Daily Review 21/12/2018
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5:30 pm, December 21st, 2018 - 64 comments
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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 …
And this post will be back some time in the new year. Have a very hipster christmas!
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Hi,Watching New Zealand from afar offers a strange perspective. It can be a good thing — distance from Aotearoa helped keep me sane while I reported on abuse at New Zealand’s biggest megachurch over the course of a year. It helps fuel my silly podcast. But it can also be ...1 hour ago - This is bad news
The speech yesterday by Treasury’s Chief Economic Advisor warning that the books are in worse shape than forecasted looks like it’s part of a softening-up process for either more cuts or a longer wait to get back into surplus. The speech was a highly unusual public preview of Treasury’s Half-Yearly ...3 hours ago - Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2024
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Chatting in the supermarket this morning, I found I needed to lunge for the chicken drumsticks.Coping mechanisms: who hasn’t felt a greater need for them lately?When it all gets too much, I turn to demonstrating handy butchery hacks.It wasn’t that she’d said anything wrong, our friend, not at all. We ...15 hours ago - The year is 2024 and it’s 1984
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The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti arrived at Parliament on Tuesday – the size is being debated but estimates range from 42,000 to 100,000. The Prime Minister is defending not attending due to some of the organisers being affiliated with Te Pāti Māori. The national gang patch ban came into force ...20 hours ago - ‘These budget cuts are counter-productive and make no sense’
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Like everyone else (everyone who wasn't there, anyway), I've spent the morning watching the hikoi march on Parliament. The pictures are astounding: parliament grounds and the surrounding streets are full, and there are still people backed up along Lambton Quay. The police are estimating 35,000 people, and that's a floor ...3 days ago
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Today, Hīkoi mō te Tiriti arrived in Wellington, with thousands gathering to march in unity against the divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...3 days ago
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The fast-track legislation passing its second reading in Parliament is another step towards environmental ruin. ...1 week ago
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Labour joins with the Government in unreservedly apologising for the abuse, neglect and trauma including torture in state and faith-based care and for ignoring the voices of survivors for too long. ...1 week ago
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Today, the Green Party stands alongside the survivors of abuse in state care and faith-based care as the Government issues an historic apology. ...1 week ago
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“Immigration NZ was told in 2012 that Czech drug-smuggler Karel Sroubek had been back to his home country in 2009, but this was not included in the original file to the Immigration Minister because the information was somehow overlooked”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12180971
What a complete waste of parliaments time and energy with Simon Bridges so called “holding the govt to account” and the opposition baying for the minister to be “sacked”.
Now, about the National opposition’s leaker……..
Not sure what your point is?
Apart from bosses blaming staff, when it is irrelevant.
He wouldn’t have seen it anyway, given he didn’t actually bother reading the whole thing.
I wonder who ‘somehow overlooked’ it christy. Some kickpuncher fanboi maybe.
Who knows?
Who ever it is the boss is giving them the blame for signing the form.
Signing the form when?
The officials never gave it to him to read twat. He is supposed to possess divine powers and know the document existed eh? As for the other twat, Mark Mitchell… he claims ILG was negligent because he didn’t go looking for the document he had no way of knowing existed.
MM is clearly mentally challenged and that’s the nice way of putting it. He looks it too.
No point at all….just a noisy but weak storm in a leaky grubby cracked faded old blue tea cup.
Maybe the point is that those who wanted the gallows up and IL-G swinging are still dreadfully disappointed they didn’t get their way. The berserk, irrational, plain dumb reactions were not about Sroubek but a First Year Anniversary reminder of losing the election.
Your childish last sentence sums it up – just like a four year old skulking away from the sandpit because he can’t get his own way, the final, heroic, mature poking out of the tongue.
Merry Christmas.
Are you blaming someone for throwing their staff under the bus on a friday arvo? Surely not.
This case consumed the Nats and their taxpayer funded resources. They crossed all sorts of boundaries for nothing. This was their big chance and it’s turned to dust in their mouths.
Good job.
Yep. National is going down the same path towards irrelevancy that Labour did in the wake of their election defeat in 2008.
Actually the Minister should have been sacked. The decision was taken hastily, and advice from officials was apparently accepted without any scrutiny or questioning. Most telling is that ILG appears to have accepted claims around a threat to Sroubeck’s life (from a modern European democracy) entirely at face value. The only reason ILG won’t be sacked is because the PM is running out of competent people to be Ministers. Oh and the PM’s own fingerprints being all over this as well. Let’s not forget that.
Bless. After the Nats threw the kitchen sink at this and came up with nothing, you decide to keep hammering away.
It’s over. Walk away.
I’m not interested in ‘the nats’. Like most people, I’m interested in how a minister who made such an appalling decision can keep his job.
Oh look it’s shadrach coming on here to do what she is here to do.
Merry Christmas shadrach. Labour are in power
In power but not in charge? Seems very trumpish to worship being at the reins of power but also being completely impotent
Let’s not forget that somehow National was informed of Sroubek’s trip to the Czech Republic and the Minister wasn’t? This whole thing fucking stinks.
It does, but then everything the National Party does stinks.
The info trail is probably too hard to pin down in this instance but but there have been several others where info has come from the public service to National opposition MPs. These should be outed and public servants should have the rules read to them once again.
Occasional (past?) commenter srylands is a case in point. He is clearly RW and National Party affiliated. He comments freely on political blog sites such as The Standard and Kiwiblog and probably others. Thats fine, but did you know srylands is a policy analyst on housing in MBIE?
BTW, srylands freely offered this information.
National knew about the trip to Czechoslavakia and ILG was not informed my the Ministry of Immigration sounds like a set up to me ?
Agreed. The Sroubek saga goes back quite a few years so was the former Nat. Minister (Woodhouse) informed and chose to do nothing? That could be how they knew about it and decided to keep it under wraps?
Didn’t Woodhouse recently boast about… having got ILG on something?
Pretty disgusting that a Minister accepts information from officials with no scrutiny.
My suggestion is that a Minister should be briefed by officials. She/he then gets another team of officials to go away and verify everything in the briefing to make sure it is thorough and accurate. When they report back she/he then gets another team to check and verify that the checkers of the thoroughness and accuracy did a good job. When they have reported to the Minister another team would then go out and get information that so far has not been presented or included up to that stage.
One outstanding positive to that approach is that many jobs will be created, not just in advisory staff but in the construction industry building the multi-storied blocks to house all the workers.
Win/win/win! But you can bet there’d still be whinge/whinge/whinge.
How many people work in that Department now, are they all incompetent ?
Or perhaps the “officials” just do their job and make sure the Minister gets ALL the relevant information” Saves time, money and the Opposition making themselves look foolish and usury.
My suggestion would be that when considering the case of a person who decidedly dodgy, the Minister takes a bit longer than an hour and actually does his job.
Public transport was free after 4 pm today in Auckland and I caught the Western Line from Britomart to Kingsland after work as usual. The train was heaving.
I’ve been working in the Woodhill forest area a lot recently and drive through Kumeu to Helensville looking at the rail line sitting there waiting.
I also look at the multiple earthworks in the area north of Huapai and at Waimauku and think what a great place to live when that rail line is electrified. I’m hoping this is in the infrastructure plan somewhere.
I think that the plan is to put Kumeu/Huapai on the Northwestern LRT rather than use heavy rail. Mostly because of capacity constraints on the heavy rail corridor. One things for sure though, in coming years the Northwestern Motorway is not going to be able to cope with the increase in traffic from that part of Auckland.
Nor SH16. This is the problem. Earth is being turned for the houses of many tens of thousands of people and the infrastructure to get them to and from work is an afterthought.
There’s that many people going to be living in that region in 10 years that another line is necessary, not trams.
The light rail will most likely deliver commuters to their destination just as quickly as a heavy rail option and be better than the same drive on the motorway network.
I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t build on the existing infrastructure. Why create another system incompatible with the one in existence?
Not an expert but I do believe light rail is not as fast as heavy rail.
Light rail can be just as fast Muttonbird depending on how it’s incorporated. And believe me, the train I get every morning from Kingsland to Britomart is so fucking slow. Dwell times (the time spent at each station) alone is dismal on the network. A snappy LRT would be a major improvement.
Surely those are just operational problems and part of the severe under investment in public transport this country has been guilty of since its very founding? Light rail isn’t going to do the distances required in a very spread out city such as Auckland. It’s worth noting that there is no modern LRT in this country to date.
The reason there isn’t LRT in NZ yet is due to the very reason you outline, a lack of investment. LRT in dedicated track zones as proposed for both the northwestern and southwestern lines is capable of 80+ kms per hour. It will be plenty good enough for what we need and a cheaper option than heavy rail.
It can’t cope with it now.
Yep. There’s already chaos on the section just finished and that is without 50-100K extra people living out there in the next 10 years.
Trams aren’t going to do the job. Another rain line is crucial, the corridor is already there, electrify it, people travel from Northwest Auckland to the CBD in an hour.
Done.
Trams or LRT, whatever you want to call it can easily do the job. Heavy rail trains may well well zoom from Kumeu to the city but there are serious capacity constraints on the heavy rail network as you head towards Britomart. My train in the morning sits, more often than not, at Newmarket waiting for clearance to proceed to Britomart.
I thought that’s what the CRL was going to alleviate. The reason you sit at Newmarket is that there’s currently only one way out of Britomart.
Even with CRL heavy rail can’t provide Auckland with the service we need. LRT needs to be layered over the top of that.
Well to me LR does the work in close and the big trains do the heavily populated routes such as Airport to CBD and the distance routes such as South to CBD and Northwest to CBD which is the current situation.
In 10 years time AT will figure out there is a problem and get some monkey to do some figures ?
I think this job is so important that it requires a state response not a local one. I’ve always said the state not local government dictates population numbers so the state not local government should be responsible for the infrastructure to get them around.
Agree !00% NZF is working on it.
=
Has anyone costed a completely free (running costs) to user public transport system for Auckland?
I don’t think anyone has done that work for Auckland’s situation. But you’d have to assume the cost would be less than the 1-1.5 billion cost of traffic congestion in this city every year.
Was that a Good Thing™?
A frightening article from Peter Wilson who is a National Party aligned journalist. Even he is shocked at the way the public service operated under the guidance of the National Party.
It’s sad that our once great country has been allowed to be taken over by RWNJs. I’ve been taken to task for calling the National Party evil, but they truely are…
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/378839/week-in-politics-spying-report-must-shake-confidence-in-public-service
Here you go again making accusations / comments about people with nothing to back it up:
“Peter Wilson who is a National Party aligned journalist”
Anything to back that up?
“A frightening article from Peter Wilson who is a National Party aligned journalist. Even he is shocked at the way the public service operated under the guidance of the National Party.
“”The most shocking finding, Stuff reported, was the Ministry of Social Development hiring investigators to dig up dirt on witnesses in the case of two brothers seeking damages from the government for being abused in state care.””
It’s sad that our once great country has been allowed to be taken over by RWNJs. I’ve been taken to task for calling the National Party evil, but they truely are…”
Maybe not exactly evil, but definitely close. However the RWNJs who were sitting on the Gummint benches when that particular outrage was going on were Labour.
https://www.ssc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/Report%20of%20the%20inquiry%20into%20the%20use%20of%20external%20security%20consultants%20by%20government%20agencies.pdf
pages 41-45
It’s sad that our once great country has been allowed to be taken over by RWNJs.
And don’t forget who started the descent to the bottom of the Social Welfare barrel – Christine Rankin. You know, the one Paula Benefit regarded as her most important mentor.
Actually was the Lange Government followed by “the mother of all budgets””. No Government afterwards, National or Labour, has restored welfare benefits, to the levels they were before the lurch to the extreme neo-liberal, right
Yep.
All our governments since 1984 have followed the failed neo-liberal paradigm – including the one we have now.
Trotter wrote very well on this the other day.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/12/21/must-read-working-towards-the-fuhrer/
That’s a good article.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/07/what-if-we-just-buy-off-big-fossil-fuel-a-novel-plan-to-mitigate-the-climate-calamity/
How about using the current subsidies for fossil fuels?
NZ’s first electrical ferry to be built in Wellington
\\http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=115098
Oh, this is so delicious:
Ukrainian Navy commits act of war – is surprised it is fired upon.
US propaganda machine reports that it is all the Russia’s fault.
Yes, moving any type of military hardware through a sovereign state’s territory without permission is an act of war.
Russia reneged on an agreement allowing the Ukraine free navigation in the sea of Azov and the strait of Kerch.
Russia said that it needed the piece of Ukraine it took over officially because it needed safety for its southern ports. Now it is committing bad faith action against Ukraine. Can’t these big powers stop themselves from pushing everyone around. They are all too big I think. Let’s go back to being small and fighting with swords seeing that fighting seems to be hard-wired in our heads.
Joe hates Russia and looks forward to war against them, I fear.
Who is Joe? If you are referring to Joe90, what he said in his comment
is true. And you are being irresponsible suggesting that war is being
‘looked forward to’.
Neil Clark nails it.
“Britain sending warships to the Black Sea to ‘send message to Russia’. It’s the 1850s all over again. Will we have another Charge of the Light Brigade too?”
https://t.co/Wus0xzFBDL?amp=1
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