Daily review 20/02/2025

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, February 20th, 2025 - 32 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

32 comments on “Daily review 20/02/2025 ”

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  1. Dennis Frank 1
    20 February 2025 at 6:07 pm

    Brownlee breaks precedent, flirts with unconstitional behaviour, as he bends over backwards to help his old mates: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/542448/government-warned-fast-track-bill-broke-rules-in-benefiting-business

    "In the case of the Fast-Track Approvals Bill I drew a different conclusion to the Clerk, having taken his advice and considered that the individual benefits to the projects listed in the schedule were not sufficiently clear given the bill itself prescribed the process they must still go through." One legal expert said Brownlee's decision was "borderline", and allowed companies to side-step an avenue for legal challenges.

    Labour and the Greens criticised the move as "unprecedented" and potentially dangerous, fearing it sets a precedent for including private companies in government legislation. The role of Speaker is politically neutral and not part of the government. Geddis said the inclusion of the list of projects in the bill sped up the process in two ways.

    As well as skipping the referral stage, where projects need to be referred for fast-tracking by the Minister for Infrastructure, projects included in the bill could avoid potential legal challenges about their inclusion in the Fast-track pathway. "Including these projects in the statutory schedule wrapped the protection of parliamentary privilege around the ministerial decision to send them to an expert panel, thereby preventing any attempt to have the courts judicially review the basis for that decision," he said.

    Brownlee's decision to disregard the Clerk's advice prompted the Labour Party to declare it had lost confidence in him. Labour's Shadow Leader of the House Kieran McAnulty called Brownlee's decision "unprecedented".
    "It has raised serious constitutional questions about the passing of a Government bill that provides for private benefit."

    The thing about rules is that its all in how you interpret them. If you hold yourself in the right position, and squint at the situation from the right angle, you can see how to finagle the rule. Anyone can learn to do this, and they often do…

    • aj 1.1
      20 February 2025 at 6:45 pm

      Andhe small furore in parliament over use of Te Reo / English has Brownlee in knots, as he clearly agrees that members can speak in either but hasn't the balls to turn and face Peters/Jones when delivering his ruling.

      He must know how stupid he is looking.

  2. Dennis Frank 2
    20 February 2025 at 6:39 pm

    So Elon Musk

    once described Trump as evil. https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/02/11/elon-musk-will-make-us-a-proper-country-again-says-his-dad/

    We all form impressions naturally, so I can't blame him for that. I haven't ruled out the possibility but his extremely-pressured childhood doesn't really validate it. Interesting how his dad told Logan Church Elon was a Biden supporter until Biden discriminated against him!

    Biden, on one particular occasion in December 2021, he invited all the so-called electric car makers in America to the White House to talk for about four or five days on converting America into an electric car country by 2030. But they didn't invite Tesla. And Tesla, of course, had built a million cars that year and sold them.” That snub sent Musk to Trump’s side, he said.

    “As Elon pointed out, there are [government workers] who have offices, they are fully air-conditioned, and they haven’t been into them for a full year. They don’t even go into work, and they’re paid.

    Such deep state agents are clearly privileged by the system. Normalcy protects them, so Elon has to be abnormal to eliminate them. He ought to publicise such instances. Bleaters will cite privacy law to prevent accountability, so the left and right may unite to maintain the cover-up. He may have to fight court cases to get natural justice done.

  3. Phillip ure 3
    20 February 2025 at 6:45 pm

    Rnz panel txt poll…69% support changing new Zealand to aotearoa ..(!)

    How cool is that..!

  4. Phillip ure 4
    20 February 2025 at 7:16 pm

    So… the current case has been granted residence…

    Now…what about all the others..?

    ..we need legislative change..

    ..we need Hipkins to come out and say that he will put right the wrong that was done..

    Anything less is nowhere near enough..

  7. joe90 7
    20 February 2025 at 8:15 pm

    Some of those that work forces
    Are the same that burn crosses

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tnlhrgmbce34nvpyti46miej/post/3liksnpt5622e

    Since GlomarResponder was first created in 2012, the account has posted hateful, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content. “America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us,” GlomarResponder wrote last month. “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck,” the account posted in September of last year. “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” GlomarResponder wrote four months prior, further clarifying the post was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a reply to a comment. “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist,” GlomarResponder posted a couple weeks later. “Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard.”

    In August, GlomarResponder posted: “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, GlomarResponder shared an image that reads: “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” Some GlomarResponder posts evoke anti-immigrant violence: “Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders,” the account posted in March 2024. “Yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position.” And in January: “My WWII vet grandfather didn’t get a chance to kill asians, so he volunteered for Korea. He’d be asking for a short term job with ICE kicking doors and swinging a baton.”

    https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-supremacist-x-account/

  8. Jilly Bee 8
    20 February 2025 at 8:50 pm

    Interesting piece on RNZ about the tax or lack thereof that some charities pay – here's looking at you Sanitarium. Here's hoping Ms No Boats Willis actually does something. I steadfastly refuse to purchase any Sanitarium goods while this state of affairs exists – Hubbards cereals for us.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/542391/with-billions-in-profit-exempt-from-tax-changes-to-nz-s-charity-rules-are-long-overdue

  9. tWig 9
    20 February 2025 at 9:50 pm

    Australia's National Gallery censors Palestinian flags on tapestries.

    Raymond (one of the collective artists) said the SaVĀge K’lub was “very surprised and concerned” when they were told in the days before the exhibition launched in June last year that there was a “high level” security risk with displaying the Palestinian flags on the tapestry and were given two options to proceed – to remove the work from the show or cover the flags – although she did not know who ordered the directive.

    “Our options were to remove the work, or we found a solution that could keep the work there,” she said….“It’s completely shameful that our loss of free speech is being enacted in these spaces.”‘

    This comes Lebanese-Australian artist who was to represent Australia in the Venice Bienniele was removed based on a quote of his from 2007 supporting Hamas.

    • weka 9.1
      20 February 2025 at 9:55 pm

      how weird. Also that the gallery didn't talk to the Guardian about why.

      • weka 9.1.1
        20 February 2025 at 9:56 pm

        the only think I can think of to make sense of that is that the gallery had been told by the security services that there was a risk but they couldn't talk about it. Still weird.

  10. tWig 10
    20 February 2025 at 9:57 pm

    Australia's National Gallery censors Palestinian flags on tapestries.

    Raymond (one of the collective artists) said the SaVĀge K’lub was “very surprised and concerned” when they were told in the days before the exhibition launched in June last year that there was a “high level” security risk with displaying the Palestinian flags on the tapestry and were given two options to proceed – to remove the work from the show or cover the flags – although she did not know who ordered the directive.

    “Our options were to remove the work, or we found a solution that could keep the work there,” she said….“It’s completely shameful that our loss of free speech is being enacted in these spaces.”

    This disclosure comes after Albanese’s government recently pressured Creative Australia to remove the Lebanese-Australian artist chosen for the next Venice Bienale, based on his quote supporting Hamas in 2007.

    • tWig 10.1
      20 February 2025 at 10:09 pm

      The latest on the artist's cancellation.

      Sorry, it was because of inclusion of a legitimate Hezbollah leader in a 2007 work by the artist. Another artist said:

      ' “The thing that I found most extraordinary was that the work that keeps being brought up by Khaled – (You, a 2007 work which includes images of the then Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah) – is 20 years old. Nasrallah was a legitimate political leader in the Middle East at that time. It was 12 years later that he and his organisation were designated as terrorists and to bring Khaled down for that is just mind-blowing.

      “I think it’s a sad indictment on the way politics and broader society end up affecting the artist. The artist becomes the soft underbelly, the litmus test, but the first to be brought down when elections need to be won, and the political cycle is so fraught and so heated.” '

      The Australian pavilion may remain empty next year, as the other artists/groups short-listed for the pavilion have said they refuse to step into his place. Solidarity!

  12. weka 12
    21 February 2025 at 9:13 am

    test reply