This news is a bit of a shocker for the Government and I bet a Treasury staffer is having their nether regions roasted right now.
A draft of the discussion paper concerning the removal of the effect of the treaty clause in the SOE Act from the partially privatised companies was inadvertently put on Treasury’s website yesterday for a short while.
The Herald downloaded a copy. It reports the changes include removal of the following passages:
* “The Government … on balance, tends to favour no Treaty clause.”* “On balance, the Government tends to the view that continued application of section 9, or … a new Treaty clause … is not appropriate when its policy intent is for the companies to be treated like other private sector companies.”* “Ministers’ powers … will not be as great as the powers they have under the SOE Act … This is part of the intent of the policy – to move the companies into a legislative and governance framework that will create a greater commercial focus to their operations.”* “In respect of institutional investors, section 9 will not be well understood … and have a negative effect on investment ..”
Obviously the Government did not want to scare the MP. The reference to Ministers’ powers not being as great as under the SOE Act belies the line that some have been running that a shareholding of 51% provides just as much power as a shareholding of 100%. It does not and the draft document recognises this.
The problem for the Government is that once it decides to remove the effect of section 9, which it will, it will then be accused of having made its mind up and not consulting in good faith.
One question that the MSM should ask is that the issue has obviously been recognised for a while. When was it first identified? If this happened before the election why was the Government’s intentions kept silent?
I can’t believe that the Government would not be truthful to us about elements of asset sales including never intending to observe the Treaty, and always intending to limit the power of Ministers despite a theoretical 51% “controlling” Crown stake National continuously emphasize.
Its like National don’t give a shit about our strategic assets apart from how much cash they can be flogged off for. 🙄
and I bet a Treasury staffer is having their nether regions roasted right now.
Give the staffer a frakking medal I say. And the NZ Herald.
Because JK knows perfectly well that National would not have been re-elected if he’d campaigned on a full asset sales policy. This is a step change to the end goal.
We have seen directors of a finance company on trial recently for misleading in a prospectus. Currently the SOE’s have the following requirement :
1) The principal objective of every State enterprise shall be to operate as a successful business and, to this end, to be—
(a) as profitable and efficient as comparable businesses that are not owned by the Crown; and
(b) a good employer; and
(c) an organisation that exhibits a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates and by endeavouring to accommodate or encourage these when able to do so.”
Provision (a) may be accepted as a given whether it is retained or not, but any investor should be aware that government appointed directors (representing a majority), will adhere to (b) and (c) whether they are enshrined in company requirements or not.
By removing these requirements however, National may be seen subsequently as having misled minority shareholders. The sort of problem that may occur for example would be if a government determined to manage the company to put a priority on long term continuity of supply, for example by investment in new technology, rather than exploiting a short term opportunity for price increases and increased dividends.
John Key may be happy for investors to think that they can work to exploit the market (and employees) for short term gain, but he cannot bind future governments.
What’s the problem here? There were originally not going to put any Treaty clause in but when they realised that might be a problem they added a couple of options around this. Seems responsive to me. You do like Governments to be responsive don’t you mickeysavage?
here were originally not going to put any Treaty clause in but when they realised that might be a PR problem they added a couple of options around this. Once the cat is out of the bag they seem responsive to me.
FIFY
Basically National don’t understand the importance of the Treaty and the Iwi corporates who exist because of those Treaty settlements understand that now, too.
The information lower down in the same article re limiting of powers of relevant ministers over the new partially owned assets is frightening … let Parliament begin.
Fill the Board of Directors of the power generation venture with passive Government directors, effectively handing control to the remaining 49% private sector directors on the board.
It’s strange that an otherwise obsdcure draft clause would add the extra drop of petrol to the asset ownership bonfire this government has set itself around the Beehive.
As the complaint about this Treaty clease peaks around Waitangi Day and in the weeks after in Parliament, the Government will find itself against a particularly Maori version of nationalism against asset sales, perhaps in a manner that we have not seen since Tanui took the government to the Court of Appeal against Coalcorp for similar reasons some years ago.
It was excellent to hear Winston Peters on National Radio this morning railing against the American film-maker James Cameron buying land. At least, unlike the Labour party, he is being consequential in his criticisms of foreign ownership. If only the Labour Party had even a single spokesperson with similar penetrating clarity.
Oddly the Greens have been quite ineffective in this space to date. And yet as they have shown in the last decade with GE and mining in national parks, they have pushed civic action on the ground really well.
Between Maori, the Greens, and Labour, this asset ownership debate could be marshalled into the next great Foreshore and Seabed march to Parliament.
The simple question for the next three months of debate leading up to Budget 2012 is whether the “Xenophobia” argument wins over the “Own Our Future” argument.
At the moment “Own Our Future”, but from a Maori perspective, is winning. The government is being spectacularly inept and it will take an almighty effort of political management to get this back on track.
Remember this Government has already effectively “booked” the 50% sale of all the big four plus Air New Zealand, and without these sales proceding apace the Government’s debt position is many billions of dollars worse than it already is.
The trick in the next year will be to use every legal means to delay every sale, to make it so politically toxic to foreign buyers that taking a minority stake is not worth it. In turn, without being able to book those proceeds, the Gvoernment will look like it had no other means to manage the finances, other than a financial prescription that other political parties had laid out prior to the election (such as increasing the top tax rate back to where it was).
If anyone can remember this far back, the turning back of the Swiss aluminium firm at Aramoana was a massive blow to the Muldoon government – people power really can work even in the face of every organised government instrument and all scales of itnernational capital.
This little Treaty clause shows that there really are incendiary moments to stop this entire sale process, sometimes surprising ones.
This asset sales process can be stopped, not just railed against.
I think the James Cameron purchase of land is different from the Crafar farms sale. Cameron intends to be resident, and presumably will pay taxes and rates here. It’s a small farm, which will hopefully keep any profits in NZ, unlike the Crafar farms.
However, I’m not keen on wealthy overseas buyers pushing up NZ land prices because they are willing to pay more.
I am more concerned about the continuation of the Hollywoodisation of the NZ film industry, in which Peter Jackson has played a major part, and Cameron looks like extending.
“However, I’m not keen on wealthy overseas buyers pushing up NZ land prices because they are willing to pay more.”
This concern is understandable if you are looking to buy a property. It is less understandable if you are looking to sell. Getting a higher price for your property as a seller is always beneficial.
Russell Norman on TV3 a couple of days ago spoke of a citizens’ referendum emerging in about two weeks for our delight and support against asset sales … anyone have any further details ? Thank you for the bonfire imagery .. let it blaze !
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 1.3.2.1
Explain how the Chinese are going to be magically exempt from paying rates and GST and income tax.
Vertical integration – The Chinese will be running the farms at a loss. Rates will still be paid but they’ll be minor compared to how much we’ll be losing.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 1.3.2.1.1.1
Yes, I do remember Muldoon and Aramoana. And with joy I also remember it took only one brilliant woman to cross the floor and bring him down on the nuclear issue … who might be the Marilyn Waring of this paltry government ? Auckland Central might be promising ? ( And refer here for those to young to know …http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Waring )
If I read you right, you are suggesting Nikki Kaye, might have the potential to do “a Marilyn Waring” – I would advise against holding your breath!
Any email response had by NK, is 100% a hack job cut and paste from the party propaganda booklet! Not really an indication that she might cross the floor at any point in time…..happy to be proved wrong!
Muzza .. you’re probably right, simply offering my thoughts .. but Marilyn also might have seemed an unlikely ‘floor-crosser’ so early on in a new parliament … not holding my breath but I do believe someone is going to bring it all down … it’s wobbly like an Edmonds jelly used to be !
Still reckon it was strange for an openly lesbian feminist woman to win a hardcore blue National electorate in the 1970′s…
Except that she wasn’t open about it! Her lesbianism was still just a rumour until after she’d left Parliament. She went for a policy of deliberate concealment, she said later, so that she would get into Parliament.
You have to wonder who the winner will be from driving down the value of these assets?, which is inevitable now.
If the government don’t get the price they have already banked for these assets (which was never realist) they’ll now be able to blame the Maori.
So cheap shares for there mates and a scapegoat allowing them to sell off more assets or and make more cuts to the public services, seems to me the way this may play out.
A reporter from the website Scoop will resign from Parliament’s press gallery after being caught photographing documents in Labour leader David Shearer’s office.
Lyndon Hood was among a number of journalists waiting in the office for an interview with Mr Shearer yesterday afternoon, and was spotted taking photos of documents on the leader’s desk by a Labour Party press secretary.
It’s tough when a momentary indiscretion can have major repercussions but the political media needs to be held accountable too, they are as much a part of our political process as the MPs, albeit unelected.
Surely that photo should be able to be given to MSM. We should be able to know what was in the document that was photographed. Afterall, the reporters were invited to Shearers office, so its not like he sneaked in to take the photograph or anything. So, in this context Shearer’s office was probably a public place. Shearer shouldn’t have left the documents lying around if he wanted the contents kept secure. The public have a right to know what was in the documents that were photographed. And if Shearer has nothing to hide, he should welcome the contents being disclosed.
Don’t be so hard on tsmithfield, he’s the kind of guy who invites mates over for dinner, and has no problem if they happen take phtotos of his wife’s knicker drawers while waiting for dessert to be served.
If I knew I had friends who were into sniffing womens underwear, and I still left the underwear out, they would probably assume I had left it out as a little treat for them. 🙂
So going full circle, are we now saying that we expect the Labour Leader, the PM, the Deputy PM etc to first clear their desks, password protect their laptop and lock their desk drawers and brief case every time they have journalists in their office?
“So going full circle, are we now saying that we expect the Labour Leader, the PM, the Deputy PM etc to first clear their desks, password protect their laptop and lock their desk drawers and brief case every time they have journalists in their office?”
Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.
What say there was something really juicy on the desk that passed the public interest test? Surely that would be fair game whether its a private place or not?
“If Key owned or operated the cafe and asked everyone to go then yes.”
Well, it hasn’t been determined if it is a private setting or not yet. So, I take it from your answer that if it is so determined by the courts then you would agree that Ambrose has broken the law.
“…whereas in the teacup case the cameraman said the recording was accidental.”
And the simple and gullible would probably believe him.
Could someone “reasonably expect” documents on their desk in their office to be “private”. The answer to that, is yes.
Could Key and Banks “reasonably expect” a conversation held in full view of the media, that they invited, in a public space, where someone was standing not more than 1m behind Key with NO glass between him and key, was “private”? The answer to that, is no.
This is doubly confirmed by the fact that Key and Banks deliberately don’t use Brash’s name but instead refer to him as “that odd fellow” – because they knew they could be overheard.
Mickey, in principle you are correct and TS is basically shoveling shit uphill (I would expect nothing less from a cyclopean idiot).
I often have employees etc in my room, there is never anything left out or on screen….Shearer has got to learn you don’t trust even the most innocent to see what should not be seen, even by accident. And journos are no innocents. Good thing is he took action…he should however never have needed to.
This whole thing reminds me of the expenses fiasco last year: the Party needs to get its collective administrative / behavoiral **** together.
Read it again, I would not do that full fekkin stop. Only cyclopean cretins would even contemplate that, and to paraphrase that new right zeitgeist soaked TV show “TS, you are the weakest link”.
You mean the evil foreigner that’s going to become a NZ citizen or resident? Well, I would have preferred it if he’d become a NZ citizen first but our laws don’t work that way ATM.
Since yesterdy afternoon, I’ve been having trouble with the recent comments links in the box to the right of the screen.
I click on one of the latest comment links, get taken to the post thread but not to the comment, and the individual comment (from the designated commenter), is nowhere to be seen, and the link I clicked on has disappeared from the box on the right. Using firefox.
I have now discovered that, once I click the link and get taken to the lead post for the thread, if I refresh, I then get taken to the specific recent comment.
Odd. Hang out for the weekend. It is probably related (somehow) to the hack I used to get past the outage yesterday. I’ll be fixing that up on the weekend.
While I am at it, I want to have another look at that box on the right. It uses JQuery to load it late in the process. I think that the intent was to make it dynamic (ie so new comment show soon after they are made) and I might put that in.
Be nice to add some filters if I can figure out a good screen process for it.
There was a protest in Christchurch yesterday, with people voicing their concerns about the pay rise of council CEO Tony Marryatt. The mainstream media plucked their crowd estimates out of thin air… over-exaggerating by a whopping 300%.
If it were just 750 people there it wouldn’t take long to count each person. 12-15 minutes tops.
However, some of the very dense grids have 35-40 heads present. Some of the lighter grids only 10-15. With say 45 decently populated grids and an average count of 26 peeps each.
I used the higher definition photo as well and got to an average 35 in the denser grids, of which there are seven. The point is that the MSM saying there were 3000 to 4000 people attending is completely wrong!
It just occurred to me that there is a correlation between the Occupy Movement and the Christchurch Protest. Many feel helpless in the face of the power of “The System” but here there was a chance for a specific focus of their discontent, as opposed to the vague discontent lacking defined targets.
when is Radio New Zealand going to fire brian krump.
there is soemthing terminally tacky about that man and when I hear him say you are going into the draw to win then I want to barf my tea all over the wireless.
Today marks the 41 anniversary of the Ramsar Convention, which is designed to raise public awareness and safeguard what wetlands remain. It’s also meant to protect the environmental, economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value of wetlands…
The Otago Fish and Game Council has unveiled plans to restore a large drained wetland off the lower Taieri River.
Operations manager Ian Hadland said today was World Wetlands Day and Fish and Game was taking the opportunity to announce plans to reflood the 80ha Takitakitoa Wetland near Henley, which is now a low-lying, rush-covered valley floor.
Mr Hadland said the Taieri project was an example of the sort of work Fish and Game was doing around New Zealand to create or restore wetlands, which have been fast disappearing with urban growth and intensified land use.
While it was involved in some large wetland projects, such as this one, Fish and Game also provided free help to farmers and landowners who wanted to create or enhance wetlands on their property.
Yeah, noticed that. Nothing but pure ideology in there – the ideology that has just been thoroughly shown as pure BS. It seems that Treasury is out to make us worse off.
Nope,not mad just panicked about the global road crash further down the highway, and disguising budgetary austerity as ‘policy for growth’. Where are our borrowing billions to come from?
Careful Jackal. you will offend every dingbat with a bobcat and a truck who wants to fill in every bit of swamp in the world because they are offended by nature.
I was actually hoping to offend those bastard farmers who let their cows mess up the place… but offending a few other dingbat environmental criminals is all good as well.
OK, so where’s the TPK thread? Just wondering, 16% of a ministry staff being scrapped, it’s budget being capped/slashed and the only person I have heard in the media about it is Winston.
Key creates a crisis, slaming us all with the notion that a 49% private shareholding shall not be held to the treaty of Waitangi, because weep weep private investers need certainty. Exactly how does the 51% holding by the Crown produce this uncertainty? well it doesn’t — unless — Key plans on fully selling the assets.
So let’s sum up this for a moment, Key plans on selling renewable energy sources held in trust by, for and of public, at the bottom of the market just before the greatest collapse in oil reserves known to Humanity. And now he wants to bleed small NZ investers who will pay more ‘because’ of perceived certainty (which they actually don’t get unless fully sold), to provide the big investors who will buy out the assets in full the benefit of the uncertainty being removed. There is no innovation in buying an asset over to the private sector to hoard, though a lot of innovation (distortion) in how to achieve the firesale in the public arena.
And that’s not enough, Key then pulls out the tried old technique in misappriopiating Maori. By talking only with Maori inside the tent (who just left the tent). The Maori party is not the sole representative of Maori, in fact the recent election saw them drop to less than half the Maori Seats, and Mana also got 1% of the list vote. So seems to me that Key echo chamber with the Maori party ‘consenting’ for all Maori, which even the Maori party is hesitating to provide, is shocking given NZ history and give the Maori just left the tent because of Asset sales.
Why should the public who have had to hold assets in trust for the future suddenly found just when they are going to become so valuable, when the market is so weak, when global soverign nations are printing money (a buyers market), justifies the PM sweeting the deal by shifting the benefit to the full sale of the assets.
Welll lucky old Key has no real opposition since the Media are gagging to white wash his astonishing position, that there is a crisis of certainty in the partial asset sale, that will leave a asset that under partial ownership will still have to take the Treaty into account (as the largest shareholder is the govt, i.e no crisis).
Where is media balance when the Media let the PM lie firstly that there is a crisis, then that the crisis is a crisis, then suggest that the Maori party represents Maori, then that the Maori party has no seat at the table due to its supply agreement. Sorry but who the hell do the editors of MSM think they are??? That a snowstorm of lies go unchallenged without any rigor at all. There is no need to remove the treaty obligations since full privatisation is not on the cards. Maori are not solely represented by the Maori Party, and the Maori party does not provide consent for the treaty to be removed because they signed a supply agreement not to be at the table on asset sales.
Then look at the Maori party, like they are hanging out for iwi to buy the assets, what a bunch of two faced… …Maori are disproportionately represented in the jails, in the courts, in the poverty metrics, and why because if the bridges were collapsed in the Pakeha dominated heartland of NZ they’d get fixed aleady, but since the social bridges, economic bridges, careers bridges, access to transport, etc, etc are all broken in Maori, Pacific Island (and Pakeha poor) areas its okay for the Maori party to ignore them and talk solely about government programs. The poor of NZ dont need more government, they need better goverance, we as a nation need capital fairness, capital independance, capital freedom for NZ and seating with Mr ‘big capital’ Key is not going to help Maori.
The Maori party has just been insulted by the PM, who says they are not at the table because of the supply agreement says nothing about asset sales, this is like you or I being told by our bank that we signed up to mortgage our home because we trusted our bank to look after our money (as we didn’t arrange a mortgage). Key broke trust with the Maori by suggesting that the supply agreement means consent does not need to be sort from, amongst others, the Maori Party. (i.e. Mana, Maori Labour MP, and other Maori MPs). Key needs to engage with Maori in Parliament who have won the votes to represented Maori not have a few staged events outside of parliament.
Key is not to be trusted, he does not come to the table in good faith.
The Maori party will loose what little credibility remains to them if they continue to support a National led government that has shown them such contempt…
Wow that was ‘fun’. A previously used plugin that was meant to delete the older post revisions went berserk. It deleted all of the posts.
I dumped the binary log out as SQL using mysqlbinlog and edited the resulting 750k line files. Have to love Visual Slickedit. At one stage it had 5 of the binlog SQL files of similar size open at once.
Did a selective display of all statements so I only saw those SQL statements with the three tables that may have been affected (problem statement below). Dumped those three files out with a slickedit macro “copy-selective-display” that copies the visible lines and ignores collapsed lines.
Looked at the tables to see what the problem was. Just wp_posts was a problem – had 5 rows left out of the 74k. Dumped that table back in from the last backup. Figured out what the last update was. Clipped between that and the error statement. Told slickedit to add a semicolon on the end of every line.
Opened up Navicat in wine (because I own a windows version and their ‘linux’ version is just Wine anyway). Told it to load and run the file out of slickedit.
Checked everything and turned maintenance mode off. Good thing that I not only have backups, but I also have the binary log running
What I now have to figure out is why this following statement caused the problem…
DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b
ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c
ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = ‘revision’
It looks fine to me ! In particular why in the hell it only affected one table as far as I can see. But I don’t do SQL a lot. I did have some problems with left outer joins converting from an older windows MySQL database to linux MySQL. But left inner joins? WTF.
Updated: Ah. LEFT JOIN is a LEFT OUTER JOIN. I’m always pedantic about saying it exactly (the way Codd would have liked it)
I really have to start doing some of these maintenance jobs right after I have taken a backup. There are so many plugin updates that I never read the code or fully test them.
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String-Pulling in the Dark: For the democratic process to be meaningful it must also be public. WITH TRUST AND CONFIDENCE in New Zealand’s politicians and journalists steadily declining, restoring those virtues poses a daunting challenge. Just how daunting is made clear by comparing the way politicians and journalists treated New Zealanders ...
Dear Nicola Willis, thank you for letting us know in so many words that the swingeing austerity hasn't worked.By in so many words I mean the bit where you said, Here is a sea of red ink in which we are drowning after twelve months of savage cost cutting and ...
The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral organisation committed to advancing open government. Countries which join are supposed to co-create regular action plans with civil society, committing to making verifiable improvements in transparency, accountability, participation, or technology and innovation for the above. And they're held to account through an Independent ...
Today I tuned into something strange: a press conference that didn’t make my stomach churn or the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Which was strange, because it was about the torture of children. It was the announcement by Erica Stanford — on her own, unusually ...
This is a must watch, and puts on brilliant and practical display the implications and mechanics of fast-track law corruption and weakness.CLICK HERE: LINK TO WATCH VIDEOOur news media as it is set up is simply not equipped to deal with the brazen disinformation and corruption under this right wing ...
NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Acting Secretary Erin Polaczuk is welcoming the announcement from Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden that she is opening consultation on engineered stone and is calling on her to listen to the evidence and implement a total ban of the product. “We need ...
The Government has announced a 1.5% increase in the minimum wage from 1 April 2025, well below forecast inflation of 2.5%. Unions have reacted strongly and denounced it as a real terms cut. PSA and the CTU are opposing a new round of staff cuts at WorkSafe, which they say ...
The decision to unilaterally repudiate the contract for new Cook Strait ferries is beginning to look like one of the stupidest decisions a New Zealand government ever made. While cancelling the ferries and their associated port infrastructure may have made this year's books look good, it means higher costs later, ...
Hi there! I’ve been overseas recently, looking after a situation with a family member. So apologies if there any less than focused posts! Vanuatu has just had a significant 7.3 earthquake. Two MFAT staff are unaccounted for with local fatalities.It’s always sad to hear of such things happening.I think of ...
Today is a special member's morning, scheduled to make up for the government's theft of member's days throughout the year. First up was the first reading of Greg Fleming's Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill, which was passed unanimously. Currently the House is debating the third reading of ...
We're going backwardsIgnoring the realitiesGoing backwardsAre you counting all the casualties?We are not there yetWhere we need to beWe are still in debtTo our insanitiesSongwriter: Martin Gore Read more ...
Willis blamed Treasury for changing its productivity assumptions and Labour’s spending increases since Covid for the worsening Budget outlook. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, December 18 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast above ...
Today the Auckland Transport board meet for the last time this year. For those interested (and with time to spare), you can follow along via this MS Teams link from 10am. I’ve taken a quick look through the agenda items to see what I think the most interesting aspects are. ...
Hi,If you’re a New Zealander — you know who Mike King is. He is the face of New Zealand’s battle against mental health problems. He can be loud and brash. He raises, and is entrusted with, a lot of cash. Last year his “I Am Hope” charity reported a revenue ...
Probably about the only consolation available from yesterday’s unveiling of the Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) is that it could have been worse. Though Finance Minister Nicola Willis has tightened the screws on future government spending, she has resisted the calls from hard-line academics, fiscal purists and fiscal hawks ...
The right have a stupid saying that is only occasionally true:When is democracy not democracy? When it hasn’t been voted on.While not true in regards to branches of government such as the judiciary, it’s a philosophy that probably should apply to recently-elected local government councillors. Nevertheless, this concept seemed to ...
Long story short: the Government’s austerity policy has driven the economy into a deeper and longer recession that means it will have to borrow $20 billion more over the next four years than it expected just six months ago. Treasury’s latest forecasts show the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s fiscal strategy of ...
Come and join myself and CTU Chief Economist for a pop-up ‘Hoon’ webinar on the Government’s Half Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) with paying subscribers to The Kākā for 30 minutes at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream to watch our chat. Don’t worry if ...
In 1998, in the wake of the Paremoremo Prison riot, the Department of Corrections established the "Behaviour Management Regime". Prisoners were locked in their cells for 22 or 23 hours a day, with no fresh air, no exercise, no social contact, no entertainment, and in some cases no clothes and ...
New data released by the Treasury shows that the economic policies of this Government have made things worse in the year since they took office, said NZCTU Economist Craig Renney. “Our fiscal indicators are all heading in the wrong direction – with higher levels of debt, a higher deficit, and ...
At the 2023 election, National basically ran on a platform of being better economic managers. So how'd that turn out for us? In just one year, they've fucked us for two full political terms: The government's books are set to remain deeply in the red for the near term ...
AUSTERITYText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy spreadsheet insists This pain leads straight to glory (File not found) Read more ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi are saying that the Government should do the right thing and deliver minimum wage increases that don’t see workers fall further behind, in response to today’s announcement that the minimum wage will only be increased by 1.5%, well short of forecast inflation. “With inflation forecast ...
Oh, I weptFor daysFilled my eyesWith silly tearsOh, yeaBut I don'tCare no moreI don't care ifMy eyes get soreSongwriters: Paul Rodgers / Paul Kossoff. Read more ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob HensonIn this aerial view, fingers of meltwater flow from the melting Isunnguata Sermia glacier descending from the Greenland Ice Sheet on July 11, 2024, near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. According to the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE), the ...
In August, I wrote an article about David Seymour1 with a video of his testimony, to warn that there were grave dangers to his Ministry of Regulation:David Seymour's Ministry of Slush Hides Far Greater RisksWhy Seymour's exorbitant waste of taxpayers' money could be the least of concernThe money for Seymour ...
Willis is expected to have to reveal the bitter fiscal fruits of her austerity strategy in the HYEFU later today. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKakaMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, December 17 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast ...
On Friday the government announced it would double the number of toll roads in New Zealand as well as make a few other changes to how toll roads are used in the country. The real issue though is not that tolling is being used but the suggestion it will make ...
The Prime Minister yesterday engaged in what looked like a pre-emptive strike designed to counter what is likely to be a series of depressing economic statistics expected before the end of the week. He opened his weekly post-Cabinet press conference with a recitation of the Government’s achievements. “It certainly has ...
This whooping cough story from south Auckland is a good example of the coalition government’s approach to social need – spend money on urging people to get vaccinated but only after you’ve cut the funding to where they could get vaccinated. This has been the case all year with public ...
And if there is a GodI know he likes to rockHe likes his loud guitarsHis spiders from MarsAnd if there is a GodI know he's watching meHe likes what he seesBut there's trouble on the breezeSongwriter: William Patrick Corgan Read more ...
Here’s a quick round up of today’s political news:1. MORE FOOD BANKS, CHARITIES, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTERS AND YOUTH SOCIAL SERVICES SET TO CLOSE OR SCALE BACK AROUND THE COUNTRY AS GOVT CUTS FUNDINGSome of Auckland's largest foodbanks are warning they may need to close or significantly reduce food parcels after ...
Iain Rennie, CNZMSecretary and Chief Executive to the TreasuryDear Secretary, Undue restrictions on restricted briefings This week, the Treasury barred representatives from four organisations, including the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi, from attending the restricted briefing for the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update. We had been ...
This is a guest post by Tim Adriaansen, a community, climate, and accessibility advocate.I won’t shut up about climate breakdown, and whenever possible I try to shift the focus of a climate conversation towards solutions. But you’ll almost never hear me give more than a passing nod to ...
A grassroots backlash has forced a backdown from Brown, but he is still eyeing up plenty of tolls for other new roads. And the pressure is on Willis to ramp up the Government’s austerity strategy. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
Hi all,I'm pretty overwhelmed by all your messages and emails today; thank you so very much.As much as my newsletter this morning was about money, and we all need to earn money, it was mostly about world domination if I'm honest. 😉I really hate what’s happening to our country, and ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 8, 2024 thru Sat, December 14, 2024. Listing by Category Like last week's summary this one contains the list of articles twice: based on categories and based on ...
I started writing this morning about Hobson’s Pledge, examining the claims they and their supporters make, basically ripping into them. But I kept getting notifications coming through, and not good ones.Each time I looked up, there was another un-subscription message, and I felt a bit sicker at the thought of ...
Once, long before there was Harry and Meghan and Dodi and all those episodes of The Crown, they came to spend some time with us, Charles and Diana. Was there anyone in the world more glamorous than the Princess of Wales?Dazzled as everyone was by their company, the leader of ...
The collective right have a problem.The entire foundation for their world view is antiscientific. Their preferred economic strategies have been disproven. Their whole neoliberal model faces accusations of corporate corruption and worsening inequality. Climate change not only definitely exists, its rapid progression demands an immediate and expensive response in order ...
National has only been in power for a year, but everywhere you look, its choices are taking New Zealand a long way backwards. In no particular order, here are the National Government's Top 50 Greatest Misses of its first year in power. ...
The Government is quietly undertaking consultation on the dangerous Regulatory Standards Bill over the Christmas period to avoid too much attention. ...
The Government’s planned changes to the freedom of speech obligations of universities is little more than a front for stoking the political fires of disinformation and fear, placing teachers and students in the crosshairs. ...
The Ministry of Regulation’s report into Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Aotearoa raises serious concerns about the possibility of lowering qualification requirements, undermining quality and risking worse outcomes for tamariki, whānau, and kaiako. ...
A Bill to modernise the role of Justices of the Peace (JP), ensuring they remain active in their communities and connected with other JPs, has been put into the ballot. ...
Labour will continue to fight unsustainable and destructive projects that are able to leap-frog environment protection under National’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. ...
The Green Party has warned that a Green Government will revoke the consents of companies who override environmental protections as part of Fast-Track legislation being passed today. ...
The Green Party says the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update shows how the Government is failing to address the massive social and infrastructure deficits our country faces. ...
The Government’s latest move to reduce the earnings of migrant workers will not only hurt migrants but it will drive down the wages of Kiwi workers. ...
Te Pāti Māori has this morning issued a stern warning to Fast-Track applicants with interests in mining, pledging to hold them accountable through retrospective liability and to immediately revoke Fast-Track consents under a future Te Pāti Māori government. This warning comes ahead of today’s third reading of the Fast-Track Approvals ...
The Government’s announcement today of a 1.5 per cent increase to minimum wage is another blow for workers, with inflation projected to exceed the increase, meaning it’s a real terms pay reduction for many. ...
All the Government has achieved from its announcement today is to continue to push responsibility back on councils for its own lack of action to help bring down skyrocketing rates. ...
The Government has used its final post-Cabinet press conference of the year to punch down on local government without offering any credible solutions to the issues our councils are facing. ...
The Government has failed to keep its promise to ‘super charge’ the EV network, delivering just 292 chargers - less than half of the 670 chargers needed to meet its target. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Government to stop subsidising the largest user of the country’s gas supplies, Methanex, following a report highlighting the multi-national’s disproportionate influence on energy prices in Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party is appalled with the Government’s new child poverty targets that are based on a new ‘persistent poverty’ measure that could be met even with an increase in child poverty. ...
New independent analysis has revealed that the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) will reduce emissions by a measly 1 per cent by 2030, failing to set us up for the future and meeting upcoming targets. ...
The loss of 27 kaimahi at Whakaata Māori and the end of its daily news bulletin is a sad day for Māori media and another step backwards for Te Tiriti o Waitangi justice. ...
Yesterday the Government passed cruel legislation through first reading to establish a new beneficiary sanction regime that will ultimately mean more households cannot afford the basic essentials. ...
Today's passing of the Government's Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill–which allows landlords to end tenancies with no reason–ignores the voice of the people and leaves renters in limbo ahead of the festive season. ...
After wasting a year, Nicola Willis has delivered a worse deal for the Cook Strait ferries that will end up being more expensive and take longer to arrive. ...
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has today launched a Member’s Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as the All Out For Gaza rally reaches Parliament. ...
After years of advocacy, the Green Party is very happy to hear the Government has listened to our collective voices and announced the closure of the greyhound racing industry, by 1 August 2026. ...
In response to a new report from ERO, the Government has acknowledged the urgent need for consistency across the curriculum for Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) in schools. ...
The Green Party is appalled at the Government introducing legislation that will make it easier to penalise workers fighting for better pay and conditions. ...
Thank you for the invitation to speak with you tonight on behalf of the political party I belong to - which is New Zealand First. As we have heard before this evening the Kinleith Mill is proposing to reduce operations by focusing on pulp and discontinuing “lossmaking paper production”. They say that they are currently consulting on the plan to permanently shut ...
Auckland Central MP, Chlöe Swarbrick, has written to Mayor Wayne Brown requesting he stop the unnecessary delays on St James Theatre’s restoration. ...
Kiwis planning a swim or heading out on a boat this summer should remember to stop and think about water safety, Sport & Recreation Minister Chris Bishop and ACC and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “New Zealand’s beaches, lakes and rivers are some of the most beautiful in the ...
The Government is urging Kiwis to drive safely this summer and reminding motorists that Police will be out in force to enforce the road rules, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“This time of year can be stressful and result in poor decision-making on our roads. Whether you are travelling to see ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says Health New Zealand will move swiftly to support dozens of internationally-trained doctors already in New Zealand on their journey to employment here, after a tripling of sought-after examination places. “The Medical Council has delivered great news for hardworking overseas doctors who want to contribute ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has appointed Sarah Ottrey to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). “At my first APEC Summit in Lima, I experienced firsthand the role that ABAC plays in guaranteeing political leaders hear the voice of business,” Mr Luxon says. “New Zealand’s ABAC representatives are very well respected and ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced four appointments to New Zealand’s intelligence oversight functions. The Honourable Robert Dobson KC has been appointed Chief Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, and the Honourable Brendan Brown KC has been appointed as a Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants. The appointments of Hon Robert Dobson and Hon ...
Improvements in the average time it takes to process survey and title applications means housing developments can progress more quickly, Minister for Land Information Chris Penk says. “The government is resolutely focused on improving the building and construction pipeline,” Mr Penk says. “Applications to issue titles and subdivide land are ...
The Government’s measures to reduce airport wait times, and better transparency around flight disruptions is delivering encouraging early results for passengers ahead of the busy summer period, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Improving the efficiency of air travel is a priority for the Government to give passengers a smoother, more reliable ...
The Government today announced the intended closure of the Apollo Hotel as Contracted Emergency Housing (CEH) in Rotorua, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. This follows a 30 per cent reduction in the number of households in CEH in Rotorua since National came into Government. “Our focus is on ending CEH in the Whakarewarewa area starting ...
The Government will reshape vocational education and training to return decision making to regions and enable greater industry input into work-based learning Tertiary Education and Skills Minister, Penny Simmonds says. “The redesigned system will better meet the needs of learners, industry, and the economy. It includes re-establishing regional polytechnics that ...
The Government is taking action to better manage synthetic refrigerants and reduce emissions caused by greenhouse gases found in heating and cooling products, Environment Minister Penny Simmonds says. “Regulations will be drafted to support a product stewardship scheme for synthetic refrigerants, Ms. Simmonds says. “Synthetic refrigerants are found in a ...
People travelling on State Highway 1 north of Hamilton will be relieved that remedial works and safety improvements on the Ngāruawāhia section of the Waikato Expressway were finished today, with all lanes now open to traffic, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“I would like to acknowledge the patience of road users ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister, Penny Simmonds, has announced a new appointment to the board of Education New Zealand (ENZ). Dr Erik Lithander has been appointed as a new member of the ENZ board for a three-year term until 30 January 2028. “I would like to welcome Dr Erik Lithander to the ...
The Government will have senior representatives at Waitangi Day events around the country, including at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, but next year Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has chosen to take part in celebrations elsewhere. “It has always been my intention to celebrate Waitangi Day around the country with different ...
Two more criminal gangs will be subject to the raft of laws passed by the Coalition Government that give Police more powers to disrupt gang activity, and the intimidation they impose in our communities, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. Following an Order passed by Cabinet, from 3 February 2025 the ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Justice Christian Whata as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Whata’s appointment as a Judge of the Court of Appeal will take effect on 1 August 2025 and fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Hon Justice David Goddard on ...
The latest economic figures highlight the importance of the steps the Government has taken to restore respect for taxpayers’ money and drive economic growth, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Data released today by Stats NZ shows Gross Domestic Product fell 1 per cent in the September quarter. “Treasury and most ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds and Associate Minister of Education David Seymour today announced legislation changes to strengthen freedom of speech obligations on universities. “Freedom of speech is fundamental to the concept of academic freedom and there is concern that universities seem to be taking a more risk-averse ...
Police Minister, Mark Mitchell, and Internal Affairs Minister, Brooke van Velden, today launched a further Public Safety Network cellular service that alongside last year’s Cellular Roaming roll-out, puts globally-leading cellular communications capability into the hands of our emergency responders. The Public Safety Network’s new Cellular Priority service means Police, Wellington ...
State Highway 1 through the Mangamuka Gorge has officially reopened today, providing a critical link for Northlanders and offering much-needed relief ahead of the busy summer period, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“The Mangamuka Gorge is a vital route for Northland, carrying around 1,300 vehicles per day and connecting the Far ...
The Government has welcomed decisions by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and Ashburton District Council confirming funding to boost resilience in the Canterbury region, with construction on a second Ashburton Bridge expected to begin in 2026, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Delivering a second Ashburton Bridge to improve resilience and ...
The Government is backing the response into high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Otago, Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard says. “Cabinet has approved new funding of $20 million to enable MPI to meet unbudgeted ongoing expenses associated with the H7N6 response including rigorous scientific testing of samples at the enhanced PC3 ...
Legislation that will repeal all advertising restrictions for broadcasters on Sundays and public holidays has passed through first reading in Parliament today, Media Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “As a growing share of audiences get their news and entertainment from streaming services, these restrictions have become increasingly redundant. New Zealand on ...
Today the House agreed to Brendan Horsley being appointed Inspector-General of Defence, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Mr Horsley’s experience will be invaluable in overseeing the establishment of the new office and its support networks. “He is currently Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, having held that role since June 2020. ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government has agreed to the final regulations for the levy on insurance contracts that will fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand from July 2026. “Earlier this year the Government agreed to a 2.2 percent increase to the rate of levy. Fire ...
The Government is delivering regulatory relief for New Zealand businesses through changes to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act. “The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, which was introduced today, is the second Bill – the other being the Statutes Amendment Bill - that ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed further progress on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway Road of National Significance (RoNS), with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) Board approving funding for the detailed design of Stage 1, paving the way for main works construction to begin in late 2025.“The Government is moving at ...
The Government today released a request for information (RFI) to seeking interest in partnerships to plant trees on Crown-owned land with low farming and conservation value (excluding National Parks) Forestry Minister Todd McClay announced. “Planting trees on Crown-owned land will drive economic growth by creating more forestry jobs in our regions, providing more wood ...
Court timeliness, access to justice, and improving the quality of existing regulation are the focus of a series of law changes introduced to Parliament today by Associate Minister of Justice Nicole McKee. The three Bills in the Regulatory Systems (Justice) Amendment Bill package each improve a different part of the ...
A total of 41 appointments and reappointments have been made to the 12 community trusts around New Zealand that serve their regions, Associate Finance Minister Shane Jones says. “These trusts, and the communities they serve from the Far North to the deep south, will benefit from the rich experience, knowledge, ...
The Government has confirmed how it will provide redress to survivors who were tortured at the Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital Child and Adolescent Unit (the Lake Alice Unit). “The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care found that many of the 362 children who went through the Lake Alice Unit between 1972 and ...
It has been a busy, productive year in the House as the coalition Government works hard to get New Zealand back on track, Leader of the House Chris Bishop says. “This Government promised to rebuild the economy, restore law and order and reduce the cost of living. Our record this ...
“Accelerated silicosis is an emerging occupational disease caused by unsafe work such as engineered stone benchtops. I am running a standalone consultation on engineered stone to understand what the industry is currently doing to manage the risks, and whether further regulatory intervention is needed,” says Workplace Relations and Safety Minister ...
Mehemea he pai mō te tangata, mahia – if it’s good for the people, get on with it. Enhanced reporting on the public sector’s delivery of Treaty settlement commitments will help improve outcomes for Māori and all New Zealanders, Māori Crown Relations Minister Tama Potaka says. Compiled together for the ...
Mr Roger Holmes Miller and Ms Tarita Hutchinson have been appointed to the Charities Registration Board, Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Louise Upston says. “I would like to welcome the new members joining the Charities Registration Board. “The appointment of Ms Hutchinson and Mr Miller will strengthen the Board’s capacity ...
More building consent and code compliance applications are being processed within the statutory timeframe since the Government required councils to submit quarterly data, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “In the midst of a housing shortage we need to look at every step of the build process for efficiencies ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey is proud to announce the first three recipients of the Government’s $10 million Mental Health and Addiction Community Sector Innovation Fund which will enable more Kiwis faster access to mental health and addiction support. “This fund is part of the Government’s commitment to investing in ...
New Zealand is providing Vanuatu assistance following yesterday's devastating earthquake, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. "Vanuatu is a member of our Pacific family and we are supporting it in this time of acute need," Mr Peters says. "Our thoughts are with the people of Vanuatu, and we will be ...
The Government welcomes the Commerce Commission’s plan to reduce card fees for Kiwis by an estimated $260 million a year, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says.“The Government is relentlessly focused on reducing the cost of living, so Kiwis can keep more of their hard-earned income and live a ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour has welcomed the Early Childhood Education (ECE) regulatory review report, the first major report from the Ministry for Regulation. The report makes 15 recommendations to modernise and simplify regulations across ECE so services can get on with what they do best – providing safe, high-quality care ...
The Government‘s Offshore Renewable Energy Bill to create a new regulatory regime that will enable firms to construct offshore wind generation has passed its first reading in Parliament, Energy Minister Simeon Brown says.“New Zealand currently does not have a regulatory regime for offshore renewable energy as the previous government failed ...
“We urge the Health Select Committee to extend the date for submissions,” concluded Rev Bush. “There is too much at stake to leave the outcome of this review only in the hands of politicians or those with vested interests.” ...
A separate passport, citizenship and membership of the United Nations are only available to fully independent nations, Winston Peters' office says. ...
By Emma Andrews, Henare te Ua Māori Journalism Intern at RNZ News The New Zealand fuel company Z Energy is swapping out street names for “correct” kupu on service stops around the country, with the help of local hapū. When Z took over 226 fuel sites from Shell in 2010, ...
Summer reissue: Was it a false measurement, a full-blown conspiracy or just some mild incompetence? Mad Chapman uncovers the truth of Maddi Wesche’s final throw. The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Old, Associate Professor, Biology, Zoology, Animal Science, Western Sydney University Dmitry Chulov, Shutterstock At this time of year, images of reindeer are everywhere. I’ve had a soft spot for reindeer ever since I was a little girl. Doesn’t everyone? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grozdana Manalo, Career Services Manager (Education), University of Sydney hedgehog94/Shutterstock Getting casual work over summer, or a part-time job that you might continue once your tertiary course starts, can be a great way to get workplace experience and earn some extra ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ty Ferguson, Research associate in exercise, nutrition and activity, University of South Australia Peera_Stockfoto/Shutterstock It’s never been easier to stay connected to work. Even when we’re on leave, our phones and laptops keep us tethered. Many of us promise ourselves we ...
The NZ Media Council upheld the complaint under principle four: comment and fact On 5 September 2024, The Spinoff published a brief article titled Made in Palestine, found in 1970s Hastings, which highlighted an upcoming art exhibition featuring photographs of vintage cosmetic products labelled “Made in Palestine.” The piece, described ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kasey Symons, Lecturer of Communication, Sports Media, Deakin University We are well and truly in cricket season. The Australian men’s cricket team is taking centre stage against India in the Border Gavaskar Trophy series while the Big Bash League is underway, as ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Woods, Lecturer, Nursing, Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University FTiare/Shutterstock Summer is here and for many that means going to the beach. You grab your swimmers, beach towel and sunscreen then maybe check the weather forecast. Did you think to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saman Khalesi, Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead in Nutrition, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity Australia Dean Clarke/Shutterstock The holiday season can be a time of joy, celebration, and indulgence in delicious foods and meals. However, for many, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia Late Night With The Devil. Maslow Entertainment Marketing is critical to the success of commercial films, and companies will often spend half as much again on top of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francisco Jose Testa, Lecturer in Earth Sciences (Mineralogy, Petrology & Geochemistry), University of Tasmania The Conversation As a kid, it was tough for me to grasp the massive time scale of Earth’s history. Now, with nearly two decades of experience as ...
Te Pāti Māori has had to adopt a new way of debating, operating and even thinking in Parliament in response to the Government’s “onslaught” against te ao Māori, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says.In an end-of-year interview with Newsroom, the Te Tai Hauauru MP reflected on how 2024 has differed from her ...
Opinion: The latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science report was announced earlier this month, yet it didn’t get the flurry of media attention and political hand-wringing that typically accompanies these announcements. This might be because it presented good news, or you could argue, no news; the results paint a ...
NewsroomBy Dr Lisa Darragh, Dr Raewyn Eden and Dr David Pomeroy
At long last, The Spinoff shells out for a nut ranking. The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and sign up to be a member today.It recently came to The Spinoff’s attention ...
I was one of hundreds of people who lost my government job this week. Here’s exactly how it played out. The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and sign up to be a ...
Summer reissue: One anxiously attentive passenger pays attention to an in-flight safety video, and wonders ‘Why can’t I pick up my own phone?’ The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and sign up ...
Summer reissue: Why do those Lange-Douglas years cast such a long shadow 40 years on? The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and sign up to be a member today. First published June ...
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This news is a bit of a shocker for the Government and I bet a Treasury staffer is having their nether regions roasted right now.
A draft of the discussion paper concerning the removal of the effect of the treaty clause in the SOE Act from the partially privatised companies was inadvertently put on Treasury’s website yesterday for a short while.
The Herald downloaded a copy. It reports the changes include removal of the following passages:
* “The Government … on balance, tends to favour no Treaty clause.”* “On balance, the Government tends to the view that continued application of section 9, or … a new Treaty clause … is not appropriate when its policy intent is for the companies to be treated like other private sector companies.”* “Ministers’ powers … will not be as great as the powers they have under the SOE Act … This is part of the intent of the policy – to move the companies into a legislative and governance framework that will create a greater commercial focus to their operations.”* “In respect of institutional investors, section 9 will not be well understood … and have a negative effect on investment ..”
Obviously the Government did not want to scare the MP. The reference to Ministers’ powers not being as great as under the SOE Act belies the line that some have been running that a shareholding of 51% provides just as much power as a shareholding of 100%. It does not and the draft document recognises this.
The problem for the Government is that once it decides to remove the effect of section 9, which it will, it will then be accused of having made its mind up and not consulting in good faith.
One question that the MSM should ask is that the issue has obviously been recognised for a while. When was it first identified? If this happened before the election why was the Government’s intentions kept silent?
Oops link is wrong. The article is here.
I can’t believe that the Government would not be truthful to us about elements of asset sales including never intending to observe the Treaty, and always intending to limit the power of Ministers despite a theoretical 51% “controlling” Crown stake National continuously emphasize.
Its like National don’t give a shit about our strategic assets apart from how much cash they can be flogged off for. 🙄
Give the staffer a frakking medal I say. And the NZ Herald.
Its like National don’t give a shit about our strategic assets apart from how much cash they can be flogged off for
Were that the case, they would not be selling only a minority stake.
Incorrect. You don’t boil a frog by dropping it into boiling water QSF…
Oh very nice 🙂
Why not? That would actually work pretty well (just not for the frog).
[ edit: yes I know the metaphor, but it is scientifically incorrect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Scientific_background ]
Because JK knows perfectly well that National would not have been re-elected if he’d campaigned on a full asset sales policy. This is a step change to the end goal.
We have seen directors of a finance company on trial recently for misleading in a prospectus. Currently the SOE’s have the following requirement :
1) The principal objective of every State enterprise shall be to operate as a successful business and, to this end, to be—
(a) as profitable and efficient as comparable businesses that are not owned by the Crown; and
(b) a good employer; and
(c) an organisation that exhibits a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates and by endeavouring to accommodate or encourage these when able to do so.”
Provision (a) may be accepted as a given whether it is retained or not, but any investor should be aware that government appointed directors (representing a majority), will adhere to (b) and (c) whether they are enshrined in company requirements or not.
By removing these requirements however, National may be seen subsequently as having misled minority shareholders. The sort of problem that may occur for example would be if a government determined to manage the company to put a priority on long term continuity of supply, for example by investment in new technology, rather than exploiting a short term opportunity for price increases and increased dividends.
John Key may be happy for investors to think that they can work to exploit the market (and employees) for short term gain, but he cannot bind future governments.
What’s the problem here? There were originally not going to put any Treaty clause in but when they realised that might be a problem they added a couple of options around this. Seems responsive to me. You do like Governments to be responsive don’t you mickeysavage?
Responsive, as in “9 months response to the crafer farms decision”
That kind of manipulative responsiveness eh Gosman!
What’s this got to do with the issue over the Section 9 clause?
Do you really need “manipulative response” explained G!
FIFY
Basically National don’t understand the importance of the Treaty and the Iwi corporates who exist because of those Treaty settlements understand that now, too.
The information lower down in the same article re limiting of powers of relevant ministers over the new partially owned assets is frightening … let Parliament begin.
Yep I suggested here that this is one way the NATs could do it:
http://thestandard.org.nz/summer-service-open-mike-05012012/#comment-422943
Fill the Board of Directors of the power generation venture with passive Government directors, effectively handing control to the remaining 49% private sector directors on the board.
It’s strange that an otherwise obsdcure draft clause would add the extra drop of petrol to the asset ownership bonfire this government has set itself around the Beehive.
As the complaint about this Treaty clease peaks around Waitangi Day and in the weeks after in Parliament, the Government will find itself against a particularly Maori version of nationalism against asset sales, perhaps in a manner that we have not seen since Tanui took the government to the Court of Appeal against Coalcorp for similar reasons some years ago.
It was excellent to hear Winston Peters on National Radio this morning railing against the American film-maker James Cameron buying land. At least, unlike the Labour party, he is being consequential in his criticisms of foreign ownership. If only the Labour Party had even a single spokesperson with similar penetrating clarity.
Oddly the Greens have been quite ineffective in this space to date. And yet as they have shown in the last decade with GE and mining in national parks, they have pushed civic action on the ground really well.
Between Maori, the Greens, and Labour, this asset ownership debate could be marshalled into the next great Foreshore and Seabed march to Parliament.
The simple question for the next three months of debate leading up to Budget 2012 is whether the “Xenophobia” argument wins over the “Own Our Future” argument.
At the moment “Own Our Future”, but from a Maori perspective, is winning. The government is being spectacularly inept and it will take an almighty effort of political management to get this back on track.
Remember this Government has already effectively “booked” the 50% sale of all the big four plus Air New Zealand, and without these sales proceding apace the Government’s debt position is many billions of dollars worse than it already is.
The trick in the next year will be to use every legal means to delay every sale, to make it so politically toxic to foreign buyers that taking a minority stake is not worth it. In turn, without being able to book those proceeds, the Gvoernment will look like it had no other means to manage the finances, other than a financial prescription that other political parties had laid out prior to the election (such as increasing the top tax rate back to where it was).
If anyone can remember this far back, the turning back of the Swiss aluminium firm at Aramoana was a massive blow to the Muldoon government – people power really can work even in the face of every organised government instrument and all scales of itnernational capital.
This little Treaty clause shows that there really are incendiary moments to stop this entire sale process, sometimes surprising ones.
This asset sales process can be stopped, not just railed against.
I think the James Cameron purchase of land is different from the Crafar farms sale. Cameron intends to be resident, and presumably will pay taxes and rates here. It’s a small farm, which will hopefully keep any profits in NZ, unlike the Crafar farms.
However, I’m not keen on wealthy overseas buyers pushing up NZ land prices because they are willing to pay more.
I am more concerned about the continuation of the Hollywoodisation of the NZ film industry, in which Peter Jackson has played a major part, and Cameron looks like extending.
“However, I’m not keen on wealthy overseas buyers pushing up NZ land prices because they are willing to pay more.”
This concern is understandable if you are looking to buy a property. It is less understandable if you are looking to sell. Getting a higher price for your property as a seller is always beneficial.
Great if your an older farmer thinking of retirement…Not so great if your a young one working hard for a deposit.
Russell Norman on TV3 a couple of days ago spoke of a citizens’ referendum emerging in about two weeks for our delight and support against asset sales … anyone have any further details ? Thank you for the bonfire imagery .. let it blaze !
and presumably will pay taxes and rates here
Explain how the Chinese are going to be magically exempt from paying rates and GST and income tax.
And I just love the idea that a land sale to James Cameron should be blocked in an effort to stop the “Holywoodisation of the NZ film industry”.
Vertical integration – The Chinese will be running the farms at a loss. Rates will still be paid but they’ll be minor compared to how much we’ll be losing.
So they’ll be getting around the transfer pricing regime? Nice trick.
Yes, I do remember Muldoon and Aramoana. And with joy I also remember it took only one brilliant woman to cross the floor and bring him down on the nuclear issue … who might be the Marilyn Waring of this paltry government ? Auckland Central might be promising ? ( And refer here for those to young to know …http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Waring )
If I read you right, you are suggesting Nikki Kaye, might have the potential to do “a Marilyn Waring” – I would advise against holding your breath!
Any email response had by NK, is 100% a hack job cut and paste from the party propaganda booklet! Not really an indication that she might cross the floor at any point in time…..happy to be proved wrong!
Why would Nikki Kaye do this when she has not indicated any strong objection to partial sale of State assets previously?
People can and sometimes do grow a conscience …Not JK though
http://greystar.co.nz/node/458
Yep. The ‘capitalism at everyone else’s cost’ chip they put in usually precludes that happening.
Muzza .. you’re probably right, simply offering my thoughts .. but Marilyn also might have seemed an unlikely ‘floor-crosser’ so early on in a new parliament … not holding my breath but I do believe someone is going to bring it all down … it’s wobbly like an Edmonds jelly used to be !
The weakest link on asset sales is Peter Dunne. He’s already said he doesn’t like asset sales in principle.
Thx Lanthanide et al … so then, instead of ‘cherchez la femme’, it should be ‘cherchez le coif ‘ ??
Still reckon it was strange for an openly lesbian feminist woman to win a hardcore blue National electorate in the 1970’s…
Must have been a weird place to be, 1970’s NZ. Contradictions a go-go
Except that she wasn’t open about it! Her lesbianism was still just a rumour until after she’d left Parliament. She went for a policy of deliberate concealment, she said later, so that she would get into Parliament.
You have to wonder who the winner will be from driving down the value of these assets?, which is inevitable now.
If the government don’t get the price they have already banked for these assets (which was never realist) they’ll now be able to blame the Maori.
So cheap shares for there mates and a scapegoat allowing them to sell off more assets or and make more cuts to the public services, seems to me the way this may play out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16812185
Do we have any similar info graphics for a NZ situation?
Some of the comments on that page are very critical of that family’s spending – Sky Movies, weekend pints, mobile phones cigarettes. Reminded me of this Hand Mirror post: http://thehandmirror.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/luxuries-necessities-and-right-to-make.html
Snappy snooping in Shearer’s office results in resignation.
It’s tough when a momentary indiscretion can have major repercussions but the political media needs to be held accountable too, they are as much a part of our political process as the MPs, albeit unelected.
Surely that photo should be able to be given to MSM. We should be able to know what was in the document that was photographed. Afterall, the reporters were invited to Shearers office, so its not like he sneaked in to take the photograph or anything. So, in this context Shearer’s office was probably a public place. Shearer shouldn’t have left the documents lying around if he wanted the contents kept secure. The public have a right to know what was in the documents that were photographed. And if Shearer has nothing to hide, he should welcome the contents being disclosed.
Repeating Cameron ts?
An office is clearly not a public place. The fact the reporters were invited in clearly indicates that.
Interesting that you should try and argue the clearly unarguable.
Don’t be so hard on tsmithfield, he’s the kind of guy who invites mates over for dinner, and has no problem if they happen take phtotos of his wife’s knicker drawers while waiting for dessert to be served.
At least my wife’s knickers aren’t left lying on the dining table on open display when people come for dinner!
And if your wife’s knickers were there, you’d be quite happy with your mates taking photos and light sniffs?
“And if your wife’s knickers were there, you’d be quite happy with your mates taking photos and light sniffs?”
I wouldn’t be happy. But I couldn’t really complain about it either.
TS you have crossed over into the realms of fantasy there.
If I knew I had friends who were into sniffing womens underwear, and I still left the underwear out, they would probably assume I had left it out as a little treat for them. 🙂
Are you angling for an invite to dinner ?
😛
So going full circle, are we now saying that we expect the Labour Leader, the PM, the Deputy PM etc to first clear their desks, password protect their laptop and lock their desk drawers and brief case every time they have journalists in their office?
“So going full circle, are we now saying that we expect the Labour Leader, the PM, the Deputy PM etc to first clear their desks, password protect their laptop and lock their desk drawers and brief case every time they have journalists in their office?”
Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.
What say there was something really juicy on the desk that passed the public interest test? Surely that would be fair game whether its a private place or not?
What you said indicates that journalists are a security risk and should be kept away from areas where sensitive information might be present.
“An office is clearly not a public place…”
So, would you accept that if it is found that Key’s cup-of-tea locale was also a private setting, then Ambrose has broken the law?
If Key owned or operated the cafe and asked everyone to go then yes.
Besides it appears the photography here was deliberate whereas in the teacup case the cameraman said the recording was accidental.
“If Key owned or operated the cafe and asked everyone to go then yes.”
Well, it hasn’t been determined if it is a private setting or not yet. So, I take it from your answer that if it is so determined by the courts then you would agree that Ambrose has broken the law.
“…whereas in the teacup case the cameraman said the recording was accidental.”
And the simple and gullible would probably believe him.
ts, this is really quite simple.
Could someone “reasonably expect” documents on their desk in their office to be “private”. The answer to that, is yes.
Could Key and Banks “reasonably expect” a conversation held in full view of the media, that they invited, in a public space, where someone was standing not more than 1m behind Key with NO glass between him and key, was “private”? The answer to that, is no.
This is doubly confirmed by the fact that Key and Banks deliberately don’t use Brash’s name but instead refer to him as “that odd fellow” – because they knew they could be overheard.
deliberately don’t use Brash’s name but instead refer to him as “that odd fellow”
Yes, apparently that was a secret code for Brash that no one was supposed to be able to decipher.
Mickey, in principle you are correct and TS is basically shoveling shit uphill (I would expect nothing less from a cyclopean idiot).
I often have employees etc in my room, there is never anything left out or on screen….Shearer has got to learn you don’t trust even the most innocent to see what should not be seen, even by accident. And journos are no innocents. Good thing is he took action…he should however never have needed to.
This whole thing reminds me of the expenses fiasco last year: the Party needs to get its collective administrative / behavoiral **** together.
So, if you had one of your competitors in your office, and you left your full marketing plan up on a white-board in plain view of all?
Read it again, I would not do that full fekkin stop. Only cyclopean cretins would even contemplate that, and to paraphrase that new right zeitgeist soaked TV show “TS, you are the weakest link”.
Any hysterical posts in the pipeline about the evil foreigner James Cameron buying up our farmland?
You mean the evil foreigner that’s going to become a NZ citizen or resident? Well, I would have preferred it if he’d become a NZ citizen first but our laws don’t work that way ATM.
Since yesterdy afternoon, I’ve been having trouble with the recent comments links in the box to the right of the screen.
I click on one of the latest comment links, get taken to the post thread but not to the comment, and the individual comment (from the designated commenter), is nowhere to be seen, and the link I clicked on has disappeared from the box on the right. Using firefox.
+1. Using Chrome
Having similar problems. Using Firefox on Apple. Firefox has been doing some erratic stuff. Might switch to Safari.
I have now discovered that, once I click the link and get taken to the lead post for the thread, if I refresh, I then get taken to the specific recent comment.
Odd. Hang out for the weekend. It is probably related (somehow) to the hack I used to get past the outage yesterday. I’ll be fixing that up on the weekend.
While I am at it, I want to have another look at that box on the right. It uses JQuery to load it late in the process. I think that the intent was to make it dynamic (ie so new comment show soon after they are made) and I might put that in.
Be nice to add some filters if I can figure out a good screen process for it.
I also want to look at the screen real estate
Thanks. I can work with this by refreshing after clicking. The site is much improved from the outages yesterday.
How many people attended?
There was a protest in Christchurch yesterday, with people voicing their concerns about the pay rise of council CEO Tony Marryatt. The mainstream media plucked their crowd estimates out of thin air… over-exaggerating by a whopping 300%.
If it were just 750 people there it wouldn’t take long to count each person. 12-15 minutes tops.
However, some of the very dense grids have 35-40 heads present. Some of the lighter grids only 10-15. With say 45 decently populated grids and an average count of 26 peeps each.
IMO it looks like a crowd of 1100-1200.
I used the higher definition photo as well and got to an average 35 in the denser grids, of which there are seven. The point is that the MSM saying there were 3000 to 4000 people attending is completely wrong!
I used a photo published on the Press I think. Enlarged it and sampled and easily reached 2,000 +
Stuff says 4,000
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6345250/Angry-Christchurch-residents-to-protest-council
It just occurred to me that there is a correlation between the Occupy Movement and the Christchurch Protest. Many feel helpless in the face of the power of “The System” but here there was a chance for a specific focus of their discontent, as opposed to the vague discontent lacking defined targets.
when is Radio New Zealand going to fire brian krump.
there is soemthing terminally tacky about that man and when I hear him say you are going into the draw to win then I want to barf my tea all over the wireless.
Has banker bashing gone to far? You be the judge!
Wetlands day nothing to celebrate
Today marks the 41 anniversary of the Ramsar Convention, which is designed to raise public awareness and safeguard what wetlands remain. It’s also meant to protect the environmental, economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value of wetlands…
This may or may not be coincidental:
This isn’t far from another redeveloped wetland area:
http://milton-district.co.nz/sinclair-wetlands/
Treasury has gone full retard.
Yeah, noticed that. Nothing but pure ideology in there – the ideology that has just been thoroughly shown as pure BS. It seems that Treasury is out to make us worse off.
Nope,not mad just panicked about the global road crash further down the highway, and disguising budgetary austerity as ‘policy for growth’. Where are our borrowing billions to come from?
No Draco T Bastard – think cup half full here in line with the sweetness and light New Zealand.
Treasury is not out to make the 90+% worse off; they’re out to make the 1-10% better off. Now, d’ya see?
Kind regards
crosby and textor
in their absence signed by: john key and bill english
Careful Jackal. you will offend every dingbat with a bobcat and a truck who wants to fill in every bit of swamp in the world because they are offended by nature.
I was actually hoping to offend those bastard farmers who let their cows mess up the place… but offending a few other dingbat environmental criminals is all good as well.
OK, so where’s the TPK thread? Just wondering, 16% of a ministry staff being scrapped, it’s budget being capped/slashed and the only person I have heard in the media about it is Winston.
http://business.scoop.co.nz/2012/02/01/nz-post-drags-down-kiwibank-credit-rating-outlook/
Now what are these bastards up to – separate and sell off ?
Key creates a crisis, slaming us all with the notion that a 49% private shareholding shall not be held to the treaty of Waitangi, because weep weep private investers need certainty. Exactly how does the 51% holding by the Crown produce this uncertainty? well it doesn’t — unless — Key plans on fully selling the assets.
So let’s sum up this for a moment, Key plans on selling renewable energy sources held in trust by, for and of public, at the bottom of the market just before the greatest collapse in oil reserves known to Humanity. And now he wants to bleed small NZ investers who will pay more ‘because’ of perceived certainty (which they actually don’t get unless fully sold), to provide the big investors who will buy out the assets in full the benefit of the uncertainty being removed. There is no innovation in buying an asset over to the private sector to hoard, though a lot of innovation (distortion) in how to achieve the firesale in the public arena.
And that’s not enough, Key then pulls out the tried old technique in misappriopiating Maori. By talking only with Maori inside the tent (who just left the tent). The Maori party is not the sole representative of Maori, in fact the recent election saw them drop to less than half the Maori Seats, and Mana also got 1% of the list vote. So seems to me that Key echo chamber with the Maori party ‘consenting’ for all Maori, which even the Maori party is hesitating to provide, is shocking given NZ history and give the Maori just left the tent because of Asset sales.
Why should the public who have had to hold assets in trust for the future suddenly found just when they are going to become so valuable, when the market is so weak, when global soverign nations are printing money (a buyers market), justifies the PM sweeting the deal by shifting the benefit to the full sale of the assets.
Welll lucky old Key has no real opposition since the Media are gagging to white wash his astonishing position, that there is a crisis of certainty in the partial asset sale, that will leave a asset that under partial ownership will still have to take the Treaty into account (as the largest shareholder is the govt, i.e no crisis).
Where is media balance when the Media let the PM lie firstly that there is a crisis, then that the crisis is a crisis, then suggest that the Maori party represents Maori, then that the Maori party has no seat at the table due to its supply agreement. Sorry but who the hell do the editors of MSM think they are??? That a snowstorm of lies go unchallenged without any rigor at all. There is no need to remove the treaty obligations since full privatisation is not on the cards. Maori are not solely represented by the Maori Party, and the Maori party does not provide consent for the treaty to be removed because they signed a supply agreement not to be at the table on asset sales.
Then look at the Maori party, like they are hanging out for iwi to buy the assets, what a bunch of two faced… …Maori are disproportionately represented in the jails, in the courts, in the poverty metrics, and why because if the bridges were collapsed in the Pakeha dominated heartland of NZ they’d get fixed aleady, but since the social bridges, economic bridges, careers bridges, access to transport, etc, etc are all broken in Maori, Pacific Island (and Pakeha poor) areas its okay for the Maori party to ignore them and talk solely about government programs. The poor of NZ dont need more government, they need better goverance, we as a nation need capital fairness, capital independance, capital freedom for NZ and seating with Mr ‘big capital’ Key is not going to help Maori.
The Maori party has just been insulted by the PM, who says they are not at the table because of the supply agreement says nothing about asset sales, this is like you or I being told by our bank that we signed up to mortgage our home because we trusted our bank to look after our money (as we didn’t arrange a mortgage). Key broke trust with the Maori by suggesting that the supply agreement means consent does not need to be sort from, amongst others, the Maori Party. (i.e. Mana, Maori Labour MP, and other Maori MPs). Key needs to engage with Maori in Parliament who have won the votes to represented Maori not have a few staged events outside of parliament.
Key is not to be trusted, he does not come to the table in good faith.
National and Maori party to split?
The Maori party will loose what little credibility remains to them if they continue to support a National led government that has shown them such contempt…
Case thrown out, careless use of a motor vehicle should of been the charge…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6354563/Judge-drops-cycle-death-case
Judge points out the confusion caused by the markings that push cyclists onto he busy footpath.
So why ws this man dragged into court, at considerable cost emotionally?
Because seems to me the council was at fault, the judge pointed out that it was a busy place for recreational cyclists (and also pedestians).
Parking should never have been allow at that choke point.
“Ring, Ring”, “Hello” “Bill I need a diversion fast, my image is suffering with this Maori thing”
Bill: “hang on a minute John”, “how about we try some teacher bashing, you know the old making class sizes bigger line”
“Teachers! Brilliant Bill that will also take the pressure of Mad Banks & Isaac as well, two birds with one stone thanks Billy”
Wow that was ‘fun’. A previously used plugin that was meant to delete the older post revisions went berserk. It deleted all of the posts.
I dumped the binary log out as SQL using mysqlbinlog and edited the resulting 750k line files. Have to love Visual Slickedit. At one stage it had 5 of the binlog SQL files of similar size open at once.
Did a selective display of all statements so I only saw those SQL statements with the three tables that may have been affected (problem statement below). Dumped those three files out with a slickedit macro “copy-selective-display” that copies the visible lines and ignores collapsed lines.
Looked at the tables to see what the problem was. Just wp_posts was a problem – had 5 rows left out of the 74k. Dumped that table back in from the last backup. Figured out what the last update was. Clipped between that and the error statement. Told slickedit to add a semicolon on the end of every line.
Opened up Navicat in wine (because I own a windows version and their ‘linux’ version is just Wine anyway). Told it to load and run the file out of slickedit.
Checked everything and turned maintenance mode off. Good thing that I not only have backups, but I also have the binary log running
What I now have to figure out is why this following statement caused the problem…
DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b
ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c
ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = ‘revision’
It looks fine to me ! In particular why in the hell it only affected one table as far as I can see. But I don’t do SQL a lot. I did have some problems with left outer joins converting from an older windows MySQL database to linux MySQL. But left inner joins? WTF.
Updated: Ah. LEFT JOIN is a LEFT OUTER JOIN. I’m always pedantic about saying it exactly (the way Codd would have liked it)
I really have to start doing some of these maintenance jobs right after I have taken a backup. There are so many plugin updates that I never read the code or fully test them.