Would've been more fun if Meka had simply changed parties right now, and kept Ministerial portfolios,, to show a Labour-Green-Maori Coslition as generally unremarkable.
What do you think about the prospects of tactical voting to keep the MP out of government? That, is people voting National who otherwise wouldn't have.
The average kiwi would likely be having visions of co-governance on steroids if Labour are in government and have to rely on the MP. Given co-governance seems to have been as popular as a turd on a birthday cake, then I can't imagine this combination would cause voters hearts to go all a flutter.
The average kiwi would likely be having visions of co-governance on steroids if Labour are in government and have to rely on the MP.
So we should drop co-governance because a bunch of bigots got whipped up into a frenzy by right-wing media, fed a whole bunch of bullshit, and now are foaming at the mouth about having to listen to someone else's perspective?
The problem with co-governance isn't co-governance. It's been the left's inability to sell a compelling narrative for why it exists, and our unwillingness to reckon with racism, inequality, and history in the service of pleasing Chris Trotter's Waitakere Man
The problem with co-governance isn't co-governance. It's been the left's inability to sell a compelling narrative for why it exists, and our unwillingness to reckon with racism, inequality, and history in the service of pleasing Chris Trotter's Waitakere Man
Yes I agree with this. I say it again my view that in its explanations Govt over estimated the ability of the electorate to understand. If this happens the interpretation/analysis is left to others who may also not understand or who may understand, but have no interest in putting forward an unbiased view.
Mr Hipkins has told us that there is no co-Governance planned for the water supply. If we look at the Te Mana o te Wai Statements in the legislation he would appear to be correct. It is going to be exclusive control by the various iwi groups with no governance by anyone else.
A full explanation of the effects is given by Dr Muriel Newman here.
'Asked why co-governance was kept, McAnulty said there were multiple reasons.
"Māori have a special interest in water and that's been established by the courts – I wasn't prepared to put anything up that would be counter to that.
"At the end of the day, I was confident that if we actually explain what it is we're proposing – accepting that our explanation previously wasn't effective and that people found out that it wasn't actually governance, that it was very similar to what's happening in the Local Government sector on a day-to-day basis – then, really, New Zealanders would be comfortable with it."
I did go through the clauses in the draft legislation on 22/4. I got a bit of justified 'stick' about my setting out at the time but I think I have read the draft legislation well enough to know that your statement
It is going to be exclusive control by the various iwi groups with no governance by anyone else.
As far as my comment on control being by various iwi groups I would suggest that, since only iwi groups can issue Te Mana o te Wai Statements and that they must be actioned the statement that they will be the only group in control is accurate. After all they will have the over-riding ability to prevent other actions being carried out if they want to.
Why don't you cite and link to the relevant section(s) of the Act, so that we can all check if you are correct or not? I'm convinced you're telling porkies but let's see what you come up with, this time.
Thank you for pointing to those sections. However, it is clear that you have grossly misinterpreted the Act and its specific amendment. Your comments are inaccurate, inconsistent with the legal text, oversimplifying and misleading. Yet, thrice (!) you make rather absolute statements and claims that fail the test of truthfulness. If you were simply parroting Muriel Newman then one wonders why you accept her ‘information’ without apparent checks and put your trust in her for being truthful. Newman is highly biased and arguably a bad faith actor and it is hard to understand why anybody would assist her agenda of biased disinformation unless it aligns with their own agenda.
You are entitled to your opinion, which, of course, has to have some foundation in reality. When you comment here, you are expected to argue for your opinion(s) and support your argument(s) with facts and data that can be verified. You pointed vaguely in the direction of some Sections of the Law but did not construct an argument. I can counter any argument that you may have and show that you are wrong and how wrong your comments were, thrice. And I am not the only one who told you that you were wrong.
You are not entitled to spread disinformation on this site, regardless of your intention. As a Moderator, I feel it is my responsibility to put a stop to that. I prefer frank and robust debate but in lieu of this, I can wear my other hat and deal with it more decisively.
Your choice – we live in a (relatively) free world.
Sections 140-143 just define a particular group that may provide a statement of their position on the provision of water services, that the water services must respond to that statement advising what steps (if any) they were taking towards fulfilling those positions and that response must be published.
There is nothing in that that is a problem. Nor in the changes to section 144.
It is almost exactly the same in essence with the requirements for territorial authority representatives being appointed to the regional representative group except that that group gets some actual power.
Basically you and that notorious racial bigot (in my opinion) Muriel Newman and her centre for racist propaganda mis-named as a Centre for Political Research are just terrified about a regional body having to respond to advice from locals who have an long-standing interest (well documented in 1840) in clean unpolluted waters. Especially that they are required to respond to it. It makes it hard to stack such bodies with minions who are interested in surrendering public assets to private monopolists – the type that characteristically follow the Act. Being forced and required to clearly explain their actions in requirements that can be pushed into the courts must be terrifying to them.
I can understand that after looking at other water plans, for instance, the Waikato Valley Authority – whose latest plan is that they may be able to stop increasing the annual pollution of the Waikato river about 70+ years.
After looking at the kind of scientific and local advice that was pushed into that advisory body and simply ignored, it is hardly surprising that the legislation is pretty clear about some of the long-standing local residents being listened to and answered.
It just makes it hard for honest thieving asset-grabbers carpet-baggers and their bigoted allies that Act likes to support…
Unfortunately I can’t raise any sympathy for those kinds of fuckwits.
A response to a Te Mana o te Wai statement for water services must include—
(a)
a plan that sets out how the water services entity intends (consistent with, and without limiting, section 4(1)(b)) to give effect to Te Mana o te Wai, to the extent that it applies to the entity’s duties, functions, and powers; and
(b)
a statement on how the plan gives effect to the obligations specified in section 4.
in section 13(d), that a function of a water services entity is to partner and engage with mana whenua in its service area:
(2)
After section 5(g), insert:
(h)
in sections 232(5), 247(1)(a), 257(1)(b), 262(1)(d), 271(1)(c), 286(1)(b), 347(1)(a), 355(b), 473(3), and 474(2) and (6), that there must be engagement with mana whenua:
(i)
in section 465(1)(b)(ii), that the chief executive of a water services entity must, as soon as practicable after finalising a specified document, prepare and publish a report on how each specified document gives effect to—
(i)
the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi; and
(ii)
Te Mana o te Wai (to the extent that Te Mana o te Wai applies to the relevant duties, functions, and powers):
(j)
in section 474(1)(c) and clause 78 of Schedule 1 that contracts, arrangements or understandings which local authorities have entered with mana whenua relating to water services transfer to water services entities:
(k)
in clause 77 of Schedule 1 that during the establishment period for water services entities, all persons exercising duties, functions, or powers must uphold the integrity, intent, and effect of Treaty settlement obligations:
(l)
in clause 8 of Schedule 5 that a subsidiary of a water services entity must give effect to Treaty settlement obligations that apply to the parent entity and are relevant to the purpose and objectives of the subsidiary.
Seems to go a little beyond a requirement to simply 'respond'. Multiple uses of the word 'must' would appear to create a binding legislative and contractual obligations to carry out the intent and requirements of these Te Mana o te Wai statements.
At least that seems to be the intent – maybe it reads differently to you.
Luxon was certainly indulging in that sort of dog whistle this morning on RNZ's Morning Report. He insisted that Labour/Greens/MP were a single bloc, so nudge nudge wink wink, if you vote Labour you'll get radical Mowrees. Might be a good move by Luxon – never underestimate the racist instincts of a sizeable cohort of kiwi, know it all, self-identifying 'practical' blokes. Corin Dann, who is either exhausted or letting his natural conservatism take over, didn't counter by asking Luxon if Natonal-ACT were a single bloc, or pointing at people like Brash who have moved from National to ACT, or making the dog whistle explicit by asking if National was now fully on board with the neoliberal extremism of the Market Leninists in ACT. But hey, these are clueless NZ journalists, lacking both memory and thought.
I think a (more?) likely possibility is the TPM will sit on the cross-benches for maximum leverage. Looking at the political neutering of the Green Party in this Government I would certainly consider this, especially when TPM is relatively inexperienced and lacks Government experience. How long this would survive in Parliament and how effective it would be is anybody’s guess – I can’t see it last a full term.
“…kept Ministerial portfolios,, to show a Labour-Green-Maori Coslition as generally unremarkable.”
Well, it could have been if she had had the courtesy to inform the PM in advance but I expect its off the table now. Maybe just as well, because her judgement seems to have been a bit wanting in the past.
He could have said "Every MMP government, Labour-led or National-led, has had a "no surprises" agreement with other parties. If TPM were at some future point to enter an agreement with Labour, the same principle would apply. Today's events are certainly surprising, and the complete lack of communication does not augur well."
(of course there isn't a "no surprises" clause now, so there's no breach, but the level of trust has just plummeted).
Totally agree. But then… John Tamihere. He has a reputation for being a bit of a turncoat. I expect he is the one who manipulated this latest development.
I give you the Green Party: An organisation so wracked by factionalism and so far up it's own arse that it can't even rid itself of a bully and political liability without somehow making the situation worse.
The Australian Green Party is tearing itself apart over gender ideology having made "trans rights" a new sacred class and threatening to suspend or expel any member who so much as asks a question about it.
“The old code already prohibited vilification, harassment and misgendering,” the party member said. “Now you won’t even be able to ask questions about or propose changes to our policy without threat of expulsion. One way or another, this will split us.”
A prediction made before every MMP election, and always wrong. It is a permanent feature of NZ politics: every 3 years the Greens will disappear, every 3 years the Greens do not, but the confident pundits and politicians do. Vernon Tava, anyone?
Sorry Ed, but wish fulfillment dreams are not political discourse, or even political comment.
And this is related to a common propaganda technique among the right-wing commentariat – you insist that what you want to happen will happen, in the hope that saying so makes it more likely to happen. Probably 80%+ of the trash posing as opinion pieces that appear in (say) the NZ Herald, are an example of this.
What happened with Metiria almost broke the party.
I door-knocked extensively for the Green Party campaign. And the day after her benefit announcement, I had people I'd been talking to regularly over several election cycles, and who even voted for a Green Party councillor, literally slamming their doors in my face.
We lost half of our volunteers almost overnight.
We lost even more people when the post-election report was presented at the next AGM, and refused to even mildly criticise her.
It could have been done so much better. If Metiria had had Ann Hartley standing up there with her when she gave that speech saying that her family would have given their last cent for their first grand child, but that the punitive benefit system would have clawed it all back – the focus would have been much more on the legislation and less on who did what and when. The press pack would not have been trolling through where Meteria was living at the time and the electoral fraud may never have come to light. Instead, the Hartleys were blindsided, every Journo in the country knew of the connection, and it was all downhill from there.
Meanwhile the Greens polled 12% in latest Roy Morgan.
Babies have huge pulling power, e.g., in advertising and election campaigns.
Talking about a media beat-up, I’ve seen several times now headlines including the word “scandal”. I tell you, Crygate is bigger than Watergate, and world-famous in NZ.
I'm certainly surprised but the Green's appear to have just bulldozed over Alburt Park fallout and carried on. Potentially that hit Labour in this poll, but will fade leading up to the election.
It is delicious to watch greybeard pundits and tory commenters get bent out of shape on the rise of Te Pāti Māori. TPM are calling for GST off kai, Feed the Kids, and many other progressive policies that in a better world a majority Labour Govt. could have ticked off on a quiet afternoon in early 2021.
We (as in AO/NZ’s population) are in the midst of significant generational change. 70% of Māori are under 40 years of age and numbers of them are getting more politically active from my observation in the Far North. First FNDC Māori Mayor, Moko Tepania has been elected. Boomers will be in a minority as a voting group in 2026. And remember, elder poverty is a thing too, with 40% of super annuitants having their gold card payments as their only income source.
“It’s Time” as Norm Kirk’s campaign said in 1972. Time to retire Rogernomics & Ruthanasia.
So assume that the green could split like they did many years ago in Germany – fundis vs realos,.
Assume that the Maori Caucus of the Labour Party changes to the TPM.
Assume that this will cause a big loss to the Labour Party.
So say assume Labour 29 – 32, Greens – what ever is left of them when they done canibalising themselves 5 – 7, and TPM say 5 – 7%. Not enough to win.
As for the current Poll out, i don't think Greens sit at 12.5 %. (i know more young people that are looking at TOP rather then the Greens, specially those that are not caught up in the gender woo woo)
National however will sit somewhere between 32 – 35%. ACT sits at 10 – 15 % and then is NZ First which could go to 5- 6 % and Democracy Now who could win a seat in Northland, making Northland the new Epsom. National wins.
I am not entertaining anyone in the Labour Party to approach NZFirst for help, nor can i see NZFirst entertaining the idea of again going with Labour.
Maybe Labour thought it was good having the TPM staffed with EX Labour people such as Rawhiti and Tamihere and now the boat jumper. So safely we could assume that the TPM is the EX Labour Maori Caucus Party, but will that get them enough votes to make it big, and how many votes will it take from Labour. The question really is how many voters can Labour lose to other parties before they become irrelevant?
As for the current Poll out, i don't think Greens sit at 12.5 %. (i know more young people that are looking at TOP rather then the Greens, specially those that are not caught up in the gender woo woo)
The key here is what older Green voters are going to do, as older voters tend to be more reliable when voting. The events at Albert Park will have put off a significant number of informed older women voters ( those that do not rely on the hysteria whipped by the mainstream media) and know what happened to as 70 year old woman at the event. The comments by Marama Davidson will have have attracted older men to vote for the new Green Party.
We shall see – but I'm certain the Greens are well below 12% (Roy Morgan always paints them high), and that their support is dropping amongst older voters and will fall further as it continues to show its new priorities.
I think it's a test of the psephological argument that political parties have a "core" support base that they can rely on irrespective of the wider political situation.
Historically, for the Greens, this seems to be around 5-6% of the electorate.
Certainly, the Greens have polled far worse 6 months out from an election and managed to just squeak through. But it will be interesting to see if the party is able to hold itself together for long enough to get over the line.
They are down in the current poll, and frankly could go down further, this defection by the MP who is looking after the cyclone hit areas in the East Coast is not good for Labour, and is of no use to anyone living currently at the East Coast, shoveling dirt with no aid and no support.
Labour had its chance in 2020 with that once in a generation MMP majority and they did not have the courage–or more importantly, the ideological ability and class position–to go for broke and lay waste to Rogernomics and Ruthanasia’s toxic legacy. Neo Blairism ruled and here we are.
But nonetheless the 2023 General Election needs to see a Labour/Green/Māori Govt. (TOP? not yet convinced).
Lesser evil voting is the unfortunate way with bourgeois Parliamentary democracies, because all main parties are in reality cross class and try and maintain they represent “all New Zealanders”. This is bollocks with only the degree of their subservience to capital varying. But you have to work with and struggle against basically with one eye on the future.
We are indeed in the midst of major demographic change. Many new gens don’t give a toss about, or support, Māori capacity building and iwi moving closer to achieving some post colonial justice at last.
I would desperately love for TOP to be electorally viable, but I just don't see it happening.
The historical track record for new political parties that aren't based around, or manage to poach a sitting MP is pretty dismal. I think the Greens are the only ones (ironic given my other comments) to manage it, and they had the advantage of at least having been part of the Alliance.
I kind of agree, but they also have a chance i believe. NZ First Shane Jones meh, whom ever the National Party runs, meh, the person with a uterus from Labour meh too Labour meh, so really yes, they could. Stranger things have happened. I would not discount them.
If the entire Maori Caucus in the Labour Party were to switch to TPM the main effect would be that there would be a lot less Maori MPs.
There are, I believe, 15 Maori MPs in the Labour Caucus. If we suppose the TPM won all the Maori seats that would give them 7 seats. I suspect the absolute limit on their party vote would be about 5% which would allow for 6 seats They would, with an overhang seat get 7 seats.
Of the existing 2 TPM MPs, and the 15 who might come over from Labour there would therefore be 10 who would be out in the cold. I'm sure that all the Labour MPs can count and they aren't going to commit electoral suicide.
Really >? Labour in the middle of a world wide pandemic that no-one knew how bad it would or could get should have made dramatic and "go for broke " changes to everything.. Thank God you are nowhere near the levers of power.
The Land of the Free will always amaze. Now a Michigan school district has banned kids taking even clear backpacks to school over concern about guns
“Across the country, we have seen an increase in threatening behavior and contraband, including weapons, being brought into schools at all levels,” the district said in a frequently-asked-questions brief for parents.
“Backpacks make it easier for students to hide weapons, which can be disassembled and harder to identify or hidden in pockets, inside books or under other items,” it said.
The school board decided on a fairly straightforward backpack ban that prohibits those made of transparent plastic. The ban applies through the end of the school year."
If the risks are so high in kids taking things to school surely the most definite, safe, bullet proof option is to not have kids go to school in the first place. I mean everyone went to school and look how they ended up.
The land of the free is the land of private tyrranies. The power of a legitimate democratic state is villified and weakened to the point that it is unable to stop private tyrranies from flourishing. Right wing 'libertarians' are authoritarians at heart.
However, as a teacher and member of the PPTA I will willingly strike with my colleagues.
Why?
Two of my coworkers are beginning teachers. Bright, engaging, great with the students, and volunteer for the co-curricular stuff. Howver both of then have had to get second jobs to make end meet.
If we want to attract people into the profession, we need to pay them accordingly/rant
I'd start with an end to any requirement for anyone working as a teacher to make any TD payment. They are paying it back by working as a teacher (as are nurses – with doctors I'd make the first 10 years TD free and then determine that by other measures – such as continuing if a GP in an area of shortage, or a rural area GP locum etc).
If anyone wants to see why Turkey is the most important hinge point in the fate of global democracy this year, this is as good an explanation as you need without going to Foreign Affairs:
Turkey (formerly part of the larger Ottoman Empire) has fulfilled this (power broking/bulwark) role many times over the last 200 years with 'the sick man of Europe' being a key reason why our troops were around the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in WW1. Its importance, perhaps a function of geography as well as now a democracy and ‘relatively stable is overlooked at one’s peril.
I suspect that over the years vastly more people have died from eating bad cheese that have been killed by plutonium. That would basically have been only the people killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. That is generally estimated as being about 65,000.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
What is usually overlooked in that story is that other people just a few meters away in the same room survived. It was an extremely high dose rate, possibly the highest any humans have been exposed to and lived to tell the tale – yet several of them lived many decades afterward.
It belies the idea that exposure to ionising radiation is always an instant death sentence.
What is usually overlooked in that story is that other people just a few meters away in the same room survived.
They did, but for how long? Did you read the Wiki article or are you pushing a binary dead-or-alive here?
Three of the observers eventually died of conditions that are known to be promoted by radiation: […] Some of the deaths may have been a consequence of the incident.
Yes I did quickly scan the wiki article, although I was always familiar with the incident. The point I am making is that most people irrationally overestimate the threat of radiation and how even in extreme cases like this one it is still difficult to draw a straight line between cause and effect.
Some of the deaths may have been a consequence of the incident. Louis Hempelman, M.D., a consultant to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, believed that it is not possible to establish a causal relation between the incident and the specifics of the death from such a small sample.
Other people in the room were hospitalised for quite some time and suffered from issues that may have been caused by radiation exposure.
Chronic biological damage at the sub-cellular level can be very hard to detect and almost impossible to prove, even when symptoms manifest, usually (much) later as syndromes, which is true for ionising radiation and exposure to chemical toxins/poisons such as nerve gasses. I think these sorts of things add to the public fear and not entirely without reason, IMO.
No-one has suggested that acute ionising exposure at that extremely high does rate is anything other than dangerous. But the fact remains that of the 8 people in that room, only 1 actually died as an immediate consequence.
That the other 7 survived for quite considerable periods afterward is the actually interesting part of the story.
What now know is that our cellular DNA is under constant assault from all manner of biochemical and environment mechanisms – of which natural background radiation is just one contributor. We also know that all the cells of our bodies are replaced at least every few months, so if we did not have some means to keep that DNA reasonably repaired and accurate we would likely not live more than a year or two.
And crucially – as long as we do not overwhelm this repair mechanism the damage from ionising radiation will not accumulate – and any harm will likely remain below any threshold of detection. It is only when we are exposed to high rates of radiation over a period of minutes or hours that it really becomes dangerous. Below a certain threshold you are almost certainly going to be just fine.
And in this case the 7 people who survived the immediate event, did so because while the peak intensity of the event was extreme, it lasted only seconds.
And crucially – as long as we do not overwhelm this repair mechanism the damage from ionising radiation will not accumulate – and any harm will likely remain below any threshold of detection.
Limiting Cancer Risk from Radiation in the Environment
EPA [US Environmental Protection Agency] bases its regulatory limits and nonregulatory guidelines for public exposure to low level ionizing radiation on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The LNT model assumes that the risk of cancer due to a low-dose exposure is proportional to dose, with no threshold. In other words, cutting the dose in half cuts the risk in half.
"This repair mechanism"is an example of evolution's adequate design – unless you're special there may be no need to worry, as far as we know.
Personal biases can mess with objective risk assessments and the value of preventative and/or protective strategies – for example lockdowns, testing/tracing, quarantine, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene/masks (“virtue signaling“?), and vaccination during a pandemic.
"This [DNA] repair mechanism"is an example of evolution's adequate design – unless you're special there may be no need to worry, as far as we know.
Personal biases can mess with objective risk assessments and the value of preventative and/or protective strategies – for example lockdowns, testing/tracing, quarantine, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene/masks (“virtue signaling“?), and vaccination during a pandemic.
P.S. Fwiw, the recent review on the cellular response to DNA damage seemed quite expert, at least to me. If you’re not interested in the “tactic” of including relevant links, then please just scroll on by – I do.
If you’re not interested in the “tactic” of including relevant links, then please just scroll on by – I know I do.
Are you saying that you want to be ignored? If so then why are you wasting pixels here?
Otherwise I confess to being too stupid to decode the impressively oblique point you are trying to make here. Try speaking to me as if I were a small child – or a cocker spaniel.
Thanks RL for not ignoring my comments in this thread. The links @11:20 am are helpful to me – reason enough to waste pixels, imho.
Otherwise I confess to being too stupid to decode the impressively oblique point you are trying to make here.
That genuinely surprises me. You mentioned "threshold" twice in your comment @9:09 am:
…threshold of detection [of harm]…
Below a certain threshold [of ionising radiation exposure] you are almost certainly going to be just fine.
I observed that the EPA bases its regulatory limits and nonregulatory guidelines for public exposure to low level ionising radiation on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model (link #1), and that DNA repair mechanisms (link #2) are imperfect products of evolution which, while adequate at the population level, may be inadequate for a few individuals (given the diversity of molecular and cellular systems), potentially contributing to an early demise.
An analogy would be that for most people the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are very safe and moderately effective, but a small proportion of recipients exhibit serious adverse reactions, perhaps due in part to the diversity of individual immune systems.
Link #3 was to a paper speculating that population-based pandemic responses might increase exposure to natural (radon-sourced) low level ionising radiation, and the possible health significance of same.
Links #4 and #5 highlighted the diversity of opinions on the benefits of mask wearing during a pandemic – some consider mask wearing to be a type of "virtue signaling", whereas at my age, and with all this talk of long COVID, it just seems commonsense.
Thank you for clarifying your point. I am going to focus on your case arguing for the LNT model.
In brief the obvious flaw of this model is that it ignores the fact that we live in a sea of background radiation – and that if this model was correct – we would all accumulate ionising damage over the course of a few decades and all die of radiation induced sickness. And this would apply to all living things, even very long lived ones.
It also ignores the fact that life on this planet evolved when the background radiation level was likely 5 – 10 times higher than it is now.
It also fails to account that natural background levels even in modern times varies over a very wide range – and there is no evidence that people living in high dose zones die sooner than anyone else. Indeed there is some compelling evidence for the opposite.
It also fails to account for the real outcomes for accidental radiation releases that have occurred – most of which have resulted in far less harm than LNT would predict. In particular it can be shown that once the dose rate falls below a fairly high threshold rate that most of the general public are very unlikely to be exposed to, even in the worst case accidents, pretty much nothing bad happens.
In the great majority of real world radiation releases, the dose is received over an extended period. LNT for which dose rate is irrelevant claims this make no difference and the only thing that counts is the cumulative dose. Real world experience says that's nonsense. What counts is keeping the harm rate below the repair rate.
The problem with LNT as a model is that it predicts far more harm from radiation than is reasonable. It was for instance the general basis on which some people predicted 100's thousands of deaths from Chernobyl, when in the real world on the ground researchers struggled to find more than a few hundred.
And that bad model in turn imposes on the nuclear power industry something called ALARP (As Low as Reasonably Practical) which is interpreted to mean by the US NRC to mean that if something can be done to reduce radiation levels, then it must be done. Regardless of cost.
Which in turn imposes insane, unreasonable costs on nuclear power generators that has absolutely stifled their development and rollout over the past three decades. Which is why we still burn coal.
PS (I am not claiming that radiation has zero risk, just that is negligible at low rates of exposure. We all accept negligible risk every time we get out of bed, but that does not stop us from getting on with life.)
Thank you for clarifying your point. I am going to focus on your case arguing for the LNT model.
Sorry to disappoint, but it's not my case. I'm open-minded, recognising that the EPA uses the LNT model, and acknowledging that the LNT model is 'hotly' debated in scientific circles.
In brief the obvious flaw of this model is that it ignores the fact that we live in a sea of background radiation – and that if this model was correct – we would all accumulate ionising damage over the course of a few decades and all die of radiation induced sickness. And this would apply to all living things, even very long lived ones.
Obviously, and evidently, exposure to background ionising radiation isn't an existential threat to Homo sapiens, and equally obviously background ionising radiation damages DNA. Some/most/all of this damage is repaired in some/most/all humans.
You seem certain that background and low-dose (<0.1 Gy) ionising radiation poses a "negligible risk" (not worth considering) to health. And that's certainly possible – I'm just less certain is all.
Risk Factors for Childhood Leukemia: Radiation and Beyond [24 December 2021] In the latest review, Kendall et al. conclude that at present no firm conclusions about NBR [natural background radiation] and childhood cancer can be reliably drawn.
Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term? [July 2022] However, in order for a more constructive nuclear discourse, a paradigm shift will be required, acknowledging the complex historical and sociopsychological factors that have shaped radiation into becoming a uniquely feared process.
I'm not a radiophobe – received safety training in the handling of phosphorous-32 back in the bad old days (1980s), before Sanger sequencing using ultrathin polyacrylamide gels (god they were fiddly) was replaced by fluorescent dye-based capillary DNA sequencers. Also visited the synchrotron facility at Daresbury over a 3-year period in the late 80s – they were very safety conscious, even when the beam lines were down due to no vacuum.
So, why are we having this pro-LNT/anti-LNT debate? It is because the precautionary approach and ALARA have resulted in regulators, in many instances, regulating µSv doses which are at least 10 000 times lower than where evidence of harm has been convincingly proven. This is done using LNT in its strictest sense and because it is achievable. However, often the resources spent to achieve such regulation is not commensurate with the acceptable risk. The anti-LNT argument would suggest that the vast amount of money spent on protecting from such low doses would be better spent protecting from known real harms, whether that be in the radiation industries or in other areas of society.
In the interests of being constructive, if I am going to criticise the LNT model I had better offer an improved alternative. The author I am following (and corresponding with) on this prefers a model called SNT (Sigmoid No Threshold). Unfortunately it requires some tech background to get the most out of it, but the essence is this:
SNT is consistent with the fact that 1000 mGy in a hour or two creates an entirely different amount of harm than a 1000 mGy spread evenly over 50 years. According to SNT, 1000 mGy acute results in an increased cancer mortality of 0.064, a bit more than LNT. But the increased cancer mortality associated with 0.385 mGy in a week is 0.0000000267. … 2000 weeks of this results in an increased cancer mortality of 0.00007, which would be undetectable.
SNT can model both the harm associated with a large dose received over a short period and the lack of detectable harm when the same dose is received over an extended period.
Now I am certain the large majority of people scanning this thread are not in the least interested in this apparently arcane debate – yet as I outlined above it lies at the heart of why we are having a climate change crisis at all. There are two reasons why we are still burning fossil fuel instead of having already transitioned to nuclear power.
One is this scientific LNT lie that has conditioned the public to be irrationally afraid of radiation and the resulting regulatory over-reach has made building coal power stations far cheaper than nuclear.
The other has been a defensive nonsense from the nuclear power industry that has pretended they could build reactors that would never suffer an accidental radiation release – at any scale. This too is a lie – nothing human is ever perfect and all engineered artifacts will fail. And the public are not stupid, they knew the industry was bullshitting when they made this claim.
The correct path forward is to be honest – yes reactors will suffer from a non-zero failure rate. We will engineer to make this rate as low as is economically feasible, but it will not be zero. But the good news is that for all realistic scenarios the resulting harm to the general public will be negligible.
Much the same proposition will apply to the high level waste – yes this is a by product that like many other industrial waste stream must be handled and stored in a serious and reliable manner, but the risk of harm from this is far lower than the anti-activists have told you.
The argument is simple enough – if you truly believe climate change is an existential threat, or even just a potentially very disruptive one, the risk of harm from nuclear power generation to solve this crisis, while not zero, is so low as to be insignificant by comparison.
It is like a starving man refusing to cross a road to obtain food, because he is scared of being struck by a meteor.
Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term? [July 2022] However, in order for a more constructive nuclear discourse, a paradigm shift will be required, acknowledging the complex historical and sociopsychological factors that have shaped radiation into becoming a uniquely feared process.
Consider the possibility that a more constructive nuclear discourse will require nuclear power advocacy from respected disinterested persons – a few strategically-placed 'new Lovelocks' might help.
Notwithstanding the opinions of the founder of ThorCon, as far as nuclear power is concerned, nimby. Australia, with its greater per capita energy use, relatively stable geology, vast empty spaces and massive uranium ore deposits, is a logical place to deploy MSRs.
RL, I hope your vision of a hyper-energised eco-friendly civilisation freed from the shackles of photosynthesis can be realised (somehow.) Imho, CC is a self-made existential threat to this iteration of civilisation on spaceship Earth – future iterations may learn from our mistakes, if people remember and agree/care what they were.
It is like a starving man refusing to cross a road to obtain food, because he is scared of being struck by a meteor.
Or a morbidly obese man refusing to limit his food intake, because he's exceptional and the prospect of losing 'weight' is terrifying.
As for bariatric surgery – fuhgeddaboudit!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
Or a morbidly obese man refusing to limit his food intake, because he's exceptional and the prospect of losing 'weight' is terrifying.
As I have pointed out many times, the future course of CC has little to do with the choices of the already rich and developed world. Yeah we can reduce our excess consumption, we can continue to become incrementally more efficient. Nice to have, but it is a small fraction of the problem. It is the poor in nations like China, India, SE Asia and Africa who will determine the outcome.
It all comes down to one thing – do they build coal burning power plants, or nuclear ones? And they will make that choice on cost.
As I have pointed out many times, the future course of CC has little to do with the choices of the already rich and developed world. Yeah we can reduce our excess consumption, we can continue to become incrementally more efficient. Nice to have, but it is a small fraction of the problem.
Yes yes, the entire "rich and developed world" is merely a small fraction of the current problem – I've read this many times. But since reducing consumption is "nice to have", and 'the rich world' is well placed to reduce consumption, why not do it? What are the obstacles to making this seemingly hard choice now?
Why communicating on climate is so hard [24 April 2023]
Communicating the climate crisis effectively is one of the most complex — and consequential — challenges of our time. While humans already have many solutions needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, we lack the ability to inform, inspire and persuade a critical mass to act decisively and immediately.
Bill McKibben Explains Global Warming By The Numbers [17 April 2023]
The IPCC says the “carbon budget” for the Earth is now at about 380 billion tons of carbon dioxide. To avoid exceeding our carbon budget — the point where carbon emissions tip the world over into an irreversible full blown climate disaster — 90% of all the fossil fuels currently buried underground will need to stay there, unburned.
The fossil fuel industry has plans on the table to add 5 times more coal, oil, and gas than the Earth can tolerate without going into total meltdown mode. “If you want to understand … why the fossil fuel industry fights so hard,” McKibben writes in Rolling Stone, we have to recognize that leaving all that fossil fuel in the ground “means stranding about $100 trillion worth of assets in the soil.”
Opinion | We must band together despite our differences to stop climate change [24 March 2023]
At first, it seems puzzling that we pursue our own demise through our carbon emissions with such zeal. But there is really no “we” here. The human race is deeply divided: rich vs. poor, and the greed of current generations vs. the survival of voiceless future generations.
Might greed, and the desire of some in "the rich world" to continue BAU just a little longer, be delaying the hard choices? Is it that simple?
Meanwhile, since I can't build a nuclear power plant, I'll continue to consume less (a win, if not a win-win) and choose actions/products with smaller footprints – that’s something I can do.
Well as one of your references speaks to – 'why is it so hard to communicate about climate change' – I suggest the answer is not very complex.
It is because the message being conveyed is that the solution to CC is energy poverty – or some variation of this. People are not stupid, as much as we might want to dress this poverty up in moral virtue, it holds for most people the prospect of a diminished life. And when we try to guilt the them into compliance, they become passively resistant, saying one thing and then doing another.
As for the already poor, the billions who live the reality of an energy poor life – they have little but contempt.
Yet a template for the answer is literally under our noses – if you offer people who can afford them EV's, they happily leap at the chance. Their CC mitigation potential might be marginal, but they will cheerfully pay a little extra for them because getting rid of that ICE engine does feel good, and their quality of life improves even.
The Stockholm Syndrome [26 May 2022]
However, a rare trend reversal was marked during COVID-19 in 2020, when Earth Overshoot Day moved back three weeks and was once again observed in August, instead of July; which is where it was in pre-pandemic 2019. A study by the GFN estimated that the pandemic had driven a 14.5-percent decrease in humanity’s carbon footprint compared to 2019. Unfortunately, this contraction has little to do with a change in mindsets regarding consumption and production, and everything to do with the economic lockdown brought on by the pandemic.
“The deficit is getting bigger and bigger, and yet there has been no real jolt to the political system. Any delays in the yearly date have been incidental, not intentional. We observed an improvement during oil shocks, the pandemic, and financial crises.”
– Véronique Andrieux, director of WWF, France.
Where do the resources needed to offer/sell meaningful numbers of people the means to decrease their environmental footprints (without compromising quality of life) come from? Hopeless.
“The way we pay for the present by liquidating the future truly fits the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Any other forms of Ponzi schemes are outlawed, only the ecological one we seem to ignore or even encourage.”
― Mathis Wackernagel
Anne Salmond: Is the ETS an environmental ponzi scheme? [1 May 2023]
We have to be sure that the Emissions Trading Scheme is not an environmental Ponzi scheme, based on unfounded claims about its overall impact on the climate. That would be prohibitively costly for the New Zealand economy, for the country’s international reputation, and for our children and grandchildren.
During world wars and more recent global and local crises, many people made do with less. Civilisation is now clearly at odds with planetary boundaries – can civilisation 'win' the day?
The Sustainability Crisis [4 May 2023; abstract only]
Forces of environmental destruction are driving the Earth System beyond the safe planetary boundaries to such an extent that they are destroying our life support system, the biosphere. Our climate, soils, forests, freshwater, biodiversity and essential minerals are all threatened. Meanwhile, social injustice and inequality are splitting our societies. Rich countries and rich individuals have the greatest responsibility for unleashing these forces. If current trends continue, civilisation is unlikely to outlast the twenty-first century. Although time is of the essence, scenario studies suggest that it may still be possible to transition to a Sustainable Civilisation, without collapsing our current civilisation, but we must act now.
Talk about the answers being literally under our noses.
The solutions are there
But what are the indicators that allow you to move – forward or backward – the date of the overshoot day? Experts identify five: cities, energy, food, planet and population. Within each of these macro-sectors there are an infinite number of sustainable solutions and alternatives. Any examples? Halving the world’s food waste would give us 13 more days on the calendar. While the so-called “15-minute city” – where all essential services can be reached on foot or by bicycle – would save us another 11 days. Or again: reforesting 350 million hectares of land would move the date by 8 days. Small individual gestures are then added to the decisions that are up to governments and companies. For example in energy production, one of the main drivers of climate change. According to expert estimates, abandoning fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions by 50% would allow us to postpone the overshoot day more than three months (93 days).
Another wall of quotes, and while I can guess why you thought them worth linking to – I cannot see anything substantive in your own words.
But if I was to take a punt you are proposing the usual mix measures that involve a mix of energy poverty and intermittent solar/wind/battery renewables to keep some lights on. Is this it?
I cannot see anything substantive in your own words.
Understood – "and I’d not suggest we will sustain our currently profligate lifestyles."
But if I was to take a punt you are proposing the usual mix measures that involve a mix of energy poverty and intermittent solar/wind/battery renewables to keep some lights on. Is this it?
Yes, for Aotearoa NZ and Aussie, except for the "energy poverty" bit. Nuclear power will likely continue to be a significant part of the global energy mix for decades (have I expressed a personal opinion to the contrary?) – just not in my back yard, OK?
Some (but not all) more populous countries, particularly in Asia, plan to increase nuclear power generation, and more power to them. Apologies for the following 'wall' of links; they're for my benefit (and possibly other readers) – they'll be of no use to you.
A nuclear blazing row [5 May 2023]
The nuclear debate in Europe is heating up. The issue is emotional. And it polarises.
Nuclear power in the global energy mix [19 April 2023]
Despite uneven global usage, nuclear energy powers about 10% of the world's total electricity grid.
So, continuing from 9:14 pm, provided this iteration of civilisation isn't destabilised (further) by CC, pandemics, wars, economic crises and other self-made challenges, nuclear power may have a 10% share of global electricity generation by 2050 – fingers crossed!
Zero-carbon nuclear power plays a supporting role
Nuclear power is an important source of firm zero-carbon energy, given the severity of the climate crisis and the necessity to quickly move off fossil fuels.
In the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario, nuclear power capacity increases significantly in the next three decades as electricity demand triples, but nuclear’s share of global electricity generation remains similar to today (10%).
Governments should especially endeavour to keep existing nuclear power online where it is safe to do so, and research new ways to benefit from nuclear power in the future, both in advanced fission and modular construction, as well as exploring prospects for power from nuclear fusion.
However, we expect the vast majority of the growth in clean power in this critical decade to come from wind and solar, which is cheaper and faster to deploy, and lacks the requirement for long-term waste storage or high decommissioning costs.
I scanned those references and as usual the main argument raised is 'nuclear is too expensive' and 'takes too long'. Both of which can be largely sheeted home to "Big Lie" LNT myth.
Though it’s convenient, mathematically simple and well established in regulatory assumptions, the LNT is a scientifically unsupportable model. It cannot be proven with empirical evidence and it can only be said to be “consistent” with epidemiological data that is so scattered at low doses that almost any line can be drawn through data points with an equal mathematical fit.
The LNT was initially bred and propagated by geneticists. Those geneticists left some letters in historical archives that indicate they were more interested stimulating grants than in protecting people from harm.
Their grant target was the Rockefeller Foundation, which was run by people with interests that were threatened by the spectre of competition from nuclear technology, both energy production and other applications. Not surprisingly, the people with interests did not explain their concerns by openly stating that they would benefit financially if they could find ways to slow the development of useful applications of nuclear technology.
The geneticists fabricated the LNT on the shaky ground of reported results from high dose, high dose rate experiments conducted on Drosophila (fruit flies), with the primary purpose of stimulating mutations. Those experiments had mostly been completed more than 30 years before the LNT was officially developed and applied to recommended radiation standards.
This article and the comment thread below it pretty much sums up the machinations that led to LNT. It was a scam from the outset – that has only been challenged in the past decade or so. And even then like most zombie ideas it's going to take a generation of funerals before it too is finally interred.
And neither is this the whole story. The evidence is now out that next gen molten salt reactors can be built at scale and quantity for considerably less than the cost of their equivalently rated coal power plants.
By the way, I was disappointed with the quote. I have built 8 very large tankers in Korea, including the four largest double hull tankers ever launched. I know what the Koreans' costs are. I know how good their production system is. We had done our own internal estimate. Despite the ground rules they had agreed to, the Koreans padded the quote by a considerable margin.
But if you accept the Korean cost numbers, the naive Levelized Cost of Electricity is less than 3 cents/kWh.
I scanned those references and as usual the main argument raised is 'nuclear is too expensive' and 'takes too long'.
While it seemed to me that the last 5 (of 8) articles linked to in my comments @9:14 pm and 9:15 pm all suggest nuclear power will continue to play an important role in electricity generation, your scan-based (knee-jerk?) reaction casts even those 5 references in a negative light – hardly a logical or objective response, imho.
(1) Small modular reactors (SMRs) promise cheaper nuclear energy, supplying zero-carbon grid baseload and enabling new use cases for nuclear reactors. By shrinking the size of nuclear reactors compared to conventional large nuclear reactors, much of the construction is transferred to factory assembly lines, cutting capital costs and making nuclear power cost-competitive with renewables in many applications. SMRs offer a new tool in the fight for decarbonization and energy security, leveraging proven technologies.
(2) Nuclear energy is unique in that it plays an important role in some countries, while in other countries it is less prevalent. Nuclear energy is essential in such as areas as electricity generation, medicine, industry, space exploration, and national security.
(3) In 2022 nuclear power generated 9.2% of the global electricity supply. Nuclear is a near zero-carbon fuel, so it does not contribute to climate change.
Thirty countries around the world use nuclear power for electricity generation. Notable producers include France, which mostly decarbonised its electricity system in the 1980s using nuclear power. The United States, China, France, Russia and South Korea all produced more than 100 TWh of nuclear power in 2022.
(4) Ember says the 'phasedown' of gas and coal power required for the energy transition is 'now within reach', but that more nuclear and hydropower are needed.
(5) It's a long-distance race, though lower profile, certainly, than the one being waged on the gasand oil front since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But it is underway and being relentlessly pursued by Beijing and Moscow. In terms of civil nuclear power, these two countries have long been plotting their path, leaving other major nations far behind. As of January 1 [2023], of the 59 reactors under construction worldwide, 22 are in China, and 43 use Russian or Chinese technology, according to the February 1 [2023] World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), an assessment of global nuclear power conducted by atomic energy experts.
It will be a great day when the electricity generated by MSRs and/or SMRs reaches 2% of total global generation, but the realist in me says I won't be around to celebrate. Is China currently the only country with an operational experimental/pilot/prototype/research/test/trial MSR?
There's even talk of combining the best features of SMRs and thorium MSRs to manufacture small modular thorium MSRs (SM-TMSRs) – the future is pregnant with unfathomable possibilities.
your scan-based (knee-jerk?) reaction casts even those 5 references in a negative light – hardly a logical or objective response, imho.
Well yes – fair enough. But as I've hinted at a few times now, this might be the risk you run with the wall of quotes tactic – even someone like myself who is inclined to read them might not have the time or inclination to carefully read them all. Especially when you don't make it clear what point you are trying to make, and why your reference is relevant to it.
From your last reference:
When China starts up its pilot reactor, it will be the first thorium molten salt reactor to operate since 1969. At that time, US researchers shut down their reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This laboratory was originally planned to run the Molten-salt Reactor Experiment with a mixture of thorium-232 and uranium-233, but this test program was unfortunately cancelled. According to nature.com, the researchers who collaborated on the project say that the Chinese design copies the Oak Ridge design, but improves on it by drawing on decades of innovation in manufacturing, materials and instrumentation.
I've followed this story intimately. It's almost entirely the consequence of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission having acted for the past three or more decades to ensure nuclear power will be stifled by adding many multiples of cost and delay to any project they can get their sticky fingers on.
And as a side effect the big conventional nuclear vendors adapted to this regime when they realised there was lots of easy taxpayer money to be had from these boondoggles. Innovation be damned – invoicing for insane layers of mandatory costs was risk free by comparison.
For example at some stage the NRC introduced a requirement for what is called a "double guillotine" failure mode – which hypothetically presumes that a 1 metre long segment of high grade, thick walled piping instantaneously vanishes from the cooling water circuit – introducing an extreme stress on the ability to cool the reactor. In the real world such a failure is physically impossible, yet nuclear engineers have to pretend to play along, and then add massive extra back up cooling capacity and complexity to cope with this impossible scenario. All of which has to be designed, tested and certified, and makes nuclear island of the plant 4 or 5 times more expensive than is warranted.
It's like regulating that the car you drive has to be able to protect you from not just a plausible road accident collision – but a direct meteor strike as well. Do you imagine anyone could afford such a vehicle?
The good news here is that in just the past 3 or 4 years the tide is turning on some of this nonsense as groups of people and even some regulators world-wide – who take CC seriously – are waking up to the root causes of this roadblock.
Certainly the Chinese and Russian regulators feel no requirement to go along with a scam originally perpetrated decades ago by an American fossil-fuel funded foundation, looking for ways to quietly kill off it's competition.
But the fact remains that of the 8 people in that room, only 1 actually died as an immediate consequence. [my italics]
Slotin lasted 9 days and they were not happy days by the looks of it. Acute death from radiation exposure is rare. You’re turning it into a binary again; It's not about dying or not dying, but about the quality and length of life after exposure.
That the other 7 survived for quite considerable periods afterward is the actually interesting part of the story.
But did they all live healthy long lives? It seems not.
He survived, although he lived with chronic neurological and vision problems. [wiki link]
Two others died at 42 and 55 but it is impossible to conclude that their prior radiation exposure was a factor in their untimely deaths and equally impossible to rule out that possibility.
We also know that all the cells of our bodies are replaced at least every few months […]
Nope, some cells in some tissues/organs turn over faster than that and some others considerably slower. For example, gut epithelial cells have relatively high turnover rates, which is one reason why they give rise to colon carcinomas [i.e. of epithelial origin]. Bone, muscle, and brain cells, for example have much lower turnover rates. This means that some cells are more susceptible to radiation damage than others, depending on how often they divide and replicate their DNA.
[…] so if we did not have some means to keep that DNA reasonably repaired and accurate we would likely not live more than a year or two.
I have no idea where you plucked that number from. DNA repair is not perfect and the activity of two main DNA damage response pathways vary with the cell cycle. Homologous Repair (aka Homologous Recombination Repair or HRR, for short) activity is very low in the G1 phase of the cell cycle while Non-Homologous End Joining or NHEJ is active throughout the cell cycle but mostly during G1. HRR is considered error-free repair and NHEJ is labelled error-prone repair. During the resting phase (G0-phase) of cells, it is again mostly NHEJ taking care of DNA repair. Many cells exist in G0/G1 phase. It is a lot more complex than this and our knowledge and understanding of the dynamic and multi-factorial processes and overlapping mechanisms and damage response & repair pathways involved changes and grows all the time.
And crucially – as long as we do not overwhelm this repair mechanism the damage from ionising radiation will not accumulate – and any harm will likely remain below any threshold of detection.
Accumulation and detection are two different things. DNA damage does indeed accumulate over time – it is called aging. Damage that persists attenuates cell function(s) and leads to so-called programmed cell death aka apoptosis or pushes cells into retirement aka senescence. The efficiency of DNA damage repair pathways does go down over time too. The number of DNA mutations do accumulate over time. One prevailing theory is that this can initiate cancer stem cells to form cancers. Cancer is an age-related disease, as you know, with its basis firmly in cumulative DNA damage. Other examples of DNA damage manifesting at much later date are skin cancer/melanoma after repeated UV exposure earlier in life (e.g. childhood) and cancer of the lung, mouth, throat, oesophagus, and stomach for example, after years of smoking. Even non-cumulative effects that are not immediately apparent or even measurable, even when you tried looking for it, can have serious consequences later in life because the long lag.
It is only when we are exposed to high rates of radiation over a period of minutes or hours that it really becomes dangerous. Below a certain threshold you are almost certainly going to be just fine.
Again, your assertions are overly simplistic. Nobody really knows. And being ‘just fine’ is totally meaningless in this context. On an individual basis one cannot make sound predictions; the epidemiology of cancer is based on probabilistic models over large numbers of people/patients.
Indeed I was being simplistic – but this is a political forum not a science journal and I usually try to balance readability for the vast majority of our non-technical readers, while conveying the idea with adequate precision.
Essentially I am exploring the now proven lie that was the LNT model – a model based on some very bad science from the very early days of nuclear research.
I do not propose to re-type the myriad technical details of this debate here, there is plenty of material available for anyone with a search engine and the curiosity to explore for themselves.
As I said above, the reason why this apparently obscure issue is important, is that this fundamental misunderstanding has resulted in nuclear power being grossly over-regulated and economically strangled for three decades now.
But to address your points:
Two others died at 42 and 55 but it is impossible to conclude that their prior radiation exposure was a factor in their untimely deaths and equally impossible to rule out that possibility
And one of them went on to live into his 80's. Nowhere did I suggest this was anything other than an extreme event, few other humans have ever been exposed to such high short term intensity and lived to tell the tale at all. And that is my point, not that there were no probable consequences – but that they lived at all! And as I quoted above – in the long run investigators still could not confirm that what they died of was the result of this extreme exposure.
And to put this into context, in any realistic reactor accident, even Chernobyl, the vast majority of the general public were exposed to dose rates many orders of magnitude smaller. So low that later researchers have firmly concluded that if there was any impact, it was below any detectable level.
Note carefully – no-one is claiming the hazard is zero, but that below a certain dose rate, where the rate of harm is lower than the rate of repair – the net impact is lost in the noise of all the other things that cause illness and cancers. And this is the conclusion UNSCEAR reached a decade ago.
Which means that all the LNT based over-regulation is a monstrous mis-allocation of resources and a massive lost opportunity to have solved the CC issue decades ago.
I came back and re-read your comment above and I want to express appreciation for the sincere thought and time you put into it. If I have not responded to every point it is was in the interests of brevity rather than merely ignoring them.
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TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
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Would've been more fun if Meka had simply changed parties right now, and kept Ministerial portfolios,, to show a Labour-Green-Maori Coslition as generally unremarkable.
Would make for an easier campaign.
What do you think about the prospects of tactical voting to keep the MP out of government? That, is people voting National who otherwise wouldn't have.
The average kiwi would likely be having visions of co-governance on steroids if Labour are in government and have to rely on the MP. Given co-governance seems to have been as popular as a turd on a birthday cake, then I can't imagine this combination would cause voters hearts to go all a flutter.
So we should drop co-governance because a bunch of bigots got whipped up into a frenzy by right-wing media, fed a whole bunch of bullshit, and now are foaming at the mouth about having to listen to someone else's perspective?
The problem with co-governance isn't co-governance. It's been the left's inability to sell a compelling narrative for why it exists, and our unwillingness to reckon with racism, inequality, and history in the service of pleasing Chris Trotter's Waitakere Man
Yes I agree with this. I say it again my view that in its explanations Govt over estimated the ability of the electorate to understand. If this happens the interpretation/analysis is left to others who may also not understand or who may understand, but have no interest in putting forward an unbiased view.
Mr Hipkins has told us that there is no co-Governance planned for the water supply. If we look at the Te Mana o te Wai Statements in the legislation he would appear to be correct. It is going to be exclusive control by the various iwi groups with no governance by anyone else.
A full explanation of the effects is given by Dr Muriel Newman here.
https://www.nzcpr.com/newsletter/
You're a true comedian.
I am not sure that he did say this? I know he said that Three Waters would be held over and now it has emerged as
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/major-shakeup-will-see-affordable-water-reforms-led-and-delivered-regionally
and
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/04/kieran-mcanulty-defends-not-ditching-three-waters-earlier-says-that-d-be-dumping-our-duty.html
and
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/04/13/analysis-how-kieran-mcanulty-might-just-save-three-waters/
I did go through the clauses in the draft legislation on 22/4. I got a bit of justified 'stick' about my setting out at the time but I think I have read the draft legislation well enough to know that your statement
is not correct.
What Hipkins said was
'Hipkins said “co-governance” was a misapplied term for the complex governance structure proposed for the water assets.
"It's not co-governance and it wasn't co-governance. These entities will be governed by a skills-based board,” he said.'
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/131774031/pm-chris-hipkins-says-cogovernance-isnt-a-part-of-three-waters-is-he-right#:~:text=Hipkins%20said%20%E2%80%9Cco%2Dgovernance%E2%80%9D,based%20board%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.
As far as my comment on control being by various iwi groups I would suggest that, since only iwi groups can issue Te Mana o te Wai Statements and that they must be actioned the statement that they will be the only group in control is accurate. After all they will have the over-riding ability to prevent other actions being carried out if they want to.
Why don't you cite and link to the relevant section(s) of the Act, so that we can all check if you are correct or not? I'm convinced you're telling porkies but let's see what you come up with, this time.
I am not a practitioner of the art of following the deatails of legislation but I think these are the relevant parts. The bill is here
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2022/0136/latest/LMS534587.html?search=ts_act%40bill%40regulation%40deemedreg_water+services+bill_resel_25_a&p=1
Section 140,141 and 142
And
https://legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2022/0210/latest/LMS794055.html
Where there is an amendment to section 144. That is the real kicker and it basically says they have to do what they are told to do.
Thank you for pointing to those sections. However, it is clear that you have grossly misinterpreted the Act and its specific amendment. Your comments are inaccurate, inconsistent with the legal text, oversimplifying and misleading. Yet, thrice (!) you make rather absolute statements and claims that fail the test of truthfulness. If you were simply parroting Muriel Newman then one wonders why you accept her ‘information’ without apparent checks and put your trust in her for being truthful. Newman is highly biased and arguably a bad faith actor and it is hard to understand why anybody would assist her agenda of biased disinformation unless it aligns with their own agenda.
" it is clear that you have
grossly misinterpreteda different view of what the Bill says". FIFY.We will clearly have to agree that we disagree on what it means. I think one thing and you think another.
Not quite.
You are entitled to your opinion, which, of course, has to have some foundation in reality. When you comment here, you are expected to argue for your opinion(s) and support your argument(s) with facts and data that can be verified. You pointed vaguely in the direction of some Sections of the Law but did not construct an argument. I can counter any argument that you may have and show that you are wrong and how wrong your comments were, thrice. And I am not the only one who told you that you were wrong.
You are not entitled to spread disinformation on this site, regardless of your intention. As a Moderator, I feel it is my responsibility to put a stop to that. I prefer frank and robust debate but in lieu of this, I can wear my other hat and deal with it more decisively.
Your choice – we live in a (relatively) free world.
Sections 140-143 just define a particular group that may provide a statement of their position on the provision of water services, that the water services must respond to that statement advising what steps (if any) they were taking towards fulfilling those positions and that response must be published.
There is nothing in that that is a problem. Nor in the changes to section 144.
It is almost exactly the same in essence with the requirements for territorial authority representatives being appointed to the regional representative group except that that group gets some actual power.
Basically you and that notorious racial bigot (in my opinion) Muriel Newman and her centre for racist propaganda mis-named as a Centre for Political Research are just terrified about a regional body having to respond to advice from locals who have an long-standing interest (well documented in 1840) in clean unpolluted waters. Especially that they are required to respond to it. It makes it hard to stack such bodies with minions who are interested in surrendering public assets to private monopolists – the type that characteristically follow the Act. Being forced and required to clearly explain their actions in requirements that can be pushed into the courts must be terrifying to them.
I can understand that after looking at other water plans, for instance, the Waikato Valley Authority – whose latest plan is that they may be able to stop increasing the annual pollution of the Waikato river about 70+ years.
After looking at the kind of scientific and local advice that was pushed into that advisory body and simply ignored, it is hardly surprising that the legislation is pretty clear about some of the long-standing local residents being listened to and answered.
It just makes it hard for honest thieving asset-grabbers carpet-baggers and their bigoted allies that Act likes to support…
Unfortunately I can’t raise any sympathy for those kinds of fuckwits.
Quoting Sec 144:
https://legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2022/0210/latest/LMS794166.html
So then looking at Sec 4:
https://legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2022/0210/latest/LMS794060.html
Seems to go a little beyond a requirement to simply 'respond'. Multiple uses of the word 'must' would appear to create a binding legislative and contractual obligations to carry out the intent and requirements of these Te Mana o te Wai statements.
At least that seems to be the intent – maybe it reads differently to you.
Luxon was certainly indulging in that sort of dog whistle this morning on RNZ's Morning Report. He insisted that Labour/Greens/MP were a single bloc, so nudge nudge wink wink, if you vote Labour you'll get radical Mowrees. Might be a good move by Luxon – never underestimate the racist instincts of a sizeable cohort of kiwi, know it all, self-identifying 'practical' blokes. Corin Dann, who is either exhausted or letting his natural conservatism take over, didn't counter by asking Luxon if Natonal-ACT were a single bloc, or pointing at people like Brash who have moved from National to ACT, or making the dog whistle explicit by asking if National was now fully on board with the neoliberal extremism of the Market Leninists in ACT. But hey, these are clueless NZ journalists, lacking both memory and thought.
It seems a persistent meme that TPM will form (!) a Government together with Labour & Greens but never with NACT – not a genuine Kingmaker proposition. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_New_Zealand_general_election#Forecasts.
I think a (more?) likely possibility is the TPM will sit on the cross-benches for maximum leverage. Looking at the political neutering of the Green Party in this Government I would certainly consider this, especially when TPM is relatively inexperienced and lacks Government experience. How long this would survive in Parliament and how effective it would be is anybody’s guess – I can’t see it last a full term.
“…kept Ministerial portfolios,, to show a Labour-Green-Maori Coslition as generally unremarkable.”
Well, it could have been if she had had the courtesy to inform the PM in advance but I expect its off the table now. Maybe just as well, because her judgement seems to have been a bit wanting in the past.
Agree.
Ranked 20th and demoted in Government as far south as possible she's not a substantial asset to lose or to gain.
Hipkins was quite restrained in his comments.
He could have said "Every MMP government, Labour-led or National-led, has had a "no surprises" agreement with other parties. If TPM were at some future point to enter an agreement with Labour, the same principle would apply. Today's events are certainly surprising, and the complete lack of communication does not augur well."
(of course there isn't a "no surprises" clause now, so there's no breach, but the level of trust has just plummeted).
"… the level of trust has just plummeted."
Totally agree. But then… John Tamihere. He has a reputation for being a bit of a turncoat. I expect he is the one who manipulated this latest development.
I agree that she appears to have been pretty poor in the courtesy department.
At a minimum, an official notification before the leaks started (and well before the date of the public announcement), should have just been routine.
I don't know if this is a sign of bad blood between her and Hipkins, or just her general attitude towards interpersonal relations.
I give you the Green Party: An organisation so wracked by factionalism and so far up it's own arse that it can't even rid itself of a bully and political liability without somehow making the situation worse.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131923147/senior-green-members-to-quit-over-dragged-out-elizabeth-kerekere-bullying-investigation
The Australian Green Party is tearing itself apart over gender ideology having made "trans rights" a new sacred class and threatening to suspend or expel any member who so much as asks a question about it.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/this-will-split-us-victorian-greens-expand-party-s-definition-of-transphobia-20230423-p5d2ku.html
“The old code already prohibited vilification, harassment and misgendering,” the party member said. “Now you won’t even be able to ask questions about or propose changes to our policy without threat of expulsion. One way or another, this will split us.”
The Green Party will be destroyed at the election.
A prediction made before every MMP election, and always wrong. It is a permanent feature of NZ politics: every 3 years the Greens will disappear, every 3 years the Greens do not, but the confident pundits and politicians do. Vernon Tava, anyone?
Sorry Ed, but wish fulfillment dreams are not political discourse, or even political comment.
And this is related to a common propaganda technique among the right-wing commentariat – you insist that what you want to happen will happen, in the hope that saying so makes it more likely to happen. Probably 80%+ of the trash posing as opinion pieces that appear in (say) the NZ Herald, are an example of this.
If the Greens could survive their co-leader committing political hara-kiri just before the General Election, they can survive most things.
What happened with Metiria almost broke the party.
I door-knocked extensively for the Green Party campaign. And the day after her benefit announcement, I had people I'd been talking to regularly over several election cycles, and who even voted for a Green Party councillor, literally slamming their doors in my face.
We lost half of our volunteers almost overnight.
We lost even more people when the post-election report was presented at the next AGM, and refused to even mildly criticise her.
what do you mean day after her benefit announcement?
This?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/silence-over-metiria-tureis-alleged-benefit-fraud-investigation-irks/C3FHD4TJQUDEYNUPBSZ4GN5MAY/
and later on reflection
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/08/metiria-turei-is-still-proud-of-her-benefit-fraud-speech.html
It could have been done so much better. If Metiria had had Ann Hartley standing up there with her when she gave that speech saying that her family would have given their last cent for their first grand child, but that the punitive benefit system would have clawed it all back – the focus would have been much more on the legislation and less on who did what and when. The press pack would not have been trolling through where Meteria was living at the time and the electoral fraud may never have come to light. Instead, the Hartleys were blindsided, every Journo in the country knew of the connection, and it was all downhill from there.
That's what made it so unforgivable. Not so much the fraud itself (which was bad) but the hamfisted, ill-thought-out, and badly bungled announcement.
Clearly nobody had thought about the on the ground political consequence. And there was no plan for dealing with the backlash.
A claim made by left wing men who want a party on the left of Labour in their own image.
"senior Green members" to quit but no names.yeah right.
This is another excuse for a media beat up to attack the Greens including repeating the pathetic "crybaby" story.
Meanwhile the Greens polled 12% in latest Roy Morgan.
Babies have huge pulling power, e.g., in advertising and election campaigns.
Talking about a media beat-up, I’ve seen several times now headlines including the word “scandal”. I tell you, Crygate is bigger than Watergate, and world-famous in NZ.
I'm certainly surprised but the Green's appear to have just bulldozed over Alburt Park fallout and carried on. Potentially that hit Labour in this poll, but will fade leading up to the election.
It is delicious to watch greybeard pundits and tory commenters get bent out of shape on the rise of Te Pāti Māori. TPM are calling for GST off kai, Feed the Kids, and many other progressive policies that in a better world a majority Labour Govt. could have ticked off on a quiet afternoon in early 2021.
We (as in AO/NZ’s population) are in the midst of significant generational change. 70% of Māori are under 40 years of age and numbers of them are getting more politically active from my observation in the Far North. First FNDC Māori Mayor, Moko Tepania has been elected. Boomers will be in a minority as a voting group in 2026. And remember, elder poverty is a thing too, with 40% of super annuitants having their gold card payments as their only income source.
“It’s Time” as Norm Kirk’s campaign said in 1972. Time to retire Rogernomics & Ruthanasia.
The culture wars in the USA are now inter-state.
So assume that the green could split like they did many years ago in Germany – fundis vs realos,.
Assume that the Maori Caucus of the Labour Party changes to the TPM.
Assume that this will cause a big loss to the Labour Party.
So say assume Labour 29 – 32, Greens – what ever is left of them when they done canibalising themselves 5 – 7, and TPM say 5 – 7%. Not enough to win.
As for the current Poll out, i don't think Greens sit at 12.5 %. (i know more young people that are looking at TOP rather then the Greens, specially those that are not caught up in the gender woo woo)
National however will sit somewhere between 32 – 35%. ACT sits at 10 – 15 % and then is NZ First which could go to 5- 6 % and Democracy Now who could win a seat in Northland, making Northland the new Epsom. National wins.
I am not entertaining anyone in the Labour Party to approach NZFirst for help, nor can i see NZFirst entertaining the idea of again going with Labour.
Maybe Labour thought it was good having the TPM staffed with EX Labour people such as Rawhiti and Tamihere and now the boat jumper. So safely we could assume that the TPM is the EX Labour Maori Caucus Party, but will that get them enough votes to make it big, and how many votes will it take from Labour. The question really is how many voters can Labour lose to other parties before they become irrelevant?
Interesting times.
The key here is what older Green voters are going to do, as older voters tend to be more reliable when voting. The events at Albert Park will have put off a significant number of informed older women voters ( those that do not rely on the hysteria whipped by the mainstream media) and know what happened to as 70 year old woman at the event. The comments by Marama Davidson will have have attracted older men to vote for the new Green Party.
We shall see – but I'm certain the Greens are well below 12% (Roy Morgan always paints them high), and that their support is dropping amongst older voters and will fall further as it continues to show its new priorities.
I think it's a test of the psephological argument that political parties have a "core" support base that they can rely on irrespective of the wider political situation.
Historically, for the Greens, this seems to be around 5-6% of the electorate.
Certainly, the Greens have polled far worse 6 months out from an election and managed to just squeak through. But it will be interesting to see if the party is able to hold itself together for long enough to get over the line.
The Greens are sufficiently reliable right now. They are like a messy and incoherent younger sister who nevertheless still manages to graduate.
It's Labour that needs to do the heavy lifting into the high 30%.
A 'bread and butter' budget isn't going to cut it Chippie.
They are down in the current poll, and frankly could go down further, this defection by the MP who is looking after the cyclone hit areas in the East Coast is not good for Labour, and is of no use to anyone living currently at the East Coast, shoveling dirt with no aid and no support.
i expect them to clear 7% but not much more then that.
My gut feeling is that's the most likely scenario
Labour had its chance in 2020 with that once in a generation MMP majority and they did not have the courage–or more importantly, the ideological ability and class position–to go for broke and lay waste to Rogernomics and Ruthanasia’s toxic legacy. Neo Blairism ruled and here we are.
But nonetheless the 2023 General Election needs to see a Labour/Green/Māori Govt. (TOP? not yet convinced).
Lesser evil voting is the unfortunate way with bourgeois Parliamentary democracies, because all main parties are in reality cross class and try and maintain they represent “all New Zealanders”. This is bollocks with only the degree of their subservience to capital varying. But you have to work with and struggle against basically with one eye on the future.
We are indeed in the midst of major demographic change. Many new gens don’t give a toss about, or support, Māori capacity building and iwi moving closer to achieving some post colonial justice at last.
I would desperately love for TOP to be electorally viable, but I just don't see it happening.
The historical track record for new political parties that aren't based around, or manage to poach a sitting MP is pretty dismal. I think the Greens are the only ones (ironic given my other comments) to manage it, and they had the advantage of at least having been part of the Alliance.
If you mean DemocracyNZ in Northland, there's as much chance of that as Walter Nash being the Prime Minister after October.
I kind of agree, but they also have a chance i believe. NZ First Shane Jones meh, whom ever the National Party runs, meh, the person with a uterus from Labour meh too Labour meh, so really yes, they could. Stranger things have happened. I would not discount them.
It's a Matt King outfit, the former National MP.
If the entire Maori Caucus in the Labour Party were to switch to TPM the main effect would be that there would be a lot less Maori MPs.
There are, I believe, 15 Maori MPs in the Labour Caucus. If we suppose the TPM won all the Maori seats that would give them 7 seats. I suspect the absolute limit on their party vote would be about 5% which would allow for 6 seats They would, with an overhang seat get 7 seats.
Of the existing 2 TPM MPs, and the 15 who might come over from Labour there would therefore be 10 who would be out in the cold. I'm sure that all the Labour MPs can count and they aren't going to commit electoral suicide.
Really >? Labour in the middle of a world wide pandemic that no-one knew how bad it would or could get should have made dramatic and "go for broke " changes to everything.. Thank God you are nowhere near the levers of power.
The Land of the Free will always amaze. Now a Michigan school district has banned kids taking even clear backpacks to school over concern about guns
If the risks are so high in kids taking things to school surely the most definite, safe, bullet proof option is to not have kids go to school in the first place. I mean everyone went to school and look how they ended up.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michigan-school-district-bans-backpacks-even-clear-ones-concern-guns-rcna82365
The land of the free is the land of private tyrranies. The power of a legitimate democratic state is villified and weakened to the point that it is unable to stop private tyrranies from flourishing. Right wing 'libertarians' are authoritarians at heart.
I'm tribal Labour. On my local LEC etc.
However, as a teacher and member of the PPTA I will willingly strike with my colleagues.
Why?
Two of my coworkers are beginning teachers. Bright, engaging, great with the students, and volunteer for the co-curricular stuff. Howver both of then have had to get second jobs to make end meet.
If we want to attract people into the profession, we need to pay them accordingly/rant
I'd start with an end to any requirement for anyone working as a teacher to make any TD payment. They are paying it back by working as a teacher (as are nurses – with doctors I'd make the first 10 years TD free and then determine that by other measures – such as continuing if a GP in an area of shortage, or a rural area GP locum etc).
What is a TD payment? Is it a student loan or something else?
Yup TD/SL.
Thank you. TD isn't something I had heard used.
If anyone wants to see why Turkey is the most important hinge point in the fate of global democracy this year, this is as good an explanation as you need without going to Foreign Affairs:
https://www.politico.eu/article/onions-prayer-rugs-turkey-approache-decisive-battle-democracy-election/
Excellent article Ad.
Turkey (formerly part of the larger Ottoman Empire) has fulfilled this (power broking/bulwark) role many times over the last 200 years with 'the sick man of Europe' being a key reason why our troops were around the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in WW1. Its importance, perhaps a function of geography as well as now a democracy and ‘relatively stable is overlooked at one’s peril.
https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/sick-man-europe-major-power-decline
I suspect that over the years vastly more people have died from eating bad cheese that have been killed by plutonium. That would basically have been only the people killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. That is generally estimated as being about 65,000.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
And Louis Slotin.
That’s a study in hubris.
What is usually overlooked in that story is that other people just a few meters away in the same room survived. It was an extremely high dose rate, possibly the highest any humans have been exposed to and lived to tell the tale – yet several of them lived many decades afterward.
It belies the idea that exposure to ionising radiation is always an instant death sentence.
They did, but for how long? Did you read the Wiki article or are you pushing a binary dead-or-alive here?
Maybe a sort of Schroedinger's Cat dead or alive.
Yes I did quickly scan the wiki article, although I was always familiar with the incident. The point I am making is that most people irrationally overestimate the threat of radiation and how even in extreme cases like this one it is still difficult to draw a straight line between cause and effect.
Other people in the room were hospitalised for quite some time and suffered from issues that may have been caused by radiation exposure.
Chronic biological damage at the sub-cellular level can be very hard to detect and almost impossible to prove, even when symptoms manifest, usually (much) later as syndromes, which is true for ionising radiation and exposure to chemical toxins/poisons such as nerve gasses. I think these sorts of things add to the public fear and not entirely without reason, IMO.
No-one has suggested that acute ionising exposure at that extremely high does rate is anything other than dangerous. But the fact remains that of the 8 people in that room, only 1 actually died as an immediate consequence.
That the other 7 survived for quite considerable periods afterward is the actually interesting part of the story.
What now know is that our cellular DNA is under constant assault from all manner of biochemical and environment mechanisms – of which natural background radiation is just one contributor. We also know that all the cells of our bodies are replaced at least every few months, so if we did not have some means to keep that DNA reasonably repaired and accurate we would likely not live more than a year or two.
And crucially – as long as we do not overwhelm this repair mechanism the damage from ionising radiation will not accumulate – and any harm will likely remain below any threshold of detection. It is only when we are exposed to high rates of radiation over a period of minutes or hours that it really becomes dangerous. Below a certain threshold you are almost certainly going to be just fine.
And in this case the 7 people who survived the immediate event, did so because while the peak intensity of the event was extreme, it lasted only seconds.
"This repair mechanism" is an example of evolution's adequate design – unless you're special there may be no need to worry, as far as we know.
Personal biases can mess with objective risk assessments and the value of preventative and/or protective strategies – for example lockdowns, testing/tracing, quarantine, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene/masks (“virtue signaling“?), and vaccination during a pandemic.
Not interested in this wall of quotes tactic. Make your case in your own words, backed by concise, pertinent references to back your point.
"This [DNA] repair mechanism" is an example of evolution's adequate design – unless you're special there may be no need to worry, as far as we know.
Personal biases can mess with objective risk assessments and the value of preventative and/or protective strategies – for example lockdowns, testing/tracing, quarantine, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene/masks (“virtue signaling“?), and vaccination during a pandemic.
P.S. Fwiw, the recent review on the cellular response to DNA damage seemed quite expert, at least to me. If you’re not interested in the “tactic” of including relevant links, then please just scroll on by – I do.
Are you saying that you want to be ignored? If so then why are you wasting pixels here?
Otherwise I confess to being too stupid to decode the impressively oblique point you are trying to make here. Try speaking to me as if I were a small child – or a cocker spaniel.
Thanks RL for not ignoring my comments in this thread. The links @11:20 am are helpful to me – reason enough to waste pixels, imho.
That genuinely surprises me. You mentioned "threshold" twice in your comment @9:09 am:
I observed that the EPA bases its regulatory limits and nonregulatory guidelines for public exposure to low level ionising radiation on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model (link #1), and that DNA repair mechanisms (link #2) are imperfect products of evolution which, while adequate at the population level, may be inadequate for a few individuals (given the diversity of molecular and cellular systems), potentially contributing to an early demise.
An analogy would be that for most people the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are very safe and moderately effective, but a small proportion of recipients exhibit serious adverse reactions, perhaps due in part to the diversity of individual immune systems.
Link #3 was to a paper speculating that population-based pandemic responses might increase exposure to natural (radon-sourced) low level ionising radiation, and the possible health significance of same.
Links #4 and #5 highlighted the diversity of opinions on the benefits of mask wearing during a pandemic – some consider mask wearing to be a type of "virtue signaling", whereas at my age, and with all this talk of long COVID, it just seems commonsense.
"Look at moi" – good boy Blue
Thank you for clarifying your point. I am going to focus on your case arguing for the LNT model.
In brief the obvious flaw of this model is that it ignores the fact that we live in a sea of background radiation – and that if this model was correct – we would all accumulate ionising damage over the course of a few decades and all die of radiation induced sickness. And this would apply to all living things, even very long lived ones.
It also ignores the fact that life on this planet evolved when the background radiation level was likely 5 – 10 times higher than it is now.
It also fails to account that natural background levels even in modern times varies over a very wide range – and there is no evidence that people living in high dose zones die sooner than anyone else. Indeed there is some compelling evidence for the opposite.
It also fails to account for the real outcomes for accidental radiation releases that have occurred – most of which have resulted in far less harm than LNT would predict. In particular it can be shown that once the dose rate falls below a fairly high threshold rate that most of the general public are very unlikely to be exposed to, even in the worst case accidents, pretty much nothing bad happens.
In the great majority of real world radiation releases, the dose is received over an extended period. LNT for which dose rate is irrelevant claims this make no difference and the only thing that counts is the cumulative dose. Real world experience says that's nonsense. What counts is keeping the harm rate below the repair rate.
The problem with LNT as a model is that it predicts far more harm from radiation than is reasonable. It was for instance the general basis on which some people predicted 100's thousands of deaths from Chernobyl, when in the real world on the ground researchers struggled to find more than a few hundred.
And that bad model in turn imposes on the nuclear power industry something called ALARP (As Low as Reasonably Practical) which is interpreted to mean by the US NRC to mean that if something can be done to reduce radiation levels, then it must be done. Regardless of cost.
Which in turn imposes insane, unreasonable costs on nuclear power generators that has absolutely stifled their development and rollout over the past three decades. Which is why we still burn coal.
PS (I am not claiming that radiation has zero risk, just that is negligible at low rates of exposure. We all accept negligible risk every time we get out of bed, but that does not stop us from getting on with life.)
Sorry to disappoint, but it's not my case. I'm open-minded, recognising that the EPA uses the LNT model, and acknowledging that the LNT model is 'hotly' debated in scientific circles.
Obviously, and evidently, exposure to background ionising radiation isn't an existential threat to Homo sapiens, and equally obviously background ionising radiation damages DNA. Some/most/all of this damage is repaired in some/most/all humans.
You seem certain that background and low-dose (<0.1 Gy) ionising radiation poses a "negligible risk" (not worth considering) to health. And that's certainly possible – I'm just less certain is all.
I'm not a radiophobe – received safety training in the handling of phosphorous-32 back in the bad old days (1980s), before Sanger sequencing using ultrathin polyacrylamide gels (god they were fiddly) was replaced by fluorescent dye-based capillary DNA sequencers. Also visited the synchrotron facility at Daresbury over a 3-year period in the late 80s – they were very safety conscious, even when the beam lines were down due to no vacuum.
It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you of that.
I think I can safely say we would agree with the general conclusions of your second reference.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7218310/
In the interests of being constructive, if I am going to criticise the LNT model I had better offer an improved alternative. The author I am following (and corresponding with) on this prefers a model called SNT (Sigmoid No Threshold). Unfortunately it requires some tech background to get the most out of it, but the essence is this:
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/a-sigmoid-no-threshold-primer
Now I am certain the large majority of people scanning this thread are not in the least interested in this apparently arcane debate – yet as I outlined above it lies at the heart of why we are having a climate change crisis at all. There are two reasons why we are still burning fossil fuel instead of having already transitioned to nuclear power.
One is this scientific LNT lie that has conditioned the public to be irrationally afraid of radiation and the resulting regulatory over-reach has made building coal power stations far cheaper than nuclear.
The other has been a defensive nonsense from the nuclear power industry that has pretended they could build reactors that would never suffer an accidental radiation release – at any scale. This too is a lie – nothing human is ever perfect and all engineered artifacts will fail. And the public are not stupid, they knew the industry was bullshitting when they made this claim.
The correct path forward is to be honest – yes reactors will suffer from a non-zero failure rate. We will engineer to make this rate as low as is economically feasible, but it will not be zero. But the good news is that for all realistic scenarios the resulting harm to the general public will be negligible.
Much the same proposition will apply to the high level waste – yes this is a by product that like many other industrial waste stream must be handled and stored in a serious and reliable manner, but the risk of harm from this is far lower than the anti-activists have told you.
The argument is simple enough – if you truly believe climate change is an existential threat, or even just a potentially very disruptive one, the risk of harm from nuclear power generation to solve this crisis, while not zero, is so low as to be insignificant by comparison.
It is like a starving man refusing to cross a road to obtain food, because he is scared of being struck by a meteor.
Cancers in children are quite rare.
Consider the possibility that a more constructive nuclear discourse will require nuclear power advocacy from respected disinterested persons – a few strategically-placed 'new Lovelocks' might help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock#Nuclear_power
Notwithstanding the opinions of the founder of ThorCon, as far as nuclear power is concerned, nimby. Australia, with its greater per capita energy use, relatively stable geology, vast empty spaces and massive uranium ore deposits, is a logical place to deploy MSRs.
RL, I hope your vision of a hyper-energised eco-friendly civilisation freed from the shackles of photosynthesis can be realised (somehow.) Imho, CC is a self-made existential threat to this iteration of civilisation on spaceship Earth – future iterations may learn from our mistakes, if people remember and agree/care what they were.
Or a morbidly obese man refusing to limit his food intake, because he's exceptional and the prospect of losing 'weight' is terrifying.
As for bariatric surgery – fuhgeddaboudit!
As I have pointed out many times, the future course of CC has little to do with the choices of the already rich and developed world. Yeah we can reduce our excess consumption, we can continue to become incrementally more efficient. Nice to have, but it is a small fraction of the problem. It is the poor in nations like China, India, SE Asia and Africa who will determine the outcome.
It all comes down to one thing – do they build coal burning power plants, or nuclear ones? And they will make that choice on cost.
It is that simple.
Yes yes, the entire "rich and developed world" is merely a small fraction of the current problem – I've read this many times. But since reducing consumption is "nice to have", and 'the rich world' is well placed to reduce consumption, why not do it? What are the obstacles to making this seemingly hard choice now?
Might greed, and the desire of some in "the rich world" to continue BAU just a little longer, be delaying the hard choices? Is it that simple?
Meanwhile, since I can't build a nuclear power plant, I'll continue to consume less (a win, if not a win-win) and choose actions/products with smaller footprints – that’s something I can do.
https://genless.govt.nz/climate-change/calculate-your-carbon-footprint/
https://www.futurefit.nz/questionnaire
https://www.footprintnetwork.org/about-us/our-history/
https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Well as one of your references speaks to – 'why is it so hard to communicate about climate change' – I suggest the answer is not very complex.
It is because the message being conveyed is that the solution to CC is energy poverty – or some variation of this. People are not stupid, as much as we might want to dress this poverty up in moral virtue, it holds for most people the prospect of a diminished life. And when we try to guilt the them into compliance, they become passively resistant, saying one thing and then doing another.
As for the already poor, the billions who live the reality of an energy poor life – they have little but contempt.
Yet a template for the answer is literally under our noses – if you offer people who can afford them EV's, they happily leap at the chance. Their CC mitigation potential might be marginal, but they will cheerfully pay a little extra for them because getting rid of that ICE engine does feel good, and their quality of life improves even.
Where do the resources needed to offer/sell meaningful numbers of people the means to decrease their environmental footprints (without compromising quality of life) come from? Hopeless.
During world wars and more recent global and local crises, many people made do with less. Civilisation is now clearly at odds with planetary boundaries – can civilisation 'win' the day?
https://takethejump.org/
Talk about the answers being literally under our noses.
The solutions are there
But what are the indicators that allow you to move – forward or backward – the date of the overshoot day? Experts identify five: cities, energy, food, planet and population. Within each of these macro-sectors there are an infinite number of sustainable solutions and alternatives. Any examples? Halving the world’s food waste would give us 13 more days on the calendar. While the so-called “15-minute city” – where all essential services can be reached on foot or by bicycle – would save us another 11 days. Or again: reforesting 350 million hectares of land would move the date by 8 days. Small individual gestures are then added to the decisions that are up to governments and companies. For example in energy production, one of the main drivers of climate change. According to expert estimates, abandoning fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions by 50% would allow us to postpone the overshoot day more than three months (93 days).
https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-electricity
Another wall of quotes, and while I can guess why you thought them worth linking to – I cannot see anything substantive in your own words.
But if I was to take a punt you are proposing the usual mix measures that involve a mix of energy poverty and intermittent solar/wind/battery renewables to keep some lights on. Is this it?
Understood – "and I’d not suggest we will sustain our currently profligate lifestyles."
Yes, for Aotearoa NZ and Aussie, except for the "energy poverty" bit. Nuclear power will likely continue to be a significant part of the global energy mix for decades (have I expressed a personal opinion to the contrary?) – just not in my back yard, OK?
Some (but not all) more populous countries, particularly in Asia, plan to increase nuclear power generation, and more power to them. Apologies for the following 'wall' of links; they're for my benefit (and possibly other readers) – they'll be of no use to you.
So, continuing from 9:14 pm, provided this iteration of civilisation isn't destabilised (further) by CC, pandemics, wars, economic crises and other self-made challenges, nuclear power may have a 10% share of global electricity generation by 2050 – fingers crossed!
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/record-clean-power-growth-in-2023-to-spark-new-era-of-fossil-fuel-decline/
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/04/12/beijing-and-moscow-dominate-global-nuclear-energy-trade_6022721_4.html
I scanned those references and as usual the main argument raised is 'nuclear is too expensive' and 'takes too long'. Both of which can be largely sheeted home to "Big Lie" LNT myth.
https://atomicinsights.com/evidence-suggesting-lnt-fabricated-purposeful-effort-hamstring-nuclear-technology-development/
This article and the comment thread below it pretty much sums up the machinations that led to LNT. It was a scam from the outset – that has only been challenged in the past decade or so. And even then like most zombie ideas it's going to take a generation of funerals before it too is finally interred.
And neither is this the whole story. The evidence is now out that next gen molten salt reactors can be built at scale and quantity for considerably less than the cost of their equivalently rated coal power plants.
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/what-is-nuclears-should-cost
While it seemed to me that the last 5 (of 8) articles linked to in my comments @9:14 pm and 9:15 pm all suggest nuclear power will continue to play an important role in electricity generation, your scan-based (knee-jerk?) reaction casts even those 5 references in a negative light – hardly a logical or objective response, imho.
It will be a great day when the electricity generated by MSRs and/or SMRs reaches 2% of total global generation, but the realist in me says I won't be around to celebrate. Is China currently the only country with an operational experimental/pilot/prototype/research/test/trial MSR?
There's even talk of combining the best features of SMRs and thorium MSRs to manufacture small modular thorium MSRs (SM-TMSRs) – the future is pregnant with unfathomable possibilities.
Well yes – fair enough. But as I've hinted at a few times now, this might be the risk you run with the wall of quotes tactic – even someone like myself who is inclined to read them might not have the time or inclination to carefully read them all. Especially when you don't make it clear what point you are trying to make, and why your reference is relevant to it.
From your last reference:
I've followed this story intimately. It's almost entirely the consequence of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission having acted for the past three or more decades to ensure nuclear power will be stifled by adding many multiples of cost and delay to any project they can get their sticky fingers on.
And as a side effect the big conventional nuclear vendors adapted to this regime when they realised there was lots of easy taxpayer money to be had from these boondoggles. Innovation be damned – invoicing for insane layers of mandatory costs was risk free by comparison.
For example at some stage the NRC introduced a requirement for what is called a "double guillotine" failure mode – which hypothetically presumes that a 1 metre long segment of high grade, thick walled piping instantaneously vanishes from the cooling water circuit – introducing an extreme stress on the ability to cool the reactor. In the real world such a failure is physically impossible, yet nuclear engineers have to pretend to play along, and then add massive extra back up cooling capacity and complexity to cope with this impossible scenario. All of which has to be designed, tested and certified, and makes nuclear island of the plant 4 or 5 times more expensive than is warranted.
It's like regulating that the car you drive has to be able to protect you from not just a plausible road accident collision – but a direct meteor strike as well. Do you imagine anyone could afford such a vehicle?
The good news here is that in just the past 3 or 4 years the tide is turning on some of this nonsense as groups of people and even some regulators world-wide – who take CC seriously – are waking up to the root causes of this roadblock.
Certainly the Chinese and Russian regulators feel no requirement to go along with a scam originally perpetrated decades ago by an American fossil-fuel funded foundation, looking for ways to quietly kill off it's competition.
Thanks RL – all good.
Slotin lasted 9 days and they were not happy days by the looks of it. Acute death from radiation exposure is rare. You’re turning it into a binary again; It's not about dying or not dying, but about the quality and length of life after exposure.
But did they all live healthy long lives? It seems not.
Two others died at 42 and 55 but it is impossible to conclude that their prior radiation exposure was a factor in their untimely deaths and equally impossible to rule out that possibility.
Nope, some cells in some tissues/organs turn over faster than that and some others considerably slower. For example, gut epithelial cells have relatively high turnover rates, which is one reason why they give rise to colon carcinomas [i.e. of epithelial origin]. Bone, muscle, and brain cells, for example have much lower turnover rates. This means that some cells are more susceptible to radiation damage than others, depending on how often they divide and replicate their DNA.
I have no idea where you plucked that number from. DNA repair is not perfect and the activity of two main DNA damage response pathways vary with the cell cycle. Homologous Repair (aka Homologous Recombination Repair or HRR, for short) activity is very low in the G1 phase of the cell cycle while Non-Homologous End Joining or NHEJ is active throughout the cell cycle but mostly during G1. HRR is considered error-free repair and NHEJ is labelled error-prone repair. During the resting phase (G0-phase) of cells, it is again mostly NHEJ taking care of DNA repair. Many cells exist in G0/G1 phase. It is a lot more complex than this and our knowledge and understanding of the dynamic and multi-factorial processes and overlapping mechanisms and damage response & repair pathways involved changes and grows all the time.
Accumulation and detection are two different things. DNA damage does indeed accumulate over time – it is called aging. Damage that persists attenuates cell function(s) and leads to so-called programmed cell death aka apoptosis or pushes cells into retirement aka senescence. The efficiency of DNA damage repair pathways does go down over time too. The number of DNA mutations do accumulate over time. One prevailing theory is that this can initiate cancer stem cells to form cancers. Cancer is an age-related disease, as you know, with its basis firmly in cumulative DNA damage. Other examples of DNA damage manifesting at much later date are skin cancer/melanoma after repeated UV exposure earlier in life (e.g. childhood) and cancer of the lung, mouth, throat, oesophagus, and stomach for example, after years of smoking. Even non-cumulative effects that are not immediately apparent or even measurable, even when you tried looking for it, can have serious consequences later in life because the long lag.
Again, your assertions are overly simplistic. Nobody really knows. And being ‘just fine’ is totally meaningless in this context. On an individual basis one cannot make sound predictions; the epidemiology of cancer is based on probabilistic models over large numbers of people/patients.
Indeed I was being simplistic – but this is a political forum not a science journal and I usually try to balance readability for the vast majority of our non-technical readers, while conveying the idea with adequate precision.
Essentially I am exploring the now proven lie that was the LNT model – a model based on some very bad science from the very early days of nuclear research.
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/111001_how_big_lie_launched_lnt_myt
I do not propose to re-type the myriad technical details of this debate here, there is plenty of material available for anyone with a search engine and the curiosity to explore for themselves.
As I said above, the reason why this apparently obscure issue is important, is that this fundamental misunderstanding has resulted in nuclear power being grossly over-regulated and economically strangled for three decades now.
But to address your points:
And one of them went on to live into his 80's. Nowhere did I suggest this was anything other than an extreme event, few other humans have ever been exposed to such high short term intensity and lived to tell the tale at all. And that is my point, not that there were no probable consequences – but that they lived at all! And as I quoted above – in the long run investigators still could not confirm that what they died of was the result of this extreme exposure.
And to put this into context, in any realistic reactor accident, even Chernobyl, the vast majority of the general public were exposed to dose rates many orders of magnitude smaller. So low that later researchers have firmly concluded that if there was any impact, it was below any detectable level.
Note carefully – no-one is claiming the hazard is zero, but that below a certain dose rate, where the rate of harm is lower than the rate of repair – the net impact is lost in the noise of all the other things that cause illness and cancers. And this is the conclusion UNSCEAR reached a decade ago.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/01/11/like-weve-been-saying-radiation-is-not-a-big-deal/?sh=15f2b28b3a7e
Which means that all the LNT based over-regulation is a monstrous mis-allocation of resources and a massive lost opportunity to have solved the CC issue decades ago.
I came back and re-read your comment above and I want to express appreciation for the sincere thought and time you put into it. If I have not responded to every point it is was in the interests of brevity rather than merely ignoring them.
Thank you. Your comment @ 9:23 pm deserves addressing, but maybe tomorrow. There are a few ‘niggly bits’ that I’d like to clear up, if possible.
nuclear power is more practical and less lethal than the alternatives.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
That’s a different topic for discussion.