thousands more young New Zealanders will have better access to mental health services as the Government delivers on its commitment to fund the Gumboot Friday initiative, says Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey. “Budget 2024 will provide $24 million over four years to contract the ...
The Coalition Government’s Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, which will improve tenancy laws and help increase the supply of rental properties, has passed its first reading in Parliament says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “The Bill proposes much-needed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 that will remove barriers to increasing private ...
Standing here in Cassino War Cemetery, among the graves looking up at the beautiful Abbey of Montecassino, it is hard to imagine the utter devastation left behind by the battles which ended here in May 1944. Hundreds of thousands of shells and bombs of every description left nothing but piled ...
I present a legislative statement on the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill Mr. Speaker, I move that the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the Bill. Thank you, Mr. ...
The Bill to repeal Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has had its first reading in Parliament today. The Bill reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the care and safety of children in care, says Minister for Children Karen Chhour. “When I became the Minister for Children, I made ...
Kia ora koutou, good morning, and zao shang hao. Thank you Fran for the opportunity to speak at the 2024 China Business Summit – it’s great to be here today. I’d also like to acknowledge: Simon Bridges - CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. His Excellency Ambassador - Wang ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing them ...
The Coalition Government will introduce legislation this year that will enable roadside drug testing as part of our commitment to improve road safety and restore law and order, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributing factor in fatal road crashes in New Zealand. In ...
The Government has announced a series of immediate actions in response to the independent review of Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “Kāinga Ora is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5 billion of expenditure each year. It ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour is pleased that Pseudoephedrine can now be purchased by the general public to protect them from winter illness, after the coalition government worked swiftly to change the law and oversaw a fast approval process by Medsafe. “Pharmacies are now putting the medicines back on their ...
Tēnā koutou katoa. Da jia hao. Good morning everyone. Prime Minister Luxon, your excellency, a great friend of New Zealand and my friend Ambassador Wang, Mayor of what he tells me is the best city in New Zealand, Wayne Brown, the highly respected Fran O’Sullivan, Champion of the Auckland business ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
Asia Pacific Report Pro-Palestinian protesters today condemned Google for sacking protesting staff and demanded that the New Zealand government immediately “cut ties with Israeli genocide”. Wearing Google logo masks and holding placards saying “Google complicit in genocide” and “Google drop Project Nimbus”, the protesters were targeting the global tech company ...
Fresh off the back of episode one of Married at First Sight NZ’s new season, Alex Casey and Tara Ward fire up the chat to dissect what the hell we all just watched. Alex Casey: Tara, are you still screaming? I’m screaming. Tara Ward: I started screaming the moment I ...
Fresh off the back of episode one of Married at First Sight NZ’s new season, Alex Casey and Tara Ward fire up the chat to dissect what the hell we all just watched. Alex Casey: Tara, are you still screaming? I’m screaming. Tara Ward: I started screaming the moment I ...
Asia Pacific Report A West Papuan independence group has condemned French “modern-day colonialism in action” in Kanaky New Caledonia and urged indigenous leaders to “fight on”. In a statement to the Kanak pro-independence leadership, exiled United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda said the proposed electoral changes ...
“The situation in Gaza is desperate,” Will Alexander said. “It’s obvious to everyone that if Christopher Luxon truly cared, our government could do a lot more.” ...
ANALYSIS:By Nicole George, The University of Queensland New Caledonia’s capital city, Nouméa, has endured widespread violent rioting over the past three days. This crisis intensified rapidly, taking local authorities by surprise. Peaceful protests had been occurring across the country in the preceding weeks as the French National Assembly in ...
EDITORIAL:By Fred Wesley, editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times So 40 Fiji members of Parliament voted in favour of the Special Committee on Emoluments Report on the review of MPs’ salaries, allowances and benefits in Parliament on Friday. Now that’s not going down well with the masses, with many venting ...
First Hovel Grant Bishop Chris ventured out of the High Keep For his annual tour of the slums of the Holey Land. His litter bearers held his palanquin high Above the muck strewn and dilapidated alleys Of the Capital. The menials and peons swarmed around And pleaded for Alms from ...
Opinion: Following France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to New Caledonia on Thursday, attention has turned to the country’s political future beyond the ongoing crisis. The uprising, which began on May 14, has demonstrated the capacity and determination of those involved to shut down the country and to inflict extensive economic ...
Asia Pacific ReportBy a Kanak from Aotearoa New Zealand in Kanaky I’ve been trying to feel cool and nice on this beautiful sunny day in Kanaky. But it has already been spoiled by President Emmanuel Macron’s flashy day-long visit on Thursday. Currently special French military forces are trying to ...
RNZ Pacific The survivors of a massive landslide in a remote village in Papua New Guinea’s highlands are still waiting for official help, more than 24 hours after the disaster. Hundreds are feared dead in Yambali village in Enga province after the landslide bulldozed homes and buried families alive early ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby The United States has said it is “ready to lend a helping hand” to the people of Mulitaka, Enga province, after a devasting landslide swallowed an entire village in Papua New Guinea’s highlands yesterday. US President Joe Biden and his wife said in a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Housing remains one of Australia’s most pressing issues in both state and federal politics. The RBA keeping rates up and high mortgage repayments have left many Australians struggling. For those Australians who don’t own a ...
This plan lacks any thought on how to drive New Zealand forward. Giving away rare minerals owned by every New Zealander for a measly return of 2.1% to the crown last year is simply ludicrous. ...
A West Coast conservation leader is lodging a complaint with Police after an officer barred her from a public meeting in Blackball, called by Resources Minister Shane Jones. The NZ First politician was in the historic coal-mining town on Thursday to launch the Government’s new draft minerals strategy, promising to ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman meets an old rival and wonders what could’ve been. Mōrena and welcome to The Weekend, where dreams and regrets have time and space to flower. What’s the thing in your life that you wish you had given more energy to? It could be a relationship, an exam, ...
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Watched ShonKey try very hard to explain his security council mtg, just did his yeah, nah, she’ll be right mate. He’s really good at filling up airtime with nothing but blah blah.
JEZ HE DID! Despite a purge that prevented a quarter of Labour supporters from voting.
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/09/24/jez-despite-purge-prevented-quarter-labour-supporters-voting/
Hokio Stream has become ‘an open sewer’ after years of polluting
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/84576646/hokio-stream-has-become-an-open-sewer-after-years-of-polluting
Coming our way with the National government – having to compete with multinationals to buy our own water…
“A small town in Ontario, Canada, has prompted fresh scrutiny of the bottled-water industry after its attempt secure a long-term water supply through the purchase of a well was outbid by the food and drinks multinational Nestlé.
When authorities in Centre Wellington, population of about 30,000, learned that Nestlé had put a bid on a spring water well in their region, they scrambled over the summer to counter with a competing bid. The goal was to safeguard a water supply for the township’s fast-growing population, Kelly Linton, the mayor, told the Guardian. “By 2041, we’ll be closer to 50,000 so protecting our water sources is critical to us.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/24/canada-nestle-water-well-bid-centre-wellington
That is what will happen if the government brings in tradeable water rights.
wtf. Farmer groups want to be able to use wayer, gm, etc, to make money, it does not matter other frmers aquifers dry up, or gm escapes, as long as the corp farmer can make profit oblivious of effects… ..just like shitty rivers.
why would any farmer lobby argue for gm and against regional efforts to grow value? Is the farming lobby a talk fest for big corp?
This is already happening in the north, unfortunately.
A small iwi is battling the Northland Regional Council to retain its long-held rights in the Poroti Springs which the NRC is busily selling off water rights to overseas companies – including Nestles which has been looking at Poroti Springs too. I’m not sure how far along Nestles has got with its resource consent application to withdraw water from the Springs.
Shocking Jenny Kirk!
There is the Freshwater site set up by Forest and Bird. Maybe it could be expanded to be an advocacy site for local water rights as so many are being hawked off by the National government and clueless councils around the country.
https://web.facebook.com/groups/freshwater111/?_rdr
there is a bottling plant taking the best aquifer water in the havlock north/ napier area for bottling will the locals drink shit.
@b waghorn – name and shame. There has already been a case in the US where the judge ruled, water is not a human right. NZ needs to get active to nip water selloffs in the bud before there is no drinkable water left. It’s no coincidence corporates are buying up water. Everyone needs water – very profitable – especially when sold so cheaply in NZ with the help of the cronies.
http://nzmiracle.com/en_US/
http://onepure.co.nz/our-mineral-water/
It would appear there is two of them.
Food for thought (I think some of it applies across the spectrum).
Some of that may be a bit on the nose but it is generally quite close to the mark. If you react badly to that you may well be proving Rodney’s point.
If the left want to attract more support they need to look more attractive.
Rodney Hide is not someone whose views are worth listening to.
The left now suffer from closed minds and moral smugness. They are moribund and backward-looking.
They run from ideas. Opposing philosophies distress them.
Top of the article Paul.
I would not call what comes from Hide’s brains ideas.
+1
Nor would I confuse laughing at his dated drivel with ‘distress’.
+1
We are reading them Paul …. anyway much of what he wrote applies to those on the right … the signs of “true beleivers” including religious devotees. 🙂
Rodney Hides opinion? Fuck off.
I have just read through yesterdays Open Mike…. wow. Well done all the contributors , esp CV and Paul and Adrian, for ably fending off the narrow minded, ignorant defenders of ‘ pax Americana ‘ or , to put it more bluntly, those who are basically backing Zionism.
For me all the hypocrisy of the USA can be summed up in one word….. Vietnam.
Yes, we can really listen to Rodney – ACT last election getting less than 1% of votes. Bit like at the amount of voters who actually take ACT seriously and soon to be the amount of people who take the Herald seriously.
Even die hard Natz supporters know that Granny is not really a news organisation anymore and you can’t trust news from Granny – sponsor-an-article cum crony-alert-reporting style. Have MR less than 1% Hide as a commentator just reinforces their dying readership.
The left will not get support from the right – they would be fools to look for it.
+1
But we do need to point out their delusional ideology and how it fails the nation.
Yep – and revolutionary as the idea might seem to the likes of Pete George, a country with 300 000 children in poverty and an entire generation consigned to homelessness has no particular need to slide further to the right. It has significant and pressing pragmatic problems that paying lip service to the bloody idols of neoliberalism will not address.
Labour will have the first affordable $600,000 homes ready by 2019. So the Aucklanders priced out of the housing market today only need to put their lives on hold until then.
(By which time the prices of the “affordable” homes will be more like $700,000).
It is of course optimistic, but the hope is that when they get their paws on the reins of power they will begin to govern, part of which will necessarily include addressing such problems. Better that they have a local Corbynist lobby to encourage them probably, or a community housing initiative to show them the way.
What are their plans with these “reins of power”?
How are they going to “address such problems”?
Labour have now had 8 years cooling their heels in Opposition. What have they come up with in that time that we can look forward to?
One of the outcomes of the last election for Labour was to notice that the Gnats produced no policy. The Gnats have no intention of being lampooned in public for their gross dishonesty and manifest stupidity. This is a lesson Labour has learned. We will only see a general picture of what they might do – but if you want genuine growth and reform that will need to come from a community base. Produce a working model & Labour might be very happy to fund and proliferate it. But thus far it doesn’t seem to be how they choose to fight their corner.
Labour has been facing off against the National tories since the 1930s.
You can’t tell me that they’ve only just figured out how Tories think.
The Tories changed their presentation. Under Bill English they represented themselves honestly as the crooked and unambiguously backward set of chumps they actually are. Key brought in the Crosby Textor thing – and the MSM decided they could embrace bias without any proximate prospect of comeuppance. Now the media are locked in – they will be reformed when the Gnats leave power and they know it.
We on The Standard can figure this shit out way fucking faster than the Labour caucus.
A Labour Govt is going to do fuck all “reform” to the MSM.
Nevertheless a strong press is believed to be one of the pillars of a healthy democracy – and I think we are feeling the lack. But yes, the LP isn’t setting speed records. Partly this is that feature of organisations that they grow to do the opposite of what they were established for. This is where a large activist membership is supposed to apply corrective feedback.
There are some curiosities in reform movements in that they require a receptive environment to develop new ideas – an incubator or as the trolls would have it an echo chamber. The Beijing student uprising resembled nothing so much as a magnetron – the ring of university campuses acting as the circulating amplifying chambers feeding the centre.
If you react badly to that you may well be proving Rodney’s point.
Pete George is moribund and backward-looking. He suffers from a closed mind and moral smugness. He runs from ideas and opposing philosophies distress him.
If he reacts badly to that he may well be proving my point.
He fills Twitter and blogs with [his] righteousness and smugness, puffed up by [his] own perceived moral and intellectual superiority.
OMG this is a great game, PM!
Yeah this Pete and George team are even worse than the Thatcher loving Gilbert and George!
+1 PM
Perhaps the Herald only publishes Hide’s silliness for amusement, not real political analysis
@ Rodney Hide rubbish on the Left…”They run from ideas” ….compared with this do-nothing regime…LOL.
Call me closed minded if you like but I never ever ever ever read Hypocrite Hide.
Or you just think Perky is a waste of skin.
The good thing about Rodders is. He’s full of shit and everyone knows it.
Aucklander’s want his testicles danglin from the sky tower in recognition of his superb super city idea.
I imaging stepping out in public is wonderful for him. Wondering if someone will dent his face.
As for the article. It’s actually a reflection of their own closed minds, they(people like him) think everyone else is behaving like they do themselves.
Rodney telling the left they have closed minds is more so outrageous that it will click bait people into A reading his article,. B push up ratings at the Herald which thankfully is diving like a Stuka!
I used to read the Herald, now it’s a third rate click bait celebrity mag. They lost the plot. If the Herald doesn’t turn it around soon it’ll be gone.
Sacking Rodney and actually reporting news would help.
Hide’s idea is basically there is no alternative to neo-liberalism.
I think he’s also a climate denier.
So we should be listening to this git.
Ha ha.
Yep, pure bloody projection and we see it from the RWNJs all the time as they use their own actions to justify keeping things the way they are and even to make things worse instead of making things better.
“Willem Wiskerke, a spokesman for Greenpeace Netherlands said: “He is a climate denier like Donald Trump, nothing more, nothing less, a rightwing, fact-free populist who denies the climate crisis and will not put any effort into solving it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/23/dutch-parliament-votes-to-close-down-countrys-coal-industry
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/23/existing-coal-oil-and-gas-fields-will-blow-carbon-budget-study
meanwhile…..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/84445709/large-area-off-canterbury-coast-proposed-for-oil-exploration
“You will like me very much” – the Don to fossil fuel execs:
“The same day as a new report highlighted the carbon emissions calamity that would accompany new fossil fuel extraction, Donald Trump promised an audience of fossil fuel executives that is the very agenda he would pursue if elected to the White House.
” “Oh, you will like me so much,” the Republican presidential candidate said in his address to the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
“He promised to lift regulations, open up more federal lands for fossil fuel extraction—including coal and fracking—and ease the way for new fossil fuel infrastructure projects including pipelines.
” Trump said he would get rid of “all unnecessary regulations, and [place] a temporary moratorium on new regulations not compelled by Congress or public safety.” He also called anti-coal regulations “unfair to our people and our workers.” ” http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/23/trump-fossil-fuel-execs-you-will-me-so-much
From your Stuff link:
“A large chunk of Canterbury’s coast will again be offered up for oil and gas exploration, under a Government proposal described as “lunacy” by Christchurch’s deputy mayor.
“The Government wants to set aside nearly 300,000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s east coast for oil and gas companies as part of its 2017 block offer.
“The annual block offer allows companies to compete for exploration permits.
“This year’s proposed offer would open up the largest area near Canterbury yet.
“It includes a space near the Banks Peninsula Marine Mammal Reserve, home to the endangered Hector’s dolphin.”
“Last year’s offer was deeply unpopular with the Christchurch City Council and environmental groups.
“They argued that deep-sea drilling could threaten the region with a catastrophic oil spill for little economic gain.”
why encourage further investment and reliance on near term stranded assets……unless you don’t believe those assets will be stranded.
Is it even “investment” – in the truest sense of the word. Surely it is exploitation.
or fraud even….unless you don’t believe in CC.
and another generation of colonisation, as well as exploitation Manuka AOR.
Is there a way to end it?
If they struck oil there the economic gain would be out of this world.
If there was a big earthquake there, their could possibly be an out of this world catastrophe.
It’s just business to National we need energy we buy oil in, it would save us money and make money and jobs,. pure business.
You cannot change nature.
@Pat – Hides not even a populist. No one ever voted for him.
Rodney’s piece has no bearing on my post..though I do agree he is unlikely to ever be described as populist (nor popular)
Epsom 2005:
– Rodney Hide 21,102
– Richard Worth (National) 8,220
– Kate Sutton (Labour) 5,112
– Keith Locke *Greens) 2,787
New Plymouth 2014
– Jonathan Young (National) 21,566
– Andrew Little (Labour) 11,788
Young is ranked 38th in National’s caucus.
“Under Hide’s leadership, the vote in the September 2005 elections severely reduced ACT’s party parliamentary representation. ACT’s share of the party vote dropped from over 7% of the total in 2002 to around 1.5%; its representation in Parliament fell from nine MPs to two. Despite this reduction, the party remained in parliament due to Hide winning the Epsom seat. As a consequence of its reduced share of the vote, ACT received a significant cut in taxpayer-funded Parliamentary resourcing and Hide shifted his electorate office in Remuera to Newmarket, the same location as that of ACT’s head office”
wiki
Thanks Rodney
now that Rodney’s (and by extension, ACT’s) popularity/support has been bought up it occurs to me if you want to measure the publics appetite for neoliberal theory you only need to examine the level of support for ACT, which I believe peaked at around 7% and now languishes within the MoE
It is quite amazing that ACT got 7% as we always beleived that there were only 5% intelligent enough to vote ACT. Now some 4% are looking elsewhere …. NZF ?
Sorry that is trolling but I couldn’t resist 🙂
Explain what your getting at Pete please.
I feel a correction coming on if your trying to tell me Rodney won that against National on his popularity alone.
As for Andrew, yeah well, never been NP, wouldn’t have a clue to judge that result.
I was showing that ‘save nz’ is wrong, Hide has had many people voting for him in an electorate, especially when compared to Little.
I said nothing about ‘his popularity alone’, it was more complex than that but Hide worked hard in Epsom. I don’t think anyone gets all their votes on popularity alone.
In 2008 ACT got 85,496 votes, that had little to do with National and quite a lot to do with Hide’s efforts.
Striding victoriously over Savenz’s use of a colloquial euphemism, don’t get altitude sickness.
@Peter George – save the spin. We all know that they were National voters told to vote for him to prop up the Natz. Not many people would willingly vote for Hide. He’s a joke, as is his ideology.
You’re claiming that 78% of Epsom voters acted under instruction from National. Confirmation your comment wasn’t ‘a colloquial euphemism’, you were making thing things up.
I am sure the Labour Party should be taking its advice form Tories.
I like the way Kate Sutton still pulled in 5k of votes in Epsom, in bloody Epsom! Go Kate!
National and Rodney/Act must have really ignored their constituents or been talking to much shit for that to happen.
In the old Newspaper days letters to the editor would have curtailed them from posting to much of fringe politicians crap like Rodney.
The complaints and stinging letters he received would have told him that. The editors letters would have also put the dickhead back where he belongs, talking fringe politics to nutters in a mental health ward.
Take this little fact in, someone born since 1980 doesn’t know truth or proper politics like us older people. They have never heard dissention. They have never seen proper protests(springboks tour someone born 1980 ain’t going to remember) They don’t know what unions can do, all they know is wall street, greed is good, consumerism and having the latest phone and trainers is important.
” talking fringe politics to nutters in a mental health ward.”
By this I assume you mean the way a senile old fool like Geoffrey Palmer on his ideas for a written Constitution?
Now there is someone who really should be ignored.
alwyn the list of people who enter representative politics with completely the wrong mental attitude, and who have not been scarred in some way by their nurture is tiny. Most of them who seek the halls of power, do it for fame, and ego.
It’s the one field I think psychological evaluation should be completed on, that is anyone seeking public office. IMHO.
Start with John Key, and many questions about his mum, and how long he breast fed for. Did he find it comforting gently pulling her hair whilst he was feeding on the nipple at 10, or did he think it felt a little strange at that age.
🙂
That’s what the media tells us, Richard Rawshark, but I do keep coming across young people who are thinking about other things – not just worried about not being able to own a home, but worried about climate change, dirty waters, oil drilling, and NZ (their home) being taken over by multitudes of others.
I just hope there are enough of these younger people to carry on dissension and protests when the time comes for those things.
…..the time comes for those things.
The youth I grew up with at that time would have marched to the beehive and thrown by force this National government out by now even.
Seriously.
Time comes for those things.., with this lot, it WILL be to late.
“I just hope there are enough of these younger people to carry on dissension and protests when the time comes for those things.”
Well you had about 100 protesters out in force yesterday for the union lead rally in Auckland.
sadly I did the one thing there I hate most, I stereo typed. Sorry. Their are a lot of good youth out there don’t get me wrong. barring the stereotyping i’m sure you all get the gist of what I said though.
I consider the youth of the greens Genter etc, an example of youth excelling beyond what we could back in my day. But they seem fewer.
Real Clear Politics still has Clinton 2-3% ahead…the Democrats in with a chance of taking the Senate…House of Reps staying with Republicans
US RWNJ’s doing the Trumps going to win thing when Hillary will clearly pass the post, is an old trick they employ when it’s looking bad for their guy. In that it’s to stop the rot and keep voters and try to gain the undecided.
Hope i’m right on that, even though Hillarys donkey deep in it too(war mongering), Trumps scarier and a big gamble. Better the devil you know.
????????
What
Lefties need to get in touch with the reality on the ground.
RCP no toss up states electoral map now has Hillary on 272 and Trump on 266. (270 electoral votes required to win the White House).
In mid Aug, Hillary was on 351 electoral votes and Trump was on 187.
In other words, according to RCP in just over a month Clinton has lost almost 80 electoral votes, while Trump has gained that much.
The gap between the two candidates on a no-toss up basis has therefore shrunk in 5 weeks by 164 electoral votes to just 6 electoral votes.
Which explains why Clinton is shouting on TV that she doesn’t know why she isn’t leading Trump by 50 points.
From recent accounts in the last week it would seem Hillary Clinton’s health is getting worse
…according to a doctor , eye movements would suggest Parkinsons or damage to brain from concussion?…and getting worse
…if this is the case, she should not be running for President because she will not be capable of the job and it would be irresponsible
…if the Democratic Party chooses to ignore this and can’t see this then the voters certainly will
Probably just a passing case of pneumonia eh… 😛
nah probably a passing case of photoshop
Even with parkinson’s, she’s a better choice than Trump.
I don’t care how many times she stumbles, falls or passes out. Among other things, a pair of blue glasses will sort things out.
The US Government is more than a President anyway and if she has the right people in the right places, that will be all fine and sweet.
lol…”if she has the right people in the right places, that will be all fine and sweet”.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-helped-topple-gadhafi-france-uk-fought-libyas-oil/215104/
Good to see the latest attempt to spread CCOs and forced local government amalgamations has been shelved.
Glad to have helped.
Seen this?
‘Activists – get things done’
Unlike ALL the other Auckland Mayoral candidates – I successfully petitioned Parliament for an urgent inquiry into Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
The following information I made available to Mayors in other parts of NZ to assist in their fight back against the continued corporate takeover of our local democracy, our assets and our public property.
The following proves that I already have an effective working relationship with central government.
Read for yourself …
https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-nz/51DBSCH_SCR69296_1/924613ec7fb831c4e74bd062f73287ac2ceb5081
Petition 2014/33 of Penelope Mary Bright and 55 others, and Report from the Controller and Auditor-General, Governance and accountability of council- controlled organisations
Kind regards
Penny Bright
2016 Independent Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Nuclear Power and Climate Change – excerpt:
“Overall, the idea that atomic power is “clean” or “carbon free” or “emission free” is a very expensive misconception, especially when compared to renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation. Among conservation, efficiency, solar and wind power technologies, there are no global warming analogs to the heat, carbon, and radioactive waste impacts of nuclear power. No green technology kills anywhere near the number of marine organisms that die through reactor cooling systems.
“Rooftop solar panels do not lose ten percent of the power they generate to transmission, as happens with virtually all centralized power generators. S. David Freeman, former head of numerous large utilities and author of All Electric America: A Climate Solution and the Hopeful Future, says: “Renewables are cheaper and safer. That argument is winning. Let’s stick to it.”
“No terrorist will ever threaten one of our cities by blowing up a solar panel. But the nuclear industry that falsely claims its dying technology doesn’t cause global warming does threaten the future of our planet. ” http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/09/188947/how-nuclear-power-causes-global-warming
Financially it seems pretty clear that renewables are the cheapest option for utility-scale new builds, even without a carbon tax. So worldwide I doubt we’ll see many more nuclear new builds, at least in western countries.
But it seems to me the appropriate comparison for nuclear is against fossil fuels. In that comparison, nuclear still looks pretty favourable to coal/gas/oil (and actually even hydro) in terms of land area ruined and human health/mortality footprints, even considering the worst case projections from Chernobyl, Fukushima etc. So to me, it looks like an environmental setback when a nuclear plant is closed prematurely while fossil plants feeding the same grid are still running and polluting.
Overall, my views are pretty similar to Monbiot’s, who expresses them a lot better than I ever could. http://www.monbiot.com/category/nuclear/
Just how ‘green’ is the production of solar panels?
Current production is far from ideal, but it’s still a lot better than fossil fuels. Most of the problems with current production are fairly easy to manage and eliminate, if the producers are incentivised to actually do it.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
Interesting comments by Rodney Hide on the left in the herald this morning, expresses much commentary you see on this site
“The left view their political failure as the fault of voters who must be hoodwinked, stupid, selfish, or suffering some other ethical or intellectual shortcoming. Why else would they not be supporting the left when they are so good and true?
The problem is never with the left or their doctrine.
They are a self-reinforcing sect who in their wretchedness and anger are becoming ever smaller. Their narrow and insular outlook prevents them reaching out. Little wonder it’s not attractive to new recruits.
It’s astonishing that National is now the vibrant party looking to the future and open to diverse views.
Labour is the narrow party that has shut itself off from the great bulk of New Zealanders.”
Red, go back to bed.
Truth hurts Garibaldi, in a strange way you are a reflection
of old Rodders comment 😀
Talking utter nonsense.
Hidebound describes the ex ACT leader perfectly.
You are being generous describing Hide’s outpourings as an interesting comment.
He does have point Paul no matter how much you may not like it, the lefts failure can’t be all externally afflicted, ie msm, dumb voters and other conspiracies
Hide does not have a point. He is pointless.
If not a point maybe then a smidgen of truth 😀
“the narrow party that has shut itself off from the great bulk of New Zealanders” sounds more like the one polling less than 1%.
Unusually stupid RW slanders repeated by morons so abject they never learned to write their own.
But the gnats are a bunch of lefties according to Seemore Coq. What are we to make of this?
Simple the Gnats control centre left and right, ie they are very removed from right wing
rofl
““The left view their political failure as the fault of voters who must be hoodwinked, stupid, selfish, or suffering some other ethical or intellectual shortcoming. Why else would they not be supporting the left when they are so good and true?
The problem is never with the left or their doctrine.”
meanwhile – if you talk to people on the left you quickly find the above assertion to be based on a deliberate over simplification of actual arguments made
in short – its horse shit
We had a wander around MOTAT on Friday and came across a potted history of Radio in New Zealand. This is what I read –
“On New Year’s Day in 1932 the Government took over the responsibility of the Radio Broadcasting Company in providing a national service. This was done under a three man Broadcasting Board who was also given the power to impose restrictions on the private stations. By 1937 most of the private stations had been bought by the New Zealand Government. Two distinct systems were then set up – one NATIONAL and one COMMERCIAL.
The first Director of Broadcasting was Professor James Shelley. He saw radio as an instrument of real democracy based on a sympathetic understanding of all points of view.
In 1946 the commercial and non-commercial branches of the national radio system were amalgamated under the name New Zealand Broadcasting Service.”
My words – the poor sod Professor Shelley will be turning in his grave at the state of our airways these days – so much for “a sympathetic understanding of all points of view.” There isn’t one jot of balance in anything we listen to on Radio or TV – just adoration for a corrupt Government which is sickening.
As most radio is talkback every nut job in the country has the power to share his view
usually the worst nutters are the host’s , m laws ,hosking and henry have all had goes spilling the rubbish into peoples
Tend to agree nutters on both sides of the phone , the medium attracts them like moths to a flame Albeit I do find Paul Henry entertaining you just need to take him with a grain of salt
tonne of salt, ………..fify
It would in fact only take a grain of salt to cover his thought section of his brain
Professor Shelley was turning in his grave even before he died. The views you attribute to him are correct. They were not those of the Prime Minister of the day however. Savage had no intention of allowing an understanding of all points of view.
Did you know that the news program to be broadcast was written in the Prime Minister’s office and delivered to the broadcasters?
Have a look at this and weep.
https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=oEXQCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=prime+minister+savage+radio+news+broadcast&source=bl&ots=O_Focr02bn&sig=C1YmpV0mlbOwJ6guXVGs78thJ6o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmpvzyqKnPAhUDoZQKHWBNAe4Q6AEIRzAG#v=onepage&q=prime%20minister%20savage%20radio%20news%20broadcast&f=false
Through the premierships of Fraser, Holland and Holyoake’s first, and repealed in the early part of his [Holyoake’s] second term.
I didn’t realise they went right through to Holyoake’s time in the early 1960s. If it was early in his second term that he got rid of it, it would seem that he didn’t approve of the practice. He was only there for about 3 months in 1957 before the election and he wouldn’t really have time to change very much.
Was Nash also doing it? From what you say it sounds as if he must have been.
Actually I can tolerate Fraser if it was about anything to do with the war.
However I highlighted Savage because he was the PM when Shelley was primarily involved in broadcasting and it was Shelley that WK was talking about.
As per your link – in 1947 things were relaxed to allow controversial broadcasts to be aired but Prime Ministerial approval was required until restrictions were abolished in 1962.
If you want to hear an out of touch ex pollie who actually dislikes democracy making a complete fool of himself, tune in to Natrad and listen to doddery old Geoffrey Palmer play with his constitutional toy soldiers.
Well said. He would tie us up in expensive knots for years trying to nut out a constitution. The main benefits of the monarchy are its distance and saving us from yet another self-important ex-pollie (like Geoffrey?) pretending to be our head of state.
It’s a esotreic academic law professors hobby horse, law lecturers blather on about it in 101 law since the the beginning of time The rest of us don’t really give a monkeys, status quo is fine, bigger issues to deal with
+100 to all that
I am not sure that you or your two supporters know what your talking about…
What happened to ‘Open Mike’ on the 24th at the end?….comments aren’t showing properly
From the Ig Nobel Prizes this year, my favourite:
“On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit”
http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html
The rest:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/sex-life-rats-personalities-rocks-awarded-ig-nobel-prizes?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=ignobel-7717
+100 rhino…lol…we live in a time of profound bullshit, trivia …and wasted time and white collar technological trickery and bankster fraud and usury…driven by materialism and venal mindless greed
‘Obama implicated in Clinton email scandal – New FBI docs’
https://www.rt.com/usa/360528-obama-implicated-clinton-email/
“President Barack Obama used a pseudonym when communicating with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by email, while her IT company referred to her email deleting as a “cover-up”, new FBI documents reveal….
During the interview with Huma Abedin, who served as deputy chief of staff under Clinton, the FBI reportedly presented her with an email exchange between Clinton and a person she did not recognize. The FBI then revealed the unknown person’s name was believed to be a pseudonym used by Obama. Abedin reacted by saying, “How is this not classified?”
This exchange could expose Obama as having mislead the public on the issue, given his 2015 statement that he found out about Clinton’s use of a private email server “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”…
Cops, a lot of talk about cops lately, underfunded, understaffed, ignoring things, skewing stats..
If Key remained PM lets say for another decade god forbid, how long do the standardista”s think it will be before a police surcharge to come out, comes along.
What was it 25 police stations to close, but a little while ago they close a load down too.
Why do we pay tax under national, they have pretty much driven everything under.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/84636485/labour-leader-andrew-little-dismisses-helen-clarks-advice-about-commanding-the-centre-ground
The title says it all, Little is not going to be a more of the same leader.
Anyone can talk about moving left of the centre; where is the left wing action, the left wing policy and the left wing personnel from Labour to back it up?
He would be silly to show all his cards to early , but going on clarkes performance on the tpp and praising of shit key, having Little publicly slap her down speaks volumes.
He is the right man for the next pm.
he is the right man for taking Labour to sub 20%
did you think that up all on your own?
More crap neoliberal advice from last century. Thanks but no thanks Aunty Helen. Little was right to distance himself from Helen’s divisive legacy.
Anyway, Key currently rules the “centre” and won’t be budged. Labour’s only chance to get it back is if FJK makes a huge ballsup like David Cameron, but I reckon Key is more self aware
Aunty Helen was right and is always right. She was smart to quickly dump any left-wing policies unpalatable to the centre so that she could appeal to the ‘middle’ voters.
Wrong, she lost the 2008 election because she wasted her political capital on pet social policies that alienated most voters. And she failed to address inequality and the growing housing bubble.
I respect her as a well-intentioned and highly intelligent person, her government was excellent on foreign policy, but she bought into the “Third Way” Blairite bullshit on economic matters, a betrayal of all workers & class struggles of the last century
St Helen tried her best to protect workers and contain the class strugles.
In the “ghost zone” ?
In the Green Party?
In the next election I will be voting Green Party(not Labour ) for the first time in what will be my 12th election.
The last time I voted National was for Muldoon, and I honestly believe that was the last time a National Party leader gave a shit for the ordinary kiwi.
Meh, I need another beer.
Looks like things have got worse in Syria today just as John Key chaired the Security Council this week with blithe, meaningless sound-bites.
Coincidence? I think not.
John Key has made an art of dividing those he pretends to represent.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/314163/security-council-to-meet-as-syria-violence-escalates
Murdoch nails it……
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtJUd2VVUAAYDId.jpg:large
Ouch.
Key spoke as if he were more interested in his own speech rather than any solution for the Syrian people.
That neither the US nor Russia batted an eyelid at Key’s weak pleas to ‘hold hands’ over the matter, and indeed doubled their strikes immediately says a lot about how the rest of the world views him.
I’m loving the DPRK News Service. (yes, it’s a parody account)
I still get a giggle out of the headline “Cruz unhinges his jaw, swallows his pride.”
Maassive trump rally in Roanoke Virginia today. Crowd estimate of 10,000 to 20,000.
https://youtu.be/jwgLr_XPHe4
Where did Clinton campaign today? How many thousand supporters did she attract?
I Imagine Clinton’s heard about Gennifer Flowers’ appearance at the first debate so I guess she’s out and about organising a front row seat for Trump’s former mistress.
Marla perhaps, or Melania…….
Did Clinton take a rest day today?
Virginia is a swing state.
Yep. Thats why Trump has held rallies there several times in the last month.
Polls in Virginia?
Currently leans Clinton by +6
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/va/virginia_trump_vs_clinton-5542.html#polls
it would appear the more things change the more they stay the same….has CT got this right?..from an Aucklander’s perspective?
https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/2016/09/from-good-guys-to-fall-guys-spinoff-and.html
A well written rant, shame Trotter didn’t get his facts straight, some reactions from Spinoff/GenZero author here (the whole thread on twitter is longer)
note that Beckett didnt even try to defend their shitty endorsement of Right Wing Ralston or their BS labelling of Mike Lee as an anachronism.
i know nothing of Lee but the endorsement of Ralston was what caused the enquiry…and as you note, they didn’t defend their endorsements merely their funding.
The colour of his jib is not the issue, the Spinoff criteria are policy positions that will deal with the housing crisis
rather a wider questionnaire than that….with some rather peculiar grading
That said I think Trotter is right about the UP being twisted by property developers & speculators for their own ends, it is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Need to close the immigration floodgates, penalise speculation & McMansions, and implement proper rates/LVT based on unimproved land value.
They’re privileged kids of the top 10%. Of course they’re going to endorse Key’s mate Bill Ralston ahead of public transportation champ Lee.
A major problem with Millennials is they have no concept of life outside of the market oriented neoliberal narratives. From TDB:
Is the EU doomed?…interesting article by an Irishman, Bryan MacDonald
‘Like the Soviet Union, is EU heading for ash heap of history?’
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/359327-soviet-union-eu-history/
“A while back, Mikhail Gorbachev famously said: ‘The most puzzling development in modern politics is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.’
Gorbachev wasn’t referring to the European Union’s hunger to expand eastwards, but instead the bloc’s top-heavy governance, where smaller states are increasingly dominated by larger members.
This was evident last year, when Angela Merkel pretty much unilaterally imposed a liberal migration policy on the confederation, which has led to massive division…
just earlier in the week, Varoufakis on the largest global economic threat 😉
And from 2’46”:
“The European Union is in dire straits, the European Union is disintegrating” (Varoufakis)
Thanks for that, it led to this great TED talk by Varoufakis
You’re very welcome. And this one also sometime at the end of last month:
“Market Economy – Reinvent or Reboot?”
Yanis Varoufakis versus Clemens Fuest, at the Alpbach Forum, along the lines of the proposition: “The market economy is the best model. It will also successfully manage the challenges faced in the future.” Agree or disagree with this statement?”