I said a while ago National would be better off not chasing the temperamental middle demographic vote, and instead go in the opposite direction.
So I was happy to see Luxon move in that direction. After the troops did a Wim Hof at their party retreat to show voters National is now full of vim and vigour, Luxon announced National may raise the age of superannuation entitlement.
That is playing with political kryptonite, and will go down like a lead balloon with many. But perceptions will slowly change as the reality of New Zealand's economic woes becomes apparent. It will then be seen as a sane and sensible action to take.
Luxon announced National may raise the age of superannuation entitlement.
Labour should do likewise. It’s inevitable that changes will be made to Super. Bill English went into the 2017 election with that policy…and got more votes than Labour. But I suspect it’s more than just Super that will be reviewed with a new Government, it’ll be tax rates and spending on health, education and welfare.
Don't know about inflation as I haven't seen figures for either country. I am not sure that either nation produces a measure of inflation.
There is a proxy in the consumer price index – which is a completely seperate measure.
We have a annual consumer price increase of 5.9% for 2021 and Australia with a different basket for their CPI had 3.5%. But you really have look closely at the baskets because they are quite different.
Both had large increases in fuel and rental costs.
Our one includes house prices, construction material costs and the costs of vehicles, which I can't see any mention of in the aussie one. Those had very high increases here.
If you are relying on the CPI measures as a comparative measure between nz and aussie, then you have successfully identified yourself as a financial idiot. You have to look at what is in the basket.
My italics – note that the percentages in the quote are just for the final quarter of 2021.
Quarterly change
In the December 2021 quarter compared with the September 2021 quarter, the CPI rose 1.4 percent (1.5 percent with seasonal adjustment).
Housing and household utilities rose 2.0 percent, influenced by higher prices for home ownership (up 4.6 percent) and actual rentals for housing (up 1.2 percent).
Transport rose 3.9 percent, influenced by private transport supplies and services (up 5.4 percent) and purchase of vehicles (up 1.9 percent).
Recreation and culture rose 2.1 percent, influenced by other recreational equipment and supplies (up 2.4 percent) and audio-visual and computing equipment (up 4.7 percent).
Miscellaneous goods and services rose 1.7 percent, influenced by other miscellaneous services (up 3.5 percent) and personal care (up 2.1 percent).
…hate to see how high inflation would be…if it..did.
So now you know that it may do. I haven’t looked into the basket to see exactly what “higher prices for home ownership” cover. But the rise is following the house mortgage interest rises pretty closely.
I know that in my case, the only major costs of home ownership (outside of principal repayments) are interest rates, body corp fees, and rates. The latter two go up, but not in the order of 4.6%. If I was on a floating rate that percentage rise would be about right. That is why I am currently fixed for another 2.5 years, and considering selling my property to make my partners (or a new property) mortgage free.
Stats NZ includes changes in rents, the cost of maintaining houses, and changes in the price of new homes – but not the land they are built on – when it calculates the CPI.
Yeah that doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t look too far down the chain.
However I was answering someone talking about inflation (for which there are many definitions – like the effects of debasement of currency), who was then probably comparing apples with oranges with the CPI measurements of two different nations using different CPI baskets to calculate a proxy for their price inflation.
It is difficult enough for economists to do this, most of the journalism profession is usually totally bemused by it, and its isn’t something you can directly compare. It depends almost entirely on what is present or not present in the basket, and what is important to the particular nation you’re looking at and what they value. For us, clean water is almost a given – but you don’t have to look too far away to find countries where that is major living cost.
The OECD does a pretty good attempt to try to get comparable figures. But realistically, I’d say that the best measure across economies is probably a year on year comparison of The Economist’s Big Mac index. A single consumer product with all of the costs of labour, capital and various grown or manufactured food stuffs inside their particular market.
''If you are relying on the CPI measures as a comparative measure between nz and aussie, then you have successfully identified yourself as a financial idiot. You have to look at what is in the basket.''
Fair enough…let's not use Aussie as a comparative measure.
Our son in Oz says those missing items would double the CPI rate. Their home has gone from $520 000 to $820 000 in 10 months in Varsity Lakes and it is a separate 3 bed 2 bath duplex. $2*aprox per litre, petrol (not the taxes on it of course.)
That is not correct. The basket of goods used to calculate the CPI in Australia does not need to be the same as the one in New Zealand. The basket of goods is chosen to represent the goods bought by the average urban household in the country concerned. These are not likely to be the same in both countries. The CPI reflects the change in the cost of that basket from one period to another in the particular country you have chosen your sample for. Thus the CPI numbers can be compared between countries.
There are a lot of problems with using the CPI as a measure of inflation but the one you are talking about is not one of them. The real problems occur with quality changes in the goods and with substitution effects as the relative price of goods changes within a country from period to period.
Seems legitimate, if unfortunately undermining the case lprent was making. Hes apparently dehydrated at present but no doubt when he recovers he will award you a short lifetime ban for insubordination.
RNZ Morning Report reporting right now on house prices with the word "slowing" prominent in the report. And then it continued by reporting that NZ's annual house price rise is 27%.
"Already ridiculous house prices go up 27%" should have been the headline, and that headline should have been at the top of the news.
yeah nah, thats old news and is not what is happening right now. sales have gone off a cliff – watch for the corresponding effect on values over the next months. values always lag sales.
and of course now jacinda is going to have the opposite effect – with house values dropping into election year.. incumbents are always turfed out in an environment of dropping house values.
incumbents are always turfed out in an environment of dropping house values.
I wouldn't think it would be a liability with numbers like this:
Three quarters of Kiwis want house prices to fall and almost half of us want them to fall substantially, according to the latest 1News Kantar Public Poll.
The prices aren't tanking yet. Just the sales of housing, and increasingly the supply of housing to sell.
We have pretty much gotten to the point where it is increasingly difficult to find somewhere to buy because potential sellers can't find much in their price range anywhere where they want to live.
For instance we could do with a larger living area – because both of us can work from home. But we only have a 55 sq metre apartment and working on top of each other doesn't work for us. Like to sell two apartments on the CBD edge. But we can't afford to buy anywhere in Auckland – which one of us needs for other reasons. But the prices in every urban area with reasonable support systems are ridiculously expensive
So I rent a workspace and we keep our two apartments and keep killing the mortgages. We have at least a query from realtors seeking to see if we want to sell every week. That doesn't include the increasingly desperate bulletins about amazing sales prices in our area from many realtors that are just about our only snail mail these days.
And that is what people are doing – they don't sell because they can't afford to even buy what they already have.
I’d be surprised if the price of ‘normal’ housing drops much. At least not until a lot of cheaper new builds get past being consented, actually get built and wind up on the market.
Just some of the speculative prices on the high end of the market will get hit.
Word from agents is that sales are tanking because they haven't got anything to sell. Alongside that buyers, and banks, are getting cagey that prices aren't going to keep climbing.
Real Estate windows around Queenstown are filled with properties they've sold over the last 6 months with only a couple of live listings. Know of one agent who's been driving a tractor for a balage contractor most of the summer.
But no talk of contracts defaulting and construction going hard out.
Possibly fear of not being able to get back into the market if they were to sell if prices suddenly took a leap.
More likely everyone is pretty happy with where they are and enjoying life in Whakatipu. Unless you are completely dependant on tourism (which is a small subset of the local economy) things are pretty rosy around the town. Like there's more 'Hiring Now' signs than Real Estate signs.
Granted discretionary retail has been all over the place in the last six months too, can understand RE being the same.
If that turns out to be the case it will be a fundamental change in the Queenstown community. In the 90's a local politician who rose to be deputy mayor often said that the town turned over half it's resident population every two years. I would agree with that assertion.
That made the town socially stratified around when you arrived so after you've been here a while the town gets rather small. Long term residents tend to ignore the newcomers because they will be gone in a couple of years and the newcomers can't break in so get pissed of and leave after a couple of years. Explains a lot of the attitudes to the place by people who've left.
Move that residency out to 10 years and we might become a more cohesive community.
I wish John Campbell would talk less and just listen to his interviewees, and challenge what is said. He lets so much go by.
e.g. Luxon (TV1) just cited 3 examples of an extra burden on business: new public holiday (Matariki), minimum wage increase, and increased maternity leave.
So do National now oppose any of those 3? It's classic "have it both ways" … mention them for your base but then accept them for the wider public. Journalism 101: follow that up and nail down their position.
Again, the wage subsidy was supplied via Winz to the employers – who had to prove that they had a loss of 30% in order to secure this wage subsidy, and then was via the employer given to the employees.
In essence, the wage subsidy was an unemployment benefit that was paid out by Winz via employers so as to not overload Winz with requests for benefits as businesses that are shut down for long periods in time generally don't keep staff on their books.
There might have been some very large businesses that have abused that system and they should be rightly called out and be expected to refund that wage subsidy, but for the smaller businesses – and Auckland with its 3 month lockdown was a good example for that – that is not the case. The money received went to workers.
The only payments that businesses got – again if they had that magical drop in revenue of 30% – was the resurgance payment and the wage subsidy for themselves.
Just thought it was worth highlighting, and dispite your mental gymnastics, that the wage subsidy was paid via employers to maintain existing employment relationships and minimise employment disruption of the lockdowns. That even worked as designed.
"Unemployment benefits are something you are entitled to if you have worked and paid taxes for a certain time."
Not in NZ they are not….unemployment benefit is not conditional on previous tax payment or employment….you can receive unemployment benefit if you have never done either, it is not an insurance scheme….nor should it be.
Yep, that is correct they only had a loss of 27.5 % and that is why they had to pay it back.
but that too is an inconvenient truth, and because they only lost 27.5% of turnover during lockdown they now will declare bankruptcy now rather then when they initially claimed that subsidy. Win win. 🙂
Suzie did quite a good job with Luxon today on RNZ Morning Report where she picked Luxon up on his policy to open the borders and dump MIQ immediately thus allowing many more Omicron cases into many parts of NZ. She asked him something like "but if we do this won't it risk overloading the health system?".
Immediately Luxon was in trouble and went into full bluster.
We need to see more journalists taking Luxon-waffle to task-he is getting a free ride.
You've never seen lateral thinking in local govt, right? The Swedes are proving it is actually possible:
Crows are being recruited to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets and squares of a Swedish city as part of a cost-cutting drive.
The wild birds carry out the task as they receive a little food for every butt that they deposit in a bespoke machine designed by a startup in Södertälje, near Stockholm. “They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis,” said Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, the company behind the method.
The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation says that more than 1bn cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets each year, representing 62% of all litter. Södertälje spends 20m Swedish kronor (£1.6m) on street cleaning. Günther-Hanssen estimates his method could save at least 75% of costs involved with picking up cigarette butts in the city.
New Caledonian crows, a member of the corvid family of birds, are as good at reasoning as a human seven-year-old, research has suggested, making them the smartest birds for the job. Günther-Hanssen said: “They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/swedish-crows-pick-up-cigarette-butts-litter
If this scheme proves effective, it'll become a classic example of inter-species symbiosis extending into urban habitat. Ecologists may even recognise a cross-cultural intelligence underlying the interaction if it embeds…
I honestly don't think that there are enough New Cal. crows, a unique species, in the whole of that territory (NZ's nearest neighbour) to be imported into Sweden to pick up a billion ciggie butts!
Good point but maybe the Swedes have been breeding an immigrant population? Insight into these cunning critters:
Taylor’s fascination with New Caledonian crows stems from when he was studying animal behaviour at Oxford in 2002. He saw a video of a crow bending a piece of wire to make it into a hook and using that hook to fish a bucket containing food out of a tube.
“As a young student, that really caught my imagination and I was just fascinated with what was going through this crow’s mind," he tells Jesse Mulligan. "It turned out that there were a couple of scientists at Auckland University, Gavin Hunt and Russell Gray, who were already working out of New Caledonia and studying the crows. That’s how I ended up coming over to Auckland to work with them.”
He says that while a bird making a tool out of wire might seem quite simple, in the animal kingdom its unprecedented. “Not even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have shown these kinds of behaviours in the wild.”
I have to admire Stuart Nash for going on Newstalk ZB with Mike Hosking and Mark Mitchell. Struggling to talk about Charlotte Bellis and the embarrassment it has caused but good on him for fronting up.
Who in the hell listens to Mike Hosking or Mark Mitchell. The former is a ignoramus who is apparently proud of his inability to read or comprehend anything more complex than a slogan, and the latter is literally a dickhead – he seems to think that being male excuses him from thinking before he speaks.
Actually that is a completely stupid and kind of an irrelevant measurement. When you have time look up how it is ESTIMATED.
It doesn’t tell you how many people are actually listening. I don’t know exactly how our measurements are made. It either measures a small sample of devices with monitoring equipment looking tuning and a device being on in a time slot – but doesn’t measure how many people were in the room or if they were listening. Or it gets a small sample of people writing down what they are listening to.
Those figures are then inflated to approximate total number of radios turned on. Personally the only place I ever hear radio is in cars, or in some industrial workspaces. If more than 5% of the people in those spaces are listening to the radio, I’d be surprised.
I think that those estimates are grossly over inflated especially if you’re looking at how many people are actually listening to the idiots blathering.
Compare that with a site like ours or any online current affairs site where you can look at how many people are reading articles, roughly how long that the page is visible, refreshing pages to read comments, and even where the page has been idle for too long – so you can regard it as stagnant. Those kinds of figures actually have some rigour in their measurement.
Broadcast media estimates are just fairy tales and only useful for looking at percentage gains or losses – and even those you have to look for bias because of the tiny sample sizes.
Hosking this morning, with Mitchell was demanding the border be open. What naturally follows from this is 'let it rip'.
31 rest home residents died from Covid in NSW a couple of days ago*. This is what would happen in New Zealand if Hosking had his way. There is no 'sort of' doing pandemic response, it's either robust, or it's not.
Britain recorded 219 Covid deaths today. Italy 479. Adjusted for NZ this is 16 and 44 respectively. Hosking and NACT consider these countries to be free, open, over Covid and out the other side. To them, this is the picture of success.
Decent Kiwis, National and ACT party voters excluded by definition, would be horrified by this.
*My wife's dad is in a dementia unit. He's still around to see his grandkids because of our government's response. If NACT were in charge he would have a much, much higher chance of either being dead, or fighting for his life without knowing what was going on.
''Decent Kiwis, National and ACT party voters excluded by definition, would be horrified by this.''
You still are making the mistake of basing a successful government Covid response on the number of people who haven't died thanks to this governments protocols.
But what about long term?
The suicides. The business closures. The people hitting the streets after losing rental accommodation. Rampant crime, Lost opportunities both socially and businesswise. The list goes on.
We should put opening up the border to a nationwide vote.
I know the result would be '' OPEN THE FUGGING BORDER.''
That would leave people like you with a chicken little approach to this pandemic to stay at home and ride it out..while the rest of us got on with life while accepting catching Covid was a near given…with the possibility of death.
I also think your comment I quoted was just plain nasty.
I just don't think you get it. Twice our Covid response has delivered world beating outcomes with regard to human life. To deny that is flat out dishonest, which is not surprising.
Given we have beaten back the thing twice, why would we do anything majorly different the third time?
In fact we are doing something different this time and that is accepting that it will enter and spread but the idea is to slow it down as much as possible. We do that with restrictions on the border, restrictions on large gatherings and continued public health measures like maintaining work bubbles and mask wearing.
I'm not sure you'll be able to point to examples of increased suicides, 'people losing rental accommodation', and rampant crime. You are just projecting there.
Sure, some businesses have closed and no doubt there are some lost opportunities but it is a 1 in 100 year pandemic. I think you are being deliberately ignorant about the realities on the ground in the more affected countries. Pretty sure people there are feeling much, much worse.
I'm just putting two and two together with the statement about National and ACT Party voters.
''I'm not sure you'll be able to point to examples of increased suicides, 'people losing rental accommodation', and rampant crime. You are just projecting there.''
By chance Kerre McIvor was talking to someone regarding youth suicides. This person said youth self harm was up over 100%. I don't know the context. But it was on this morning and should be in the archives.
Accommodation: I have previously cited personal examples of that.
Business: I have lost over 5 businesses I regularly deal with. Here is the latest. It's up for sale. I doubt it will sell. Growers like me will lose a great source of parent stock that probably can't be replaced.
"Who would win a referendum to open up the borders?"
You're in lalaland if you think people want the border opened up. The only fools to want that have been the Conservatives who have always wanted us to follow Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro into multi-deaths…
If we had done what you said we would have had in excess of 12,000 deaths.
Sometimes conservatives are so frikkin' thick
A referendum would say ‘keep the border closed’
edit: plus such a route would in fact have been worse for business… check the comparable stats with countries with huge death lists… your points fail
''You're in lalaland if you think people want the border opened up. The only fools to want that have been the Conservatives who have always wanted us to follow Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro into multi-deaths…''
Folks, in true Lefty fashion, VTO disagrees with me. He knows Kiwis would vote to keep the borders closed.
I say he's full of crap. ( VTO- vote to open). A referendum has already been held on talkback a few times. Time and again apart from the timid, the call has been: ''we are vaxxed open up.''
But, but, too many Righties on TB!
Then of course we have MSM. Again the sentiments have been similar in many of the interviews I have heard.
No doubt there is a solid core of Kiwis who want the borders to remain shut. They believe we are an Island to oneself. They will be the first to bleat when essentials and professional help isn't available because there's none.
I say he’s full of crap. ( VTO- vote to open). A referendum has already been held on talkback a few times…..
Now I know that you aren’t worth reading. Talkback is the last refuge of the unevolved gullible angry sheep of our society being led around by a conniving guru figures who can talk up a storm. It is also a teeny fraction of our society.
It is like you are recommending that paedophiles should determine our laws governing children – and probably by people with fewer morals. The haters, angry people who want to ruin everyone else seem to live on talkback.
Talkback is the opinion of the stupid man with a chip on his shoulder.
The genre revolves around some fool having the time to make a phone call so other fools can hear them whinge about something to someone who is not in a position to resolve their complaint.
'Talkback is the opinion of the stupid man with a chip on his shoulder.''
I'm afraid you are wrong.
Today I learnt about panel beating and insurance. Panel beaters do little work now because of the construction of new cars. They just replace parts. A car can even be written off because of hail damage.
But hey.. remember this. Talkback will be a major factor in taking this government out.
Today I learnt about panel beating and insurance. Panel beaters do little work now because of the construction of new cars. They just replace parts. A car can even be written off because of hail damage.
''I'm curious what the discussion was around that.''
Started to listen on the fly. Simon Barnett's daughter has a car with a dent. The dent had never been a problem for a warrant test until this year when it was. She took the car to two panel beaters. One who wouldn't sign off on work done…another panel beater did ( I don't know the context) sign off on the work done.
That lead to what I assume was an ex panel beater ringing up, and also a man from a car or Insurance agency/ firm explaining things further.
Also discussed was new rules for Jap imports. Any rust must be fix before the car can be sold.
That's the jist of the conversation from my understanding of what I heard.
So unless you have something better than a reckon from the radio I'd prefer to believe the experts thanks.
Why the impatience to open the borders…we are still working on Omicron. You surely would not seriously be suggesting opening the borders right now? I have every confidence that the borders will be opened, when it is the best time, health-wise (and health wise = economy-wise) has been the stance that has got us through so far.
While you may have more knowledge about the link it does not say the business is for sale that I can see…..more a sensible looking at selling methods for pick up. perhaps their couriers have let them down and that is why they are not selling to the rest of us. I see one of the partners is working full time on Covid issues. Anyway I have completed the contact form.
''Re suicides…this view on suicides goes against what i would call reputable sources''
The interviewee ran an organisation/ help centre for troubled youth. I didn't quite hear which because of static.
Of course attempted suicide and self harm probably won't show up in the stats?
That said, fair point. I will accept your link.
''Why the impatience to open the borders…we are still working on Omicron. You surely would not seriously be suggesting opening the borders right now? I have every confidence that the borders will be opened, when it is the best time, health-wise (and health wise = economy-wise) has been the stance that has got us through so far.''
That will depend on a government decision The problem is, by the day, more and more people are losing faith in this government. I know this is a Lefty blog, but the ability of posters to gloss over obvious government blunders time and again is staggering.
''While you may have more knowledge about the link it does not say the business is for sale that I can see.''
That is correct. All customers received a private email announcing the business is for sale.
Of course attempted suicide and self harm probably won't show up in the stats?
Definitely a consideration, when actually verified. But then of course even conflating self-harm with a suicide attempt (big fucking "whoa nellie" there), any increase in attempt would be contrasted by the nominal (if not statistically significant) decrease in completion.
''Definitely a consideration, when actually verified. But then of course even conflating self-harm with a suicide attempt (big fucking "whoa nellie" there), ''
You need to be careful there – the two can be inter changeable. Somethings the experts have to sort which is which. Generally self harm is considered a category by itself.
''Any increase in attempt would be contrasted by the nominal (if not statistically significant) decrease in completion.''
You need to be careful there – the two can be inter changeable. Somethings the experts have to sort which is which. Generally self harm is considered a category by itself.
You talked about "attempted suicide and self harm" together. That's a problem, as you state. They can be different things, and are often difficult to distinguish between. Heck even intentional vs unintentional self harm can have a lot of problems – was risky behaviour a fall, or a jump? Was a jump an attempt at suicide, or self harm?.
''Any increase in attempt would be contrasted by the nominal (if not statistically significant) decrease in completion.''
?
If attempted suicide is up, but completed suicides are down, maybe an inadvertent byproduct of lockdowns is that people are left alone less often and get discovered before the outcome becomes permanent. And are the mental health issues associated with lockdowns, or living in a pandemic?
Sure, there are research projects going on into this area right now, but at the moment it's all reckons. The melieu of outcomes sure as shit won't get resolved here, and probably not for years after we start loosening up on tourism visas again.
Good. Because if I see you running lines like this again without an actual reference I'll probably step into moderation mode.
We're in a global crisis, I take a dim view of people politicising suicide.
We want robust debate here, which means a bit of work for commenters. We all put out our reckons, and that's ok, but when it comes to claims of fact on important issues, please check your facts first. It's not hard to google suicide stats, and this is an issue that's been talked about a lot.
''Which number matters more – the rate or the total number?
''Both are important. The total number represents each individual who is suspected to have died by suicide (or, in the official data, the number of people who have been found to have died by suicide). Each one of these people was important and deserves to be acknowledged.
However, the rate is more helpful in comparing suicide data over time because it helps to adjust for population size. It is also more meaningful in helping us to understand how suicide impacts different populations such as Māori and non-Māori. Because the number of Māori is smaller than the number of non-Māori, we need to know their rate per hundred thousand to see that the Māori suicide rate is much higher than the non-Māori suicide rate and know Maori need targeted suicide prevention initiatives.
Does New Zealand have the highest suicide rate in the world?
''No, but we do have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD.''
In hindsight, I ceded the point because I didn't explain myself in a clear enough manner.
In hindsight, I ceded the point because I didn't explain myself in a clear enough manner.
Yes, this is what I am pointing to. Nothing wrong with saying that you heard something on the radio, but you could easily have googled suicide stats since the pandemic began before using what you thought you heard in your argument.
And yes, made your point more clearly. But still getting something to back it up.
Blade made a categorical statement about youth self harm and linked it to suicide. St John is talking about mental health callouts up to and including suicide, while mentioning self harm callouts in children (patients under 14). There is often a distinction in the literature between "children (0-14)" and "young people (15-24)", as these groups have very different needs.
Look, nobody is saying lockdowns aren't tough or don't likely exacerbate a number of problems such as mental health problems, self harm, or family violence. That's one reason the government stopped using them (although I personally regard that policy with trepidation).
But have lockdowns saved thousands of lives? Definitely. Have they increased suicides? Nope.
Really? Blade was talking about suicide and intentional self harm.
What about episodes where someone has run out of meds and not been able to restock, for whatever reason? How did the pandemic affect regular mental health consultations – did it lead to poorer-quality care in people for whom self-harm was not a significant risk? Were co-occupants usually calling about the behaviour of people who were stuck at home and more able to be monitored than if they'd just disappeared for a few days? Similarly, were self-harm events noticed by co-occupants when they would have been literally covered up by the time people normally got home? Are people getting ambos called to home when they would otherwise have had cops called on them in the main street? Heck, are the cop pickups for similar cases up or down?
Sure, the surface water is swirling around suspiciously. Is it a giant drain? Is it a fish for dinner? Is it a maelstrom that'll suck a person down 800ft? All we know is that it's swirling suspiciously.
This is about as good as evidence you can get for what Blade was talking about.
Nah. It's a hint. Much better evidence would be more precise analyses of ambo case notes. Even better evidence than that would be a combo of the NMDS admissions dataset, the outpatients dataset, and of course the primhd mental health database. Throw in some case studies and qualitative interviews, you've got the bulk of a solid thesis.
But that takes more effort than going for broke on the basis of a very large-grained statistic from a single referral organisation.
''Ohs said there had been a concerning rise in the number of mental health and suicide attempt incidents.''
That from Maui's link.
You give a lot of reasons why and why not that could be true or otherwise.
What you are really doing is doing my work for me. Does it matter what the cause is, and what category a problem comes under?
From my orginal post:
''But what about long term?
The suicides. The business closures. The people hitting the streets after losing rental accommodation. Rampant crime, Lost opportunities both socially and businesswise. The list goes on.''
''Increase homelessness is due to amateur landlordism, absentee landlords, and Airbnb'ers.''
Have you ever asked yourself what the government is doing regulating private landlords?
If a tenant doesn't like their accommodation, they should bugger off. It should be called democracy.
This is how screwed our country is.
In another post I said the hallmark of this government is about being fair. But being fair in socialism means people have to suffer because socialists have no idea about business.
In this case, both the landlord and tenant are victims.
By chance Kerre McIvor was talking to someone regarding youth suicides. This person said youth self harm was up over 100%. I don’t know the context. But it was on this morning and should be in the archives.
There is no way I'm spending one nano-second looking up Kerre McIvor's archives.
It's up to you to provide the proof that 'youth self harm is up over 100%' and not by linking to a lunatic caller who rang into 1ZB.
I'm also (sort of) interested in the demise of the tropical plant wholesaler which you claimed was proof of the evils of Jacinda's totalitarian over-response to Covid.
They couldn't operate under the conditions this dopey hapless government has foisted on this country.
From their site:
''We are currently only taking orders for pick ups from Waipu and deliveries to Northland. Sadly, we will not be selling plants to the rest of NZ until further notice.''
Notice the word Sadly?
And now they have done the numbers and realised that under Jacinda they have no chance of recovery, so the business is for sale.
That is one of the problems with talkback – transient, hard to find, and when you do get it, you have to spend ages finding whatever you’re looking for – if it existed at all.
Not to mention that you have little idea of any validity of the veracity of the person making the claims because they will state as fact without having to provide links.
In other words – talkback is mostly interesting bullshit, with about as much validity as talking to another idiot in bar.
Perhaps they should take lessons from RadioNZ who seem to have theirs up shortly (ie within minutes) after the program finishes for any of the talk-talk sessions.
From the times I have looked at commercial radio archives or seen judgements on their sins, there always seems to be missing material. I suspect that somewhere in the backend there is a lawyer censoring what is defamatory or unlawful.
But even then to find that something is missing. it is tortuous having to slowly work your way through long recording finding the bit that you wanted to re-listen to. It’d be nice if they just got a machine to transcribe it with timestamps. That would make the pearls of wisdom searchable.
Oh I hear his pathetic borderline tantrums via Media Watch when they highlight his flip-flop goldfish brained reckons. His credibility is shot and he should've been given away years ago.
I was listening to the Hosking/Mitchell double team against Nash this morning. An embarrassment to broadcasting. Nash should withdraw from this slot like the Prime Minister did. This type of fuckwittery from Hosking does nothing at all for the well being of decent New Zealanders.
Should do, but then you're accused of running away from the "tough questions". It's a hit job they play, probably rehearsed, that is easily soaked up by the gullible. I would think some decent people have been manipulated by this form of propaganda.
So when is this government going to bring in a government loan scheme for people wanting to buy their first home? It is easily the best possible solution to several ills and is long overdue. And would secure many many votes. Isn't it a no-brainer?
vto-that might put further pressure on house prices….though as we discussed above house sales are now starting to plummet so it might be a good time to do this.
Yes, it would increase the number of buyers, which does put pressure on the market. But that is no reason to not do it. Perhaps how it worked in the olden days should be checked.
The pressure on our 'market' today comes from investors. It is all investors who have caused this great massive increase. They should be turfed out. Imagne a 'market' in which only owner-occupiers could buy and sell – it would all be much more realistic and reflect the true need for housing, rather than reflecting central bank monetary policy, govt investment settings and tax rates, or anything else to do with money rather than a bed at night. It is all shitted up imo ('scuse language)
"Australia had approved 60 suppliers and had enough tests to offer them up to schools, Luxon told Morning Report.
"If Australia has approved 60 providers that have met their standards we should just adopt those same [companies]."
"I would also use the private sector, the big businesses like Mainfreight and Air New Zealand and Foodstuffs and Zuru Toys, who have big procurement agencies and divisions – get them out here procuring supplies for us."
Obviously Luxon hasn't been paying attention to the RAT shambles across the ditch.
Private suppliers, with slack federal government oversight, importing unapproved, dodgy RAT tests and charging exorbitant prices in a tight market to those who can least afford it.
'National announced on Tuesday it wants rapid antigen tests in schools – students and staff tested twice weekly, like they do in Australia.
"Why in New Zealand, do we accept that, 'Oh sorry, we just didn't get the rapid antigen tests last year'," Luxon told reporters.
There are 800,000 schoolkids in New Zealand. Our current supply of 5 million rapid antigen tests wouldn't even last three weeks, and that doesn't even take into account teacher tests. There would need to be millions and millions of tests available. '-Newshub
"And up to last week that meant that the only immediate source the government could find was what businesses had already ordered themselves and, no matter what language you choose to use, those supplies were requisitioned by the MOH. The irony of all of this was that for more than two months there was an offer on their table from a company called Kudu Spectrum to deliver 1 million tests every 10 days with offers of up to 30 million delivered in six weeks. The offer also sat between 50 and 60 per cent below what the Government, and businesses who were lucky enough to find a source, were being charged at the time."
"Today I heard that the Government has placed an order for a further 20 million. If they had moved eight weeks ago when the offer was first made, those supplies would be here already."
And then along came the private sector:
"A week ago, working alongside the lawyer representing Kudu Spectrum and business leaders like Don Braid at Mainfreight, I finally got through to the MOH and within a day the first order for 5 million was placed."
Looks like I fixed the comments gong to trash problem.
As a result of a problem getting a automatic update of a LetsEncrypt SSL certificate yesterday, I turned Cloudflare on.
There has been a change in caching strategy.
So let me know if you have problems with caching. In particular if you aren't logging in:
getting pages where the comment fields are filled out for someone else.
finding that replies sidebar is set for someone else.
I got a booster shot yesterday. I feel tired, stiff and somewhat sore this morning. Definitely not up to my usual focus of writing code at a going to market level. So I took the day off to prevent making costly errors.
Lucky for this site as I had time to drop down a few levels – not so good for my employer.
Luxon on breakfast tv – thinks a Matariki holiday, minimum wage increase and increased maternity leave are all unnecessary because of the cost to "business". Is that all Nats think about. Well-being and decent working conditions for the majority are an extravagance in his wealthy view. For one with so much to want to deny so little to so many, is a "let them eat cake" Marie Antoinette would be proud.
"Yes, we are truly blessed to have the love child of David Cameron and John Key as our next prospective leader. Since we know God is on his advisory team, I’d keep an eye on Luxon making greater use of those “faith based organisations” for his welfare policy delivery. (It worked in the 19th century after all.) Otherwise if elected, a Luxon-led National government appears to be readying itself to deliver another same old package of tax cuts, public service cutbacks, punitive law and order policies and all the other budget-balancing, austerity measures that failed New Zealand previously."
Looks like the honey moon was unexpectedly brief. The media is already poking the holes is what he announces even as he puts the policy to the media. Even with no internal dissent Luxons leadership appears immediately on brittle foundations.
It's a positive change from the sub-morons that typify National – but you know they'll punish her for that.
There is little chance of them breaking through the decades of brute stupidity and incontinent greed to operate in the public interest as they are paid to.
It feels uneasily like we’re watching a hologram of a political leader, one pre-programmed to play only the Solid Gold National Party hits of yesteryear.
Luxflakes has nothing to offer NZ that hasn't been offered by Key and English, Bolger and Shipley!
Remember last year when we opened the border to visiting Aussies…and nobody came.
Albeit, shortly after we had to go into lockdown. Opening a border is not a panacea, sensible people are reluctant to even go to a cafe let alone holiday in another country and it will be like that for quite a while yet.
'In initial deals with the US government, Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine costs $19.50 per dose, compared with $15 for Moderna's shot, $16 for Novavax's, $10 for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine and $4 for AstraZeneca's.'the Sun.
However 433 of the 2177 houses will have the KiwiBuild brand removed from them and will be sold on the open market, further to the KiwiBuild reset announced in September 2019.
It should be a condition of every Kiwibuild sale that any rent charged for these government built homes must not exceed 25% of a tenants income.
So one in five houses that were meant to be “KiwiBuild houses”, ring-fenced for first-home-buyers, will be sold on the open market.
You havent checked your dates . Those figures are from Feb 2020.
Every kiwibuild ballot is over subscribed for some time now……
I was aware of the date contained in the linked news article. 2020 is not that long ago.
ghostwhowalksnz I have read your link, nowhere is it stated that Kiwibuild homes are no longer being sold on the open market.
Houses that are built for Kiwibuild, but are then sold on the open market have their Kiwibuild designation removed.
Why is that?
Does this mean that houses built under the Kiwibuild scheme, but sold to speculators and landlords wouldn't show up on any subscribed or over subscribed list of Kiwibuild houses?
Maybe I should have written; Houses built for Kiwibuild, but removed from the total, and sold on the open market to private speculators and landlords should have their rents fixed at 25% of a tenants income
29/09/2021 · "Only those homes bought by or available to purchase by KiwiBuild eligible buyers are included. If any KiwiBuild homes are offered for sale on the open market they will be removed from the Kiwibuild total."
……If any KiwiBuild homes are offered for sale on the open market they will be removed from the KiwiBuild total.
Market and affordable housing built or enabled by Kāinga Ora (including Hobsonville Point) and homes built through the KiwiBuild programme, which are available or have been sold on the open market.
ghostwhowalks if, (as you seem to be claiming); houses being built for Kiwibuild are no longer having their designation changed to be sold on the open market, then you shouldn't have any problem with the government putting in a stipulation that these houses rents should be fixed at 25% of tenants income as a condition of sale.
So, far as MIQ is concerned and 501s from Australia, I find it really galling that we have have a dedicated MIQ facility effectively giving priority to crims from Australia:
I can understand why they have a dedicated facility given that a lot of them probably have issues that require specialised attention.
However, wouldn't it be better if the government used our limited MIQ spaces as an excuse for delaying the return of these people who are likely to cause trouble here in NZ so that we can let more deserving kiwis back in.
The National Party will allow its MPs to vote with their conscience on the Government’s proposed conversion therapy ban, after controversially forcing its MPs to collectively vote against the bill at the first reading.
“National Party members hold a range of views on this bill, and intend to vote as a matter of conscience during the remaining stages of the bill,” the party’s contribution to the select committee report stated.
The Justice Select Committee received 107,000 submissions on the bill, and more than 800 oral submissions were heard on the bill. The bill remained largely unchanged by the committee, which made recommendations that clarified the bill’s wording, including the type of actions that constitute conversion therapy.
The proposed ban has divided the National Party’s caucus, with a faction of liberal MPs wanting to support the ban, and a faction of socially conservative MPs being opposed. The party’s youth wing, the Young Nats, has also decried the party’s opposition to the bill.
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
I said a while ago National would be better off not chasing the temperamental middle demographic vote, and instead go in the opposite direction.
So I was happy to see Luxon move in that direction. After the troops did a Wim Hof at their party retreat to show voters National is now full of vim and vigour, Luxon announced National may raise the age of superannuation entitlement.
That is playing with political kryptonite, and will go down like a lead balloon with many. But perceptions will slowly change as the reality of New Zealand's economic woes becomes apparent. It will then be seen as a sane and sensible action to take.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/02/national-backs-raising-superannuation-but-labour-continues-to-rule-out-lift.html
Talking of the economy, the Aussies are a little bit worried about their inflation rate reaching 3.5%. I forget what ours is?
Luxon announced National may raise the age of superannuation entitlement.
Labour should do likewise. It’s inevitable that changes will be made to Super. Bill English went into the 2017 election with that policy…and got more votes than Labour. But I suspect it’s more than just Super that will be reviewed with a new Government, it’ll be tax rates and spending on health, education and welfare.
So you attended Osbournes presentation to the National party? And he explained its good politics to plunge your economy into recession as treasurer?
Yes Osborne was their 2nd choice…they wanted….former Tory P.M
'David Cameron made about $10m (£7m) from Greensill Capital before the finance firm he lobbied on behalf of collapsed, according to the BBC.'
Well hopefully the whole National economic strategy isn't determined by the whim of who bothered to show up to talk.
No one from UK could turn up anyway.
They would have been zoom speeches. Sounds more like Osbourne is another 'old mate' like Key
English went into election with 'kick the can down the road' policy to raise super age in 2037-40
20 years from the date of promise
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/325965/govt-to-raise-nz-super-age-to-67-in-2040
Today the Cullen Fund to support future Super payments is worth $58 billion.
By the time they start to draw on the money its projected to be over $150 bill
Sir Michael was a parsimonious minister of finance. But he got somethings right. It's a pity Sir Rob scrapped the other superfund back in the day.
Estimated worth according to the link: 278 billion.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/9916584/Compulsory-super-would-be-worth-278b
Why doesn't parliament just get the RBNZ to write them $278 billion into an account in honour of Rob Muldoons huge mistake?
I mean surely there is a bipartisan consensus that a mistake was made and NZ could make good use of $278 billion right now.
Don't know about inflation as I haven't seen figures for either country. I am not sure that either nation produces a measure of inflation.
There is a proxy in the consumer price index – which is a completely seperate measure.
We have a annual consumer price increase of 5.9% for 2021 and Australia with a different basket for their CPI had 3.5%. But you really have look closely at the baskets because they are quite different.
Both had large increases in fuel and rental costs.
Our one includes house prices, construction material costs and the costs of vehicles, which I can't see any mention of in the aussie one. Those had very high increases here.
If you are relying on the CPI measures as a comparative measure between nz and aussie, then you have successfully identified yourself as a financial idiot. You have to look at what is in the basket.
'Our one includes house prices,'….you sure about that?
My understanding is it doesn't,hate to see how high inflation would be…if it..did.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/consumers-price-index-december-2021-quarter
My italics – note that the percentages in the quote are just for the final quarter of 2021.
So now you know that it may do. I haven’t looked into the basket to see exactly what “higher prices for home ownership” cover. But the rise is following the house mortgage interest rises pretty closely.
I know that in my case, the only major costs of home ownership (outside of principal repayments) are interest rates, body corp fees, and rates. The latter two go up, but not in the order of 4.6%. If I was on a floating rate that percentage rise would be about right. That is why I am currently fixed for another 2.5 years, and considering selling my property to make my partners (or a new property) mortgage free.
Housing?
Stats NZ includes changes in rents, the cost of maintaining houses, and changes in the price of new homes – but not the land they are built on – when it calculates the CPI.
'Can we trust our inflation figures? | Stuff.co.nz
Yeah that doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t look too far down the chain.
However I was answering someone talking about inflation (for which there are many definitions – like the effects of debasement of currency), who was then probably comparing apples with oranges with the CPI measurements of two different nations using different CPI baskets to calculate a proxy for their price inflation.
It is difficult enough for economists to do this, most of the journalism profession is usually totally bemused by it, and its isn’t something you can directly compare. It depends almost entirely on what is present or not present in the basket, and what is important to the particular nation you’re looking at and what they value. For us, clean water is almost a given – but you don’t have to look too far away to find countries where that is major living cost.
The OECD does a pretty good attempt to try to get comparable figures. But realistically, I’d say that the best measure across economies is probably a year on year comparison of The Economist’s Big Mac index. A single consumer product with all of the costs of labour, capital and various grown or manufactured food stuffs inside their particular market.
''If you are relying on the CPI measures as a comparative measure between nz and aussie, then you have successfully identified yourself as a financial idiot. You have to look at what is in the basket.''
Fair enough…let's not use Aussie as a comparative measure.
Nope – just don't use the CPI figures to compare. It is fraught with comparison problems.
Instead look at comparable measures.
I think I will stick with New Zealand's economic data ( TWI etc).
Australias CPI for December quarter was also affected by their lockdowns where they could acess data so they used estimates
They also have an interesting figure
'Trimmed mean annual inflation, which excludes large price rises and falls, increased to 2.6 per cent, the highest since June 2014.'
Our son in Oz says those missing items would double the CPI rate. Their home has gone from $520 000 to $820 000 in 10 months in Varsity Lakes and it is a separate 3 bed 2 bath duplex. $2*aprox per litre, petrol (not the taxes on it of course.)
That is not correct. The basket of goods used to calculate the CPI in Australia does not need to be the same as the one in New Zealand. The basket of goods is chosen to represent the goods bought by the average urban household in the country concerned. These are not likely to be the same in both countries. The CPI reflects the change in the cost of that basket from one period to another in the particular country you have chosen your sample for. Thus the CPI numbers can be compared between countries.
There are a lot of problems with using the CPI as a measure of inflation but the one you are talking about is not one of them. The real problems occur with quality changes in the goods and with substitution effects as the relative price of goods changes within a country from period to period.
The average urban household in Australia doesn't pay for rents or housing then?
Yes they do. And it is included in the calculation of the CPI, just as it is here.
Here is a simple explanation of the subject by the RBA.
https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflation-and-its-measurement.html
Seems legitimate, if unfortunately undermining the case lprent was making. Hes apparently dehydrated at present but no doubt when he recovers he will award you a short lifetime ban for insubordination.
Don't tempt him. At my age of course one must accept that one's remaining lifetime is probably short.
RNZ Morning Report reporting right now on house prices with the word "slowing" prominent in the report. And then it continued by reporting that NZ's annual house price rise is 27%.
"Already ridiculous house prices go up 27%" should have been the headline, and that headline should have been at the top of the news.
yeah nah, thats old news and is not what is happening right now. sales have gone off a cliff – watch for the corresponding effect on values over the next months. values always lag sales.
and of course now jacinda is going to have the opposite effect – with house values dropping into election year.. incumbents are always turfed out in an environment of dropping house values.
doom, we're all doomed
I wouldn't think it would be a liability with numbers like this:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/01/31/three-quarters-of-kiwis-want-house-prices-to-fall/
good point vto-I had heard that house sales are tanking.
Perhaps this should have been mentioned by RNZ in its report.
The prices aren't tanking yet. Just the sales of housing, and increasingly the supply of housing to sell.
We have pretty much gotten to the point where it is increasingly difficult to find somewhere to buy because potential sellers can't find much in their price range anywhere where they want to live.
For instance we could do with a larger living area – because both of us can work from home. But we only have a 55 sq metre apartment and working on top of each other doesn't work for us. Like to sell two apartments on the CBD edge. But we can't afford to buy anywhere in Auckland – which one of us needs for other reasons. But the prices in every urban area with reasonable support systems are ridiculously expensive
So I rent a workspace and we keep our two apartments and keep killing the mortgages. We have at least a query from realtors seeking to see if we want to sell every week. That doesn't include the increasingly desperate bulletins about amazing sales prices in our area from many realtors that are just about our only snail mail these days.
And that is what people are doing – they don't sell because they can't afford to even buy what they already have.
I’d be surprised if the price of ‘normal’ housing drops much. At least not until a lot of cheaper new builds get past being consented, actually get built and wind up on the market.
Just some of the speculative prices on the high end of the market will get hit.
Word from agents is that sales are tanking because they haven't got anything to sell. Alongside that buyers, and banks, are getting cagey that prices aren't going to keep climbing.
Real Estate windows around Queenstown are filled with properties they've sold over the last 6 months with only a couple of live listings. Know of one agent who's been driving a tractor for a balage contractor most of the summer.
But no talk of contracts defaulting and construction going hard out.
why have people stopped selling?
No one's got an answer for that yet.
Possibly fear of not being able to get back into the market if they were to sell if prices suddenly took a leap.
More likely everyone is pretty happy with where they are and enjoying life in Whakatipu. Unless you are completely dependant on tourism (which is a small subset of the local economy) things are pretty rosy around the town. Like there's more 'Hiring Now' signs than Real Estate signs.
Granted discretionary retail has been all over the place in the last six months too, can understand RE being the same.
Possible, and I hope so too.
If that turns out to be the case it will be a fundamental change in the Queenstown community. In the 90's a local politician who rose to be deputy mayor often said that the town turned over half it's resident population every two years. I would agree with that assertion.
That made the town socially stratified around when you arrived so after you've been here a while the town gets rather small. Long term residents tend to ignore the newcomers because they will be gone in a couple of years and the newcomers can't break in so get pissed of and leave after a couple of years. Explains a lot of the attitudes to the place by people who've left.
Move that residency out to 10 years and we might become a more cohesive community.
I wish John Campbell would talk less and just listen to his interviewees, and challenge what is said. He lets so much go by.
e.g. Luxon (TV1) just cited 3 examples of an extra burden on business: new public holiday (Matariki), minimum wage increase, and increased maternity leave.
So do National now oppose any of those 3? It's classic "have it both ways" … mention them for your base but then accept them for the wider public. Journalism 101: follow that up and nail down their position.
Didn't mention the billion $ wage subsidy?
Again, the wage subsidy was supplied via Winz to the employers – who had to prove that they had a loss of 30% in order to secure this wage subsidy, and then was via the employer given to the employees.
In essence, the wage subsidy was an unemployment benefit that was paid out by Winz via employers so as to not overload Winz with requests for benefits as businesses that are shut down for long periods in time generally don't keep staff on their books.
There might have been some very large businesses that have abused that system and they should be rightly called out and be expected to refund that wage subsidy, but for the smaller businesses – and Auckland with its 3 month lockdown was a good example for that – that is not the case. The money received went to workers.
The only payments that businesses got – again if they had that magical drop in revenue of 30% – was the resurgance payment and the wage subsidy for themselves.
I do hope you highlight that your wages are merely, in essence an unemployment benefit, with each pay day.
My wages are my income that i raise/earn for myself via the work i do for either myself, or for someone else.
Unemployment benefits are something you are entitled to if you have worked and paid taxes for a certain time.
But then you were just trying to be smart, right, and the money that YOU earn is just your unemployment benefit. Right?
Just thought it was worth highlighting, and dispite your mental gymnastics, that the wage subsidy was paid via employers to maintain existing employment relationships and minimise employment disruption of the lockdowns. That even worked as designed.
"Unemployment benefits are something you are entitled to if you have worked and paid taxes for a certain time."
Not in NZ they are not….unemployment benefit is not conditional on previous tax payment or employment….you can receive unemployment benefit if you have never done either, it is not an insurance scheme….nor should it be.
And the wage subsidy of $600 a week only equated to $15 an hour for a 40 hour week. Many businesses had to top up.
And some businesses just went along for the ride and had a whoopsie when MSD said they had to pay it back…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/hawkes-bay-company-collapses-after-government-recalls-106k-in-wage-subsidies/NO77A3CASVZZ6GJA4JTCEJ2NCE/
A stock transport company having a 30% drop in turnover because of lockdown, come on.
Yep, that is correct they only had a loss of 27.5 % and that is why they had to pay it back.
but that too is an inconvenient truth, and because they only lost 27.5% of turnover during lockdown they now will declare bankruptcy now rather then when they initially claimed that subsidy. Win win. 🙂
Journalism 101 <> tvnz/rnz.
Campbell's playing the game of morning tv for his paymasters.
Suzie did quite a good job with Luxon today on RNZ Morning Report where she picked Luxon up on his policy to open the borders and dump MIQ immediately thus allowing many more Omicron cases into many parts of NZ. She asked him something like "but if we do this won't it risk overloading the health system?".
Immediately Luxon was in trouble and went into full bluster.
We need to see more journalists taking Luxon-waffle to task-he is getting a free ride.
You've never seen lateral thinking in local govt, right? The Swedes are proving it is actually possible:
If this scheme proves effective, it'll become a classic example of inter-species symbiosis extending into urban habitat. Ecologists may even recognise a cross-cultural intelligence underlying the interaction if it embeds…
Hope those crows don't get beak-cancer!
I honestly don't think that there are enough New Cal. crows, a unique species, in the whole of that territory (NZ's nearest neighbour) to be imported into Sweden to pick up a billion ciggie butts!
Good point but maybe the Swedes have been breeding an immigrant population? Insight into these cunning critters:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018682155/the-new-caledonian-crow-is-way-smarter-than-we-thought
Better still, support people never to smoke, so no butts.
I have to admire Stuart Nash for going on Newstalk ZB with Mike Hosking and Mark Mitchell. Struggling to talk about Charlotte Bellis and the embarrassment it has caused but good on him for fronting up.
Who in the hell listens to Mike Hosking or Mark Mitchell. The former is a ignoramus who is apparently proud of his inability to read or comprehend anything more complex than a slogan, and the latter is literally a dickhead – he seems to think that being male excuses him from thinking before he speaks.
Well – I guess you listen to them 🙂
"Who in the hell listens to Mike Hosking"
Quite a few people by the looks of it. I know this is from April 2021 but I don't think too much has changed in the ratings.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/124981735/newstalk-zb-leads-commercial-radio-results
Ah, it's the pressure, Jimmy. It makes people lose touch with reality.![yes yes](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/thumbs_up.png?x42494)
Actually that is a completely stupid and kind of an irrelevant measurement. When you have time look up how it is ESTIMATED.
It doesn’t tell you how many people are actually listening. I don’t know exactly how our measurements are made. It either measures a small sample of devices with monitoring equipment looking tuning and a device being on in a time slot – but doesn’t measure how many people were in the room or if they were listening. Or it gets a small sample of people writing down what they are listening to.
Those figures are then inflated to approximate total number of radios turned on. Personally the only place I ever hear radio is in cars, or in some industrial workspaces. If more than 5% of the people in those spaces are listening to the radio, I’d be surprised.
I think that those estimates are grossly over inflated especially if you’re looking at how many people are actually listening to the idiots blathering.
Compare that with a site like ours or any online current affairs site where you can look at how many people are reading articles, roughly how long that the page is visible, refreshing pages to read comments, and even where the page has been idle for too long – so you can regard it as stagnant. Those kinds of figures actually have some rigour in their measurement.
Broadcast media estimates are just fairy tales and only useful for looking at percentage gains or losses – and even those you have to look for bias because of the tiny sample sizes.
Yep.
Hosking this morning, with Mitchell was demanding the border be open. What naturally follows from this is 'let it rip'.
31 rest home residents died from Covid in NSW a couple of days ago*. This is what would happen in New Zealand if Hosking had his way. There is no 'sort of' doing pandemic response, it's either robust, or it's not.
Britain recorded 219 Covid deaths today. Italy 479. Adjusted for NZ this is 16 and 44 respectively. Hosking and NACT consider these countries to be free, open, over Covid and out the other side. To them, this is the picture of success.
Decent Kiwis, National and ACT party voters excluded by definition, would be horrified by this.
*My wife's dad is in a dementia unit. He's still around to see his grandkids because of our government's response. If NACT were in charge he would have a much, much higher chance of either being dead, or fighting for his life without knowing what was going on.
Hosking don’t care.
''Decent Kiwis, National and ACT party voters excluded by definition, would be horrified by this.''
You still are making the mistake of basing a successful government Covid response on the number of people who haven't died thanks to this governments protocols.
But what about long term?
The suicides. The business closures. The people hitting the streets after losing rental accommodation. Rampant crime, Lost opportunities both socially and businesswise. The list goes on.
We should put opening up the border to a nationwide vote.
I know the result would be '' OPEN THE FUGGING BORDER.''
That would leave people like you with a chicken little approach to this pandemic to stay at home and ride it out..while the rest of us got on with life while accepting catching Covid was a near given…with the possibility of death.
I also think your comment I quoted was just plain nasty.
I just don't think you get it. Twice our Covid response has delivered world beating outcomes with regard to human life. To deny that is flat out dishonest, which is not surprising.
Given we have beaten back the thing twice, why would we do anything majorly different the third time?
In fact we are doing something different this time and that is accepting that it will enter and spread but the idea is to slow it down as much as possible. We do that with restrictions on the border, restrictions on large gatherings and continued public health measures like maintaining work bubbles and mask wearing.
I'm not sure you'll be able to point to examples of increased suicides, 'people losing rental accommodation', and rampant crime. You are just projecting there.
Sure, some businesses have closed and no doubt there are some lost opportunities but it is a 1 in 100 year pandemic. I think you are being deliberately ignorant about the realities on the ground in the more affected countries. Pretty sure people there are feeling much, much worse.
I'm just putting two and two together with the statement about National and ACT Party voters.
''I'm not sure you'll be able to point to examples of increased suicides, 'people losing rental accommodation', and rampant crime. You are just projecting there.''
By chance Kerre McIvor was talking to someone regarding youth suicides. This person said youth self harm was up over 100%. I don't know the context. But it was on this morning and should be in the archives.
Accommodation: I have previously cited personal examples of that.
Business: I have lost over 5 businesses I regularly deal with. Here is the latest. It's up for sale. I doubt it will sell. Growers like me will lose a great source of parent stock that probably can't be replaced.
https://www.subtropica.co.nz/
Ok.. you and I are not going to agree on anything. So I will ask you one question:
Who would win a referendum to open up the borders?
"Who would win a referendum to open up the borders?"
You're in lalaland if you think people want the border opened up. The only fools to want that have been the Conservatives who have always wanted us to follow Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro into multi-deaths…
If we had done what you said we would have had in excess of 12,000 deaths.
Sometimes conservatives are so frikkin' thick
A referendum would say ‘keep the border closed’
edit: plus such a route would in fact have been worse for business… check the comparable stats with countries with huge death lists… your points fail
''You're in lalaland if you think people want the border opened up. The only fools to want that have been the Conservatives who have always wanted us to follow Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro into multi-deaths…''
Folks, in true Lefty fashion, VTO disagrees with me. He knows Kiwis would vote to keep the borders closed.
I say he's full of crap. ( VTO- vote to open). A referendum has already been held on talkback a few times. Time and again apart from the timid, the call has been: ''we are vaxxed open up.''
But, but, too many Righties on TB!
Then of course we have MSM. Again the sentiments have been similar in many of the interviews I have heard.
No doubt there is a solid core of Kiwis who want the borders to remain shut. They believe we are an Island to oneself. They will be the first to bleat when essentials and professional help isn't available because there's none.
Talkback referenda, huh?
NZ is indeed not an island. The word is "archipelago".
''NZ is indeed not an island. The word is "archipelago".''
Please allow for licentia poetica.
I'm just following everyone else![laugh laugh](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/teeth_smile.png?x42494)
Now I know that you aren’t worth reading. Talkback is the last refuge of the unevolved gullible angry sheep of our society being led around by a conniving guru figures who can talk up a storm. It is also a teeny fraction of our society.
It is like you are recommending that paedophiles should determine our laws governing children – and probably by people with fewer morals. The haters, angry people who want to ruin everyone else seem to live on talkback.
I see talkback as the opinion of the man on the street minus the bias of MSM and blogs and newspapers.
''Unevolved gullible angry sheep.''
I don't consider myself that. But maybe I can't self reflect. This year will certainly answer that question.
Talkback is the opinion of the stupid man with a chip on his shoulder.
The genre revolves around some fool having the time to make a phone call so other fools can hear them whinge about something to someone who is not in a position to resolve their complaint.
Perhaps, Blade, we could help you see beyond your self-described blind-spot?
'Talkback is the opinion of the stupid man with a chip on his shoulder.''
I'm afraid you are wrong.
Today I learnt about panel beating and insurance. Panel beaters do little work now because of the construction of new cars. They just replace parts. A car can even be written off because of hail damage.
But hey.. remember this. Talkback will be a major factor in taking this government out.![cheeky cheeky](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/tongue_smile.png?x42494)
''Perhaps, Blade, we could help you see beyond your self-described blind-spot?''
Perhaps you first need to do a 'deep check' on yourself?
I'm curious what the discussion was around that.
Blade, you said: "But maybe I can't self reflect".
I sensed you were on the brink of self-awareness, and kindly offered to give you a wee nudge.
''I'm curious what the discussion was around that.''
Started to listen on the fly. Simon Barnett's daughter has a car with a dent. The dent had never been a problem for a warrant test until this year when it was. She took the car to two panel beaters. One who wouldn't sign off on work done…another panel beater did ( I don't know the context) sign off on the work done.
That lead to what I assume was an ex panel beater ringing up, and also a man from a car or Insurance agency/ firm explaining things further.
Also discussed was new rules for Jap imports. Any rust must be fix before the car can be sold.
That's the jist of the conversation from my understanding of what I heard.
Re suicides…this view on suicides goes against what i would call reputable sources
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300468852/covid19-no-evidence-suicides-increased-during-delta-lockdown-coroner-says
So unless you have something better than a reckon from the radio I'd prefer to believe the experts thanks.
Why the impatience to open the borders…we are still working on Omicron. You surely would not seriously be suggesting opening the borders right now? I have every confidence that the borders will be opened, when it is the best time, health-wise (and health wise = economy-wise) has been the stance that has got us through so far.
While you may have more knowledge about the link it does not say the business is for sale that I can see…..more a sensible looking at selling methods for pick up. perhaps their couriers have let them down and that is why they are not selling to the rest of us. I see one of the partners is working full time on Covid issues. Anyway I have completed the contact form.
''Re suicides…this view on suicides goes against what i would call reputable sources''
The interviewee ran an organisation/ help centre for troubled youth. I didn't quite hear which because of static.
Of course attempted suicide and self harm probably won't show up in the stats?
That said, fair point. I will accept your link.
''Why the impatience to open the borders…we are still working on Omicron. You surely would not seriously be suggesting opening the borders right now? I have every confidence that the borders will be opened, when it is the best time, health-wise (and health wise = economy-wise) has been the stance that has got us through so far.''
That will depend on a government decision The problem is, by the day, more and more people are losing faith in this government. I know this is a Lefty blog, but the ability of posters to gloss over obvious government blunders time and again is staggering.
''While you may have more knowledge about the link it does not say the business is for sale that I can see.''
That is correct. All customers received a private email announcing the business is for sale.
Definitely a consideration, when actually verified. But then of course even conflating self-harm with a suicide attempt (big fucking "whoa nellie" there), any increase in attempt would be contrasted by the nominal (if not statistically significant) decrease in completion.
''Definitely a consideration, when actually verified. But then of course even conflating self-harm with a suicide attempt (big fucking "whoa nellie" there), ''
You need to be careful there – the two can be inter changeable. Somethings the experts have to sort which is which. Generally self harm is considered a category by itself.
''Any increase in attempt would be contrasted by the nominal (if not statistically significant) decrease in completion.''
?
You talked about "attempted suicide and self harm" together. That's a problem, as you state. They can be different things, and are often difficult to distinguish between. Heck even intentional vs unintentional self harm can have a lot of problems – was risky behaviour a fall, or a jump? Was a jump an attempt at suicide, or self harm?.
If attempted suicide is up, but completed suicides are down, maybe an inadvertent byproduct of lockdowns is that people are left alone less often and get discovered before the outcome becomes permanent. And are the mental health issues associated with lockdowns, or living in a pandemic?
Sure, there are research projects going on into this area right now, but at the moment it's all reckons. The melieu of outcomes sure as shit won't get resolved here, and probably not for years after we start loosening up on tourism visas again.
Good. Because if I see you running lines like this again without an actual reference I'll probably step into moderation mode.
We're in a global crisis, I take a dim view of people politicising suicide.
We want robust debate here, which means a bit of work for commenters. We all put out our reckons, and that's ok, but when it comes to claims of fact on important issues, please check your facts first. It's not hard to google suicide stats, and this is an issue that's been talked about a lot.
''Good. Because if I see you running lines like this again without an actual reference I'll probably step into moderation mode.''
The source was mentioned – ZB talkback Kerre's show. And no, I didn't look it up because I didn't know I would be quoting it.
Notice how I can accept a point… unlike many on this site?
''We're in a global crisis, I take a dim view of people politicising suicide.''
Yes, I'm well acquainted with suicide. That's why I'm not politicising.
You must remember the context when I was asked to explain the suicide numbers. It was about youth. I stated in my original post:
" But what about the long term?"
''https://mentalhealth.org.nz/suicide-prevention/suicide-statistics''
Quote:
''Which number matters more – the rate or the total number?
''Both are important. The total number represents each individual who is suspected to have died by suicide (or, in the official data, the number of people who have been found to have died by suicide). Each one of these people was important and deserves to be acknowledged.
However, the rate is more helpful in comparing suicide data over time because it helps to adjust for population size. It is also more meaningful in helping us to understand how suicide impacts different populations such as Māori and non-Māori. Because the number of Māori is smaller than the number of non-Māori, we need to know their rate per hundred thousand to see that the Māori suicide rate is much higher than the non-Māori suicide rate and know Maori need targeted suicide prevention initiatives.
Does New Zealand have the highest suicide rate in the world?
''No, but we do have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD.''
In hindsight, I ceded the point because I didn't explain myself in a clear enough manner.
.
Yes, this is what I am pointing to. Nothing wrong with saying that you heard something on the radio, but you could easily have googled suicide stats since the pandemic began before using what you thought you heard in your argument.
And yes, made your point more clearly. But still getting something to back it up.
St John reported a 30% increase in mental health / suicide related callouts in 2021, which does backup Blade's claim.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300507841/30-increase-in-mental-healthrelated-incidents-for-st-john-ambulance
Well, kinda but not really.
Blade made a categorical statement about youth self harm and linked it to suicide. St John is talking about mental health callouts up to and including suicide, while mentioning self harm callouts in children (patients under 14). There is often a distinction in the literature between "children (0-14)" and "young people (15-24)", as these groups have very different needs.
Look, nobody is saying lockdowns aren't tough or don't likely exacerbate a number of problems such as mental health problems, self harm, or family violence. That's one reason the government stopped using them (although I personally regard that policy with trepidation).
But have lockdowns saved thousands of lives? Definitely. Have they increased suicides? Nope.
Dude, there were 2,500 more mental health related incidents that required a St John ambulance in 2021.
This is about as good as evidence you can get for what Blade was talking about.
Really? Blade was talking about suicide and intentional self harm.
What about episodes where someone has run out of meds and not been able to restock, for whatever reason? How did the pandemic affect regular mental health consultations – did it lead to poorer-quality care in people for whom self-harm was not a significant risk? Were co-occupants usually calling about the behaviour of people who were stuck at home and more able to be monitored than if they'd just disappeared for a few days? Similarly, were self-harm events noticed by co-occupants when they would have been literally covered up by the time people normally got home? Are people getting ambos called to home when they would otherwise have had cops called on them in the main street? Heck, are the cop pickups for similar cases up or down?
Sure, the surface water is swirling around suspiciously. Is it a giant drain? Is it a fish for dinner? Is it a maelstrom that'll suck a person down 800ft? All we know is that it's swirling suspiciously.
Nah. It's a hint. Much better evidence would be more precise analyses of ambo case notes. Even better evidence than that would be a combo of the NMDS admissions dataset, the outpatients dataset, and of course the primhd mental health database. Throw in some case studies and qualitative interviews, you've got the bulk of a solid thesis.
But that takes more effort than going for broke on the basis of a very large-grained statistic from a single referral organisation.
''Ohs said there had been a concerning rise in the number of mental health and suicide attempt incidents.''
That from Maui's link.
You give a lot of reasons why and why not that could be true or otherwise.
What you are really doing is doing my work for me. Does it matter what the cause is, and what category a problem comes under?
From my orginal post:
''But what about long term?
The suicides. The business closures. The people hitting the streets after losing rental accommodation. Rampant crime, Lost opportunities both socially and businesswise. The list goes on.''
I'm not doubting the figures of mental health incidents. But suicides haven't increased. And you're trying to lump them together.
With your original comment, "the suicides" don't seem to have increased at all.
Business closures, homelessness, and crime? Some might have increased due to the lockdown. Or was it due to the pandemic?
Increase homelessness is due to amateur landlordism, absentee landlords, and Airbnb'ers.
Increased crime is due to Peter Dutton.
''Increase homelessness is due to amateur landlordism, absentee landlords, and Airbnb'ers.''
Have you ever asked yourself what the government is doing regulating private landlords?
If a tenant doesn't like their accommodation, they should bugger off. It should be called democracy.
This is how screwed our country is.
In another post I said the hallmark of this government is about being fair. But being fair in socialism means people have to suffer because socialists have no idea about business.
In this case, both the landlord and tenant are victims.
There is no way I'm spending one nano-second looking up Kerre McIvor's archives.
It's up to you to provide the proof that 'youth self harm is up over 100%' and not by linking to a lunatic caller who rang into 1ZB.
The ZB archive for Kerre's show has not been logged as far as I can tell.
”Lunatic caller who rang into ZB.”
I can promise you this was no lunatic.
Some facts, any facts, would be great.
I'm also (sort of) interested in the demise of the tropical plant wholesaler which you claimed was proof of the evils of Jacinda's totalitarian over-response to Covid.
Could you please expand on this nutty theory?
Sure, this is going to sound nutty.
They couldn't operate under the conditions this dopey hapless government has foisted on this country.
From their site:
''We are currently only taking orders for pick ups from Waipu and deliveries to Northland. Sadly, we will not be selling plants to the rest of NZ until further notice.''
Notice the word Sadly?
And now they have done the numbers and realised that under Jacinda they have no chance of recovery, so the business is for sale.
That is one of the problems with talkback – transient, hard to find, and when you do get it, you have to spend ages finding whatever you’re looking for – if it existed at all.
Not to mention that you have little idea of any validity of the veracity of the person making the claims because they will state as fact without having to provide links.
In other words – talkback is mostly interesting bullshit, with about as much validity as talking to another idiot in bar.
Not my fault the session hasn't been archived. I have popped an email off to ZB. I would hate to disappoint you.
Perhaps they should take lessons from RadioNZ who seem to have theirs up shortly (ie within minutes) after the program finishes for any of the talk-talk sessions.
From the times I have looked at commercial radio archives or seen judgements on their sins, there always seems to be missing material. I suspect that somewhere in the backend there is a lawyer censoring what is defamatory or unlawful.
But even then to find that something is missing. it is tortuous having to slowly work your way through long recording finding the bit that you wanted to re-listen to. It’d be nice if they just got a machine to transcribe it with timestamps. That would make the pearls of wisdom searchable.
Blade suicides have decreased, Check the veracity of your assertions.
And do a Deep Check (please).
"Who in the hell listens to Mike Hosking or Mark Mitchell."
Jimmy & Blade.
That's two (almost quite a few).
Oh, plus Mike and Mark (double the audience, right there!).
Oh I hear his pathetic borderline tantrums via Media Watch when they highlight his flip-flop goldfish brained reckons. His credibility is shot and he should've been given away years ago.
I was listening to the Hosking/Mitchell double team against Nash this morning. An embarrassment to broadcasting. Nash should withdraw from this slot like the Prime Minister did. This type of fuckwittery from Hosking does nothing at all for the well being of decent New Zealanders.
"….withdraw from the slot….."
Should do, but then you're accused of running away from the "tough questions". It's a hit job they play, probably rehearsed, that is easily soaked up by the gullible. I would think some decent people have been manipulated by this form of propaganda.
Please provide a link so I can check this out.
Oh, and Muttonbird, don't listen to talkback. You will find NSRadio a better fit for both your health and your political views.
So when is this government going to bring in a government loan scheme for people wanting to buy their first home? It is easily the best possible solution to several ills and is long overdue. And would secure many many votes. Isn't it a no-brainer?
Election year I imagine.![laugh laugh](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/teeth_smile.png?x42494)
I hope you're right.
Leaving matters up to the "free market" has been proved to not work… other than for the most simple things like undies and plastic buckets..
Does that apply to outsize bloomers? Asking for a friend of the ghost of Mabel Howard, bless her.
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22391156
Funny how the sizes still don't really standardise between brands 68 years later.
vto-that might put further pressure on house prices….though as we discussed above house sales are now starting to plummet so it might be a good time to do this.
Yes, it would increase the number of buyers, which does put pressure on the market. But that is no reason to not do it. Perhaps how it worked in the olden days should be checked.
The pressure on our 'market' today comes from investors. It is all investors who have caused this great massive increase. They should be turfed out. Imagne a 'market' in which only owner-occupiers could buy and sell – it would all be much more realistic and reflect the true need for housing, rather than reflecting central bank monetary policy, govt investment settings and tax rates, or anything else to do with money rather than a bed at night. It is all shitted up imo ('scuse language)
With more people able to buy, there will be more competition so houses prices will rise.
Yep, I wouldn't throw any more petrol on that fire, in terms of increasing the amount of money that can be directed to purchasing real estate.
Either increase housing supply or decrease potential to make speculative profits (e.g. CGT, empty house tax, rent caps etc).
Ah when life was simpler.
When life was simpler – YouTube
no idea who they are, but the satire is good.
Satire?
lol.
There is a great documentary on U Tube for fans of The Fast Show.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWCkVdXpC4
The first few minutes will be familiar to anyone who has been ignored by a group of men and had their ideas appropriated by others.
Paul Whitehouse pays tribute to Harry Enfield as the one who gave some of the comics their break.
Harry and Paul are brilliant!
'Women know your place' is another one I found raaather….amusing.
More on the benefits of the free market, according to the would-be PM with 7 homes
"Australia had approved 60 suppliers and had enough tests to offer them up to schools, Luxon told Morning Report.
"If Australia has approved 60 providers that have met their standards we should just adopt those same [companies]."
"I would also use the private sector, the big businesses like Mainfreight and Air New Zealand and Foodstuffs and Zuru Toys, who have big procurement agencies and divisions – get them out here procuring supplies for us."
Obviously Luxon hasn't been paying attention to the RAT shambles across the ditch.
Private suppliers, with slack federal government oversight, importing unapproved, dodgy RAT tests and charging exorbitant prices in a tight market to those who can least afford it.
A brilliant idea from Christopher7…
'National announced on Tuesday it wants rapid antigen tests in schools – students and staff tested twice weekly, like they do in Australia.
"Why in New Zealand, do we accept that, 'Oh sorry, we just didn't get the rapid antigen tests last year'," Luxon told reporters.
There are 800,000 schoolkids in New Zealand. Our current supply of 5 million rapid antigen tests wouldn't even last three weeks, and that doesn't even take into account teacher tests. There would need to be millions and millions of tests available. '-Newshub
Ol' Luxxy's a nitwit!
Simple answer…the government sat on their arses.
"And up to last week that meant that the only immediate source the government could find was what businesses had already ordered themselves and, no matter what language you choose to use, those supplies were requisitioned by the MOH. The irony of all of this was that for more than two months there was an offer on their table from a company called Kudu Spectrum to deliver 1 million tests every 10 days with offers of up to 30 million delivered in six weeks. The offer also sat between 50 and 60 per cent below what the Government, and businesses who were lucky enough to find a source, were being charged at the time."
"Today I heard that the Government has placed an order for a further 20 million. If they had moved eight weeks ago when the offer was first made, those supplies would be here already."
And then along came the private sector:
"A week ago, working alongside the lawyer representing Kudu Spectrum and business leaders like Don Braid at Mainfreight, I finally got through to the MOH and within a day the first order for 5 million was placed."
Poor deluded boy. It is harder to do than say.
Looks like I fixed the comments gong to trash problem.
As a result of a problem getting a automatic update of a LetsEncrypt SSL certificate yesterday, I turned Cloudflare on.
There has been a change in caching strategy.
So let me know if you have problems with caching. In particular if you aren't logging in:
I got a booster shot yesterday. I feel tired, stiff and somewhat sore this morning. Definitely not up to my usual focus of writing code at a going to market level. So I took the day off to prevent making costly errors.
Lucky for this site as I had time to drop down a few levels – not so good for my employer.
Thanks, lprent. Comments are showing now. Can’t vouch for the quality of them but at least they are there. 🙂
But I'm not responsible for the quality of other people's comments.
It isn't my concern as a sysop. It could be my concern as a moderator. But everyone knows to read the policy about behaviour – right?
Sorry, I meant the quality of my own comments.
Rest and fluids I was told. Thanks for your work here.
Luxon on breakfast tv – thinks a Matariki holiday, minimum wage increase and increased maternity leave are all unnecessary because of the cost to "business". Is that all Nats think about. Well-being and decent working conditions for the majority are an extravagance in his wealthy view. For one with so much to want to deny so little to so many, is a "let them eat cake" Marie Antoinette would be proud.
''Cost to business". Is that all Nats think about?
Good question. If I was asked to render down the belief systems of Labour and National into one sentence, it would be:
National: How many chickens can we get in the pot?
Labour: It's ALL about being fair.
Not the best of choices.
That's 2 sentences.
Fairness?
Makes you gag, Blade?
Figures.
''That's 2 sentences.''
Depends on how you perceive things, Robert.
Given you wear a monocle over your left eye, your range of vision is of course blinkered.
Thanks for another waste of space post. Although I have to admit I liked your post yesterday.
"Yes, we are truly blessed to have the love child of David Cameron and John Key as our next prospective leader. Since we know God is on his advisory team, I’d keep an eye on Luxon making greater use of those “faith based organisations” for his welfare policy delivery. (It worked in the 19th century after all.) Otherwise if elected, a Luxon-led National government appears to be readying itself to deliver another same old package of tax cuts, public service cutbacks, punitive law and order policies and all the other budget-balancing, austerity measures that failed New Zealand previously."
Werewolf – clear-sighted.
http://werewolf.co.nz/2022/02/gordon-campbell-on-luxons-second-hand-clothes/
Looks like the honey moon was unexpectedly brief. The media is already poking the holes is what he announces even as he puts the policy to the media. Even with no internal dissent Luxons leadership appears immediately on brittle foundations.
So hence the rise of …. drum roll…. Nicola Willis.
(rumours might be right)
She's a Smarty-pants, alright!
It's a positive change from the sub-morons that typify National – but you know they'll punish her for that.
There is little chance of them breaking through the decades of brute stupidity and incontinent greed to operate in the public interest as they are paid to.
If the drum roll lasts too long, or Luxons politics are too amorphous, she will have difficulty differentiating herself.
From the Gordon Campbell link:
Luxflakes has nothing to offer NZ that hasn't been offered by Key and English, Bolger and Shipley!
NZ, beware the sugary-tongued serpent!
"Luxflakes"
Enjoying the elegance of that.
I know the answer Blade…
it depends on the size of the chickens and the size of the….pot.
You are the only true socialist on this site, Blazer. Know your enemy… and stay away from the pot, while offering the kids candyfloss.
Remember last year when we opened the border to visiting Aussies…and nobody came.
Albeit, shortly after we had to go into lockdown. Opening a border is not a panacea, sensible people are reluctant to even go to a cafe let alone holiday in another country and it will be like that for quite a while yet.
hopefully. Aussies might want a break this time though.
Pfizer cost $36.50 per dose for NZ Govt.
Government paid $36.50 per dose of Pfizer vaccine (msn.com)
'In initial deals with the US government, Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine costs $19.50 per dose, compared with $15 for Moderna's shot, $16 for Novavax's, $10 for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine and $4 for AstraZeneca's.'the Sun.
@todays ex rate-$US19.50=apx$NZ30….
100 bucks to stay well! Cheap at twice the price.
'New Zealand's COVID-19 vaccination programme will cost $1.4 billion, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed for the first time.
Budget 2021: $1.4 billion allocated to New Zealand's COVID-19 vaccination programme | Newshub
So much for providing housing low income New Zealanders and cooling the housing market.
1 in 5 Kiwibuild homes are being made available to private landlords and investors to buy.
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/103493/kiwibuild-stock-take-govt-currently-26-million-out-pocket-buying-and-selling
It should be a condition of every Kiwibuild sale that any rent charged for these government built homes must not exceed 25% of a tenants income.
You havent checked your dates . Those figures are from Feb 2020.
Every kiwibuild ballot is over subscribed for some time now.
You need to be able to find the front door to comment you know.
https://universalhomes.co.nz/resources/affordable-homes-in-partnership-with-kiwibuild/
I was aware of the date contained in the linked news article. 2020 is not that long ago.
ghostwhowalksnz I have read your link, nowhere is it stated that Kiwibuild homes are no longer being sold on the open market.
Houses that are built for Kiwibuild, but are then sold on the open market have their Kiwibuild designation removed.
Why is that?
Does this mean that houses built under the Kiwibuild scheme, but sold to speculators and landlords wouldn't show up on any subscribed or over subscribed list of Kiwibuild houses?
Maybe I should have written; Houses built for Kiwibuild, but removed from the total, and sold on the open market to private speculators and landlords should have their rents fixed at 25% of a tenants income
29/09/2021 · "Only those homes bought by or available to purchase by KiwiBuild eligible buyers are included. If any KiwiBuild homes are offered for sale on the open market they will be removed from the Kiwibuild total."
https://www.hud.govt.nz/research-and-publications/statistics-and-research/the-government-housing-dashboard/definitions-government-housing-dashboard/
ghostwhowalks if, (as you seem to be claiming); houses being built for Kiwibuild are no longer having their designation changed to be sold on the open market, then you shouldn't have any problem with the government putting in a stipulation that these houses rents should be fixed at 25% of tenants income as a condition of sale.
So, far as MIQ is concerned and 501s from Australia, I find it really galling that we have have a dedicated MIQ facility effectively giving priority to crims from Australia:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300434756/covid19-501-deportee-flights-to-resume-dedicated-isolation-hotel-stood-up
I can understand why they have a dedicated facility given that a lot of them probably have issues that require specialised attention.
However, wouldn't it be better if the government used our limited MIQ spaces as an excuse for delaying the return of these people who are likely to cause trouble here in NZ so that we can let more deserving kiwis back in.
Theres a whole lot of special groups for MIQ spots.
Going to Antarctica, thats around 900 foreign nationals per year.
medical professionals relocating to NZ , thats 300 per month.
National sports groups representing the country, entertainers Maybe 10 per month ?
Surely a way to stick it to the Australian government would be to tell them they had to apply in the ballot like everyone else.
…or go into MIQ in Waiouru for 12 months?
Democracy breaks out within the National Party:
King Solomon Luxon has decided to please both factions and cut the child in two.
That's Whizz-dome, right there!
"The FDA accepts legal aid from Pfizer and delays releasing licensure pages till May"
https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2022/01/31/fda-pfizer-may220131/
Test