Stuff today launched a fact checking policy tracker on the new government’s “major” initiatives. If done well (researched, balaced, investigated), I think it is a great development. I am not sure they have the resources unless they have added post election staff to do it well?
“The concept is simple: we’ll highlight key events with short pieces of analysis, fact-checking and data-based reporting.” Which is kind of what journalism is always supposed to be.
A “new” type of journalism? Maybe. Or maybe not.
“Post will include a mix of the elements you’re used to from Stuff: charts, video, pictures and tweets, all wrapped up with sharp insights from our journalists.”
How they determine “major” ( cost, number of people impact, etc) will also be interesting.
There’s no way they would’ve ever done that for national.
This will be probably be gamed to further push negative memes around the govt by cloaking them in ‘facts’ IMO as part of the rights new media strategy.
Y’know that ‘my expert says…’ shit that shonky had as stock in trade.
The Fourth Estate is dead in New Zealand. John Campbell used to ask the tough questions , holding politicians responsible for their actions or inactions. Remember Campbell’s dogged determination to have John Key and Brownlee do the right thing for those suffering during Christchurch’s post-earthquake? John Campbell soon afterwards lost his job at TV3, many news host now are seen to tow the line, afraid to upset their bosses. True reporting and holding politicians accountable has flown out of the window in New Zealand. Shame on us.
Very true savenz but like Carolyn_nth, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
By and large Newsroom has been a success and its possible they have been galvanised into action by a new government with new ideas and lots of changes about to occur. In other words, they now have impetus which was certainly lacking under the previous government.
Well my advice to our coalition government I would have someone auditing all the news videos and make sure they all show the good side to out new coalition government because some of the videos have not been flattering and everyone has a side that looks good on video. I no you have just started but u need someone on that job of keeping the media honest.
1st point every news show except for the breakfast show has a blue back ground. This is subliminal message blue is best.
Like in 2008 nearly every fucken article I read had key in it. It was the key to this the key to that go back you and will find the proof national still have the media in there clasp look at bill and joice videos all good shots we are in this for the long game we have to be. Kia kaha
There is a a nother subliminal message being put out through Our media and thats crack this a have a crack this word should be banned as the media have not figured out that they are being used by some people to put this message out there I notice these things. This shit is a design drug that does what it is designed to do which is to hook the user and then makes them a uncontrolled idiot whom has no grasp on reality and will do anything to get there next fix. Fuck that.
“The concept is simple: we’ll highlight key events with short pieces of analysis, fact-checking and data-based reporting.” Which is kind of what journalism is always supposed to be.
Agree. But given many of us wanted it we cannot object now. Balance and investigation are key. My conern is they are going to just repackage the “I reckon and knee jerk” journalism with some pretty bells and whistles.
I woukd have loved to have seen this during the election campaign but too many journos and editors dribbling at tge possibility of a scandal for real stuff?
Patricia +1
The selective eye of the media is very concerning. It tends to focus increasingly on trivia, gore, and sensationalism. Not to mention the international component at RNZ which is dodgy, quoting suspect US sources. RNZ needs better funding and journalism. Here’s hoping.
It would be a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” in the American political machine Andre, and you know it. Both the Repugs and Dems are a lost cause.
That comment is more useful for assessing your vantage point that it is for assessing the very real differences between Dems and Repugs for Americans and the rest of the world.
There is no real difference , both parties are war mongering, corporate supporting, 1% defending, scum. Who have hurt working people ever since their inception.
Says someone who is so fukn stupid that he admitted a couple of months ago he had pen in hand with his ballot paper, and he couldn’t even put a tick in a box that would help get rid of the Nats.
And just very politely, I’m suggesting you might want to pull your head in Andre.
If you don’t want to address a point made, then don’t. If you can’t, that’s okay too.
What isn’t okay is to launch into ad hom bullshit off the back of previous, unrelated comments you either disagreed with or couldn’t get your head around.
The appropriate point in reply to adam had already been made at 2.1.1.1. adam’s reply to that just perfectly illustrated the point that had already been addressed, and he completely missed.
So more or less dismissing someone out of hand because they opined that both the Dems and Repugs are a lost cause, was addressing the point that both parties share broadly similar perspectives on specific policy fronts.
Erm, no. That can’t be what you meant, because all you did in response to Adam’s comment was what you did in response to Garibaldi’s – which was to side-step the substantive content of the comment and “go” the person making the comment.
But we’ve been through this (above) and I’m confident, that now you have had the opportunity to make a second go at comprehension, that it won’t develop into a pattern that marks your comments, and that being the case, I won’t have to start putting on hats and what-not when I stumble across your contributions to the site. 🙂
I think it’s a fair point to make that the farther one is politically from the US political “Overton Window”, the less apparent distance there is between the dems and the republicans. Particularly if you’re viewing it from side-on.
But for the 10% of the US population who have affordable healthcare under the dems which they could lose under the republicans, the distance between the two parties might seem a little bit larger than it does to you or Adam.
If you or anyone else really needs a concise explanation of the difference between Dems and Repugs in how it relates to ordinary Americans, here you go.
And I’ll add another one: Democrats support workers rights, such as the right to organise, equal pay, non-discrimination. Republicans want to eliminate all worker protections to allow employers complete rights to do whatever they want.
And there’s many many more differences that deeply affect Americans and the rest of the world.
Come on McFlock the democrats opposed single payer, which would make a real difference to people’s lives. The democrats could stop the repeal, but they will not. loads of ways to stop the repeal of legislation but the democrats never do.
The ‘they’re the same’ line is a rhetoric device not designed to be fact. Therefore a irreverent sharpish response with a link seems okayish. But of course I bow to greater knowledge of these things. //leaves quietly and quickly…
Come on McFlock the democrats opposed single payer, which would make a real difference to people’s lives.
Oh, government paying would be better, but ACA still made a real difference to 30 million people that the republicans are trying to repeal.
The democrats could stop the repeal, but they will not. loads of ways to stop the repeal of legislation but the democrats never do.
That’s not how democracy works. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the dems are minority in Congress, Senate, and it’s a republican presidency. How are the dems supposed to outvote that?
There would be very few that don’t support single-payer in principle. There are at least three realpolitik reasons why there was no chance of passing single-payer in that tiny 2008-2010 period when they had 60 votes in the senate.
First is it’s an extremely complex problem how to get to single-payer from the system they had in ’08, 2 years would not be anywhere near enough time to sort out a robust solution.
Second, literally every single Democrat senator was needed to pass Obamacare, there was no margin for even a single no. And yes, there probably were a very few dems that would not have been willing to sign on to such a massive change. So they all signed on to something they (incorrectly) believed had a chance of bipartisan support.
Third, they do need to consider re-electability. As it was, they went way out on a limb supporting the expansion of healthcare to those that previously couldn’t afford it. And many of them paid the political price in 2010, when Obamacare was widely considered to have added a lot of momentum to the Republican wave that year.
That was a lot of writing needed to address a simple throw-away bullshit line. I really hope you’ll take it on board so it won’t be neeeded again.
Now, how about you tell us how you think Democrats could stop the repeal if the Republicans mustered the fifty votes in the Senate?
1) Filibuster
2) Committee hearings requests on point by point basis.
3) Points of order stalling as it’s a repeal – so not covered by Byrd Rule
4) Open up new debates within the debate to repeal
5) Put forward amendments rather than the repeal
That’s from the top of my head. They have other tools. The senate and the house can slow bills down to a snail’s pace until the midterms. There is very limited ability to go into urgency to repeal unlike us – also there is the whole talking to moderate republicans to remind them about midterms.
As I said, it’s about stopping the repeal. The road to do that is not a simple straight up vote.
adam, the repugs were trying to do it under reconciliation. So none of that applies. None of it.
The time window they had for reconciliation ran out a little while ago, so those points do apply now. And the repugs aren’t even trying now after their window closed. But they might try again next year under a new reconciliation process.
I suppose if the trumpists look like actually winning the repeal of ACA on their (third?) attempt, the dems could make use of your great expertise on how to stop people doing anything substantial, ever.
Yes they did, and now they must do it in a open floor debate – if at all.
They will probably not go to reconciliation again, as elections are coming up.
As for slandering the democrats – hell yes, and I stand by it, ‘wet liberal I know your pain politics’ is the reason we are in this mess. No good saying you agree with somthing in principle if you not go the backbone to actually support it via voting for it. Corporate donors make peons of us all.
You do know that slander is an untruth, right? So standing by slander is standing by an untruth…
Anyway, regardless of whether you think dems are soft liberals or not, they have fundamentally improved (simply with the ACA) the lives of 30 million people, and the republicans want to repeal that improvement.
So yes, there is a significant difference between the two, the closer you are to US politics. You’re in the opposite hemisphere and on their far left. Of course the positions of the democrats and republicans look similar to you – you’re a very long way away from them. Get closer, and you’d feel the differences.
Actually guys the main thrust of my comment was more to do with the fact that both the party machines are so corrupt that anyone half decent cannot make it through. But , yes ,I also meant that whoever Americans vote for they still get the same boss ie deep state Zionism ( for want of a better expression).
Hear! Hear! re your response to Garibaldi at 2.1.1.1, Andre. Looking back…..and knowing what we now know, I’m even more appalled than I was then by the utterly scandalous madness of TS becoming a vehicle for cheerleading for Trump…..thanks principally to the overbearing and bawling hubris of one CV. Particularly since that self-vaunted ‘prime leftie’ seemed to be motivated more by a ridiculously indulgent reaction to an internecine shit-fest occurring somewhere south of Timaru. Self-satisfying delusions as to one’s own ‘purity’ are fucking dangerous!
There’s a new controversial theory that anti-muons can detect virtual holes. They could run an experiment on Joyce to test the theory and publish in Nature.
India trade deal is apparently on life support and has been for many months. I guess John Key was just inflating his own importance when he said great progress was being made?
@Tracey
It basically comes down to the manner in which many of their nationals have been treated over the gNat junta’s reign.
Strangely enough, despite corruption (overt there, covert here), India does actually give a shit about its nationals.
Same thing with South American states. I’m not sure whether many will remember the absolute CLANGER Key, and his business enterage dropped when on a mission to Sth America at the time of Chavez’ death. They (a number of Sth American states) certainly didn’t and still haven’t.
It went down like a cup of cold sick – even though not all were fans of the Chavez reign.
Why would India want a trade deal with NZ when we’ve created a mechanism by which many/most of their nationals are exploited and treated as disposable human economic units. Even though India have veered right and swallowing much of the cool aid, Modi’s staked his name on fixing corruption, cosy little deals, black money, and they’re wide awake to all that now happening in lil ‘ole NuZull.
I’ve had the popcorn out not long after the gNatz came to power, and I happened to pick up a South American diplomat’s son hitch hiking back to Wellington with his mates. And was it the start of the gNat junta’s second term that Key started rattling on about being careful not to be arrogant? Or maybe it was the first term when an astute journalist observed that the smiling assassin only knew where various blots on the Pacific Ocean were, and that they were actually Pacific Island neighbours during his flights to HhhhWoiEeee with mum and the kuds
Parker does not seem confident of overturning ISDS clause but if we must have it I am happier ( not to be confused with happy) if the adjudication of disputes is done by;
Fulltime Judges
Public Forum
Fully disclosed decisions
He is not talking at all about IP issues. Thry had 5 bottom lines ( Labour) as Mcflock pointed out a couple of days ago but so far are publicly focusing on only 2(arguably 3) of them.
“Parker confirmed he was interested in the alternative to ISDS developed by the European Union, based on a public investment court system.
“One of the principles of justice is actually once you turn yourself over to becoming a judge, you put your prior biases and conflicts of interest behind you, and that’s not as clearly done in respect of arbitrations because the people who sit on those arbitration panels, once they’ve done it they go back to being a trade lawyer, perhaps accountable for their business to some of these forces who were in the contest, so a court is better in that regard.”
I find myself in agreement with Mike Hosking this morning:
“So here’s the theme: Governments make a difference. Governments can cock it up, or stoke it up.
But governments also, by and large, aren’t quite as big a deal as you might think.
Certainly not as big a deal as the headline writers would have you believe.
Mostly people carry on. Mostly people make their own decisons. Take their own risks. Live their own lives. Chart their own reality.
If you’re waiting for a government to tell you what to do, where to do it, how to do it and when to do it, then good luck to you. But the rest of us are getting on with it.”
We have a weak and disaggregated state and public sector.
We have a highly deregulated and market-driven society.
We have almost zero horizontal discipline across government policy or departments.
We have a very delicately poised coalition government, in no position to make massive changes.
We have no common direction as a country.
None of that has changed in the last 20 years, and is unlikely to on current tracking.
Certainly I didn’t notice some minor season of anomie forming during the coalition negotiations.
And yet we have a functioning society.
Plenty of things are getting worse, which we can all roll off as a list. All will take many years to improve.
We don’t yet have a government that is strongly altering our daily lives for good..
We have a weak and disaggregated state and public sector.
We have a highly deregulated and market-driven society.
We have almost zero horizontal discipline across government policy or departments.
We have no common direction as a country.
That’s all because our society has been under attack by business for the last thirty or more years which has been helped by the governments of the day.
We have a very delicately poised coalition government, in no position to make massive changes.
Actually, it’s not – it’s pretty solid. Probably more solid that the previous government.
Now let’s go through the list of entities this government would need to clean out:
– Electricity Commission
– NZTA Board
– HNZ Board
– Boards of all power generators (since they can still roll them from 51%)
– Boards of all Crown Research Institutions
– Law Commission
– Reserve Bank
– Boards of all the hundreds of largely useless quangos circulating through Wellington, from the Walking Commission to NZ On Air
– RNZ, TVNZ,and all the remaining State Owned Enterprises
etc.
You get the picture.
This government has started with momentum in only a very few areas. And this is this government at its peak: it never gets stronger, more forceful or more popular than here.
Page 15 of yesterdays Herald quotes Phil Goff proposing a streamlining of Water Services.
Let’s ignore the use of the word “streamlining” in an article about water services ??? and cut to the important possibility if this takes place.
The concept of “three waters” ie Watercare being responsible for Potable water, Waste Water and Stormwater management is not new and shouldn’t need any great research. This was the concept proposed before amalgamation by those responsible who had spent 3–4 years carefully examining all aspects of the best way to handle this important section of infrastructure for the new Auckland.
Sadly their deliberations were effectively thrown in the rubbish bin and Rodney Hide was given the job of sorting everything out which he did in about three months after his mate John Key had handed him the task.
The then head of Watercare refused to have stormwater as part of their responsibility and so it became a separate section of Auckland Council. Wastewater discharges into the Waitemata continue at roughly the same rate as they did before amalgamation except in the former North Shore City area , they had followed the three waters principal during the upgrade of their infrastructure over several years.
This is another legacy that Auckland could well do without. Let’s hope that reason will now prevail.
Only slightly on topic… I discovered a while back that the (privatised) Papakura water contract was still operational. It’s not part of Watercare, I assume because they couldn’t break the contract & have to let it expire.
It was Hide who pushed for those privatised contracts to be extended up to 25years. Interesting when one considers that if all of the councils had contracted out their utilities the SuperCity could never have come about. Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it.
Paddles the cat, the twitter account for Jacinda and Clarks’s pet, now has more followers after being active only a month than the deputy leader of the National Party, Paula Bennett, who has been on Twitter since 2009.
Jacinda’s pet has more media followers than Bill’s.”
I doubt this instance is any guide, Germans have a far tougher driving licence test than we do they’re generally pretty good drivers from what I’ve heard.
Tiredness may be a part that needs addressing. I had a near miss a while back with someone in a hire camper crossing the line on a corner. They entered it wrong and cut the white line. Their reaction was to swerve even further towards me, luckily for me they just as quickly corrected and pulled back in. That was open road, I’d taken my foot off when I saw them over the line & then nearly crapped myself when they veered further, thought for a brief moment they were aiming at me.
I put them down as used to driving on the right, where their swerve to the right would have been the natural reaction, and that they may have picked the camper up straight after landing & then drove north. They could have been getting tired, which may be why they took the wrong line on the corner to begin with.
The point being it may not be a bad idea to more strongly urge people to not engage in a long drive in a camper immediately on arriving here after a long flight. They are campers after all, it’s not as if they have nowhere to sleep.
” The comments came in response to Health Minister David Clark saying he is “very seriously considering” accepting resignations from District Health Board (DHB) heads that aren’t on the new Government’s “wavelength.”
“I’m extremely disappointed,” Mr English said.
“I thought the Jacinda Ardern Government would be different. It turns out it’s just the same old Labour trying to do its brutal tactics on the public service.”
Mr Clark told RNZ he may ask for resignation letters from current chairs of DHBs before choosing which ones to accept back into the fold.
“I want to be sure that the district health board chairs are in agreement with the current Government’s agenda and direction,” Mr Clark told RNZ. ”
Good idea, Minister Clark. Would it be too much to ask you to also take the opportunity to trim bloated top-level administrative overhead and salaries? Y’know, so the money actually gets spent on providing services rather than funding lots of expensive top-level jobsworths whose only function is getting in the way?
And they did so through crony appointments to senior management positions. I suspect even public servants at the coal face in WINZ live in fear of their masters.
I’m hoping the age of the various corporatised public service feifdoms will get a bloody big shake up. And despite someone’s pessimism on another thread about not being able to make changes needed, the neo-libs created exactly the structure that will/could allow a bloody big shakeup to happen.
We’ll see. It is very early days.
$500,000 salary plus for a damn hospital CEO. Where was that? The figure stayed in my head, and everything else faded when I heard it to day or yesterday on Radionz. The hospitals are damned of course, trying to manage on short rations for the working parts, while the cock at the top is paid for playing the neo -lib game of sorting out the inefficiencies with a sinking budget level.
+1 This is the essence of neo-liberal corruption. English to blame for setting it all up that way before he rose to be an outgoing prime-ministerial candidate first time he lost.
The Electoral Commission in London has a very poor record of inquiry and prosecution. Sadly the Metropolitan police are not much better.
Carol Cadwalladr has pushed the story in The Guardian but it is not getting any traction in the mainstream media.
Open Democracy has done some solid work which the Electoral Commission will probably ignore. https://www.opendemocracy.net/dup-dark-money
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an attempt by the late hotelier Earl Hagaman’s estate to reconsider a defamation case against the new justice minister Andrew Little.
I say good for the boy’s parents, they at least have their priorities right. IMO the Police should respect their wishes and stay out of it… provided the boy agrees too.
My oh my Waikato Diocesan School for Girls, a prestigious Anglican private school – and they let their “gals” out of bounds topless to play truant. What on earth is the world coming to. I have heard tales of yore from other Hawkes Bay Private schools for girls as well – doesn’t say much for the upper echelons of society in this country does it. Breeding our young ladies to be such utter trollops!!!!! Tongue in cheek here but seeing our prisons are littered with the poor and products of our public schools it just shows tacky-ness comes from all stratas of our society, you’d better believe it.
I have always found single sex schools to have a certain elitism and super-patriotism about them that was pretty gross. This could be a consequence of that.
Maui ,
You are entitled to your opinion but I disagree, depends on the on the ethics of the school and the way it is run surely. Your experience may well have been much less
agreeable than mine was.
Also – allows them to repeat the gratuitous publishing of three photos of teenage girls in their underwear (restrained?) on the back of a motorbike, and to reinforce the notion that privilege denotes respectability to all actions without critique.
I think it the best-conceived streaking prank so far carried out. The Herald even did a cartoon based on it. Unfortunately, the boy was run over and cut in the leg. Without that, it would have seemed impressive and harmless. But now, the question of whether the girls had the appropriate licences to be driving the bikes could come into question, and it could end in tears. There was no malice here, as there is when the poor bash a dairy-owner, so I am not sure that it is a matter of privilege. Wait and see if prosecution follows.
Without modern phones, there would have been no photos for the NZ Herald to so cynically publish as click-bait (and the article reached the top of their internet chart). That is also a sad commentary – on what the general public want to see.
In the old days they used vehicles for pranks, like seeing how many people you could pile into a volkswagen. Probably now it would have to be that they were all nude.
Then if there were both sexes one of the males would get an erection, then there would be some tale of sexual malpractice, and that would be good click bait. So watch the media over the next year when there is a low point in the news cycle, and no sexual malpractice of some luminary being investigated, or a new war, or shooting in a school, mall, concert, church, or particularly horrific bombing or picture of a child suffering. /sad and disillusioned not sarc
The rise in motocross bikes in public places is everywhere. They are super dangerous and often ridden by unlicensed people – aka – kids without the brains or understanding that they can kill people with their behaviour. The parents cheer it on.
Somehow whenever there is an accident of this kind, surprise surprise it is always considered a prank gone wrong and hushed up. Even when someone is killed or severely injured.
I’m all for harmless pranks but if they could have pulled the same prank on bicycles and nobody would have been hurt and it would not have been doing something illegal (aka riding motocross bikes in public places without permission or a motorbike license + injuring someone to boot).
Now I no my money from my business is not thunderous I made 2× this when I was 14 but in my line of business it’s all about the good will and if some people are shitting all over my good name there goes my earning sliding backwards. By 2 thirds but the potential earnings from my eco Maori pseudonym is thunderous but the same people are interfering with this. So I will be making a claim on the breaches of my rights under the Treaty of Waitangi there are many injustices that are being dealt out to me and my whanau. like the red head guy whom thought that he would come over to the farm house that I was living in that the farm owner had just sacked me idiot an say boo and the dumb ass Maori would run away. Well no because this Maori is a proud and brave Maori that knows his rights and told him were to go. So they have stuffed my farming career that I had planed to be managing and making $80.000 WTF. Now the big picture is that this sort of service can be dealt out to anyone in New Zealand if they are not in the who gives a________ club ie millionairs club. They now no that Im not a dumb ass Maori now. I wonder if the generals want to negotiate well no sorry they are God’s and are never worng
WTF just like the orange man Kia Kaha
The White House first learned one of its senior staffers met with the grand jury hearing the case presented by the special counsel into alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 election not from the staffer but from media reports, sources with knowledge of the investigation tell ABC News.
Former Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis recently testified before that grand jury into his role on President Donald Trump’s campaign. Clovis currently serves as the senior White House adviser to the Department of Agriculture.
Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page privately testified Thursday that he mentioned to Jeff Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — as new questions emerge about the attorney general’s comments to Congress about Russia and the Trump campaign.
During more than six hours of closed-door testimony, Page said that he informed Sessions about his coming July 2016 trip to Russia, which Page told CNN was unconnected to his campaign role. Page described the conversation to CNN after he finished talking to the House intelligence committee.
The Repugs release their tax reform bill. Like all “conservative” tax plans anytime anywhere, it borrows money to pay for big tax cuts to those that already have the most (especially those that write the rules and their owners), sticks it to those that have the least, and lies that it will increase growth.
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Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
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Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee 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 One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
“It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April to meet the Prime Minister’s ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
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Stuff today launched a fact checking policy tracker on the new government’s “major” initiatives. If done well (researched, balaced, investigated), I think it is a great development. I am not sure they have the resources unless they have added post election staff to do it well?
“The concept is simple: we’ll highlight key events with short pieces of analysis, fact-checking and data-based reporting.” Which is kind of what journalism is always supposed to be.
A “new” type of journalism? Maybe. Or maybe not.
“Post will include a mix of the elements you’re used to from Stuff: charts, video, pictures and tweets, all wrapped up with sharp insights from our journalists.”
How they determine “major” ( cost, number of people impact, etc) will also be interesting.
Watching that space
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/98487531/the-first-draft-tracking-the-start-of-a-government
Pity they didn’t start it 9 years ago!
Then we’d also have a comparison.
Or during the election. Apparently Garner has been alluding to a similar thing.
There’s no way they would’ve ever done that for national.
This will be probably be gamed to further push negative memes around the govt by cloaking them in ‘facts’ IMO as part of the rights new media strategy.
Y’know that ‘my expert says…’ shit that shonky had as stock in trade.
It looks like a Newsroom initiative, supported by Stuff.
So, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that Newsroom would’ve done it in response to the NACT government, if they’d been around then.
However, to be fair, they do need to compare the current government’s performance with NACT’s track record.
Exactly so unless they do that it’s simply more DP.
Alot of what’s going to get done is repairing the damage National have dished out across NZ society so unless there’s context it’s pure spin.
Watch for synergies between stuff/granny and national attack lines.
Well done Newsroom, again… gosh they are a wonderful resource, kudos Newsroom
The Fourth Estate is dead in New Zealand. John Campbell used to ask the tough questions , holding politicians responsible for their actions or inactions. Remember Campbell’s dogged determination to have John Key and Brownlee do the right thing for those suffering during Christchurch’s post-earthquake? John Campbell soon afterwards lost his job at TV3, many news host now are seen to tow the line, afraid to upset their bosses. True reporting and holding politicians accountable has flown out of the window in New Zealand. Shame on us.
Yes, funny timing. When they cheerleaded shit for 9 years.
Very true savenz but like Carolyn_nth, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
By and large Newsroom has been a success and its possible they have been galvanised into action by a new government with new ideas and lots of changes about to occur. In other words, they now have impetus which was certainly lacking under the previous government.
Yep, has been some well researched articles on newsroom.
Well my advice to our coalition government I would have someone auditing all the news videos and make sure they all show the good side to out new coalition government because some of the videos have not been flattering and everyone has a side that looks good on video. I no you have just started but u need someone on that job of keeping the media honest.
1st point every news show except for the breakfast show has a blue back ground. This is subliminal message blue is best.
Like in 2008 nearly every fucken article I read had key in it. It was the key to this the key to that go back you and will find the proof national still have the media in there clasp look at bill and joice videos all good shots we are in this for the long game we have to be. Kia kaha
There is a a nother subliminal message being put out through Our media and thats crack this a have a crack this word should be banned as the media have not figured out that they are being used by some people to put this message out there I notice these things. This shit is a design drug that does what it is designed to do which is to hook the user and then makes them a uncontrolled idiot whom has no grasp on reality and will do anything to get there next fix. Fuck that.
True. They never did it for National though.
Agree. But given many of us wanted it we cannot object now. Balance and investigation are key. My conern is they are going to just repackage the “I reckon and knee jerk” journalism with some pretty bells and whistles.
I woukd have loved to have seen this during the election campaign but too many journos and editors dribbling at tge possibility of a scandal for real stuff?
Alarm bells went off for me when I saw “first draft”.
Too many times I’ve seen a story get edited over a week to become a massaged message.
So I think this is the same group finding a new way to colour public perception.
Bill English has declared war, so we have been warned.
Government should claim this space to avoid false news.
Patricia +1
The selective eye of the media is very concerning. It tends to focus increasingly on trivia, gore, and sensationalism. Not to mention the international component at RNZ which is dodgy, quoting suspect US sources. RNZ needs better funding and journalism. Here’s hoping.
Looks like the Democrats have decided to emulate the Republicans and establish their very own circular firing squad.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
I won’t shed any tears if the Dem old crusties all take other out and clear the field for new blood.
It would be a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” in the American political machine Andre, and you know it. Both the Repugs and Dems are a lost cause.
That comment is more useful for assessing your vantage point that it is for assessing the very real differences between Dems and Repugs for Americans and the rest of the world.
There is no real difference , both parties are war mongering, corporate supporting, 1% defending, scum. Who have hurt working people ever since their inception.
Says someone who is so fukn stupid that he admitted a couple of months ago he had pen in hand with his ballot paper, and he couldn’t even put a tick in a box that would help get rid of the Nats.
https://thestandard.org.nz/is-nz-doomed-to-lying-politics-now/#comment-1389259
And just very politely, I’m suggesting you might want to pull your head in Andre.
If you don’t want to address a point made, then don’t. If you can’t, that’s okay too.
What isn’t okay is to launch into ad hom bullshit off the back of previous, unrelated comments you either disagreed with or couldn’t get your head around.
The appropriate point in reply to adam had already been made at 2.1.1.1. adam’s reply to that just perfectly illustrated the point that had already been addressed, and he completely missed.
Ah. I see.
So more or less dismissing someone out of hand because they opined that both the Dems and Repugs are a lost cause, was addressing the point that both parties share broadly similar perspectives on specific policy fronts.
Erm, no. That can’t be what you meant, because all you did in response to Adam’s comment was what you did in response to Garibaldi’s – which was to side-step the substantive content of the comment and “go” the person making the comment.
But we’ve been through this (above) and I’m confident, that now you have had the opportunity to make a second go at comprehension, that it won’t develop into a pattern that marks your comments, and that being the case, I won’t have to start putting on hats and what-not when I stumble across your contributions to the site. 🙂
I think it’s a fair point to make that the farther one is politically from the US political “Overton Window”, the less apparent distance there is between the dems and the republicans. Particularly if you’re viewing it from side-on.
But for the 10% of the US population who have affordable healthcare under the dems which they could lose under the republicans, the distance between the two parties might seem a little bit larger than it does to you or Adam.
If you or anyone else really needs a concise explanation of the difference between Dems and Repugs in how it relates to ordinary Americans, here you go.
http://addictinginfo.com/2013/05/09/fifteen-differences/
And I’ll add another one: Democrats support workers rights, such as the right to organise, equal pay, non-discrimination. Republicans want to eliminate all worker protections to allow employers complete rights to do whatever they want.
And there’s many many more differences that deeply affect Americans and the rest of the world.
See how easy that was to respond to the actual content of a comment? Thank-you.
Come on McFlock the democrats opposed single payer, which would make a real difference to people’s lives. The democrats could stop the repeal, but they will not. loads of ways to stop the repeal of legislation but the democrats never do.
The ‘they’re the same’ line is a rhetoric device not designed to be fact. Therefore a irreverent sharpish response with a link seems okayish. But of course I bow to greater knowledge of these things. //leaves quietly and quickly…
Oh, government paying would be better, but ACA still made a real difference to 30 million people that the republicans are trying to repeal.
That’s not how democracy works. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the dems are minority in Congress, Senate, and it’s a republican presidency. How are the dems supposed to outvote that?
adam, that’s slandering most of the Democrats.
There would be very few that don’t support single-payer in principle. There are at least three realpolitik reasons why there was no chance of passing single-payer in that tiny 2008-2010 period when they had 60 votes in the senate.
First is it’s an extremely complex problem how to get to single-payer from the system they had in ’08, 2 years would not be anywhere near enough time to sort out a robust solution.
Second, literally every single Democrat senator was needed to pass Obamacare, there was no margin for even a single no. And yes, there probably were a very few dems that would not have been willing to sign on to such a massive change. So they all signed on to something they (incorrectly) believed had a chance of bipartisan support.
Third, they do need to consider re-electability. As it was, they went way out on a limb supporting the expansion of healthcare to those that previously couldn’t afford it. And many of them paid the political price in 2010, when Obamacare was widely considered to have added a lot of momentum to the Republican wave that year.
That was a lot of writing needed to address a simple throw-away bullshit line. I really hope you’ll take it on board so it won’t be neeeded again.
Now, how about you tell us how you think Democrats could stop the repeal if the Republicans mustered the fifty votes in the Senate?
1) Filibuster
2) Committee hearings requests on point by point basis.
3) Points of order stalling as it’s a repeal – so not covered by Byrd Rule
4) Open up new debates within the debate to repeal
5) Put forward amendments rather than the repeal
That’s from the top of my head. They have other tools. The senate and the house can slow bills down to a snail’s pace until the midterms. There is very limited ability to go into urgency to repeal unlike us – also there is the whole talking to moderate republicans to remind them about midterms.
As I said, it’s about stopping the repeal. The road to do that is not a simple straight up vote.
adam, the repugs were trying to do it under reconciliation. So none of that applies. None of it.
The time window they had for reconciliation ran out a little while ago, so those points do apply now. And the repugs aren’t even trying now after their window closed. But they might try again next year under a new reconciliation process.
I suppose if the trumpists look like actually winning the repeal of ACA on their (third?) attempt, the dems could make use of your great expertise on how to stop people doing anything substantial, ever.
Yes they did, and now they must do it in a open floor debate – if at all.
They will probably not go to reconciliation again, as elections are coming up.
As for slandering the democrats – hell yes, and I stand by it, ‘wet liberal I know your pain politics’ is the reason we are in this mess. No good saying you agree with somthing in principle if you not go the backbone to actually support it via voting for it. Corporate donors make peons of us all.
You do know that slander is an untruth, right? So standing by slander is standing by an untruth…
Anyway, regardless of whether you think dems are soft liberals or not, they have fundamentally improved (simply with the ACA) the lives of 30 million people, and the republicans want to repeal that improvement.
So yes, there is a significant difference between the two, the closer you are to US politics. You’re in the opposite hemisphere and on their far left. Of course the positions of the democrats and republicans look similar to you – you’re a very long way away from them. Get closer, and you’d feel the differences.
Took a leaf from your playbook McFlock, changed the language to suit.
Seeing as we can’t call acts of terror, terrorism.
May as well call the dishonesty of wet liberals – slander.
So we must worship at the altar of your world view, otherwise its abuse there Andre.
Open your mind, try reading ‘A People’s History of America’ by Howard Zinn.
No worshiping and no alters (except for thems that’s so inclined) and no personal abuse.
Pretty simple really.
Actually guys the main thrust of my comment was more to do with the fact that both the party machines are so corrupt that anyone half decent cannot make it through. But , yes ,I also meant that whoever Americans vote for they still get the same boss ie deep state Zionism ( for want of a better expression).
Try stop licking Trump’s arse by default Adam.
Oh do try getting the point North, other wise I’ll just take you as another wet liberal who can’t handle working people actually having power.
Hear! Hear! re your response to Garibaldi at 2.1.1.1, Andre. Looking back…..and knowing what we now know, I’m even more appalled than I was then by the utterly scandalous madness of TS becoming a vehicle for cheerleading for Trump…..thanks principally to the overbearing and bawling hubris of one CV. Particularly since that self-vaunted ‘prime leftie’ seemed to be motivated more by a ridiculously indulgent reaction to an internecine shit-fest occurring somewhere south of Timaru. Self-satisfying delusions as to one’s own ‘purity’ are fucking dangerous!
All I’m reading is the same puritanical ranting coming from you North. Just, from a different ideological position.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/africa/98511341/cosmic-rays-reveal-mysterious-void-in-egypts-great-pyramid
This could be used to find that fiscal hole that Steven Joyce was talking about; even when he was wrong about it, he was still right 😉
🙂
Muons only detect holes that exist. Like the one inside Joyce’s head.
There’s a new controversial theory that anti-muons can detect virtual holes. They could run an experiment on Joyce to test the theory and publish in Nature.
But in Joyce’s case, you probably won’t get a useful read because what surrounds that void is so dense.
On the other hand, it is such a perfect vacuum in there that you could store a very large amount of antimatter quite safely.
Joyce = a void. Absolute zero warmth – a space wasted on nothing.
Might be usefull as a carbon sink.
India trade deal is apparently on life support and has been for many months. I guess John Key was just inflating his own importance when he said great progress was being made?
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/11/02/57753/nz-india-fta-on-life-support
All I can say to that is ‘good’. Obviously getting that FTA would increase our already unsustainable dairy herd.
@Tracey
It basically comes down to the manner in which many of their nationals have been treated over the gNat junta’s reign.
Strangely enough, despite corruption (overt there, covert here), India does actually give a shit about its nationals.
Same thing with South American states. I’m not sure whether many will remember the absolute CLANGER Key, and his business enterage dropped when on a mission to Sth America at the time of Chavez’ death. They (a number of Sth American states) certainly didn’t and still haven’t.
It went down like a cup of cold sick – even though not all were fans of the Chavez reign.
Why would India want a trade deal with NZ when we’ve created a mechanism by which many/most of their nationals are exploited and treated as disposable human economic units. Even though India have veered right and swallowing much of the cool aid, Modi’s staked his name on fixing corruption, cosy little deals, black money, and they’re wide awake to all that now happening in lil ‘ole NuZull.
I’ve had the popcorn out not long after the gNatz came to power, and I happened to pick up a South American diplomat’s son hitch hiking back to Wellington with his mates. And was it the start of the gNat junta’s second term that Key started rattling on about being careful not to be arrogant? Or maybe it was the first term when an astute journalist observed that the smiling assassin only knew where various blots on the Pacific Ocean were, and that they were actually Pacific Island neighbours during his flights to HhhhWoiEeee with mum and the kuds
Parker does not seem confident of overturning ISDS clause but if we must have it I am happier ( not to be confused with happy) if the adjudication of disputes is done by;
Fulltime Judges
Public Forum
Fully disclosed decisions
He is not talking at all about IP issues. Thry had 5 bottom lines ( Labour) as Mcflock pointed out a couple of days ago but so far are publicly focusing on only 2(arguably 3) of them.
“Parker confirmed he was interested in the alternative to ISDS developed by the European Union, based on a public investment court system.
“One of the principles of justice is actually once you turn yourself over to becoming a judge, you put your prior biases and conflicts of interest behind you, and that’s not as clearly done in respect of arbitrations because the people who sit on those arbitration panels, once they’ve done it they go back to being a trade lawyer, perhaps accountable for their business to some of these forces who were in the contest, so a court is better in that regard.”
Tracey, ISDS are now not allowed in any trade agreement. Agreed by all three parties and passed by cabinet today.
Jacinda has said that is their biggest concern, so now it is official.
Not doubting you but can you post a link? I don’t see this in the news yet.
A.
Stage four of the grieving process is depression. Stage five acceptance.
Hosking now at bewilderment factor 9, showing indictors of both of the above.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11939977
I find myself in agreement with Mike Hosking this morning:
“So here’s the theme: Governments make a difference. Governments can cock it up, or stoke it up.
But governments also, by and large, aren’t quite as big a deal as you might think.
Certainly not as big a deal as the headline writers would have you believe.
Mostly people carry on. Mostly people make their own decisons. Take their own risks. Live their own lives. Chart their own reality.
If you’re waiting for a government to tell you what to do, where to do it, how to do it and when to do it, then good luck to you. But the rest of us are getting on with it.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11939977
We have a weak and disaggregated state and public sector.
We have a highly deregulated and market-driven society.
We have almost zero horizontal discipline across government policy or departments.
We have a very delicately poised coalition government, in no position to make massive changes.
We have no common direction as a country.
None of that has changed in the last 20 years, and is unlikely to on current tracking.
Certainly I didn’t notice some minor season of anomie forming during the coalition negotiations.
And yet we have a functioning society.
Plenty of things are getting worse, which we can all roll off as a list. All will take many years to improve.
We don’t yet have a government that is strongly altering our daily lives for good..
I love how he doesnt think he is a headline writer
I doubt Mikey even knows who he is.
https://thestandard.org.nz/mike-hosking-the-case-of-the-vanishing-journalist/
That’s all because our society has been under attack by business for the last thirty or more years which has been helped by the governments of the day.
Actually, it’s not – it’s pretty solid. Probably more solid that the previous government.
Hasn’t had a test yet to evaluate its strength.
Oh I don’t agree. Asking political appointees to write a resignation letter is a start.
Clean out the strategic interference to begin real change on day 10.
Health Minister is simply “considering” this.
Now let’s go through the list of entities this government would need to clean out:
– Electricity Commission
– NZTA Board
– HNZ Board
– Boards of all power generators (since they can still roll them from 51%)
– Boards of all Crown Research Institutions
– Law Commission
– Reserve Bank
– Boards of all the hundreds of largely useless quangos circulating through Wellington, from the Walking Commission to NZ On Air
– RNZ, TVNZ,and all the remaining State Owned Enterprises
etc.
You get the picture.
This government has started with momentum in only a very few areas. And this is this government at its peak: it never gets stronger, more forceful or more popular than here.
This is as good as it gets.
So, Hosking is right this time.
As good as it gets? Your lack of imagination is eclipsed only by a pessimism – an ebony hue on black.
Page 15 of yesterdays Herald quotes Phil Goff proposing a streamlining of Water Services.
Let’s ignore the use of the word “streamlining” in an article about water services ??? and cut to the important possibility if this takes place.
The concept of “three waters” ie Watercare being responsible for Potable water, Waste Water and Stormwater management is not new and shouldn’t need any great research. This was the concept proposed before amalgamation by those responsible who had spent 3–4 years carefully examining all aspects of the best way to handle this important section of infrastructure for the new Auckland.
Sadly their deliberations were effectively thrown in the rubbish bin and Rodney Hide was given the job of sorting everything out which he did in about three months after his mate John Key had handed him the task.
The then head of Watercare refused to have stormwater as part of their responsibility and so it became a separate section of Auckland Council. Wastewater discharges into the Waitemata continue at roughly the same rate as they did before amalgamation except in the former North Shore City area , they had followed the three waters principal during the upgrade of their infrastructure over several years.
This is another legacy that Auckland could well do without. Let’s hope that reason will now prevail.
+1 John Shears
+100
Only slightly on topic… I discovered a while back that the (privatised) Papakura water contract was still operational. It’s not part of Watercare, I assume because they couldn’t break the contract & have to let it expire.
It was Hide who pushed for those privatised contracts to be extended up to 25years. Interesting when one considers that if all of the councils had contracted out their utilities the SuperCity could never have come about. Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it.
“Can there be a more wonderful humiliation?
Paddles the cat, the twitter account for Jacinda and Clarks’s pet, now has more followers after being active only a month than the deputy leader of the National Party, Paula Bennett, who has been on Twitter since 2009.
Jacinda’s pet has more media followers than Bill’s.”
Ouch.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/11/02/twitter-watch-jacindas-cat-has-more-followers-than-the-deputy-leader-of-the-national-party/
Go paddles. Love it love it,,—what ya say to that james, –poor paula?
The killing fields. Tourist drivers are a danger not only to themselves but to Kiwis as well.
The Germans crossed the centre line, hit a truck which then lost control and killed two (reading between the lines) locals.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11939828
Question: is the latest road death spike associated with the spike in tourist numbers?
I doubt this instance is any guide, Germans have a far tougher driving licence test than we do they’re generally pretty good drivers from what I’ve heard.
Tiredness may be a part that needs addressing. I had a near miss a while back with someone in a hire camper crossing the line on a corner. They entered it wrong and cut the white line. Their reaction was to swerve even further towards me, luckily for me they just as quickly corrected and pulled back in. That was open road, I’d taken my foot off when I saw them over the line & then nearly crapped myself when they veered further, thought for a brief moment they were aiming at me.
I put them down as used to driving on the right, where their swerve to the right would have been the natural reaction, and that they may have picked the camper up straight after landing & then drove north. They could have been getting tired, which may be why they took the wrong line on the corner to begin with.
The point being it may not be a bad idea to more strongly urge people to not engage in a long drive in a camper immediately on arriving here after a long flight. They are campers after all, it’s not as if they have nowhere to sleep.
This year police have a greater involvement in deaths on the road than tourists.
Billy already getting in a whine that the elites might not be quite so coddled going forward.
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/labour-already-a-brutal-government-bill-english/ar-AAulbPV?li=BBqdg4K&ocid=mailsignout
” The comments came in response to Health Minister David Clark saying he is “very seriously considering” accepting resignations from District Health Board (DHB) heads that aren’t on the new Government’s “wavelength.”
“I’m extremely disappointed,” Mr English said.
“I thought the Jacinda Ardern Government would be different. It turns out it’s just the same old Labour trying to do its brutal tactics on the public service.”
Mr Clark told RNZ he may ask for resignation letters from current chairs of DHBs before choosing which ones to accept back into the fold.
“I want to be sure that the district health board chairs are in agreement with the current Government’s agenda and direction,” Mr Clark told RNZ. ”
Good idea, Minister Clark. Would it be too much to ask you to also take the opportunity to trim bloated top-level administrative overhead and salaries? Y’know, so the money actually gets spent on providing services rather than funding lots of expensive top-level jobsworths whose only function is getting in the way?
Irony alert. The last govt acted so poorly toward public servants one even got death threats as a result of one Minister’s actions.
I almost spat my coffee when I saw his comment about brutal tactics. Rank hypocrisy.
You’ve got better control of your reflexes than I do.
And they did so through crony appointments to senior management positions. I suspect even public servants at the coal face in WINZ live in fear of their masters.
I’m hoping the age of the various corporatised public service feifdoms will get a bloody big shake up. And despite someone’s pessimism on another thread about not being able to make changes needed, the neo-libs created exactly the structure that will/could allow a bloody big shakeup to happen.
We’ll see. It is very early days.
Perhaps the same should happen in broadcasting. (Wouldn’t leave many though.)
“Considering” is just weak.
He has a month tops to get his people in there and re-write the entities.
After that, political ossification sets and the window closes.
$500,000 salary plus for a damn hospital CEO. Where was that? The figure stayed in my head, and everything else faded when I heard it to day or yesterday on Radionz. The hospitals are damned of course, trying to manage on short rations for the working parts, while the cock at the top is paid for playing the neo -lib game of sorting out the inefficiencies with a sinking budget level.
+1 This is the essence of neo-liberal corruption. English to blame for setting it all up that way before he rose to be an outgoing prime-ministerial candidate first time he lost.
Russophobia… fake news…
/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-investigation/uk-investigates-brexit-campaign-funding-amid-speculation-of-russian-meddling-idUKKBN1D14H9
The Electoral Commission in London has a very poor record of inquiry and prosecution. Sadly the Metropolitan police are not much better.
Carol Cadwalladr has pushed the story in The Guardian but it is not getting any traction in the mainstream media.
Open Democracy has done some solid work which the Electoral Commission will probably ignore.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/dup-dark-money
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/28/trump-assange-bannon-farage-bound-together-in-unholy-alliance
I can’t help but suspect that the Russians may have interfered in our election too.
Who did plant all that unfavourable news that kept breaking out??
Have you heard of the seed and soil hypothesis? The wind blows the seed and if it lands on suitable soil it will germinate.
But who is controlling that wind?
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an attempt by the late hotelier Earl Hagaman’s estate to reconsider a defamation case against the new justice minister Andrew Little.
It awarded Mr Little costs.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/342933/court-dismisses-defamation-appeal-against-andrew-little
Good . Minister. Little holds honest stances.
Hooray.
If you havent had a chance to listen to the spoof of Max Key dissing Eminem you might lije to. Lil Max will be very pouty
This one?
https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/27-10-2017/maxclusive-max-key-destroys-eminem-career-in-diss-track/
Hamilton Boys’ High School student injured in girls’ nude bike prank
(not sure how running someone over at a school on a motorbike can be considered a ‘prank’)
You also have to wonder about the girls who thought it was a good idea????
If it was a youth gang that deliberately ran amok around a school and ran someone over, they would be in custody.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/11/hamilton-boys-high-school-student-injured-in-girls-nude-bike-prank.html
I say good for the boy’s parents, they at least have their priorities right. IMO the Police should respect their wishes and stay out of it… provided the boy agrees too.
Sounds like it was simply an accident. The prank was simply riding nude which seems to be the only reason why this was ‘news’.
My oh my Waikato Diocesan School for Girls, a prestigious Anglican private school – and they let their “gals” out of bounds topless to play truant. What on earth is the world coming to. I have heard tales of yore from other Hawkes Bay Private schools for girls as well – doesn’t say much for the upper echelons of society in this country does it. Breeding our young ladies to be such utter trollops!!!!! Tongue in cheek here but seeing our prisons are littered with the poor and products of our public schools it just shows tacky-ness comes from all stratas of our society, you’d better believe it.
I have always found single sex schools to have a certain elitism and super-patriotism about them that was pretty gross. This could be a consequence of that.
Maui ,
You are entitled to your opinion but I disagree, depends on the on the ethics of the school and the way it is run surely. Your experience may well have been much less
agreeable than mine was.
Just to reinforce the “just a prank” perspective, the Herald has kindly come up with an article High school pranks that have annoyed teachers.
Also – allows them to repeat the gratuitous publishing of three photos of teenage girls in their underwear (restrained?) on the back of a motorbike, and to reinforce the notion that privilege denotes respectability to all actions without critique.
never happened in my day. Pity – would have been a highlight of my teenage years…
True savenz. Depends whether you view pranks top-down or bottom-up.
I think it the best-conceived streaking prank so far carried out. The Herald even did a cartoon based on it. Unfortunately, the boy was run over and cut in the leg. Without that, it would have seemed impressive and harmless. But now, the question of whether the girls had the appropriate licences to be driving the bikes could come into question, and it could end in tears. There was no malice here, as there is when the poor bash a dairy-owner, so I am not sure that it is a matter of privilege. Wait and see if prosecution follows.
Without modern phones, there would have been no photos for the NZ Herald to so cynically publish as click-bait (and the article reached the top of their internet chart). That is also a sad commentary – on what the general public want to see.
In the old days they used vehicles for pranks, like seeing how many people you could pile into a volkswagen. Probably now it would have to be that they were all nude.
Then if there were both sexes one of the males would get an erection, then there would be some tale of sexual malpractice, and that would be good click bait. So watch the media over the next year when there is a low point in the news cycle, and no sexual malpractice of some luminary being investigated, or a new war, or shooting in a school, mall, concert, church, or particularly horrific bombing or picture of a child suffering. /sad and disillusioned not sarc
The squealing in this Kiwiblog thread should amuse – https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/11/labour_confirms_national_awards_will_be_compulsory.html
The rise in motocross bikes in public places is everywhere. They are super dangerous and often ridden by unlicensed people – aka – kids without the brains or understanding that they can kill people with their behaviour. The parents cheer it on.
Somehow whenever there is an accident of this kind, surprise surprise it is always considered a prank gone wrong and hushed up. Even when someone is killed or severely injured.
I’m all for harmless pranks but if they could have pulled the same prank on bicycles and nobody would have been hurt and it would not have been doing something illegal (aka riding motocross bikes in public places without permission or a motorbike license + injuring someone to boot).
Now I no my money from my business is not thunderous I made 2× this when I was 14 but in my line of business it’s all about the good will and if some people are shitting all over my good name there goes my earning sliding backwards. By 2 thirds but the potential earnings from my eco Maori pseudonym is thunderous but the same people are interfering with this. So I will be making a claim on the breaches of my rights under the Treaty of Waitangi there are many injustices that are being dealt out to me and my whanau. like the red head guy whom thought that he would come over to the farm house that I was living in that the farm owner had just sacked me idiot an say boo and the dumb ass Maori would run away. Well no because this Maori is a proud and brave Maori that knows his rights and told him were to go. So they have stuffed my farming career that I had planed to be managing and making $80.000 WTF. Now the big picture is that this sort of service can be dealt out to anyone in New Zealand if they are not in the who gives a________ club ie millionairs club. They now no that Im not a dumb ass Maori now. I wonder if the generals want to negotiate well no sorry they are God’s and are never worng
WTF just like the orange man Kia Kaha
Well that is a comment with lot of possibilities.
Kushner is now a target:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/jared-kushner-robert-mueller-documents-russia-investigation/index.html
Family dinners will be fun.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/358248-vanity-fair-trump-blaming-kushner-for-mueller-investigation
Thanksgiving is coming up soon.
And Mr Clovis won’t be on the invite list.
The White House first learned one of its senior staffers met with the grand jury hearing the case presented by the special counsel into alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 election not from the staffer but from media reports, sources with knowledge of the investigation tell ABC News.
Former Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis recently testified before that grand jury into his role on President Donald Trump’s campaign. Clovis currently serves as the senior White House adviser to the Department of Agriculture.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-unaware-top-adviser-testified-grand-jury/story?id=50895265
Al Franken is going after Sessions for lying under oath to the Senate.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/jeff-sessions-under-fire-as-new-revelations-cast-further-doubt-on-his-russia-testimony/
Floodgates are opening.
Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page privately testified Thursday that he mentioned to Jeff Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — as new questions emerge about the attorney general’s comments to Congress about Russia and the Trump campaign.
During more than six hours of closed-door testimony, Page said that he informed Sessions about his coming July 2016 trip to Russia, which Page told CNN was unconnected to his campaign role. Page described the conversation to CNN after he finished talking to the House intelligence committee.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/carter-page-testimony-russia-trip/index.html?sr=twCNN110217carter-page-testimony-russia-trip0734PMVODtop
The Repugs release their tax reform bill. Like all “conservative” tax plans anytime anywhere, it borrows money to pay for big tax cuts to those that already have the most (especially those that write the rules and their owners), sticks it to those that have the least, and lies that it will increase growth.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16595980/winners-losers-house-republican-tax-bill
It’s almost like they have an agenda.
https://twitter.com/byHeatherLong/status/926139481052385285
Must be coincidence, surely? They wouldn’t really act with considered malice towards regions that don’t support them, would they?
Still has to be coincidence…
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/11/charts-of-the-day-how-republicans-are-using-the-tax-code-to-screw-blue-states/
Is it just me then, that repealing the all the crazy laws from national over employment is not much of a victory.
Actually feels shallow, weak, and if this is the great example of a changing government.
Then don’t expect much change.
If that’s all they manage in the frist hundred days (let alone the entire term), I’d agree with you.
I suspect that a few more changes than that are on the cards, despite the nats’ desire to become a cancer on the side of parliament.
I hope you’re right McFlock, I hope you’re right.
Looks like Iceland’s Left-Green alliance is about to become a governing reality under Katrin Jakobsdottir:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/02/iceland-president-left-greens-form-coalition
“I am the only one that matters…” – the Grabemfuhrer in response to questions about why positions are being left unfilled.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358573-trump-on-lack-of-nominees-i-am-the-only-one-that-matters
The good news is he doesn’t understand that those positions are there to help him actually achieve things.