Stubbs says the Manapouri electricity will go to waste if Tiwai Point isn't using it. Wrong now, and even wronger when grid upgrades that are already underway get completed.
Stubbs buys into that low-carbon high-purity sales spin. Wrong. That Tiwai Point is sucking so much electricity from NZ electricity supply is keeping the coal going into Huntly. Close Tiwai Point, and the coal boilers at Huntly will very likely close very soon after. So in fairness, we should be attributing Huntly's coal-derived emissions to Tiwai Point.
The smelting process also releases CO2 (and other nasties) as a result of the carbon anodes that are consumed in the smelting process. As I understand it, Tiwai Point's performance in this part of the process is middling. Rio Tinto are underway with commercialising an alternative process that doesn't have these carbon emissions, but using that process will require retrofitting the whole smelter. Which will reduce any residual value existing carbon-emitting "assets" may still have.
The "dollar" price Stubbs tosses around would presumably have hidden in it the hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities associated with environmental problems at the Tiwai Point site.
'Sam Stubbs makes a good case for nz buying tiwai smelter, '
The debate has moved on from this and the facts show that it is not an idea to fly. Forget this one, and think of what else could use the workforce of seasoned practical men, accompanied by abundant electricity.
Interesting article. The China production is huge- are they aiming for a monopoly hold on the market with all the strategic and destructive potential that implies? Rio may not want to shoot itself in the foot but by default will it be shooting a lot of other industries and national interests. Warplanes?
I am really getting sick of these opinion pieces on what is supposed to be a news website. But Stubbs is wrong about Tiwai on so many fronts its really a joke. Tiwai produces "high quality aluminium" because the smelting process is old and really inefficient. The world production of aluminium in 2018 was 60,000,000 metric tons. China has huge numbers of smelters and produces 33,000,000 metric tons while NZ's sole smelter produces 337,000 metric tons. ie NZ produces 0.5% of the world's production. NZ isn't even a pimple on the backside of this elephant. As well as that China has all of the manufacturing infrastructure underneath that to use the aluminium. The NZ smelter has been under threat for years and years for very basic reasons – it isn't making money and its output is minscule. The best thing NZ can do with the power from Manapouri is to eventually connect it to the Transpower grid but that is going to take a few years.
It's already connected to the grid. It's just that the part of the grid between Invercargill and the Waitaki area wasn't really grunty enough to take the 600ishMW that will be freed up next year. But an upgrade was already underway before the closure announcement, and is no doubt being accelerated.
Now the thing to notice is that the reporter fails to inform the public what actually happened to cause the injury – or injuries. Even worse, the reporter is evidently too stupid to consider how other parents who leave their kids at that daycare centre are going to feel about the cover-up.
At the very least the reporter and Stuff's editor ought to be considering the public interest in the situation. Is privacy law being used to perform the cover-up? Then say so! What part of morality do you dorks not get??
Gems Educational Daycare general manager Gemma Smith said the centre was “deeply saddened” over the incident. “Our focus right now is supporting the child and their family, as well as our centre community.” Smith would not give details about the victim’s age or gender.
Yes, yes, the ritualised issuance of politically-correct banalities has been rigorously adhered to, we get that.
WorkSafe said it was investigating. Do you know more? Email newstips@stuff.co.nz
Who do they believe are going to inform them, if not those who were there, on the spot, supervising the kids? Pathetic. Disgusting.
Smith said the centre would cooperate with WorkSafe and Ministry of Education investigations. “We do everything possible to provide a safe environment for the children we care for. If accidents occur, we have systems in place to offer immediate assistance,” Smith said.
You can imagine how thrilled the other parents will be to see this. If I was one of them I would yank my kids out of there pronto. I wonder how those parents will react to being frozen out by the manager/owner and media.
The Worksafe shadow over all – is it more talked about than evidenced? Are they actually operating under their own aegis – making sure that any work they do results in safe outcomes – that match their contracts in a satisfactory and positive manner. Minister Andrew Little this morning sounded like a kindly uncle as I listened while I worked.
The thing I am hearing regularly from agencies supposed to be arms of the government is that they decide what they will investigate on the test of – 'Can it be tested and won in Court' and so, be a plus mark in their activity success tickbox. If not, 'There is not enough evidence to pursue this matter'. They all need to be pursued by eager citizens, noses to the ground and teeth at the ready to nip them on their fat butts. (Or very thin ones because their personal drives go into the new middle-class memes of personal fitness and setting goals of running marathons, bicycle riding in lycra etc).
Worksafe has been defunded under National as well as reorganized so the enforcement side hasn't got the funds to investigate or prosecute let alone prevention.Pike River.
Half of Queenstown will know by now what happened. Certainly the parents with kids in that daycare will. There's no public interest here that requires immediate media coverage of the details, and it works against the public interest to publish too quickly and then find out the details were wrong because the people the journo was talking to were still in shock and/or dealing with the event and didn't have their facts straight. We see this with rapid emergencies fairly often now, where MSM rush to publish before they've confirmed what happened. It takes time to get a reliable and truthful narrative.
The incident happened Monday morning, the report was published late Monday afternoon. I'd expect more information in the next few days once the police, WorkSafe, and the Ministry have started on their processes.
Yet over 60 per cent of respondents want the economy rejigged towards something better. “Let's use this time to reform the economic system” is what the question reads. A large majority said yes.
Yet the question is a crucial one, because it really does go to the heart of each major party’s pitch for the election.
Yet you can bet both major parties will duck the issue! Labour because it can now coast to victory on its poll ratings. National because it is the party of business as usual.
And if you consider the trajectory of the tourist industry, the change to zero international tourists becomes clear. Visitor arrivals in New Zealand have roughly doubled every 10 or so years since the advent of the jet in the 1950s, and were 3.9 million in 2019. That has now stopped in its tracks.
National will now start whining like the drug addict who needs their regular hit. How feeble their calls for re-opening the borders are will be amusing to see.
Labour, for the first time since the fourth Labour Government of David Lange and Roger Douglas, could have the parliamentary numbers to ram through serious changes to the fabric of New Zealand’s economy.
The prospect of Labour ramming anything anywhere is zilch. Think limp dishrag.
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has consistently said Labour, should it be re-elected to the Treasury benches, would look to make the economy better than it was before. Quite what that will mean in practical terms will have to wait until after the election.
Got that right! Don't spook the horses, Grant! He's done well, to my surprise, presenting centrism as a benign economic model to the electorate, and it complements the PM's mastermind managerial style nicely. Expect them to rise above bland though, spicing it up with a few futuristic signals in the next few weeks – carefully designed not to provoke expectation of drastic change.
Unsurprising to see a libertarian journo like Malpass struggle to articulate any other approach to changing an economy than cutting taxes and protections. No imagination.
An unfortunate name for that journo surely. I'm rereading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – it would be a name that might occur there. Fact stranger than fiction.
Today, will we see National’s internal polling leaked to the media and endorsed by its Leader? If so, who will be the recipient of the info? What will the National tacticians decide? Will it be a shot across the bow or one in the foot? I’ve ordered extra popcorn.
Listening to recent interviews with Musk's mate Thiel, is mindbending . It is hard to grasp what he believes in as he makes ambiguous, confusing responses. The world consists of only three doors to choose from ?
The power of money to have those in power then court you, yet the Mont Pelerin Society describe Thiel as a philanthropist. https://youtu.be/IXG2F0a6I28
Under Evo's term of indigenous socialism has been "the majority population has, for the first time in their lives, lived above poverty.
The achievements were more than economic. Bolivia made a great leap forward in indigenous rights."
Evo’s crime.
“My sin was being indigenous, leftist, and anti-imperialist,” Evo said after being coerced into resigning this week.
His replacement, Jeanine Añez Chávez, agreed. “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites,” the opposition senator tweeted in 2013, “the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco!!!” After Evo’s departure, Chavez declared herself interim president while holding up a large bible, though she failed to get the required quorum in the senate to do so.
Maybe Collins sees herself as a Chavez when she vowed to "crush the other lot", meaning just about all! Would she also burn the indigenous flag that was hung upside down behind Mueller while ripping the UN Agenda 30 to shreds. Could Collins stick to NZ alligning to the seventeen 2030 goals ? Can you hear her saying,
"We resolve to build a better future for all people, including the millions who have been denied the chance to lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives……We can be the first generation to succeed in ending poverty; just as we may be the last to have a chance of saving the planet."
Musk is trolling clueless idiots with a predisposition to think 'Tesla batteries use lots of lithium -hmm, Bolivia has lots of lithium and just had a coup = Tesla bad' who have zero understanding of lithium supply chains and technical details of battery chemistry.
Are you aware on mobile version some of these articles are not readable. I cant read either this one or Mickeys about Labour being better economic managers without switching to desktop version.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Try it again now. Between us, weka and I have both played with the tweet.
My cell (Samsung S10 running Chrome on Android 10) requested that I whitelisted the page at the client side – probably because it was picking up the tweet. Try to reload the page and see what happens. Also tell me what kind of device you’re using.
Finally some true vision, reminiscent of old…world leading and full of common sense and undeterred by the fact it hasnt been done before…this is the type of thinking we need.
The thinking has always been there,for pumped storage between two natural reservoirs called Tekapo and Pukeko.
The fly in the ointment was the breaking up of generators,with little thought as to the future beyond shareholder entitlement.
Sustainable Energy forum’s hydro expert, Alastair Barnett, estimates that the Onslow scheme could provide 5000 gigawatt-hours storage. But a simpler pumped storage system between Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki could provide over half Onslow’s dry-year storage with minimal construction cost – the two lakes were originally designed to do exactly that.
That scheme was precluded by the separation of ownership within the Tekapo-Waitaki hydro scheme. Genesis owns and manages Tekapo, Meridian owns the power stations below Tekapo. Each gentailer manages their part of the resource to maximise profit and shareholder value, not to minimise financial or environmental cost.
Bill English so he could privatise them and grab a large dividend ( repalced by borrowing) for tax cuts for the high earning mates. The electricity industry in New Zealand could do with a ground zero reset and rstructure to eliminate all the market inefficencies of privatisation. 29 power company CEO's – really? We used to run the lot out of the 8 floors of Rutherford house in Wellington.
Pumped hydro not new or ground breaking but the vision of the scheme incorporating wetlands and the scale are….the impact on the workings of the electricity market in NZ is also a great opportunity to revisit the profit motive, particularly in light of the recent finding on 'spillage' and wholesale pricing.
There appears a difference of opinion between Barnett and Bardsley on the viability of Tekapo and Pukaki around suitable geology but I expect those differences can be evaluated.
The cost appears to me to be overemphasised considering construction time is estimated to be 6-8 years…thats an annual outlay of approx half a billion per annum….weve just spent 16 billion on wage subsidies in less than 5 months.
I heard Orams piece on RNZ where he questioned the ability of (any) gov to plan a multigenerational project however the decision and construction can occur inside a decade…potentially inside the term of one administration.
In any event, we have wasted numerous years the decisions on long term infrastructure and energy provision and cannot be delayed any longer….and that system must be as close to zero carbon as possible.
Covid will be omnipresent, the placement of polling booths will be sparse, in larger halls, but there'll be many more of them around the place to ensure, we're told, that you will be able to keep your social distance.
This at the same time that we're assured there is no community spread, to the extent it's now okay to join the thousands of spectators packed in at rugby matches for hours. But it seems that when it comes to the few minutes you will spend in the polling booth, you will be reminded to keep your distance.
That's what this is really all about, it's a reminder of who the Conqueror of Covid is and why we should all bear thanks and show our appreciation with a tick in the correct box.
To be clear, Barry is insinuating the Labour Party has influenced the spacing of polling booths in order to win the election.
Thank heavens incognito we've got you – you're onto it. Probably people will see some red arrows soon and it will show how pervasive the Labour propagamda is. It's all around you, like a red rag to a bull. Better put – /sarc.
He's been reporting on elections for decades, so I'm sure he knows who really makes these decisions.
But his readers/listeners might not. So he feeds them BS he knows is false. That fails the most basic test of ethics, and he should be facing disciplinary action from NZME. Lying about our democratic process is unacceptable.
The fool thinks that no covid now means no covid in 8 weeks. And yet if we had a new outbreak at election time and hadn't made these plans, Captain Hindsight will be cursing the government's foolishness. 🙄
Yep – that is clearly the thinking behind it. To allow for the possibility that there IS some community transmission in 8 weeks.
If Soper really wanted to make mischief (which he does), rather than sound like a daft conspiracy theorist, he would argue that this forward planning shows how little confidence the government has that they can keep Covid out and that it's all 'shambolic'etc. etc. Missed opportunity there Bazza – I wonder whether next week's cheque might be going to a more competent propagandist?
I don't normally watch vid of her, but that one is kind of intense. She's trying to make a joke, but her eyes are seriously dark when she speaks to Henry and then she puts a smile on it. But those eyes just before the smile. She's like that earlier in the piece with someone else too (Tova I think).
I think I tore an eyebrow muscle when watching that. Did she say Monthly Pie-a-ton? Getting hungry now and licking the salt from my empty popcorn bowl.
In fact, I think we need to note every time in future when her eyebrow rises while she is trying to speak seriously and convincingly. She does it all the time..
Has she got rogue eyebrows do you think? That if studied will give accurate indications of the truthfulness of her statements. Cripes, what a disadvantage for a politician. Some bird watchers in the UK who are more interested in showy stats than being informed experts are called 'twitchers'. I imagine Collins is more interested in numbers of voters rather than deep interest in us as people and citizens, so she is a sort of twitcher; which may explain her eyebrow movements. If it is a Pavlovian response (moving from birds to dogs) she may be unable to control it and so bird fanciers might have to keep their eyes on this twitcher, who could end up going to the dogs! Do hope you followed this. It's all a deep code you know.
Eyebrow up or not, Collins was clearly joking when she said that, but has made a rod for her own eyebrow. Everything she says from now on will be parsed in an 'Are you joking now?' context.
Under Collins’ ‘leadership‘, the National Party’s puddle of ‘truthfulness‘ has dried up – just can’t trust them. Mind you, ‘She’s a handsome Tory’
Judith statistics – 436000 and no eyebrows were raised ? Was that a plucked or tweeked guess?
Maybe she has leaked info because it does not seem to correlate with Treasury's weekly data indicators.
Prior, Treasury presented at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) 2020. "We still expect to see a large contraction in growth in the June quarter, followed by a partial rebound in the September quarter, and a further economic recovery afterwards."
However there was upward activity for June. Treasury responded to the need for the more immediate need of pertinent, economy indicator reports, as complementary to the less frequent quarterly GDP ; hence using the NZAC index ( The GDP not due for this quarter until September 17, 2020).
"The NZAC does nonetheless point to some upside to those initial estimates. Our initial estimate for June quarter GDP was based on longer periods of time at higher alert levels. We’ve also made a quicker progression to Alert level 1 than what we assumed at BEFU, and therefore activity has been able to resume more quickly.
Current Stats NZ statistics suggests to Treasury that, " employment continued to hold up in June (Figure 2). For the week ended 21 June, the most accurate measure (which lags by 27 days) showed the total number of paid jobs up 4.5% on the same week in 2019. At the industry level, paid jobs in the primary industries were up 10.1% on last year, goods-producing jobs were up 2.5%, and services jobs were up 3.1% on 2019 after falling by around 80,000 between March and April 2020. "
My computer shows a completely blank screen in the middle of your comment. When you look at the screen is there a big white space or is it filled with graphs and content you've put up? Please advise. It would be a help for me to know.
To protect your security, treasury.govt.nz will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. To see this page, you need to open it in a new window.
Thanks solkta I have Firefox but didn't get that message.
Thanks incognito I tried that link and got some really interesting artwork snaking over various backgrounds.
I'm having trouble with pdfs – can't get many of them. I have to ask my associate what to do and write down in a book so I can transfer the instructions to the particular part of my brain which is dedicated to keeping up with this wonderful technology that is so helpful in showing us how far we have dipped or risen every day, and that is not just referring to Covid-19. Anyway if I don't do it today, it might have changed by tomorrow, and then I have had an hour or so for some other activity that might be more useful. However I will try, so don't give up on me please.
For that link to the quick summary dashboard, the Treasury site only gives the one format link. It also then required giving Chrome app storage permission to download.
However, other articles such as the weekly updates, were not embedded with Chrome and have a choice of formats.
I never went to the website. I simply took your link and turned it into a URL that TS readers can see/read and click on (or not). I was trying to help.
Agree Treetop. She was however in a similar position of trying to escape so needed to divert by flippancy.
Trapped, she could have said, “I shouldn’t be in this predicament ! Everyone agrees with me. Seperate but equal is great policy ( for my eyebrows )".
The reporters further questioned, “Everyone? You’re standing alone in here.” She gestures around, “Everyone, you know, the paintings on the corridor wall, tables and the clock all of them think I should be PM .”
I have heard The Telegraph soundly run down and yet have found much in it of value. Yet this latest on Harry and Meghan shows the vicious probing of a mosquito, and too many of such bites can maim its host.
This from Angela Levin: Just before Prince Harry got engaged to Meghan Markle, he invited me to Kensington Palace for a chat as I was writing his biography. One of the things he was keen to get across was the importance of teamwork.
If you want to be a success you have to be a team player,” he told me. “You get taught in the Army that you can’t get anywhere without the support of other people. I agree.”
It seems as if he is trying to establish a reasonable rapport with the media as his mother tried. But is the media reasonable; can it be reasoned with? Or is lurking behind it the malign drive of unalloyed pleasure in malicious gossip, desire for power through knowledge, and overall, lovely moolah – profit?
Harry and Meghan did not include a Covid-19 senario in their plans. The timing was bad for them to make a clean break, more so for Harry than Meghan.
Harry had issues with how the media treated his mother and a double up with negative media when Meghan became upset about media coverage about her which she did not like. Media coverage became personalised about Meghan and her father and this cannot be brushed off. The Royal family are reliant on the media for their charity work and on tourism to justify the expense of keeping them.
What is the Royal position on the media "don't explain, don't complain." This could have been modernised and a human element to it. I would have liked Harry and Meghan to have delayed leaving the firm for 3 years.
Look how the Queen's job has become redundant due to Covid-19. The Queen is 94 and I expect she is enjoying having a bit more rest.
I see we have caved in to our Yankee Masters in regard to extradition to Hong Kong, so much for being independent. Better if we dump the spy game and opt out of 'five eyes'
Say someone from here goes to Hong Kong and ends up murdering someone there, then rushes back to NZ , can't be extradited and we're stuck with a murderer?
Surely there should be case by case considerations?
Ok if China executes mainly for drug trafficking, and murder , we still end up potentially protecting rapists , fraudsters, criminals as well
Either way we could end up with undesirables evading justice
I did plenty of stupid things when I was 14, and 18 (or 28 or 38 or … OK, never mind).
I certainly won't condemn him for that. But he – and above all the National Party – need to accept that they made a silly decision to have a high school kid as a candidate, and they can't have it both ways: get a pass for being a teenager OR don't get a pass, because you're ready to be an MP. But pick one.
Maybe William Wood (opposition National Party candidate for the Palmerston North electorate) shouldn't be punished politically for a 'mistake' made four years ago, but…
Might the 'tactic' of fielding very young candidates in general elections be more widely adopted to minimise political risk from revelations of past 'misdemeanors'?
Its more about selecting a rude, green (as in naivety) inexperienced teenager whose brain is still not fully developed.
You can almost read their simplistic thought process:
he'll bring in the votes of the 18-20 year olds.
He'll do nothing of the sort. Half of them couldn't care less and won't vote. The other half will more than likely go with Labour because they are promising better training and employment opportunities for the young.
I just hope he has a good support system as he is on the young side. He has guts putting himself out there. A lot of seasoned MPs have been known to struggle. Politics can be dehumanising.
Under most laws, young people are recognized as adults at age 18. But emerging science about brain development suggests that most people don't reach full maturity until the age 25. Guest host Tony Cox discusses the research and its implications with Sandra Aamodt, neuroscientist and co-author of the book Welcome to Your Child's Brain.
Swarbrick's brain developed early, whereas Wood is a late ‘bloomer‘?
COX: Is there a difference between males and females with regard to their brain development, particularly in this age category?
AAMODT: Females' brains develop about on average two years earlier than male brains, so you're more likely to have a late developing male brain than female.
If you're choosing Swarbrick and Wood as examples, then it's only political parties in opposition that pick under-developed brains.
Swarbrick's brain may have been "under-developed" when she became an MP at age 23 – if so then what I'd give for that level of under-development! She is, however, the youngest person to be elected to NZ's parliament since the opposition National party selected Marylin Waring to stand for the Raglan electorate in 1975.
Of course it might just be pure coincidence that the two youngest MPs in the modern history of NZ's parliament are women. You have to go all the way back to 1906 to find anyone younger than Waring, and people didn't live as long in them thar days.
You're jumping to conclusions (a common characteristic of the under-developed) – I'll vote 'support' in the End of Life Choice referendum (promoted by ACT's David Seymour), but I’m (still) genuinely undecided on the Cannabis Legalisation and Control referendum (supported by the Green party's Chlöe Swarbrick). And yes, I will Party Vote Green.
I couldn't persuade Swarbrick to partake in an MRI brain scan, so had to resort to other objective measurements of achievement to inform my conclusions about her level of development.
I'm unlikely to vote for the Greens but that is no excuse IMO for this sort of mindset in someone so young – how usual is it for a then 17 to be that determined to push themselves into politics The choice of those politics leans to the right as does it appears the couple of incidents shows a determined certain mindset. Set beside the observation by Politik that certain National MPs in safe seats are reckless with their behaviours & lacking in personal responsibilities – the "twins" Barclay & Walker, Falloon, Muller's misplaced personal confidence. These people have had approval from the National Party none of it speaks of interest in serving wider NZ
The details are pretty important in order for the admin to fix it. This site isn't sponsored, it consists of very few very dedicated people.
It would be a great help if you didn’t trivialise and paid attention to your device, operating system, and browser so The Standard can make your experience better.
edit
Prince Andrew embroiled in allegations of relations with under-age girls. Woman accused of organising young girls for sex.
Jeffrey Epstein ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell charged in US Jul.3/20 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53268218
All very modern. Yet concerned women and men were fighting to stop exactly the same thing in the 1800s.
Part of an interview in 1885 between 'the campaigning editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead' and the head of London's Criminal Investigation Department, Howard Vincent.
"But", I said in amazement, "then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?" "Certainly", said he, "there is not a doubt of it." "Why", I exclaimed, "the very thought is enough to raise hell." "It is true", he said; "and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours."
Stead, to stir the public and prove that child slavery was being condoned, purchased a 13-year old girl from her mother for Five pounds, and took her out of Britain to France. For his effrontery in bringing this to public notice he was charged, taken before the Courts, and sentenced to three months imprisonment.
Josephine Butler aided by her husband had been devoted for years to the cause of helping young girls and women from being discriminated against by the justice system in the cruellest way. A Bill was passed in 1885 that set standards as to higher age, and other protections. Then the fervent campaigners went further and began to attempt purist conditions going to higher levels in controlling sexuality, a moral outrage movement.
The passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act led to the formation of purity societies, such as the White Cross Army, whose aims were to force the closure of brothels through prosecution. The societies widened their remit to suppress what they considered indecent literature—including information on birth control—and the entertainment provided by the music halls.
Butler warned against the purity societies because of their "fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force, and in so doing that you may in some way promote social purity".
I think this example makes a point about now and not being extreme in PC speech bans, with moral crusaders becoming over zealous about words and behaviour being over-censored. If we could strike the right balance we could live more harmoniously.
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Asia Pacific Report A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963. In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A key part of the Albanese government’s political strategy is to fill the news cycle with its presence and messaging. Ministers are deployed to the maximum, even when they’ve little to say. This week ...
Recent extreme weather events showed the importance of a well-functioning insurance system, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs minister Andrew Bayly. ...
By Jo Moir, RNZ News political editor, and Craig McCulloch, deputy political editor New Zealand’s Labour Party is demanding Winston Peters be stood down as Foreign Minister for opening up the government to legal action over his “totally unacceptable” attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. In an interview on RNZ’s ...
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https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300066798/heres-why-government-buying-tiwai-point-is-not-a-crazy-idea
Sam Stubbs makes a good case for nz buying tiwai smelter,
I'd add if they can pick it up for a dollar they could sell a share of it to kiwis.
Stubbs says the Manapouri electricity will go to waste if Tiwai Point isn't using it. Wrong now, and even wronger when grid upgrades that are already underway get completed.
Stubbs buys into that low-carbon high-purity sales spin. Wrong. That Tiwai Point is sucking so much electricity from NZ electricity supply is keeping the coal going into Huntly. Close Tiwai Point, and the coal boilers at Huntly will very likely close very soon after. So in fairness, we should be attributing Huntly's coal-derived emissions to Tiwai Point.
The smelting process also releases CO2 (and other nasties) as a result of the carbon anodes that are consumed in the smelting process. As I understand it, Tiwai Point's performance in this part of the process is middling. Rio Tinto are underway with commercialising an alternative process that doesn't have these carbon emissions, but using that process will require retrofitting the whole smelter. Which will reduce any residual value existing carbon-emitting "assets" may still have.
The "dollar" price Stubbs tosses around would presumably have hidden in it the hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities associated with environmental problems at the Tiwai Point site.
'Sam Stubbs makes a good case for nz buying tiwai smelter, '
The debate has moved on from this and the facts show that it is not an idea to fly. Forget this one, and think of what else could use the workforce of seasoned practical men, accompanied by abundant electricity.
Rod Oram sizes up the situation well – thoroughly and coolly. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/oram-how-the-global-aluminium-market-killed-tiwai-point
Interesting article. The China production is huge- are they aiming for a monopoly hold on the market with all the strategic and destructive potential that implies? Rio may not want to shoot itself in the foot but by default will it be shooting a lot of other industries and national interests. Warplanes?
I am really getting sick of these opinion pieces on what is supposed to be a news website. But Stubbs is wrong about Tiwai on so many fronts its really a joke. Tiwai produces "high quality aluminium" because the smelting process is old and really inefficient. The world production of aluminium in 2018 was 60,000,000 metric tons. China has huge numbers of smelters and produces 33,000,000 metric tons while NZ's sole smelter produces 337,000 metric tons. ie NZ produces 0.5% of the world's production. NZ isn't even a pimple on the backside of this elephant. As well as that China has all of the manufacturing infrastructure underneath that to use the aluminium. The NZ smelter has been under threat for years and years for very basic reasons – it isn't making money and its output is minscule. The best thing NZ can do with the power from Manapouri is to eventually connect it to the Transpower grid but that is going to take a few years.
It's already connected to the grid. It's just that the part of the grid between Invercargill and the Waitaki area wasn't really grunty enough to take the 600ishMW that will be freed up next year. But an upgrade was already underway before the closure announcement, and is no doubt being accelerated.
Where are you going to sell the Aluminium and buy the bauxite.
No economic viability even for the biggest mining company in the World .
This happened yesterday: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122262318/toddler-critically-injured-at-queenstown-daycare
Now the thing to notice is that the reporter fails to inform the public what actually happened to cause the injury – or injuries. Even worse, the reporter is evidently too stupid to consider how other parents who leave their kids at that daycare centre are going to feel about the cover-up.
At the very least the reporter and Stuff's editor ought to be considering the public interest in the situation. Is privacy law being used to perform the cover-up? Then say so! What part of morality do you dorks not get??
Yes, yes, the ritualised issuance of politically-correct banalities has been rigorously adhered to, we get that.
Who do they believe are going to inform them, if not those who were there, on the spot, supervising the kids? Pathetic. Disgusting.
You can imagine how thrilled the other parents will be to see this. If I was one of them I would yank my kids out of there pronto. I wonder how those parents will react to being frozen out by the manager/owner and media.
The Worksafe shadow over all – is it more talked about than evidenced? Are they actually operating under their own aegis – making sure that any work they do results in safe outcomes – that match their contracts in a satisfactory and positive manner. Minister Andrew Little this morning sounded like a kindly uncle as I listened while I worked.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018756842/andrew-little-on-worksafe
The thing I am hearing regularly from agencies supposed to be arms of the government is that they decide what they will investigate on the test of – 'Can it be tested and won in Court' and so, be a plus mark in their activity success tickbox. If not, 'There is not enough evidence to pursue this matter'. They all need to be pursued by eager citizens, noses to the ground and teeth at the ready to nip them on their fat butts. (Or very thin ones because their personal drives go into the new middle-class memes of personal fitness and setting goals of running marathons, bicycle riding in lycra etc).
Worksafe has been defunded under National as well as reorganized so the enforcement side hasn't got the funds to investigate or prosecute let alone prevention.Pike River.
If the matter has already been prosecuted by the police, what would worksafe be adding?
Half of Queenstown will know by now what happened. Certainly the parents with kids in that daycare will. There's no public interest here that requires immediate media coverage of the details, and it works against the public interest to publish too quickly and then find out the details were wrong because the people the journo was talking to were still in shock and/or dealing with the event and didn't have their facts straight. We see this with rapid emergencies fairly often now, where MSM rush to publish before they've confirmed what happened. It takes time to get a reliable and truthful narrative.
The incident happened Monday morning, the report was published late Monday afternoon. I'd expect more information in the next few days once the police, WorkSafe, and the Ministry have started on their processes.
The (r)evolution pending: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/122262881/why-do-kiwis-want-the-economic-system-reformed
Yet you can bet both major parties will duck the issue! Labour because it can now coast to victory on its poll ratings. National because it is the party of business as usual.
National will now start whining like the drug addict who needs their regular hit. How feeble their calls for re-opening the borders are will be amusing to see.
The prospect of Labour ramming anything anywhere is zilch. Think limp dishrag.
Got that right! Don't spook the horses, Grant! He's done well, to my surprise, presenting centrism as a benign economic model to the electorate, and it complements the PM's mastermind managerial style nicely. Expect them to rise above bland though, spicing it up with a few futuristic signals in the next few weeks – carefully designed not to provoke expectation of drastic change.
Unsurprising to see a libertarian journo like Malpass struggle to articulate any other approach to changing an economy than cutting taxes and protections. No imagination.
An unfortunate name for that journo surely. I'm rereading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – it would be a name that might occur there. Fact stranger than fiction.
Today, will we see National’s internal polling leaked to the media and endorsed by its Leader? If so, who will be the recipient of the info? What will the National tacticians decide? Will it be a shot across the bow or one in the foot? I’ve ordered extra popcorn.
Judith was planning to release them yesterday, but her sharpie ran out of ink
To be expected when you borrow Gerry's.
If the internal polls were good, they would have been released before now,.expect polling figures that did not come off a poll
Listening to recent interviews with Musk's mate Thiel, is mindbending . It is hard to grasp what he believes in as he makes ambiguous, confusing responses. The world consists of only three doors to choose from ?
The power of money to have those in power then court you, yet the Mont Pelerin Society describe Thiel as a philanthropist. https://youtu.be/IXG2F0a6I28
For Musk, the arrogant prat to make that tweet and pass it off as a joke reminds me of Collins and her similar attempt
Things haven't gone well for the indigenous people of Bolivia since the coup
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/14/what-the-coup-against-evo-morales-means-to-indigenous-people-like-me
Under Evo's term of indigenous socialism has been "the majority population has, for the first time in their lives, lived above poverty.
The achievements were more than economic. Bolivia made a great leap forward in indigenous rights."
Evo’s crime.
“My sin was being indigenous, leftist, and anti-imperialist,” Evo said after being coerced into resigning this week.
His replacement, Jeanine Añez Chávez, agreed. “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites,” the opposition senator tweeted in 2013, “the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco!!!” After Evo’s departure, Chavez declared herself interim president while holding up a large bible, though she failed to get the required quorum in the senate to do so.
Maybe Collins sees herself as a Chavez when she vowed to "crush the other lot", meaning just about all! Would she also burn the indigenous flag that was hung upside down behind Mueller while ripping the UN Agenda 30 to shreds. Could Collins stick to NZ alligning to the seventeen 2030 goals ? Can you hear her saying,
"We resolve to build a better future for all people, including the millions who have been denied the chance to lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives……We can be the first generation to succeed in ending poverty; just as we may be the last to have a chance of saving the planet."
well he has spoken the truth, nothing more nothing left.
but hey, green clean electric cars, no fossil fuel mining…..well, when one does not count lithium mining as 'fossil fuel'.
So he is not joking, he is literally just saying the truth. We can coup anyone.
Musk is trolling clueless idiots with a predisposition to think 'Tesla batteries use lots of lithium -hmm, Bolivia has lots of lithium and just had a coup = Tesla bad' who have zero understanding of lithium supply chains and technical details of battery chemistry.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/26/tesla-battery-materials-production-lithium-nickel-sourcing/
https://theconversation.com/bolivian-lithium-why-you-should-not-expect-any-white-gold-rush-in-the-wake-of-morales-overthrow-127139
Are you aware on mobile version some of these articles are not readable. I cant read either this one or Mickeys about Labour being better economic managers without switching to desktop version.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
thanks. Have moved this to Open Mike so it's easier to keep track of. Lynn (sysop) is aware of the issue, I will let him know about today's one too.
I dunno if this makes any difference, but I've noticed it's mostly Mickeys pieces.
That’s a hilarious comment 😀
Probably more noticeable because micky is writing more posts than anyone else.
Try it again now. Between us, weka and I have both played with the tweet.
My cell (Samsung S10 running Chrome on Android 10) requested that I whitelisted the page at the client side – probably because it was picking up the tweet. Try to reload the page and see what happens. Also tell me what kind of device you’re using.
Works for me now, cheers. (Chrome, Samsung).
how do you white list on a phone?
Just checked, restriction on my phone are disabled, so that means there is no blacklisting happening?
Finally some true vision, reminiscent of old…world leading and full of common sense and undeterred by the fact it hasnt been done before…this is the type of thinking we need.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018756855/lake-onslow-hydro-project-pros-and-cons
The thinking has always been there,for pumped storage between two natural reservoirs called Tekapo and Pukeko.
The fly in the ointment was the breaking up of generators,with little thought as to the future beyond shareholder entitlement.
Sustainable Energy forum’s hydro expert, Alastair Barnett, estimates that the Onslow scheme could provide 5000 gigawatt-hours storage. But a simpler pumped storage system between Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki could provide over half Onslow’s dry-year storage with minimal construction cost – the two lakes were originally designed to do exactly that.
That scheme was precluded by the separation of ownership within the Tekapo-Waitaki hydro scheme. Genesis owns and manages Tekapo, Meridian owns the power stations below Tekapo. Each gentailer manages their part of the resource to maximise profit and shareholder value, not to minimise financial or environmental cost.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2007/S00524/green-the-grid-no-use-mixed-energy-sources-to-reach-true-carbon-zero.htm
Who was the bright spark who split them up?
Bill English so he could privatise them and grab a large dividend ( repalced by borrowing) for tax cuts for the high earning mates. The electricity industry in New Zealand could do with a ground zero reset and rstructure to eliminate all the market inefficencies of privatisation. 29 power company CEO's – really? We used to run the lot out of the 8 floors of Rutherford house in Wellington.
Pumped hydro not new or ground breaking but the vision of the scheme incorporating wetlands and the scale are….the impact on the workings of the electricity market in NZ is also a great opportunity to revisit the profit motive, particularly in light of the recent finding on 'spillage' and wholesale pricing.
There appears a difference of opinion between Barnett and Bardsley on the viability of Tekapo and Pukaki around suitable geology but I expect those differences can be evaluated.
The cost appears to me to be overemphasised considering construction time is estimated to be 6-8 years…thats an annual outlay of approx half a billion per annum….weve just spent 16 billion on wage subsidies in less than 5 months.
I heard Orams piece on RNZ where he questioned the ability of (any) gov to plan a multigenerational project however the decision and construction can occur inside a decade…potentially inside the term of one administration.
In any event, we have wasted numerous years the decisions on long term infrastructure and energy provision and cannot be delayed any longer….and that system must be as close to zero carbon as possible.
Barry Soper going full conspiracy theory:
To be clear, Barry is insinuating the Labour Party has influenced the spacing of polling booths in order to win the election.
Lunatic.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12351444
As long as there’s no red tape to send subliminal messages.
Thank heavens incognito we've got you – you're onto it. Probably people will see some red arrows soon and it will show how pervasive the Labour propagamda is. It's all around you, like a red rag to a bull. Better put – /sarc.
Probably says alot more about the NZ Herald's quality of trite shite selected to pass off as news. The eyebrows!
He's been reporting on elections for decades, so I'm sure he knows who really makes these decisions.
But his readers/listeners might not. So he feeds them BS he knows is false. That fails the most basic test of ethics, and he should be facing disciplinary action from NZME. Lying about our democratic process is unacceptable.
Soapy Baz still struggling with the old this is inside, this is outside thing. Come to the door Soapy, we'll run through it again.
If Soper is insinuating the Labour Party has influenced the spacing of polling booths in order to win the election he is an idiot.
I've sent in a complaint. I hope others do as well.
One sentence (not too rude!) is enough. Soper's piece is not "bad opinion", it is simply false.
Maybe he was joking.
The fool thinks that no covid now means no covid in 8 weeks. And yet if we had a new outbreak at election time and hadn't made these plans, Captain Hindsight will be cursing the government's foolishness. 🙄
Yep – that is clearly the thinking behind it. To allow for the possibility that there IS some community transmission in 8 weeks.
If Soper really wanted to make mischief (which he does), rather than sound like a daft conspiracy theorist, he would argue that this forward planning shows how little confidence the government has that they can keep Covid out and that it's all 'shambolic'etc. etc. Missed opportunity there Bazza – I wonder whether next week's cheque might be going to a more competent propagandist?
"“When my eyebrow goes up, it’s a joke.”"
Comedy (and political) gold!
Every time those eyebrows rise, she's
telling porkiesjoking.https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300067642/election-2020-judith-collins-says-she-was-joking-when-falsely-saying-no-one-escaped-while-she-was-corrections-minister
https://twitter.com/David_Cormack/status/1287891151333122048
Have you watched the video interview, weka? You must, and especially focus on the end where she addresses "Henry".
I don't normally watch vid of her, but that one is kind of intense. She's trying to make a joke, but her eyes are seriously dark when she speaks to Henry and then she puts a smile on it. But those eyes just before the smile. She's like that earlier in the piece with someone else too (Tova I think).
Is she always like that?
I think I tore an eyebrow muscle when watching that. Did she say Monthly Pie-a-ton? Getting hungry now and licking the salt from my empty popcorn bowl.
I noticed that early in the piece her eyebrows went right up as she was saying that she cared about the thousands of NZers about to lose their jobs…
In fact, I think we need to note every time in future when her eyebrow rises while she is trying to speak seriously and convincingly. She does it all the time..
Has she got rogue eyebrows do you think? That if studied will give accurate indications of the truthfulness of her statements. Cripes, what a disadvantage for a politician. Some bird watchers in the UK who are more interested in showy stats than being informed experts are called 'twitchers'. I imagine Collins is more interested in numbers of voters rather than deep interest in us as people and citizens, so she is a sort of twitcher; which may explain her eyebrow movements. If it is a Pavlovian response (moving from birds to dogs) she may be unable to control it and so bird fanciers might have to keep their eyes on this twitcher, who could end up going to the dogs! Do hope you followed this. It's all a deep code you know.
“When my eyebrow goes up, it’s a joke.”
Eyebrow up or not, Collins was clearly joking when she said that, but has made a rod for her own eyebrow. Everything she says from now on will be parsed in an 'Are you joking now?' context.
Under Collins’ ‘leadership‘, the National Party’s puddle of ‘truthfulness‘ has dried up – just can’t trust them. Mind you, ‘She’s a handsome Tory’
"I don't understand how that's funny, can you explain how it's funny?"
That was so funny i had to watch it twice. I wonder if someone should explain to Collins why this is funny? I guess she has staff for that.
I was terrified she was going to turn to camera and look at me.
The Medusa effect?
This was a sub headline in this story about 10 mins ago:
Unfortunately it's now been changed to this:
"Interestingly", when Collins made the claim to her National Party faithful audience, her eyebrows didn't "go up".
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/07/judith-collins-hits-out-at-shane-jones-avoids-talking-about-political-polls.html
I thought her eyebrows were always up?
Judith statistics – 436000 and no eyebrows were raised ? Was that a plucked or tweeked guess?
Maybe she has leaked info because it does not seem to correlate with Treasury's weekly data indicators.
Prior, Treasury presented at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) 2020. "We still expect to see a large contraction in growth in the June quarter, followed by a partial rebound in the September quarter, and a further economic recovery afterwards."
However there was upward activity for June. Treasury responded to the need for the more immediate need of pertinent, economy indicator reports, as complementary to the less frequent quarterly GDP ; hence using the NZAC index ( The GDP not due for this quarter until September 17, 2020).
"The NZAC does nonetheless point to some upside to those initial estimates. Our initial estimate for June quarter GDP was based on longer periods of time at higher alert levels. We’ve also made a quicker progression to Alert level 1 than what we assumed at BEFU, and therefore activity has been able to resume more quickly.
https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/weu/weekly-economic-update-24-july-2020-html
High-frequency activity indicators continued to hold steady in July along with other upward expansion indicated on Treasury's dashboard.
https://treasury.govt.nz/system/files/2020-07/covid-19-econ-dashboard-24jul2020.pdf
Current Stats NZ statistics suggests to Treasury that, " employment continued to hold up in June (Figure 2). For the week ended 21 June, the most accurate measure (which lags by 27 days) showed the total number of paid jobs up 4.5% on the same week in 2019. At the industry level, paid jobs in the primary industries were up 10.1% on last year, goods-producing jobs were up 2.5%, and services jobs were up 3.1% on 2019 after falling by around 80,000 between March and April 2020. "
How did Judith calculate her prediction ?
Is it my computer or is that the opposite to a black hole?
Please explain your comment or are you trying to be pernicious because ……?
My computer shows a completely blank screen in the middle of your comment. When you look at the screen is there a big white space or is it filled with graphs and content you've put up? Please advise. It would be a help for me to know.
I think that is because it is a link to a PDF.
Try this instead: https://treasury.govt.nz/system/files/2020-07/covid-19-econ-dashboard-24jul2020.pdf
I get this message:
and then a box to click to go there.
Thanks solkta I have Firefox but didn't get that message.
Thanks incognito I tried that link and got some really interesting artwork snaking over various backgrounds.
I'm having trouble with pdfs – can't get many of them. I have to ask my associate what to do and write down in a book so I can transfer the instructions to the particular part of my brain which is dedicated to keeping up with this wonderful technology that is so helpful in showing us how far we have dipped or risen every day, and that is not just referring to Covid-19. Anyway if I don't do it today, it might have changed by tomorrow, and then I have had an hour or so for some other activity that might be more useful. However I will try, so don't give up on me please.
For that link to the quick summary dashboard, the Treasury site only gives the one format link. It also then required giving Chrome app storage permission to download.
However, other articles such as the weekly updates, were not embedded with Chrome and have a choice of formats.
I never went to the website. I simply took your link and turned it into a URL that TS readers can see/read and click on (or not). I was trying to help.
Her "It doesn't give my opponents much time to run up to an election, does it?" moment I reckon. She's not very good is she?
Muldoon was drunk when he uttered those words. Words of a desperate man who knew it was all over for him.
A leader should not joke about an escape from corrections.
Does she think it is a joke when someone leaves a psychiatric ward and harm occurs?
Agree Treetop. She was however in a similar position of trying to escape so needed to divert by flippancy.
Trapped, she could have said, “I shouldn’t be in this predicament ! Everyone agrees with me. Seperate but equal is great policy ( for my eyebrows )".
The reporters further questioned, “Everyone? You’re standing alone in here.” She gestures around, “Everyone, you know, the paintings on the corridor wall, tables and the clock all of them think I should be PM .”
I have heard The Telegraph soundly run down and yet have found much in it of value. Yet this latest on Harry and Meghan shows the vicious probing of a mosquito, and too many of such bites can maim its host.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/harry-meghan-seem-bring-worst/
This from Angela Levin: Just before Prince Harry got engaged to Meghan Markle, he invited me to Kensington Palace for a chat as I was writing his biography. One of the things he was keen to get across was the importance of teamwork.
If you want to be a success you have to be a team player,” he told me. “You get taught in the Army that you can’t get anywhere without the support of other people. I agree.”
It seems as if he is trying to establish a reasonable rapport with the media as his mother tried. But is the media reasonable; can it be reasoned with? Or is lurking behind it the malign drive of unalloyed pleasure in malicious gossip, desire for power through knowledge, and overall, lovely moolah – profit?
Harry and Meghan did not include a Covid-19 senario in their plans. The timing was bad for them to make a clean break, more so for Harry than Meghan.
Harry had issues with how the media treated his mother and a double up with negative media when Meghan became upset about media coverage about her which she did not like. Media coverage became personalised about Meghan and her father and this cannot be brushed off. The Royal family are reliant on the media for their charity work and on tourism to justify the expense of keeping them.
What is the Royal position on the media "don't explain, don't complain." This could have been modernised and a human element to it. I would have liked Harry and Meghan to have delayed leaving the firm for 3 years.
Look how the Queen's job has become redundant due to Covid-19. The Queen is 94 and I expect she is enjoying having a bit more rest.
Where can we view the interview with Henry and Tova please?
It’s in Robert Guyton's post @11:33am
Surprise surprise..
/
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1287811120691126272
And Chump's brownshirts were nowhere to be seen?
I see we have caved in to our Yankee Masters in regard to extradition to Hong Kong, so much for being independent. Better if we dump the spy game and opt out of 'five eyes'
It might have been less confrontational just to be unable to extradite individual cases.
How does it work ?
Say someone from here goes to Hong Kong and ends up murdering someone there, then rushes back to NZ , can't be extradited and we're stuck with a murderer?
Surely there should be case by case considerations?
True, but would that be satisfactory to our Master, Uncle Sam.
If China executes murderers we wouldn't be extraditing anyway would we?
Ok if China executes mainly for drug trafficking, and murder , we still end up potentially protecting rapists , fraudsters, criminals as well
Either way we could end up with undesirables evading justice
Nats teen candidate apologises for Hitler impression…
asked why he did it by journalists Mr Wood replied “ve aks ze qvestions!…”
-sarc-
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/07/national-s-teen-candidate-william-wood-apologises-after-appearing-to-impersonate-hitler-in-resurfaced-image.html?fbclid=IwAR1GZYfFQRbnE6IX9PK7zFgks-ekGDMgKVtt2Y8r8sHoZfi8VjiWgc1TZlE
I did plenty of stupid things when I was 14, and 18 (or 28 or 38 or … OK, never mind).
I certainly won't condemn him for that. But he – and above all the National Party – need to accept that they made a silly decision to have a high school kid as a candidate, and they can't have it both ways: get a pass for being a teenager OR don't get a pass, because you're ready to be an MP. But pick one.
He was only 14. Mind you, now he's only 18.
Maybe William Wood (opposition National Party candidate for the Palmerston North electorate) shouldn't be punished politically for a 'mistake' made four years ago, but…
Oh come on! It was a joke; he raised an eyebrow.
Might the 'tactic' of fielding very young candidates in general elections be more widely adopted to minimise political risk from revelations of past 'misdemeanors'?
A freudian slip of the tongue caused him to froth at mouth.
Stiff upper lip
Its more about selecting a rude, green (as in naivety) inexperienced teenager whose brain is still not fully developed.
You can almost read their simplistic thought process:
he'll bring in the votes of the 18-20 year olds.
He'll do nothing of the sort. Half of them couldn't care less and won't vote. The other half will more than likely go with Labour because they are promising better training and employment opportunities for the young.
I just hope he has a good support system as he is on the young side. He has guts putting himself out there. A lot of seasoned MPs have been known to struggle. Politics can be dehumanising.
As a secondary school teacher, I have seen heaps of 16-yr-olds who possessed more understanding of experience and wisdom than many 30-yr-olds.
Unfortunately, the minute William Wood opened his mouth, I excluded him from that category.
It comes down to having good judgment.
The Labour person made them at 29.
The latest 'leader' of the opposition National party made them at 50+
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/20-07-2020/nicky-hager-five-reasons-why-judith-collins-wont-be-prime-minister/
DIRTY POLITICS – Chapter 4: The Crusher and the Attack Dog [link to PDF]
Perhaps you are hoping for another William Pitt the younger?
I'm not hoping for anything.
Have no idea who he is.
How old was Swarbrick when she ran for the mayoralty?
20ish?
22ish – it's a well known truism that females mature earlier than males.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708#:~:text=Brain%20Maturity%20Extends%20Well%20Beyond%20Teen%20Years%20Under%20most%20laws,maturity%20until%20the%20age%2025.
Swarbrick's brain developed early, whereas Wood is a late ‘bloomer‘?
So you have proof Swarbrick is below the average 26?
I’d guess no on the age restriction on her weed bill
Not following – can you show your working?
"Swarbrick's brain developed early, whereas Wood is a late ‘bloomer‘?"
What is the proof of this
You're quoting a question, not an assertion, and you brought up Swarbrick @15.1.3.2.1.
I'm not following your question @10:31 pm.
True
So going by the scientists link then both Swarbricks and the Nat idiots brains would not have been fully developed, when entering politics.
So hey. Both the govt and the opposition pick under developed brains
If you're choosing Swarbrick and Wood as examples, then it's only political parties in opposition that pick under-developed brains.
Swarbrick's brain may have been "under-developed" when she became an MP at age 23 – if so then what I'd give for that level of under-development! She is, however, the youngest person to be elected to NZ's parliament since the opposition National party selected Marylin Waring to stand for the Raglan electorate in 1975.
Of course it might just be pure coincidence that the two youngest MPs in the modern history of NZ's parliament are women. You have to go all the way back to 1906 to find anyone younger than Waring, and people didn't live as long in them thar days.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/mps-and-parliaments-1854-onwards/youngest-members-of-parliament/
That purely comes down to opinion of her ideas.
You obviously agree with them, so to you she wasn't under developed. Others don't.
“That purely comes down to opinion of her ideas.”
You're jumping to conclusions (a common characteristic of the under-developed) – I'll vote 'support' in the End of Life Choice referendum (promoted by ACT's David Seymour), but I’m (still) genuinely undecided on the Cannabis Legalisation and Control referendum (supported by the Green party's Chlöe Swarbrick). And yes, I will Party Vote Green.
I couldn't persuade Swarbrick to partake in an MRI brain scan, so had to resort to other objective measurements of achievement to inform my conclusions about her level of development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chl%C3%B6e_Swarbrick
I am actually in the same scenario with the EoL and weed referendum
EoL yes, Weed still humming and harring over.
The difference is I doubt I would ever vote for the Greens
🙂
I've voted Green for a looong time, but it wasn't always the case, so never say ‘never‘. As long as you vote, it's all good.
I'm unlikely to vote for the Greens but that is no excuse IMO for this sort of mindset in someone so young – how usual is it for a then 17 to be that determined to push themselves into politics The choice of those politics leans to the right as does it appears the couple of incidents shows a determined certain mindset. Set beside the observation by Politik that certain National MPs in safe seats are reckless with their behaviours & lacking in personal responsibilities – the "twins" Barclay & Walker, Falloon, Muller's misplaced personal confidence. These people have had approval from the National Party none of it speaks of interest in serving wider NZ
Works now. Samsung Something
The details are pretty important in order for the admin to fix it. This site isn't sponsored, it consists of very few very dedicated people.
It would be a great help if you didn’t trivialise and paid attention to your device, operating system, and browser so The Standard can make your experience better.
Cheers.
I have just been able to reinstall click to edit. I lost it a few days ago.
People try to help me and it goes in one ear and out the other.
edit
Prince Andrew embroiled in allegations of relations with under-age girls. Woman accused of organising young girls for sex.
Jeffrey Epstein ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell charged in US Jul.3/20 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53268218
All very modern. Yet concerned women and men were fighting to stop exactly the same thing in the 1800s.
Part of an interview in 1885 between 'the campaigning editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead' and the head of London's Criminal Investigation Department, Howard Vincent.
"But", I said in amazement, "then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?" "Certainly", said he, "there is not a doubt of it." "Why", I exclaimed, "the very thought is enough to raise hell." "It is true", he said; "and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours."
Stead, to stir the public and prove that child slavery was being condoned, purchased a 13-year old girl from her mother for Five pounds, and took her out of Britain to France. For his effrontery in bringing this to public notice he was charged, taken before the Courts, and sentenced to three months imprisonment.
Josephine Butler aided by her husband had been devoted for years to the cause of helping young girls and women from being discriminated against by the justice system in the cruellest way. A Bill was passed in 1885 that set standards as to higher age, and other protections. Then the fervent campaigners went further and began to attempt purist conditions going to higher levels in controlling sexuality, a moral outrage movement.
The passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act led to the formation of purity societies, such as the White Cross Army, whose aims were to force the closure of brothels through prosecution. The societies widened their remit to suppress what they considered indecent literature—including information on birth control—and the entertainment provided by the music halls.
Butler warned against the purity societies because of their "fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force, and in so doing that you may in some way promote social purity".
Her warnings went unheeded by other suffragists, and some, such as Millicent Fawcett—who was later Butler's biographer—continued to combine their activities in the feminist movement with the work for the purity societies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Butler#Early_married_life;_1850%E2%80%931864
I think this example makes a point about now and not being extreme in PC speech bans, with moral crusaders becoming over zealous about words and behaviour being over-censored. If we could strike the right balance we could live more harmoniously.