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.
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
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Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
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Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
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Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
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Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
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Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
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Yesterday the Mayor released what he calls his “plan to save public transport” which is part of his final proposal for the Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP). This comes following consultation on the draft version that occurred in March which showed, once again, that people want more done on transport, especially ...
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or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. ...
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The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
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The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
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The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
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David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
SPECIAL REPORT:Islands Business in Suva Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist and Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital journalist Police have used tear gas and stun grenades on rioters at an airport near Nouméa as the chaos in New Caledonia stretched into its sixth day. Five people, including two police officers, have died and hundreds of ...
Asia Pacific ReportThe global human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on France to not “misuse” a crackdown in the ongoing unrest in the non-self-governing French Pacific territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in the wake of a controversial vote by the French Parliament to adopt a bill changing the territory’s ...
A major provider of school lunches fears the government's new $3 limit for most students will see them eating more pre-packaged and processed food. ...
The star of Dark City: The Cleaner takes us through his life in TV, including the VHS revolution and the John Campbell impression that started it all. Best known for his comedic roles, Cohen Holloway says he struggled at times to maintain the stone cold facade of serial killer on ...
David Hill remembers an old friend, who you’ve probably never heard of. My friend Doug never travelled; he had little interest in the world beyond his own tiny rural town. I’ve rarely known anyone who radiated such contentment. Doug (I’ll call him that) died in March. You won’t know him. ...
Some of the earliest photos of life in Aotearoa are on display at Auckland Museum right now – but the identities of some of the people in them are a mystery.What was it like to be one of the first people in New Zealand to have their photo taken? ...
Since its founding almost a decade ago, Featherston Booktown has grown into one of the country’s most interesting and idiosyncratic literary events. Erin Banks reports from the audience. “Come in, have you had lunch? I’m about to make a cheese toastie.” Mary Biggs, operations manager of Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival, ...
After 33 years abroad, Loveni Enari recently returned to Aotearoa and Samoa in what a friend joked was an “existential crisis”. He learnt and re-learnt so much about his family, friends and both countries. Almost as an afterthought, he got a Samoan tatau. This is his story. (Accompanying it are ...
Nearly 30 years ago, two people told me they’d killed a woman they knew. I thought the truth would come out, that others would tell it. In the end, I had to. The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Fact: in 1995, Angela Blackmoore ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at the week and shines a light on some increasingly rare longform journalism. Mōrena and welcome to The Weekend where there will sadly be no aurora to see. After a busy week last week of short, sharp pieces, this week we swung the other way, ...
ANALYSIS:By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a revered Kanak visionary, was inspirational to indigenous Pacific political activists across Oceania, just like Tongan anthropologist and writer Epeli Hao’ofa was to cultural advocates. Tragically, he was assassinated in 1989 by an opponent within the independence movement during ...
Forget thin is in, apparently now bigger is better … or is it? After over a decade of body positivity, girls, teens and women are even more confused about what body positivity actually is. The movement began with women confronting unrealistic expectations of how their bodies should look. But sub-strands ...
Grace always sat at the bar at the back of The Cambridge, where she could watch who came in. A huge mirror ran the length of the pub, so you could sometimes watch people without them knowing. The mirror made the place seem a lot bigger than it really was. ...
MONDAY Sheriff Mark Mitchell rose at dawn. He had a long day’s ride ahead of him. He was headed for Waikeria. Waikeria! Even the name itself stirred his blood, and set root in his imagination. There was nothing and no one in Waikeria. But he would bend it to his ...
The first phase of the inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones finished this week, turning up plenty of revelations and few answers. But through all the confusion, heartbreak and antipathy on display, the simple fact at the heart of this case remains: if little Lachie’s body had ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Benjamin, Professor in Art History, University of Sydney “She’s no oil painting”. Those were the unkind words of a colleague commenting on the subject of Vincent Namatjira’s acrylic painting, Gina. Every one of the prominent Australians and cultural heroes in Namatjira’s ...
Government plans to require local councils hold a referendum on whether to have Māori wards breaches the Treaty of Waitangi, a Waitangi Tribunal report has found. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney This year the National Rugby League (NRL) opened its season in Las Vegas. It was an audacious move by the league’s ambitious head honcho Peter V’Landys to showcase the game in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate Professor, Music Industry, RMIT University Leading music organisations have praised the federal budget for its investment in the live music sector. The budget includes A$8.6 million for a program called Revive Live: to provide essential support to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marnee Shay, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, The University of Queensland The 2024 federal budget contains A$110 million for Indigenous education. This includes funding for various different organisations to represent and help Indigenous people as well as scholarships in a bid to ...
Air New Zealand has confirmed Nouméa’s Tontouta International airport in New Caledonia is closed until Tuesday. The airline earlier told RNZ it would update customers as soon as it could. Earlier today, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report government officials had been working on an “hourly basis” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Linley, PhD Candidate in Ecology, Charles Sturt University Grant Linley Australia’s unprecedented Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20 created ideal conditions for misinformation to spread, from the insidious to the absurd. It was within this context that a bizarre story ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcel Scharth, Lecturer in Business Analytics, University of Sydney OpenAI executive Mira Murati launching GPT-4o.OpenAI Earlier this week OpenAI launched GPT-4o (“o” for “omni”), a new version of the artificial intelligence (AI) system powering the popular ChatGPT chatbot. GPT-4o is promoted ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treasure McGuire, Assistant Director of Pharmacy, Mater Health SEQ in conjoint appointment as Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Bond University and as Associate Professor (Clinical), The University of Queensland Speedkingz/Shutterstock Menopause is a natural biological process that marks the end of a ...
A new poem by Hannah Patterson. Xiāng There’s a pear tree in our backyard And Xiāng tells me She can’t eat them anymore Not after some things that have happened in her life. She tells me, in Mandarin The word for pear sounds the same as the word for disassociation ...
‘Cycling Works’ aims to show business support for citywide cycle infrastructure. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, supermarket giant Foodstuffs lost its attempt to block the construction of a cycle lane outside Thorndon New World in Wellington. The Spinoff’s Wellington editor ...
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 Slow Productivity by Cal Newport (Penguin, $40)Taking out the top spot in Auckland this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University For decades, Australia has exported uranium – but not used it, other than in the Lucas Heights research reactor. But change is coming. We now face a rapidly deepening commitment to ...
"In future I should walk away," Green MP Julie Anne Genter says after complaints over an exchange in Parliament and from two members of the public. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Graffam, PhD Candidate in Theatre, Monash University Gianna Rizzo/Malthouse Music pumps; lights pulsate; two sweaty bodies sway together, touching, breathing in each other’s scent. A male body framed by downlight restlessly shifts between stances and gestures. He undresses. The intensity ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sandra van der Laan, Professor of Accounting, University of Sydney Mtaya/Shutterstock At some point, you or someone else will need to make a decision about your “send-off”. Most Australians die in an institution, such as a hospital or aged care facility. ...
Asia Pacific Report Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai — who is also Chairman of the Melanesian Spearhead Group — has reaffirmed MSG’s support of the pro-independence umbrella group Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) stance opposing the French government’s constitutional bill “unfreezing” the New Caledonia Electoral Roll. It is ...
Producer Susan Leonard remembers her father Ernie, a pioneer of Māori television, and how his legacy lives on in Pathfinders.My father was a fabulous man. His name was Ernie Leonard and he started in TV in the 1970s when it was still glamorous – when TVNZ made behind the ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk, and Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist The suspected ringleaders of the unrest in New Caledonia have been placed in home detention and the social network TikTok has been banned as French security forces struggle to restore law and order. The French ...
Multi-year appropriations - which give the government authority to spend money without reapplying annually - are loosening Parliament's control of the public purse, auditor-general says. ...
Dr. Eric Chuah who stood for a centrist NZ political party in the October 2023 NZ Elections for Maungakiekie Auckland will stand as a candidate for Tauranga City Council Ward of Matua-=Otumoetai and Mayor of Tauranga. ...
If you can’t get to the comedy fest, let us bring the comedy fest to you. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. The New Zealand International Comedy Festival is in full swing at the moment, with a veritable smorgasboard of comedy treats ...
A new poll commissioned by Unions Wellington shows an overwhelming majority of Wellingtonians oppose the Council’s plan to sell the 34% public stake in Wellington Airport. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aruna Sathanapally, Chief Executive, Grattan Institute, Grattan Institute A central focus of this week’s budget is the treasury’s forecast for inflation. By this time next year, inflation is projected to be back within the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target range. Inflation has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yolanda van Heezik, Professor of Ecology, University of Otago Getty Images Cities across Aotearoa New Zealand are trying to solve a housing crisis, with increasing residential density a key solution. But not everyone is happy about the resulting loss of natural ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Reeve, Deputy Program Director, Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute WDG Photo/Shutterstock For years, the electricity sector has been the poster child for emissions cuts in Australia. The sector achieved a stunning 26% drop in emissions over the past 15 ...
It’s often the last thing people want to do, but asking someone if they’re having suicidal thoughts is a critical first step to helping them. Content warning: this story discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. For a list of resources that can help if you or someone you know is feeling ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy J. Ralph, Associate Professor, Macquarie University The pyramids at Giza, like dozens of others, are located several kilometres west of the current path of the Nile.Alex Cimbal / Shutterstock The largest field of pyramids in Egypt – consisting of 31 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute ABO PHOTOGRAPHY/Shutterstock Receiving a cancer diagnosis is life-changing and can cause a range of concerns about ongoing health. Fear of cancer returning is one ...
Winston Peters has been on tour around the Pacific while two unrelated crises unfolded, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Two separate ...
This is the Mount Everest of artificial meatcraft.Ah, bacon. Pig’s gold. Toast’s consolation. Dawn’s savoury embrace. If meat was a currency, bacon would be the Benjamin Franklin. Or if you’re feeling patriotic, the Lord Rutherford. When it comes to fake bacon, the obvious question is: why bother? In the ...
From illegal milk to sprinkler bans and airplane ticket scams, Tyrone Barugh is on a one-man mission through New Zealand’s most obscure legal loopholes. I’m deep undercover, investigating Wellington’s criminal underworld. Inside this store, I’ve been told there is a million-dollar trade in illicit substances. A man dressed in black ...
It’s been a recess week at Parliament, which might indicate slim pickings for conversation topics for the Raw Politics team. But things are never dull in politics, especially with a new Government keen to follow through on its law and order promises, and a NZ First minister who wants to ...
Dear Hon Judith Collins, Minister of Defence, and Hon Christopher Penk, Associate Minister of Defence I have written to you, to attempt to give you an insight into the incredible hardship of being an NZDF family. Whilst I cannot speak on behalf of serving personnel, I can speak from my ...
Analysis: What a difference a year makes. In mid 2023, Wayne Brown the Auckland Mayor was a politician diminished by a calamitous response to the region’s Anniversary Weekend storm emergency and later forced against his preference into a half sale only of the city’s airport shares. His demeanour among his ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 17 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
New Zealand’s drug legislation hasn’t been overhauled in nearly 50 years, in spite of a recommendation from the Law Commission in 2011 to do so. Our Misuse of Drugs Act was passed in 1975 and is based on a United Nations framework set in 1961. Now a new organisation, Harm ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) A free copy of this amazing story of a woman who operated behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France was up for grabs this past fortnight. Readers were asked to share a story of wartime bravery, ...
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.
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
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.
''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.
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.
send that suggestion to MEGAN
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.
A wink and a nod.
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