Author Archive
The King stay the King … the pawns, in the game, they get capped quick
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 11th, 2013 - 113 comments
So, Key wants Gilmore gone. Gilmore lied to Key about the whether he threatened the waiter with the wrath of the PM’s office. Bringing Key’s office itself was bad enough but Key accepted Gilmore’s lie. When that lie was exposed, Key knew his authority as leader had been trifled with. Gilmore now has to go. But Key can’t boot him. So, out is coming the dirt.
Selling Mighty River cost you $100m
Written By: - Date published: 7:33 pm, May 9th, 2013 - 158 comments
National admitted today that the sale of Mighty River cost around $100m, and that the paltry 2.5% of New Zealanders who bought an average of $8,000 each are not typical Kiwis. The figures themselves are shocking but the politics is really revealing. English didn’t try to avoid the unpalatable failure of asset sales, he was flippant. He is so out of touch he doesn’t see the problem.
Warehouse adopts living wage
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, May 8th, 2013 - 66 comments
The Warehouse has adopted a policy of paying a living wage of $18.50-$20 an hour for longer-term employees. It’s a really positive move and The Warehouse is to be congratulated. It’ll cost about $2.5m a year, or 5% of profits. As we’ve seen in the NZ Power debate, it’s a rare thing for major companies to look beyond their balancesheets to the community they exist within. Now, who’s next?
Why Phil O’Reilly wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, May 3rd, 2013 - 80 comments
Yesterday, Phil O’Reilly’s Business New Zealand basically declared war on Labour and the Greens. Their ‘open letter’ demanded opposition parties to withdraw the NZ Power policy or risk a capital strike. Unprecedented in modern NZ history. It was a boots and all attempt by the capitalist elite to try to monster the Left. It proves that they think NZ Power is both practical and popular.
Why Brian Gaynor wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, May 2nd, 2013 - 34 comments
To say Brian Gaynor is excited about the Mighty River sale is an understatement. Of his last five Herald columns, two have been about how great it will be, and two have been about how awful NZ Power is. His other media appearances have been in a similar vein: Mighty River = good, NZ Power = bad. It’s in his financial interests that investors aren’t scared off Mighty River.
Why First NZ Capital wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 6:48 am, May 1st, 2013 - 35 comments
A couple of people have questioned this series of posts outing the financial interests of supposedly ‘independent’ commentators who are coming out against the Green/Labour plan to lower power prices. ‘Everyone has links to everyone in New Zealand’. Maybe so, but not everyone is paid by the people whose interests they’re protecting while pretending to be independent in the msm.
Why Allan Miller wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, April 30th, 2013 - 46 comments
Hot on the heels of electricity industry funded Lewis Evans publishing an op-ed about how terrible NZ Power is, another academic has popped up to claim the policy is the end of the world.
Why Lewis Evans wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, April 30th, 2013 - 43 comments
Lewis Evans had an op-ed in the Dompost yesterday. It attacked NZ Power in confused terms. Evans claimed, for instance, that all the savings from lower costs would come from lower dividends to the Government, when a moment’s thought shows you that’s not true and will be even less true after the asset sales. The disclosure statement at the end of Evans’ op-ed doesn’t mention Contact and Meridian pay him.
Why Doug Heffernan wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, April 29th, 2013 - 52 comments
John Key has committed to giving up the National Party’s leadership if he loses the next election. That didn’t stop him from committing the next National Government from reversing NZ Power and putting up electricity prices whenever it comes to power . It got me thinking about the people who are so keen to kill NZ Power in its cradle and why. Today: MRP CEO Doug Heffernan.
Meanwhile, in the real world…
Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, April 23rd, 2013 - 27 comments
So, John Key, Bill English, and Steven Joyce are now devoting all their energy into trying to stop the asset sales programme collapsing after the Greens and Labour gave notice the excessive profits are going to end, and National confirmed they’re for real by suspending the sale. While the government’s wasting its effort on that, real families are suffering.
12,000 posts
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, April 22nd, 2013 - 4 comments
I just noticed that we passed 12,000 posts a few days ago. Appropriately, it was our stalwart, Anthony, who hit the mark with a post on Mini ‘W’. As always, it’s about the community. 12,000 posts from us would be just pissing in the wind without your 551,000 comments.
Whose interests are the Nats working for?
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, April 22nd, 2013 - 82 comments
Why are National and the Right pitching a fit at the prospect of the Crown and foreign institutions losing superprofits when that’s the price of households and businesses getting lower power prices? Real businesses are looking forward to paying less for power but National says ‘stuff them, we’re looking out for the Crown’s stealth tax and Origin Energy’s profits’.
Westpac workers fed up with pushing debt
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, April 19th, 2013 - 34 comments
Bank profits are up again. A 10 per cent increase over the past three months it was announced yesterday. What we don’t often hear though is how this profit is generated. It basically goes like this. Bank staff are all under sales targets. They need to sell a certain level of debt to meet these […]
Pull the other one, it’s full of sarin
Written By: - Date published: 7:27 am, April 16th, 2013 - 90 comments
New Zealand is, famously, a nuclear-free country. We’re also signatories to the Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons Conventions, which outlaw them. So, if you’re looking to learn about weapons of mass destruction, New Zealand’s the wrong place to go. It’s laughable that Key’s inventing WMD-seeking terrorists to justify legalising spying on Kiwis.
Sums it up, really
Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, April 12th, 2013 - 134 comments
National’s 3 quarters of the way through its time at the crease now. And what has it achieved? A record debt pile. 300,000 jobless. 100,000 underemployed. Rising poverty. 1,000 a week fleeing to Australia. A new housing bubble. A record high dollar that’s killing our businesses. And falling household incomes. A list of articles on Stuff sums it up.
The fix is in
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, April 9th, 2013 - 47 comments
So, here’s the play. Key’s been caught asleep at the wheel of our spies. 88 people illegally spied on. Key knew last July, but didn’t act until the Dotcom case brought things out in September. The Nats’ goal is to deflect blame from Key (and spies who could leak against him). So, they’re blaming the law. They want us to believe the law that clearly states the GCSB can’t spy on Kiwis was ‘confusing’.
Temper, temper
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, April 8th, 2013 - 38 comments
Key’s ‘knucklehead’ outburst has been interpreted by the more sycophantic parts of the press as a clever ‘wedging’ of the media from the public. The supposed logic, which a few journos surprisingly buy, is that the media is much less popular than him, so attacking the media when he is criticised is a vote winner (or at least voter retainer). Nah.
WCC outsourcing vote – the results
Written By: - Date published: 8:26 am, April 5th, 2013 - 46 comments
Yesterday Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown cast her vote for the first stage of out-sourcing to continue with the result that the street cleaning and gardening work has been outsourced.
That’s 27 jobs gone.
Vance asks the right questions on Key cronyism
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, April 4th, 2013 - 65 comments
Key’s adopted what Andrea Vance labels his “so what demeanour” as he tries to shrug off his highly irregular and inappropriate role in the selection of Ian Fletcher to head the GCSB. But whether or not Key was too involved in getting his mate a job is only the first round of this – the next calls into question the reliability of both Key and Fletcher’s account of the Dotcom saga.
Will Wellington’s Green mayor outsource council jobs?
Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, April 4th, 2013 - 106 comments
Hard to believe, but despite having a Green Party mayor the Wellington City Council is about to outsource work currently done by council staff. We all know what that means – redundancies, longer hours, poorer safety standards and ultimately lower pay for workers as contractors screw down wages in a bid to undercut each other […]
Cronyism
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 3rd, 2013 - 289 comments
You know, when it came out that Key was good mates with his new GCSB spy boss, Ian Fletcher, (a man who was appointed despite lack of experience in spying or the NZ public service), I kind of thought ‘so what’? People know each other. But then I gave Robertson enough credit not to be raising this if he didn’t have a killer punch waiting. Today, he landed it.
Granny Herald: Cunliffe wrong to be right
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, April 2nd, 2013 - 19 comments
Sometimes, I wonder where Granny Herald gets her crack from. It’s clearly strong stuff. Like when she runs an editorial soundly condemning an opposition MP for doing something that the same editorial admits is justified. Today, Cunliffe gets an earful for daring to suggest that IT multi-nationals are ripping us off.
Labour’s three factions
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, March 25th, 2013 - 348 comments
It’s interesting how little understanding there is of the state and politics within the Parliamentary Labour Party. A lot of the coverage of Labour’s internal workings has tended to personalise the tension – it’s been focused on Shearer vs Cunliffe without any questions about what lies beneath.
Cunliffe off to a flyer in revenue
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 150 comments
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The revenue portfolio looked like a big step down for Cunliffe but already he’s made a mark as the parliamentary voice of a business/union coalition against Dunne’s stealth taxes. The result: humiliating backdowns for Dunne, a stain that may threaten his hold on Ohariu, and Cunliffe and Labour on the side of the winners.
Billy Big Stepper
Written By: - Date published: 6:54 am, March 20th, 2013 - 27 comments
Our wee James Bond wannabes had a code name for Kim Dotcom (you know, in case their comms were intercepted by the bad guys). They called him Billy Big Stepper. So witty! But Labour’s uncovered something more serious too. It seems that the GCSB was aware in February that they may have broken the law and went into a quite a tizz, before covering it up.
Key sends more Kiwi jobs to Aussie
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 pm, March 18th, 2013 - 52 comments
So much for all this propaganda about the asset sales being all about deepening markets here and giving Kiwis a chance to invest. When it came to building the website for the pre-registration, where did the Nats go? To Aussie. They got an Aussie company to build the site, saying Kiwi companies weren’t up to it. Cause, you know, the site is soooo secure and all.
Mr Fucks It
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, March 16th, 2013 - 41 comments
In what is sure to be an interesting test of our amnesty, I want to point out that Steven Joyce is probably the most over-rated politician in living memory. The man has literally never achieved anything. He lost the unloseable election, his fossil fuels-centric economic policy is a predictable failure and he has completely failed on jobs.
Jones cleared
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 pm, March 12th, 2013 - 79 comments
Well, cleared might be a slight exaggeration but he’s not going to have the police turn up on his doorstep and right now that’s good enough for a David Shearer who is worrying about the lack of brown faces in his top-team.
Keep Our Assets petition submission
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, March 12th, 2013 - 51 comments
The Keep Our Assets petition will be submitted today at 12.30 at Parliament with approximately 400,000 signatures. It is the largest petition in New Zealand history. The referendum that will follow will test National’s mandate for asset sales – clearly and unequivocally. Well done to the thousands of collectors and all the signatories. National – stop the sales and listen.
Key’s Venezuelan snub
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, March 8th, 2013 - 277 comments
John Key’s decision to not attend Hugo Chavez’s funeral is a snub of a major trade partner at a crucial time. Remember, this junket’s justification is that, for some reason, Key’s presence in these countries will improve trade. But, in snubbing Venezuela, he is insulting our largest export destination in South America. Venezuela matters more than all the countries Key is visiting combined.
- NZ warned against ‘blood offsets’ from carbon credit breakthrough
The COP29 climate summit has already notched an early win, taking a step forward on settling rules for international carbon trading – but environmental groups have cried foul at the rush through of the policy and the substance of the standards for emissions removals.One of the issues which stalled negotiations ...1 day ago - As te reo Māori grows, so does the search for trilingual interpreters
Deaf Māori face exclusion from their whānau and cultural heritage due to an extreme shortage of trilingual interpreters. Imagine being deaf and at the tangi of a loved one. You stand when everyone else stands, sit when everyone else sits, and stare at the lips of speakers, trying to catch ...1 day ago - We have the ratings for Stuff’s ThreeNews. What story do they tell?
Duncan Greive analyses three months’ worth of ratings data to get a sense of whether Stuff and Three’s big bet is paying off. When Three shocked the country by announcing it was shutting Newshub earlier this year, as many as 10 groups are thought to have canvassed the idea of ...1 day ago
- Face-off against surveillance
Opinion: We are constantly being watched and recorded. Thanks to the proliferation of AI facial recognition technologies we are being watched even more: on the street, in the bank, in shopping malls, on public transport, at the supermarket check-out, even our phones are likely watching us. Are AI facial recognition ...1 day ago
- Where are we all going? Our population trends in 10 charts
Opinion: The shape of NZ’s changing regional population profile is always a popular point of discussion. Since we wrote on it last year, population growth has peaked and turned rapidly lower. Here, we take another tour of the regions to see how this slowing has been experienced, and what the impacts ...1 day ago
- Is there a worse way of discussing one of NZ’s founding documents?
Opinion: The select committee needs to call for submissions from people who have constitutional, legal and Indigenous rights expertise The post Is there a worse way of discussing one of NZ’s founding documents? appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- Where is the global leadership fighting climate change now?
Opinion: World leaders from more than 100 countries are gathering this week at the United Nations climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, at COP29, to discuss the threats of a rapidly warming world.Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which has been signed by almost every country in the world, there is a requirement ...1 day ago
- Trump has won, but are there any winners in the Middle East?
A week after the ‘shock’ re-election of Donald Trump to the Whitehouse and over a year into one of the most blood-soaked periods of the Middle East’s tortured modern history, the question is, what has been lost and has anything been won, and what impact might Trump II have on ...1 day ago
- Majority of landlords reject Government’s no-cause evictions
Though a majority of landlords oppose no-cause evictions, their return will be celebrated by the few large property investors who called for them The post Majority of landlords reject Government’s no-cause evictions appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- Newsroom daily quiz, Wednesday 13 November
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp');Got a good quiz question? Send Newsroom your questions. .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .entry-title { font-size: 1.2em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles .entry-meta { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; margin-top: 0.5em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .entry-meta { font-size: 0.8em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .avatar { height: 25px; width: ...1 day ago
- Trump’s shadow looms over major summit
As the PM prepares to attend a major summit for the first time, the most important figure in discussions will be far away The post Trump’s shadow looms over major summit appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- Daily crossword, Wednesday 13 November
The post Daily crossword, Wednesday 13 November appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- The politics of saying sorry
Comment: Christopher Luxon had the least baggage of almost anyone in senior positions in Parliament, going into his national apology for the abuse of children in state care.He just hadn’t been there. He only came into Parliament in 2020, became National’s leader in 2021 and Prime Minister in late 2023.The ...1 day ago
- A lot of talk but little help for Fijians facing rising sea levels
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa this year, climate change was high on the agenda, the big talking point for politicians and NGOs.After spending a week there, hearing how Pacific Island nations were worst affected, The Detail’s Sharon Brettkelly went to Fiji to see what was being ...1 day ago
- Xero hits record high on hopes of boost from pro-business Trump
Xero has its sights set on the large, but more competitive, US market The post Xero hits record high on hopes of boost from pro-business Trump appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- The last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior – Rongelap podcast series
ABC Radio Australia and RNZ You probably know about the last moments of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985. But what do you know about the environmental campaign ship’s last voyage before it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand on 10 July 1985? Where had it ...2 days ago - Jim Chalmers to announce $900 million fund for states to boost competition and productivity
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers will announce a fund of up to $900 million for states and territories to improve productivity and competition, in a Wednesday speech urging an all-out effort to tackle one of Australia’s biggest ...2 days ago
- Despite the national apology, abuse in state care is still happening – only systemic change wi...
Tuesday marks a long-awaited milestone for survivors of the state care system, writes Jennifer Montgomery of Victoria University of Wellington. ...2 days ago - View from The Hill: Albanese plays ‘captain’s pick’ to maximise Labor’s election prospects i...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Anthony Albanese prides himself on his eye for a good candidate. In 2020, when he was opposition leader, he drafted Kristy McBain to run for a byelection in the marginal NSW seat of Eden-Monaro. If ...2 days ago
- The Treaty Principles Bill
Human Rights Commission’s Tino Rangatiratanga leaderJulia Whaipooti explains what has been happening. ...2 days ago - Wellington Airport sale still possible – council’s chief financial officer
But Andrea Reeves stressed it is not their preferred option. ...2 days ago
- Predictably, domestic airfares surged after the collapse of Rex. There aren’t many good solutions
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Doug Drury, Professor/Head of Aviation, CQUniversity Australia Australia’s airline industry is famously duopolistic. Just two companies – Qantas and Virgin Australia – service 98% of the domestic passenger market. That’s not for a lack of other companies having tried to secure a ...2 days ago
- NZ abuse in care apology called PR stunt,’tokenistic’ by some survivors
By Lillian Hanly, RNZ News political reporter Survivors of abuse in care arrived at Parliament today to hear the formal apology from the state which oversaw and inflicted harm on children. Public sector leaders from Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Health, New Zealand Police, and Ministry of Education also apologised, ...2 days ago
- Our new study shows teen vaping is linked to childhood trauma. Here’s why it might be harder to qu...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy-Leigh Rowe, Postdoctoral Researcher in Mental Health and Substance Abuse, University of Sydney sergey koleskinov/Shutterstock If you experience trauma during childhood, there’s a greater chance you’ll use substances such as alcohol, tobacco and other drugs later. But what does the evidence ...2 days ago
- Survivors Must Receive Redress To Have The Opportunity To Heal: Save The Children
Today’s vision shared of New Zealand is of an Aotearoa where every child has their rights understood, respected and upheld ensuring they live good lives now and have a bright future to look forward to. ...2 days ago
- How the federal government’s misinformation bill might impede freedom of speech
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor Emerita in Constitutional Law, University of Sydney The federal government’s proposed legislation on misinformation and disinformation has passed the House of Representatives, but faces a rocky time in the Senate. Opponents have dubbed it the MAD Bill, and ...2 days ago
- As it happened: Hīkoi mō te Tiriti leaves Dargaville, headed for Auckland
Kaipara Māori Ward councillor Pera Paniora urged locals to join the hikoi and take the fight for their rights to Parliament.. ...2 days ago
- Abuse in care apology called PR stunt, ‘not genuine’ and ‘tokenistic’ by som...
Survivors of abuse in care described today's formal apology as "a PR stunt" questioning whether it was authentic. ...2 days ago
- Govt Axes Specialist Māori Body Advising Pharmac Without Consulting Māori
"This is another sad indictment of the priority the National-led Government places on improving the health of Māori," said Fleur Fitzsimons, Assistant Secretary for Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi Public Service Association. ...2 days ago
- An Apology For The Apology? Blind Survivor Deplores Use Of Ableist Slur By Prime Minister At Histori...
“The phrase "turn a blind eye" is an inherently ableist expression that wrongly equates blindness with ignorance, neglect, or deliberate stupidity. This phrase reinforces the dangerous & outdated stereotype that blind people are less perceptive, capable, ...2 days ago
- Care Experienced Young People Say Apology Means Nothing Without Action
The apologies seemed sincere, but amongst those listening there was disappointment that there is still no redress system; and a sense that unless the apology is followed by action the words will seem hollow. ...2 days ago
- A day when sorry seemed to be the easiest word
A historic day and national apology left survivors wanting more The post A day when sorry seemed to be the easiest word appeared first on Newsroom. ...2 days ago
- Watch: Christopher Luxon apologises to survivors of abuse in care
The Prime Minister's long-awaited and historic apology to survivors of abuse in care included the announcement of a national remembrance day, but some say they wanted more detail about the redress plan. ...2 days ago
- Abuse in care apology will never erase what happened but helps with ‘closure’
An apology without action is just empty words, survivors say, after hours of speeches from heads of government agencies and politicians were broadcast around the country. ...2 days ago
- Ara Taiohi Calls For Abuse Apology To Be Backed Up By Rangatahi-centred Policies
We must build back better, build a system with rangatahi at its very centre. The legacy of this government will be measured by their ability to respond appropriately, to create a physically safe and emotionally nurturing environment for children and ...2 days ago
- Right now, the Sun is far more active than predicted – and small satellites are paying the price
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kyle McMullan, PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, Curtin University Last week, three tiny Australian satellites from Curtin University’s Binar Space Program burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. That was always going to happen. In fact, Binar means “fireball” in the Noongar language of ...2 days ago
- Despite the national apology, abuse in state care is still happening – only systemic change will w...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Montgomery, Faculty of Health Research Associate, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Getty Images Today marks a long-awaited milestone for survivors of the state care system, with the formal apology by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon acknowledging the catastrophic ...2 days ago
- Three rooms, one apology: Survivors gather across the motu for abuse in care reckoning
Joel MacManus reports from parliament as the prime minister delivers the national apology for abuse in state care, while Lyric Waiwiri-Smith in Auckland and Alex Casey in Christchurch join survivors watching the livestream. ‘It’s not enough’ – Wellington As Andrew Bridgman, the acting chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, began the ...2 days ago
- ‘The room was aching’: Survivors in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch gather for apology
Joel MacManus reports from parliament as the prime minister delivers the national apology for abuse in state care, while Lyric Waiwiri-Smith in Auckland and Alex Casey in Christchurch join survivors watching the livestream. As Andrew Bridgman, the acting chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, began the speeches at the national apology ...2 days ago
- Hollow Apology Fails To Resonate With Survivors
Today, the Government had an historic and monumental opportunity to start righting decades of wrongs against survivors. Unfortunately, the Government has yet again let down survivors who placed their trust in it. ...2 days ago
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