Here's just one illustration of how we in New Zealand are shameful laggards in de-fossilising our transport: Norway new vehicle sales are around 60% pure battery, and another 20% plug-in hybrid. In the overall fleet, pure battery and plug-in hybrids are up to about 20%. Dino-juice is well on its way out, in Norway.
We really need to sort out issues such as the scheduled application of road user charges to electric vehicles at the end of this year. Applying RUC of nearly 8 cents/km to electric vehicles would remove any fuel cost savings from going electric. I recently took on a project that's turned into fairly regular part-time employment, which is a 100km round-trip for me.
So instead of using my dear old Landie, I went looking for something a bit … more environmentally and fiscally and socially aware. (No, public transport is nowhere even remotely close to viable for this commute). I could just barely make the range of a second generation Leaf work, if I plugged in to charge at work. But I ended up getting a Honda Fit hybrid, and the petrol cost is less than just the RUC costs alone would be on a Leaf if they end up imposed on schedule, without even considering the charging cost.
In terms of new electric vehicles, there's a lot more choice coming at us really fast. At the moment, the lowest price new EV in NZ is the MG ZS ev, at just under $50k. But BYD are saying they are planning to sell their EA1 in Oz for under 35k dingodollars, so probably around the $40 mark here.
Camrys are much bigger than I like for daily use. I've still got the Landie for the big jobs, few as they may be.
I was a bit wary of potential reliability with the Fit, but everything I found online indicated the only real issues were with control software in the earliest models, which were quickly sorted with a software update.
I came close to going for a Prius plug-in, but the extra size and budget stretch needed, and that the pure-electric range would only cover about 1/4 of my km and the open road economy wasn't as good as the Fit, combined to tip it to the Fit. Besides, Prius. But if the pure-electric range covered my daily needs, then I would probably have gone for the Prius PHV, Prius image issues and size notwithstanding.
But jeez, I didn't think driving on pure electric would be as nice as it is. Wafting along at 50kmh or 90kmh with zero engine noise or vibration – it's bliss. It's super disappointing it only lasts a km or two on the flat before the engine has to fire up again. If that BYD EA1 actually does land here under $40k, I might end up breaking a lifetime habit of buying cheap cars and driving them til they're dead ten-ish years later, and spring for one.
Toyota Yaris 1.6 hybrid car or suv. Under $30k does 2.3litres to 100k ( that's about a third of the normal petrol usage – doesn't need to be plugged in. But I think they might be difficult to get hold of.
"There’s an EV mode but don’t get too excited. The owner’s manual suggests there’s a maximum electric-only range of only 1km (yep, a single, miserable kilometre…) and that it could be as little as a few hundred metres."
I have a larger toyota hybrid that uses about 60% of petrol a non hybrid uses and that's better than their literature suggests. I struggled to make sense of the article?? Toyota suggest the yaris uses about 1/3 of the petrol equivalent so that shouldn't be too far out? I'm not clear about why the article talks about only going 1km – seems kinda irrelevant. Otherwise it's up to the next in the range the Corolla.
Hybrids seem to be quite a good intermediate stage especially for people at the far end of the current battery distance ranges.
It's a middle class dilemma. I don't know what the average spend is on a car in NZ – from a quick look I can't find it. But I'd wager it's well under $20k and may be under $15K, The used hybrids and EVs at this price range are fairly old and and have issues (real or imagined) with range and/or battery life. Buyers who can't afford to make a bad economic decision are leery of them. You might, as Ad suggested, find a reliable used Camry hybrid or similar in this price range that you are prepared to take a punt on in terms of battery life. It will be years though before used Kia and Hyundai hybrids and the like turn up at this price, and the same issues will apply.
But even the middle class is being rorted – the price of new hybrids and EVs has been cynically jacked up sky-high. So that they make no economic sense for the buyer because the fuel savings don't cover the higher purchase price. And sitting in the background is inflated housing prices and the huge mortgages that have to be serviced – how long before this sucks middle class discretionary spending out of other sectors, or are people just expected to pile up more personal debt to save the planet with a flash EV?
I significantly stretched my usual budget and spent $10.5k on a 2014 model with 92500 km. I found precisely zero online chatter about battery degradation on Honda hybrids, unlike the plethora of online chatter about degradation in Prius Ni-MH batteries and Leaf batteries.
Even if the battery does degrade significantly, it's only going to have a tiny effect on fuel economy. It will still eliminate all the fuel waste sitting at lights, most of the fuel waste in stop-start traffic. It still has the Atkinson cycle engine, and the electric motor will still cover for the lowish torque at low to medium engine speeds characteristic of Atkinson cycle engines. It just won't be able to store quite as much from regenerative braking and going down hills, but that's only a small part of how it enables better economy.
Interesting facts Andre – every bit of info about EVs is new to me and I hope I will gradually get informed. Though can't afford one and am attached to old 1989 Toyota which I have insured for about $1000, third party.
It's a new language, eh.
I'm hoping when the time comes to replace my current suzuki 50cc, there will be some suzuki electric equivalents in a similar price range – currently the electrics I have searched online have been about twice the price. But I long for the day I can tootle around town without the engine noise, lol
Lack of engine noise will mean pedestrians having to be specially careful. Get forgetful and the car wil be onyou before you think to look, having not heard.
Mine is quiet but you do get used to looking for people who haven't heard. Much like the overseas tourists that used to be around Wellington looking the wrong way around before they step out.
I drive a black Leaf. My friends call it the Black Ninja, the way it sneaks up on people at the curb. One is therefore careful lest the paintwork be blemished. Later Leafs I believe make noises to alert pedestrians of their presence. I have toyed with the idea of recording my son-in-law's Harley and piping that through external speakers mounted in a pipe where the exhaust would be……
I have heard that some common hybrids can have the battery unit checked and as its made up of a number of cells they can find the cells that are worst of and only replace them
This is what the Prius looks like and others will be similar
I was wondering why they didn't do that. For some, a new battery costs as much as a new car. A cell servicing every 20,000km would be an affordable alternative.
I've looked into replacing cells they have to be the same age you can't just put new cells in.you can buy reconditioned complete packs for about a third of the new price.
They are fairly easy to change out the complete pack but the dealer's charge $1200 plus for an hrs work and will only put in new batteries.
Sorry Weka but in the box where my name appears it keeps reverting to tricledrownk no matter how many times I correct it.any suggestions on how I can correct this.i clear the box restore even the auto name feature comes up as Tricledrown then it reverts back to Tricledrownk.
Let's see if we can sort this out. What device are you using and what browser?
Can you please clarify if you can manually edit your name each time (and the problem is that it won't 'stick')? I'm seeing comments from you in the past week as Tricledrownk and Tricledrown. Why is that?
There is a lot of online chatter about hybrid battery degradation – most of it is simply ignorant. If they were so bad would you see so many taxis in Auckland that are hybrid? There are heaps of Prius, Aqua, and Corolla etc. around now. I have had a hybrid (2005 Prius) for 8 years now (1st NZ owner with 37k on the clock – now 150k). It has been the most reliable car I have ever owned and the only battery replacement has been the auxiliary which was 15 years old. Still returns 4.5 l /100km as it did when first bought. Basically halved my emission profile. Now looking to upgrade to something even more efficient.
Again there is virtually no public transport around here and we have to travel regularly at least 150k (300k return) way beyond the range of a Leaf. Friend had one for a while but was lucky enough to upgrade to a Tesla. I have to admit I had some difficulty with the 10th commandment* on first sight.
Yep, it is rare for a Prius battery to crap out. Most of the articles that went into actual detail showed the car was doing Star Trek mileages, and/or extreme temperatures.
But still, I took the complete absence of complaints about Fit batteries to be a good sign, when compared to the cornucopia of complaints about such rare problems that occurred in the Prius batteries.
Andre – I don't want to down the argument for EV but there are 2 glaring issues:
1/ what is NZ going to do with some 2.5 million cars that actually cannot be converted but became instant trash
2/ Batteries, the amount of raw material -Lithium, nickel and cobalt are the key metals used to make those batteries – is being mined in poor countries the activity is devastating on the environment. The issue of disposal is not solved. Funny how this is being advertised as a environmentally better solution. This is ruining the environment in larger proportions and faster. But of cause its not at our doorstep.
My take is nothing really has changed, the emperor has new clothes and we now poison the soil until we cant grow food anymore. The drive to self destruction has not been broken at all. The run for profits is selling the average punter that buying an extraordinary expensive car is so much better. But really it isn't.
The 2.5 million existing ICE vehicles will end the same way as all almost all the other vehicles disposed of up til now. They will be crushed and/or shredded, and sent off to be recycling.
Battery recycling is entirely feasible, and is starting to become an actual thing now that significant quantities of end-of-life batteries are becoming available. Here's just one effort: https://insideevs.com/features/441524/tesla-jb-straubel-future-battery-recycling/ There's plenty more going on, you just need to make a very minimal effort to educate yourself.
If you had actually fully read my original post, you might have come to the last paragraph where I specifically addressed the cobalt and nickel issues. A lot of the new EVs use battery chemistries that don't use cobalt or nickel. The most popular alternative is lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), as used in BYD vcars and trucks and buses and dome of Tesla's made in China models.. These weren't preferred a few years ago because of lower energy density, but with improvements in battery technology they are now better than the best cobalt and nickel batteries were just a few years ago. As well as being much longer lasting.
Middle class dilemma now, everyone's dilemma eventually if we want to let catastrophic climate change happen. Someone has to step up and effect change. Or not I guess, and we let everything burn to the ground. Are we going to take this seriously or not?
(It will be a long time before I can afford an EV, I'm relying on the middle classes to bring the price down).
(It will be a long time before I can afford an EV, I'm relying on the middle classes to bring the price down).
i guess that will be the problem if the middle class has got no money to spend on an overpriced EV. In my circle of people i know absolutly no one who owns a car that has cost more then 5 grand, if people do own a new car its Lease plan via work.
That is what i hope is that the people who drive gasguzzlers now for work in work vehicle will get the EVs first, and that that hopefully brings the price down for all. If it does not, which also would not surprise me those that are not in a rich enough class to afford one of these vehicles will have to content with a. walk (for those that can), b. cycle (for those that can), c. public transport (where it exists) and the rest is shit outta luck.
I suspect the issue isn’t going to be ev affordability but lack of other solutions. PT, cycle infrastructure, relocalising services and work, train network, and so on.
I guess it will be both. A large number of cars in NZ are business cars, i expect these to be EV when that becomes mandatory. Then there are those that already have them or will upgrade and can either afford it outright, or slap the car on the mortgage.
how the lower income to poor people are to afford these vehicles i have no idea.
I know a few people that are scared of this day for exactly this reason. But i expect the government to give tax incentives to those that can afford these cars to reaise 'interest' and 'uptake' and then for those that can't afford it, sucks to be them.
We will end up affording them same as we do with ice cars now, second hand resale and imports.
But I don’t think we can see how it will work because it hasn’t happened before and we will have to transition off the kind of car use and reliance we have now into a different kind of society. Not many people with good vision on that, relatively. Yet.
I am staggered that over 20,000 extra cars were put on our roads in May alone. Weka's link is all gung-ho about sales, but gives no figure for the number of old cars taken off the road.
I doubt if that number would get to 10,000. Can anyone reassure me?
If we are constantly putting far more cars onto the roads than we are taking off, the matter of how many are hybrid is irrelevant. We will always be worsening our carbon footprint.
And gridlock will spread everywhere. Not even national's big road-building programmes will prevent gridlock everywhere.
Nobody seems to be doing any planning or intervention on how many vehicles are being put onto our roads each year compared to how many are taken off .
Sheer stupidity, unless I am wrong in assuming that fewer vehicles are being taken off.
As far as I can tell, all those graphs show increasing numbers of vehicles, with no indication of whether we are taking any vehicles off the road at all.
Changing to more fuel-efficient vehicles does not help our carbon footprint if we are constantly putting more vehicles onto our roads than we are taking off.
There is information about new registrations in LTSA data, as well as some downloadable datasets.
If you're just guesstimating, then basically you can look at the charts with new and renewed registrations, particularly light passenger vehicles. The line (total vehicles) is going up, but if the "existing" point for 2015 is lower than the "new plus existing" in 2014, then some cars have gone off the road.
EVs are spiking, but as a proportion of the fleet larger engined "light passenger vehicles" have also increased regularly over 40 years. I'm thinking SUVs.
But EV tech seems to be maturing quickly, and buses are increasing in number quickest of all, so, it's not all bleak. But it is complex, and easy to focus on the wood instead of all the trees.
It's difficult to find because it's a particularly niche piece of data, and there are many twigs to examine, and sometimes one needs to be familiar with data collections and the mindset of data collators to know how to search for a particular twig.
Most things are available, it's just a case of figuring out who has it and where to find it and how to get it. Organisations literally have people highly trained at doing exactly that. And nosy fellows like me watching them do it.
If you go to Weka's link, select "2019 annual fleet statstics", and "view sections", you can download a pdf report and an xlsx workbook. I believe you're after sheet 5.1 in the workbook.
BUT
the report is more helpful. There are more cars with bigger engines, but per capita travel in those vehicles is lower and the CO2 emissions of those vehicles is also lower than older vehicles.
I bought a 4-door 1.2 litre Suzuki Swift new for $20k 3 years ago. It runs on the smell of an oily rag and compares well in terms of emissions with somewhat larger EV's. Suzuki now make a hybrid Swift which I think is $26k new and has even lower emissions.
Hi Andre, it is laudable that car manufactures offer EV's.
I have some questions though.
Lets say we have some
As at 31 May 2021
As at 31 May 2021Vehicle TypeTotal5,493,773AGRICULTURAL MACHINE2,849ATV8,109BUS32,796GOODS VAN/TRUCK/UTILITY806,577HIGH SPEED AGRICULTURAL VEHICLE144MOBILE MACHINE23,500MOPED31,618MOTOR CARAVAN48,229MOTORCYCLE167,758PASSENGER CAR/VAN3,505,856SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE3,315TRACTOR45,923TRAILER NOT DESIGNED FOR H/WAY USE980TRAILER/CARAVAN816,119
If the point you're trying to make is that there are lots of other kinds of vehicles that are also fossil-fueled, all I can suggest is pick whatever class of vehicle you're interested, and search for electric [whatever kind of vehicle you're interested in].
Come on ACT and/or the Green Party! Time to do some virtue signalling and expose this to loads of sunlight and oxygen. Or do you have something to hide as well …?
My understanding of l(L)iberal was those that saw Corbyn as an anti-semite, Assange as treacherous, keepers of the status quo. Kinda like conservatives on the left side of politics.
Small el liberal in NZ historically has meant socially liberal people who vote on the left.
Large el L liberal is a political position and theory that most people here aren’t even aware of. Adrian and others use it as a pejorative and label designed to corral. I don’t find it particularly helpful because it’s often inaccurately applied.
the people you refer to are what I would call centre lefties.
liberal also has a more modern meaning, basically socially liberal but comfortable with neoliberal economics so long as progress can be made. Eg the term liberal feminism is used to mean feminists who want equal pay but don’t act to end the patriarchy.
"the people you refer to are what I would call centre lefties" …aahhh No, the people referred to as 'Liberals' are Centrists, which is it's own quite defined and distinct ideology.
And we know this because as we have seen with our own eyes, the way the Third Way Centrists in the UK and the establishment Centrist Dems defended their ideology against the actual Progressive Left as aggressively as any political ideologue we have seen in action recently in western politics.
These Free market Liberal Imperialists and their media arm are a more immediate threat and major obstacle at present to any Progressive Left project taking root anywhere in the West than the Right IMO, thereby making them a serious threat to the survival of our planet.
Not sure how many leftish people thought assange was "treacherous". Or even Corbyn as personally being anti-Semitic (although the party as a whole seemed to have a problem that was never addressed).
meh.
Why does the left have so many labels?
So people on the left know who to hate.
……work was still being done to figure out next steps and chief executive Naomi James said they were in talks with central government about ways to create jobs, or repurpose the site.
"That could be anything from imports of other products, green energy and fuel opportunities through to the solar farm….."
I'm not a pitiless shit happy to see such social damage, I am hopeful that these highly skilled workers may find a place at the proposed solar farm.
This is my hope.
That the transition from a fossil fuel economy is done in a just way.
This transition must happen.
Or don't you accept the need for us to move away from fossil fuels?
We should be making the most of this opportunity to make the solar farm a reality.
I share my pity with the Mayor of Dunedin for those affected by the Southland floods, and, the even much greater social damage caused if we don't embrace a just transition.
While we have our own refinery we could potentially refine our own crude which i think atm is exported take that ability away and we are totally dependent on a foreign country for our fuel , not good in my view for a people who still have some way to go before we can transition to other fuels and noone knows whats arround the corner etc .Neither would there be much in the way of jobs in a solar farm once its up an running you could prob run the whole shebang with a couple of technicians an a couple of robots to keep the panels clean .
zouch. Walks on the field at a high point, walks off to find all that's come back.
Almost as bad as that woman who tweeted about AIDS in Africa before getting onto a 12 hour flight there, and getting off the flight to find out she'd been fired (she was back with the company within a few years, so not exactly a career-ender then, either).
Still, as long as he hasn't been turning up to EDL rallies or David Irving book signings recently, he should be ok. Most people know that depressed teens say stupid shit sometimes.
But there seems at the same time to be a youth worship – the young green Councillor will come up with some amazing magic and practical answer to all convoluted problems that will enable the Great Forward Leap into a Better Future.
Who has found the Covid vaccine booking 0800 number, I have searched for ages and followed every direction to my DHB and still no number. Somebody really does need a kick up the arse for anything complicated in doing this.
You can always contact your GP to get the latest information. If you haven't one then I think you should look for a group practice where appropriate for you. They do try to help you with your health problems if they run good management.
There's a link on the MOH covid website to the various DHb's and what they are doing. What I don't get is why they are making such a meal out of it.
I'm Capital & Coast and they are wasting money sending out invitations etc. The Flu shot doesn't have a lot of admin for the person being stabbed so why don't they use a similar system.
Just print up a bar coded form with a few rip off bits similar to an electoral voting form – you go in on your allocated day with address/age proof -fill out background information – give them bit one get stabbed and scanned then give them bit two to scan when you go in for the second shot. Immuno/other groups get the form from their Doctor.
Just allocate days to go by initial letter of surname or something similar.
Then at the end just check up on the numbers where there is only one scan. It's an exercise in getting shots into arms not in trying to collect and store ready to be hacked the personal details of everyone – which seems to be a health department obsession.
100 years since WW1 and big spending on updating our Memorial to that War. In Key's time. Easier to direct people's attention to those memories of the past which have a hold on people's consciousness. But there was WW2 so much closer that took my birth father who served bravely, and the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan war – and …? Enough to think about and should be top and front in our minds. But no, sort of slid under the carpet. And that is a discomforting place to be.
Turoa Karatea frequently scratches himself until he bleeds, but time is running out for him to get compensation for a condition he says was caused by Agent Orange. Will a Waitangi Tribunal inquiry finally deliver for Karatea and other Vietnam veterans before the last of the veterans die?
Ahh, my sister has phoned it through to me but she only got it because her husbands mate passed it on to them. It all seems very clandestine, very secret squirrel stuff.
Anyway it is 080026 88 22, pass it own but carefully like Richie Mounga organising his backline. And just another moan, if this is one of the most important numbers in NZ history why isn’t it a simple one like any company with a competent info department manages to get. I think I can see why the Government is giving health a bloody good kicking.
Lives lost, scarred people, lost revenue to the area because of lack of objective informed direction from government agencies and lost mana for the people there and all NZ.
Eight adventurers died on the submarine volcano. Another 16 would later succumb to horrific burns, inhalation and blast injuries. And 25 survivors were left with lifelong physical and mental recoveries from the explosion.
Despite tourist companies leading visitors onto New Zealand's most active volcano for decades, some stakeholders' health and safety obligations were unclear.
RNZ can now reveal the confusion went right to the top.
Small government good, effective government bad – say the neoliberalists! Just like the pig farm idea introduced by Roger Douglas. (Can he be deknighted now we feel benighted)? Animal Farm was run by pigs who promised and made rules that they gradually altered till what the animals got was the opposite of what they had been told.
Israel's Health Ministry says a small number of heart inflammation cases observed mainly in young men who received Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine in Israel were likely linked to their vaccination.
This was perhaps exacerbated by the stresses that so many young Israeli men are experiencing as they battle the horrific, blood-thirsty Palestinians that threaten Israel. /sarc
But an analysis by Deloitte also showed such an investment would reap economic rewards, with a growth in GDP of up to $23b, and thousands of jobs created.
One of the most important pieces of data, however, was a projection on how the investment would impact ratepayers – and likely what councils will be concerned about the most…
By foregoing the reforms, it showed the cost burden on ratepayers would be extremely lopsided. Some could end up paying nearly $14,000 a year in their water bill, while others would pay just $1,900. But if reforms did go ahead, and if two to four entities were created to oversee the water network, the bill would instead be a lot more evenly split amongst ratepayers. The highest average bill would end up being just $1,600 while the lowest average would be around $800.
My present bill is I think no more than $200 pa. And what does the master grinder Deloitte consider our water would be profitable for? And are we still virtually giving it away to overseas exploiters?
In a lot of urban areas the "water" bill is mostly for sewage disposal. Watercare in Auckland does a pro rata from the water meter volume (78.5% homes and 95% for apartments) to have a volume for the waste disposal network. The waste disposal cost is 1.75 X that of water per 1000L plus a fixed yearly charge
The pure water supply is around 25% of account ( inc GST)
"The United States is all for more development and investments in the Islands, but that investment should adhere to international standards for environmentally and socially sustainable development, and should be pursued transparently, with public consultation.
How would nuclear bombing part of the Marshall Islands repeatedly by the USA fit in with that worthy-sounding set of guidelines and principles?
The purpose of Operation Crossroads was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval warships. Testing in the islands began at Bikini Atoll with the Shot Able test, on July 1, 1946. … These were also the first U.S. nuclear detonations since the “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” bombs dropped over Japan. https://www.atomicheritage.org/location/marshall-islands
Tom Lehrer was writing about the nuclear bomb tensions back in the 1960s – oh we have come a long and reasoned way since then! Remember this is satire about the serious backdrop to all the flimflam that we hear from our 'betters' amongst our good leaders looking to advance Humanity and Peace.
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The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Photo by Jari Hytönen on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government is talking up the crucial role of gas as a transition fuel “through to 2050 and beyond”. In a gas strategy to be released on Thursday, the government envisages the fuel’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Next week the government will again next try to get its legislation through to deal with non-citizens who won’t cooperate with efforts to deport them. The bill, which the opposition and crossbench refused to rush ...
A long-term project that will set out an alternative vision for Aotearoa that looks beyond the narrow confines of the policy straight jacket adopted by successive governments. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bree Hurst, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Law, QUT, Queensland University of Technology TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock A much-awaited report into Coles and Woolworths has found what many customers have long believed – Australia’s big supermarkets engage in price gouging. What started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney The Albanese government wanted to avoid an inquiry into its migration amendment bill. The report, handed down yesterday by a senate committee that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne Lobbying is at the heart of government. Who has access to and influence over key government officials shapes the decisions governments make – and how they make them. The ability to influence ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myfany Turpin, Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, Linguistics and Ethnobiology, University of Sydney The act representing Australia at this year’s Eurovision contest has sadly not qualified for the grand final. Yet for Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross, the duo that makes up Electric Fields, ...
In announcing changes to the school lunches programme, David Seymour said kids would no longer be served ‘woke’ foods. To clear up any confusion, The Spinoff has compiled a guide to the wokeness levels of some common food items. Apple = NOT WOKE Avocado = WOKE Avocado, smashed = EVEN ...
The Minister Responsible for GCSB and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security have been notified of this review, and have been provided a finalised Terms of Reference. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Robert Way/Shutterstock As the past few years have illustrated so clearly, the Australia-China relationship is complicated. As such, it is crucial for Australians to develop a more nuanced understanding of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mariana Campbell, Research Lecturer, Conservation, Charles Darwin University Marilyn Connell Australian freshwater turtles are facing an alarming trend. Almost half of these species are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus) is one of Australia’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debbie Passey, Digital Health Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritise the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Barbaro, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Psychologist, La Trobe University Unsplash We’ve come a long way in terms of understanding that everyone thinks, interacts and experiences the world differently. In the past, autistic people, people with attention deficit hyperactive disorder ...
PNG Post-Courier Papua New Guinea’s deputy opposition leader James Nomane has accused the government of “reckless economic management” that has forced devaluation to manage loan repayments in foreign currency and placate the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prime Minister James Marape “must stop lying to the people of Papua New Guinea”, ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Jane Arthur, author of Brown Bird, and former bookseller at Good Books.The book I wish I’d writtenI have been working on not comparing myself to others. On accepting that what I can ...
The final decision on the Wellington District Plan makes it official: High-density housing is legal across most of Wellington. Housing minister Chris Bishop has announced his decision on the Wellington District Plan, approving a series of amendments to radically upzone most of Wellington, allowing tens of thousands of new townhouses ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to ...
RNZ News As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”. Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations ...
With funding set to be scrapped for the Hamilton-Auckland commuter train, Te Huia enthusiast Georgie Dansey argues for it to be thrown a lifeline. It’s 5.45am and the chain of my crappy old bike falls off slugging up the one hill in Hamilton. I contemplate yeeting the bike into the ...
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Cricket tragics and I am one, will be delighted about NZs current performance at Lords.
Yes especially Devon Conway
Black Caps v England: Devon Conway produces magical debut century at Lord's | Stuff.co.nz
Early days I know, win this test and maybe the UK press will stop asking questions about the ODI final.
Stolen as it was.
The UK press are referring to him as 'from South Africa'
I'm sure that when they ever mention Ben Stokes they always refer to him as "New Zealand player Ben Stokes".
I mean surely they would? Wouldn't they?
No surprises there.
While not untrue, I wonder if they did the same about Kelvin Peterson. Before he fell out with his team mates of course.
Nice to see we found some batsmen that actually do what they are supposed to do, and actually score more than 30.
Here's just one illustration of how we in New Zealand are shameful laggards in de-fossilising our transport: Norway new vehicle sales are around 60% pure battery, and another 20% plug-in hybrid. In the overall fleet, pure battery and plug-in hybrids are up to about 20%. Dino-juice is well on its way out, in Norway.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/06/02/norways-plugin-ev-transition-continues-83-3-share-in-may-with-ford-mustang-mach-e-overall-bestseller/
We really need to sort out issues such as the scheduled application of road user charges to electric vehicles at the end of this year. Applying RUC of nearly 8 cents/km to electric vehicles would remove any fuel cost savings from going electric. I recently took on a project that's turned into fairly regular part-time employment, which is a 100km round-trip for me.
So instead of using my dear old Landie, I went looking for something a bit … more environmentally and fiscally and socially aware. (No, public transport is nowhere even remotely close to viable for this commute). I could just barely make the range of a second generation Leaf work, if I plugged in to charge at work. But I ended up getting a Honda Fit hybrid, and the petrol cost is less than just the RUC costs alone would be on a Leaf if they end up imposed on schedule, without even considering the charging cost.
In terms of new electric vehicles, there's a lot more choice coming at us really fast. At the moment, the lowest price new EV in NZ is the MG ZS ev, at just under $50k. But BYD are saying they are planning to sell their EA1 in Oz for under 35k dingodollars, so probably around the $40 mark here.
(To forestall the inevitable complaints about scarce resources, the EA1 uses LFP batteries, ie nickel and cobalt free. Now if only they could change to rare-earth free motors such as the induction motors Tesla and Audi use on some of their products, or other designs such as the Mahle magnet-free wound-rotor wound-stator design)
Is 8c the intended or current RUC? Who came up with that?
Is Norway paying for its transition by selling oil?
Did you consider a reliable sedan hybrid like a Toyota Camry?
We're all going to have to make the same choices you made, so it's useful to see your choice criteria.
Plenty of couples get into spreadsheets for it. Eyeroll.
Camrys are much bigger than I like for daily use. I've still got the Landie for the big jobs, few as they may be.
I was a bit wary of potential reliability with the Fit, but everything I found online indicated the only real issues were with control software in the earliest models, which were quickly sorted with a software update.
I came close to going for a Prius plug-in, but the extra size and budget stretch needed, and that the pure-electric range would only cover about 1/4 of my km and the open road economy wasn't as good as the Fit, combined to tip it to the Fit. Besides, Prius. But if the pure-electric range covered my daily needs, then I would probably have gone for the Prius PHV, Prius image issues and size notwithstanding.
But jeez, I didn't think driving on pure electric would be as nice as it is. Wafting along at 50kmh or 90kmh with zero engine noise or vibration – it's bliss. It's super disappointing it only lasts a km or two on the flat before the engine has to fire up again. If that BYD EA1 actually does land here under $40k, I might end up breaking a lifetime habit of buying cheap cars and driving them til they're dead ten-ish years later, and spring for one.
Toyota Yaris 1.6 hybrid car or suv. Under $30k does 2.3litres to 100k ( that's about a third of the normal petrol usage – doesn't need to be plugged in. But I think they might be difficult to get hold of.
"There’s an EV mode but don’t get too excited. The owner’s manual suggests there’s a maximum electric-only range of only 1km (yep, a single, miserable kilometre…) and that it could be as little as a few hundred metres."
https://evcentral.com.au/2020-toyota-yaris-hybrid-review/
I have a larger toyota hybrid that uses about 60% of petrol a non hybrid uses and that's better than their literature suggests. I struggled to make sense of the article?? Toyota suggest the yaris uses about 1/3 of the petrol equivalent so that shouldn't be too far out? I'm not clear about why the article talks about only going 1km – seems kinda irrelevant. Otherwise it's up to the next in the range the Corolla.
Hybrids seem to be quite a good intermediate stage especially for people at the far end of the current battery distance ranges.
It's a middle class dilemma. I don't know what the average spend is on a car in NZ – from a quick look I can't find it. But I'd wager it's well under $20k and may be under $15K, The used hybrids and EVs at this price range are fairly old and and have issues (real or imagined) with range and/or battery life. Buyers who can't afford to make a bad economic decision are leery of them. You might, as Ad suggested, find a reliable used Camry hybrid or similar in this price range that you are prepared to take a punt on in terms of battery life. It will be years though before used Kia and Hyundai hybrids and the like turn up at this price, and the same issues will apply.
But even the middle class is being rorted – the price of new hybrids and EVs has been cynically jacked up sky-high. So that they make no economic sense for the buyer because the fuel savings don't cover the higher purchase price. And sitting in the background is inflated housing prices and the huge mortgages that have to be serviced – how long before this sucks middle class discretionary spending out of other sectors, or are people just expected to pile up more personal debt to save the planet with a flash EV?
I significantly stretched my usual budget and spent $10.5k on a 2014 model with 92500 km. I found precisely zero online chatter about battery degradation on Honda hybrids, unlike the plethora of online chatter about degradation in Prius Ni-MH batteries and Leaf batteries.
Even if the battery does degrade significantly, it's only going to have a tiny effect on fuel economy. It will still eliminate all the fuel waste sitting at lights, most of the fuel waste in stop-start traffic. It still has the Atkinson cycle engine, and the electric motor will still cover for the lowish torque at low to medium engine speeds characteristic of Atkinson cycle engines. It just won't be able to store quite as much from regenerative braking and going down hills, but that's only a small part of how it enables better economy.
Interesting facts Andre – every bit of info about EVs is new to me and I hope I will gradually get informed. Though can't afford one and am attached to old 1989 Toyota which I have insured for about $1000, third party.
It's a new language, eh.
I'm hoping when the time comes to replace my current suzuki 50cc, there will be some suzuki electric equivalents in a similar price range – currently the electrics I have searched online have been about twice the price. But I long for the day I can tootle around town without the engine noise, lol
Lack of engine noise will mean pedestrians having to be specially careful. Get forgetful and the car wil be onyou before you think to look, having not heard.
There are moped riders who think they are invulnerable. They'd be a hazard, like cyclists.
But then they have a spill, and realise we're about the squishiest people around. Besides, at least we have reggo plates.
Mine is quiet but you do get used to looking for people who haven't heard. Much like the overseas tourists that used to be around Wellington looking the wrong way around before they step out.
I drive a black Leaf. My friends call it the Black Ninja, the way it sneaks up on people at the curb. One is therefore careful lest the paintwork be blemished. Later Leafs I believe make noises to alert pedestrians of their presence. I have toyed with the idea of recording my son-in-law's Harley and piping that through external speakers mounted in a pipe where the exhaust would be……
I have heard that some common hybrids can have the battery unit checked and as its made up of a number of cells they can find the cells that are worst of and only replace them
This is what the Prius looks like and others will be similar
I was wondering why they didn't do that. For some, a new battery costs as much as a new car. A cell servicing every 20,000km would be an affordable alternative.
Think I'll wait for Toyotas solid state battery versions.
Plenty of companies do that. Easily found just by searching a phrase such as nz hybrid battery replacement.
Here's just the first one that popped up: https://hybridcore.co.nz/hybridcore-shop/
I've looked into replacing cells they have to be the same age you can't just put new cells in.you can buy reconditioned complete packs for about a third of the new price.
They are fairly easy to change out the complete pack but the dealer's charge $1200 plus for an hrs work and will only put in new batteries.
Tricledown, you've been repeatedly making a typo in your username, which means that a moderator has to do some work for your comment to appear.
You're now in premod, which means your comments won't appear at all until I've seen you acknowledge this mod note and agree to take more care.
Let's see if we can sort this out. What device are you using and what browser?
Can you please clarify if you can manually edit your name each time (and the problem is that it won't 'stick')? I'm seeing comments from you in the past week as Tricledrownk and Tricledrown. Why is that?
There is a lot of online chatter about hybrid battery degradation – most of it is simply ignorant. If they were so bad would you see so many taxis in Auckland that are hybrid? There are heaps of Prius, Aqua, and Corolla etc. around now. I have had a hybrid (2005 Prius) for 8 years now (1st NZ owner with 37k on the clock – now 150k). It has been the most reliable car I have ever owned and the only battery replacement has been the auxiliary which was 15 years old. Still returns 4.5 l /100km as it did when first bought. Basically halved my emission profile. Now looking to upgrade to something even more efficient.
Again there is virtually no public transport around here and we have to travel regularly at least 150k (300k return) way beyond the range of a Leaf. Friend had one for a while but was lucky enough to upgrade to a Tesla. I have to admit I had some difficulty with the 10th commandment* on first sight.
* Thou shalt not covert thy neighbours donkey.
Yep, it is rare for a Prius battery to crap out. Most of the articles that went into actual detail showed the car was doing Star Trek mileages, and/or extreme temperatures.
But still, I took the complete absence of complaints about Fit batteries to be a good sign, when compared to the cornucopia of complaints about such rare problems that occurred in the Prius batteries.
Andre – I don't want to down the argument for EV but there are 2 glaring issues:
1/ what is NZ going to do with some 2.5 million cars that actually cannot be converted but became instant trash
2/ Batteries, the amount of raw material -Lithium, nickel and cobalt are the key metals used to make those batteries – is being mined in poor countries the activity is devastating on the environment. The issue of disposal is not solved. Funny how this is being advertised as a environmentally better solution. This is ruining the environment in larger proportions and faster. But of cause its not at our doorstep.
https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/risky-business-the-hidden-costs-of-ev-battery-raw-materials/
My take is nothing really has changed, the emperor has new clothes and we now poison the soil until we cant grow food anymore. The drive to self destruction has not been broken at all. The run for profits is selling the average punter that buying an extraordinary expensive car is so much better. But really it isn't.
The 2.5 million existing ICE vehicles will end the same way as all almost all the other vehicles disposed of up til now. They will be crushed and/or shredded, and sent off to be recycling.
Battery recycling is entirely feasible, and is starting to become an actual thing now that significant quantities of end-of-life batteries are becoming available. Here's just one effort: https://insideevs.com/features/441524/tesla-jb-straubel-future-battery-recycling/ There's plenty more going on, you just need to make a very minimal effort to educate yourself.
If you had actually fully read my original post, you might have come to the last paragraph where I specifically addressed the cobalt and nickel issues. A lot of the new EVs use battery chemistries that don't use cobalt or nickel. The most popular alternative is lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), as used in BYD vcars and trucks and buses and dome of Tesla's made in China models.. These weren't preferred a few years ago because of lower energy density, but with improvements in battery technology they are now better than the best cobalt and nickel batteries were just a few years ago. As well as being much longer lasting.
Middle class dilemma now, everyone's dilemma eventually if we want to let catastrophic climate change happen. Someone has to step up and effect change. Or not I guess, and we let everything burn to the ground. Are we going to take this seriously or not?
(It will be a long time before I can afford an EV, I'm relying on the middle classes to bring the price down).
i guess that will be the problem if the middle class has got no money to spend on an overpriced EV. In my circle of people i know absolutly no one who owns a car that has cost more then 5 grand, if people do own a new car its Lease plan via work.
That is what i hope is that the people who drive gasguzzlers now for work in work vehicle will get the EVs first, and that that hopefully brings the price down for all. If it does not, which also would not surprise me those that are not in a rich enough class to afford one of these vehicles will have to content with a. walk (for those that can), b. cycle (for those that can), c. public transport (where it exists) and the rest is shit outta luck.
10,000 new car sales in May.
Compared to 11,200 used import sales. (Edit).
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/110693/passenger-car-sales-posted-their-own-set-new-records-may-buyers-choosing-larger-and
I suspect the issue isn’t going to be ev affordability but lack of other solutions. PT, cycle infrastructure, relocalising services and work, train network, and so on.
I guess it will be both. A large number of cars in NZ are business cars, i expect these to be EV when that becomes mandatory. Then there are those that already have them or will upgrade and can either afford it outright, or slap the car on the mortgage.
how the lower income to poor people are to afford these vehicles i have no idea.
I know a few people that are scared of this day for exactly this reason. But i expect the government to give tax incentives to those that can afford these cars to reaise 'interest' and 'uptake' and then for those that can't afford it, sucks to be them.
We will end up affording them same as we do with ice cars now, second hand resale and imports.
But I don’t think we can see how it will work because it hasn’t happened before and we will have to transition off the kind of car use and reliance we have now into a different kind of society. Not many people with good vision on that, relatively. Yet.
It will be interesting to watch, that is for sure.
I am staggered that over 20,000 extra cars were put on our roads in May alone. Weka's link is all gung-ho about sales, but gives no figure for the number of old cars taken off the road.
I doubt if that number would get to 10,000. Can anyone reassure me?
If we are constantly putting far more cars onto the roads than we are taking off, the matter of how many are hybrid is irrelevant. We will always be worsening our carbon footprint.
And gridlock will spread everywhere. Not even national's big road-building programmes will prevent gridlock everywhere.
Nobody seems to be doing any planning or intervention on how many vehicles are being put onto our roads each year compared to how many are taken off .
Sheer stupidity, unless I am wrong in assuming that fewer vehicles are being taken off.
But I bet I am right!
for comparison
https://www.transport.govt.nz/statistics-and-insights/fleet-statistics/sheet/vehicle-fleet
As far as I can tell, all those graphs show increasing numbers of vehicles, with no indication of whether we are taking any vehicles off the road at all.
Changing to more fuel-efficient vehicles does not help our carbon footprint if we are constantly putting more vehicles onto our roads than we are taking off.
I feel more cynical than ever.
Not sure it's cynicism, as such.
There is information about new registrations in LTSA data, as well as some downloadable datasets.
If you're just guesstimating, then basically you can look at the charts with new and renewed registrations, particularly light passenger vehicles. The line (total vehicles) is going up, but if the "existing" point for 2015 is lower than the "new plus existing" in 2014, then some cars have gone off the road.
EVs are spiking, but as a proportion of the fleet larger engined "light passenger vehicles" have also increased regularly over 40 years. I'm thinking SUVs.
But EV tech seems to be maturing quickly, and buses are increasing in number quickest of all, so, it's not all bleak. But it is complex, and easy to focus on the wood instead of all the trees.
I thought the saying was that one could not see the wood for the trees..
We need as least as many cars coming off the road as we are putting on to just start breaking even and making progress with EVs.
It seems we have no real indication of how many cars are coming off our roads.. and I suspect that if we did, we would cringe.
To interrupt the flow of cheap imported cars would provoke the ire of the entire right-wing pro-market economy sector.
Is this why it is so hard to find figures for just how many cars are coming off our roads?
It's difficult to find because it's a particularly niche piece of data, and there are many twigs to examine, and sometimes one needs to be familiar with data collections and the mindset of data collators to know how to search for a particular twig.
Most things are available, it's just a case of figuring out who has it and where to find it and how to get it. Organisations literally have people highly trained at doing exactly that. And nosy fellows like me watching them do it.
If you go to Weka's link, select "2019 annual fleet statstics", and "view sections", you can download a pdf report and an xlsx workbook. I believe you're after sheet 5.1 in the workbook.
BUT
the report is more helpful. There are more cars with bigger engines, but per capita travel in those vehicles is lower and the CO2 emissions of those vehicles is also lower than older vehicles.
And buses are increasing in number.
Good stuff to go to bed on, looks like lol
I bought a 4-door 1.2 litre Suzuki Swift new for $20k 3 years ago. It runs on the smell of an oily rag and compares well in terms of emissions with somewhat larger EV's. Suzuki now make a hybrid Swift which I think is $26k new and has even lower emissions.
Hi Andre, it is laudable that car manufactures offer EV's.
I have some questions though.
Lets say we have some
As at 31 May 2021
As at 31 May 2021 Vehicle TypeTotal5,493,773AGRICULTURAL MACHINE2,849ATV8,109BUS32,796GOODS VAN/TRUCK/UTILITY806,577HIGH SPEED AGRICULTURAL VEHICLE144MOBILE MACHINE23,500MOPED31,618MOTOR CARAVAN48,229MOTORCYCLE167,758PASSENGER CAR/VAN3,505,856SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE3,315TRACTOR45,923TRAILER NOT DESIGNED FOR H/WAY USE980TRAILER/CARAVAN816,119
If the point you're trying to make is that there are lots of other kinds of vehicles that are also fossil-fueled, all I can suggest is pick whatever class of vehicle you're interested, and search for electric [whatever kind of vehicle you're interested in].
Here's just my first hit for electric tractor: https://www.futurefarming.com/Machinery/Articles/2020/3/John-Deere-We-believe-in-electric-tractors-100-552869E/.
Or electric rubbish truck: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/emack-lr-electric-garbage-truck/
It is impossible to follow the money.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/pete-mckenzie-politics-rife-with-dark-money
Come on ACT and/or the Green Party! Time to do some virtue signalling and expose this to loads of sunlight and oxygen. Or do you have something to hide as well …?
Here is one for tour local Imperialist Liberals, you know who you are….
Two Centuries Of ‘The Imperialist, Warmongering, Hate-Filled Guardian’
https://www.medialens.org/2021/two-centuries-of-the-imperialist-warmongering-hate-filled-guardian/
…Guard Dogs of the Liberal status quo, always have been and still are.
Not sure we have many Liberals in NZ
Wave a stick round these parts and you'll hit half a dozen of them.
Capital L Liberal isn't really a thing in NZ.
My understanding of l(L)iberal was those that saw Corbyn as an anti-semite, Assange as treacherous, keepers of the status quo. Kinda like conservatives on the left side of politics.
Small el liberal in NZ historically has meant socially liberal people who vote on the left.
Large el L liberal is a political position and theory that most people here aren’t even aware of. Adrian and others use it as a pejorative and label designed to corral. I don’t find it particularly helpful because it’s often inaccurately applied.
the people you refer to are what I would call centre lefties.
liberal also has a more modern meaning, basically socially liberal but comfortable with neoliberal economics so long as progress can be made. Eg the term liberal feminism is used to mean feminists who want equal pay but don’t act to end the patriarchy.
Thanks weka. Yr last paragraph resonates, there is a ' blow the bridge, I'm over' or 'I'm alright, Jack' attitude to them.
"the people you refer to are what I would call centre lefties" …aahhh No, the people referred to as 'Liberals' are Centrists, which is it's own quite defined and distinct ideology.
And we know this because as we have seen with our own eyes, the way the Third Way Centrists in the UK and the establishment Centrist Dems defended their ideology against the actual Progressive Left as aggressively as any political ideologue we have seen in action recently in western politics.
These Free market Liberal Imperialists and their media arm are a more immediate threat and major obstacle at present to any Progressive Left project taking root anywhere in the West than the Right IMO, thereby making them a serious threat to the survival of our planet.
Not sure how many leftish people thought assange was "treacherous". Or even Corbyn as personally being anti-Semitic (although the party as a whole seemed to have a problem that was never addressed).
meh.
Why does the left have so many labels?
So people on the left know who to hate.
You are right about the hate.
During the height of Assange's turmoil there was a lot of hate directed at him round these parts.
The 'left' saves it's worse for it's own. Often stemming from a kinda purity Olympics.
Well, I for one don't think I ever accused Assange of being "treacherous".
I would have liked him to have faced trial for his alleged sexual assaults, though. I guess for the true left that's "po-tay-to po-tah-to" though.
They say every cloud has a silver lining.
Could this be a good news story?
From sunny Northland:
Bring it on, I say.
That's over 100 of Northlands last $100k salaries up and gone.
So it's reasonable to deduce in your glee you're a pitiless shit happy to see such social damage.
That's not very charitable of you Ad.
I'm not a pitiless shit happy to see such social damage, I am hopeful that these highly skilled workers may find a place at the proposed solar farm.
This is my hope.
That the transition from a fossil fuel economy is done in a just way.
This transition must happen.
Or don't you accept the need for us to move away from fossil fuels?
We should be making the most of this opportunity to make the solar farm a reality.
I share my pity with the Mayor of Dunedin for those affected by the Southland floods, and, the even much greater social damage caused if we don't embrace a just transition.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-02-06-2021/#comment-1796034
Instead of being dependent on imported fossil fuels, the North could be our solar energy capital.
Wouldn't you like to see that?
I took it that way at first too, but if you ignore the headline Jenny’s comment makes more sense and less callously. She’s cheering green jobs.
While we have our own refinery we could potentially refine our own crude which i think atm is exported take that ability away and we are totally dependent on a foreign country for our fuel , not good in my view for a people who still have some way to go before we can transition to other fuels and noone knows whats arround the corner etc .Neither would there be much in the way of jobs in a solar farm once its up an running you could prob run the whole shebang with a couple of technicians an a couple of robots to keep the panels clean .
Didn't Fletcher's pride itself on being a social responsible corporate?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300323481/mainfreight-and-fletcher-building-two-very-different-wage-subsidy-stories
Responsible to shareholders not wider society.
Fletchers thanks the NZ and Oz govt for their generosity…..yeah right.
Who amongst us covered themselves in glory at 19 yrs old?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/cricket/black-caps/125330762/england-rookie-ollie-robinsons-sexist-and-racists-tweets-return-to-haunt-him-at-lords
His apology seems fulsome and sincere. I question the motives of the retweeter.
I've not read this but yes, I'm thankful social media wasn't a thing in my teens, or 20s for that matter, I didn't mature until well into my 30s.
zouch. Walks on the field at a high point, walks off to find all that's come back.
Almost as bad as that woman who tweeted about AIDS in Africa before getting onto a 12 hour flight there, and getting off the flight to find out she'd been fired (she was back with the company within a few years, so not exactly a career-ender then, either).
Still, as long as he hasn't been turning up to EDL rallies or David Irving book signings recently, he should be ok. Most people know that depressed teens say stupid shit sometimes.
I suppose the most important bit is if he can forgive himself.
Brutal irony. At the start of the test, where you may expect National Anthems there was a wee monologue about inclusivity.
Probably why his posts surfaced while he was on the field.
Memorable comments are going to be remembered by someone.
But there seems at the same time to be a youth worship – the young green Councillor will come up with some amazing magic and practical answer to all convoluted problems that will enable the Great Forward Leap into a Better Future.
Who has found the Covid vaccine booking 0800 number, I have searched for ages and followed every direction to my DHB and still no number. Somebody really does need a kick up the arse for anything complicated in doing this.
The MoH number on my Nelson card was – Healthline 0800 358 5453. Hope that works.
You can always contact your GP to get the latest information. If you haven't one then I think you should look for a group practice where appropriate for you. They do try to help you with your health problems if they run good management.
When you get the email saying its time the login link to book is in the email
The 0800 number AUCKLAND is 0800 2VAX COVID (282926)
Other areas are slightly changed number
There's a link on the MOH covid website to the various DHb's and what they are doing. What I don't get is why they are making such a meal out of it.
I'm Capital & Coast and they are wasting money sending out invitations etc. The Flu shot doesn't have a lot of admin for the person being stabbed so why don't they use a similar system.
Just print up a bar coded form with a few rip off bits similar to an electoral voting form – you go in on your allocated day with address/age proof -fill out background information – give them bit one get stabbed and scanned then give them bit two to scan when you go in for the second shot. Immuno/other groups get the form from their Doctor.
Just allocate days to go by initial letter of surname or something similar.
Then at the end just check up on the numbers where there is only one scan. It's an exercise in getting shots into arms not in trying to collect and store ready to be hacked the personal details of everyone – which seems to be a health department obsession.
100 years since WW1 and big spending on updating our Memorial to that War. In Key's time. Easier to direct people's attention to those memories of the past which have a hold on people's consciousness. But there was WW2 so much closer that took my birth father who served bravely, and the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan war – and …? Enough to think about and should be top and front in our minds. But no, sort of slid under the carpet. And that is a discomforting place to be.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/443953/maori-war-veteran-s-skin-still-peeling-50-years-after-agent-orange-exposure
Turoa Karatea frequently scratches himself until he bleeds, but time is running out for him to get compensation for a condition he says was caused by Agent Orange. Will a Waitangi Tribunal inquiry finally deliver for Karatea and other Vietnam veterans before the last of the veterans die?
Ahh, my sister has phoned it through to me but she only got it because her husbands mate passed it on to them. It all seems very clandestine, very secret squirrel stuff.
Anyway it is 080026 88 22, pass it own but carefully like Richie Mounga organising his backline. And just another moan, if this is one of the most important numbers in NZ history why isn’t it a simple one like any company with a competent info department manages to get. I think I can see why the Government is giving health a bloody good kicking.
Lives lost, scarred people, lost revenue to the area because of lack of objective informed direction from government agencies and lost mana for the people there and all NZ.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/443934/whakaari-white-island-confusion-over-safety-responsibilities-at-senior-level
A super-heated, highly-acidic eruption tore across the crater without warning.
Ash concealed huge landmarks – helicopter landing pads, an old sulphur factory and a shipping container.
Eight adventurers died on the submarine volcano.
Another 16 would later succumb to horrific burns, inhalation and blast injuries.
And 25 survivors were left with lifelong physical and mental recoveries from the explosion.
Despite tourist companies leading visitors onto New Zealand's most active volcano for decades, some stakeholders' health and safety obligations were unclear.
RNZ can now reveal the confusion went right to the top.
Small government good, effective government bad – say the neoliberalists! Just like the pig farm idea introduced by Roger Douglas. (Can he be deknighted now we feel benighted)? Animal Farm was run by pigs who promised and made rules that they gradually altered till what the animals got was the opposite of what they had been told.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/443905/israel-reports-pfizer-vaccine-probable-link-to-heart-inflammation
Israel's Health Ministry says a small number of heart inflammation cases observed mainly in young men who received Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine in Israel were likely linked to their vaccination.
This was perhaps exacerbated by the stresses that so many young Israeli men are experiencing as they battle the horrific, blood-thirsty Palestinians that threaten Israel. /sarc
Water, water everywhere and not a drop for drinking, buy it by the thimbleful as you can afford it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/443956/mayors-split-over-key-water-reforms
Completed by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, it ramped up the estimated cost of how much work needs doing to upgrade the country's water systems.
But an analysis by Deloitte also showed such an investment would reap economic rewards, with a growth in GDP of up to $23b, and thousands of jobs created.
One of the most important pieces of data, however, was a projection on how the investment would impact ratepayers – and likely what councils will be concerned about the most…
By foregoing the reforms, it showed the cost burden on ratepayers would be extremely lopsided. Some could end up paying nearly $14,000 a year in their water bill, while others would pay just $1,900.
But if reforms did go ahead, and if two to four entities were created to oversee the water network, the bill would instead be a lot more evenly split amongst ratepayers.
The highest average bill would end up being just $1,600 while the lowest average would be around $800.
My present bill is I think no more than $200 pa. And what does the master grinder Deloitte consider our water would be profitable for? And are we still virtually giving it away to overseas exploiters?
In a lot of urban areas the "water" bill is mostly for sewage disposal. Watercare in Auckland does a pro rata from the water meter volume (78.5% homes and 95% for apartments) to have a volume for the waste disposal network. The waste disposal cost is 1.75 X that of water per 1000L plus a fixed yearly charge
The pure water supply is around 25% of account ( inc GST)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/443989/us-to-pacific-leaders-be-wary-of-funds-with-strings-attached
Antony Blinken told a virtual summit of leaders and delegates from 11 Pacific countries that economic coercion across the region was on the rise.
While making no specific mention of China, he also spoke of threats to order in the region.
"The United States is all for more development and investments in the Islands, but that investment should adhere to international standards for environmentally and socially sustainable development, and should be pursued transparently, with public consultation.
How would nuclear bombing part of the Marshall Islands repeatedly by the USA fit in with that worthy-sounding set of guidelines and principles?
The purpose of Operation Crossroads was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval warships. Testing in the islands began at Bikini Atoll with the Shot Able test, on July 1, 1946. … These were also the first U.S. nuclear detonations since the “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” bombs dropped over Japan. https://www.atomicheritage.org/location/marshall-islands
Tom Lehrer was writing about the nuclear bomb tensions back in the 1960s – oh we have come a long and reasoned way since then! Remember this is satire about the serious backdrop to all the flimflam that we hear from our 'betters' amongst our good leaders looking to advance Humanity and Peace.
Who's Next (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdtAFIl2jhc
So Long Mom (a song for WW111) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo
We will all go together When We Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs