His wife is Chilean, but he has a dual nature by birth too, that provides an internationalist perspective:
Boris Sokratov is a Bulgarian-Māori and has whakapapa to Te Rarawa, Ngāti Haua. He was the producer of the Nutters Club Radio Show. He helped establish the Key to Life Charitable Trust that supports mental health advocate Mike King.
Yes, it does seem an unprecedented achievement. It exposes the reality of cultural/political/ethnic Aotearoa – a social contract based on history. Seymour reckons it's time to renegotiate that contract. Maori are uniting to oppose doing so. Makes me think of the Springsteen song of 1980: The Ties That Bind. Bondage constrains.
The electoral franchise established under the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act was supposed to be colour-blind. Truth is it wasn’t (on purpose) because voting was linked to private land ownership. And guess who owned the majority of private land? Only men who owned land were entitled to vote. Māori land ownership was collective.
That meant the majority who were Māori (80,000 people) were excluded from voting. While the settler population (6000) could. On top of that Māori wāhine weren’t allowed to vote until 1893. Only 100 or so Māori voted in the first general election in 1853, out of a total electorate of 5849.
The Treaty preserves the political contract between Crown & Maori chiefs. It is largely seen as an ongoing social contract between pakeha & Maori – so widely that it approximates common sense to see it that way. Encoded into law, this interpretation has become authoritative in recent decades. Seymour wants out of this tradition, but his rationale – same rights for all – is mere ideology.
In 1859 the British Crown Law Office confirmed that Māori could not vote unless they had individual title granted by the Crown.
Anchoring democracy in property rights was valid insofar as it brought feudalism through into the 19th century, which suited the empire just fine. Our state was six years old then, and the constitutional framework has evolved somewhat since, but not to the point of including indigenous rights as far as I'm aware. So those rights conferred by the Treaty remain chiefly and are not specifically allocated to other Maori, which makes them contestable…
Here's a helpful summary of what Seymour wants to overthrow:
In 1986, the government passed the State-Owned Enterprises Act, which included a provision stating that “nothing in this Act shall permit the Crown to act in a manner that is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”. A year later, our highest court was required to determine what those principles were. Much of what we know about the principles still comes from that case. Among other things, the court discussed the principles of partnership (that te Tiriti/the Treaty was a partnership between Māori and the Crown), active protection (that te Tiriti/the Treaty creates a duty on the Crown to actively protect certain Māori interests), and of redress (that breaches of te Tiriti/the Treaty oblige the Crown to compensate Māori).
It also discussed the obligation on both Treaty partners to act reasonably and in good faith towards each other [which] remains central to understandings of te Tiriti/the Treaty today. Treaty principles are also increasingly included in legislation. There is a trend towards provisions being more specific, requiring the Crown to take specific actions in order to uphold its Tiriti/Treaty duties.
That outlines the legal view, which sees the Treaty as an ongoing contract between partners. The obvious flaw that the judiciary seems blind to is that Maori generally were not partners: only their chiefs were. Trying to pretend that the social contract extends to all Maori is delusional when there's no historical basis for doing so. I presume the judiciary feels that they & the govt have created sufficient law to make it so – but who will believe them??
To summarise so far: the principles have evolved over time, come from multiple sources, and for most of the past 40 years have been the main way in which lawmakers, public officials, and courts have navigated the differences between the two texts of te Tiriti/the Treaty.
Putting aside the myth of the cession of sovereignty, it is perhaps unsurprising the Government has stated that further clarity would be useful. The problem, however, is that what is being proposed is not really an attempt to clarify Treaty principles, but an attempt to erase them.
Erasure of judicial decisions can be achieved by parliamentary legislation, since parliament is supreme law-maker. Is doing so in our national interest? Not obviously, and very likely only feasible on an evidently mutual-interest basis. Any positive alternative to the status quo would have to spell that out clearly for all to agree.
"The obvious flaw that the judiciary seems blind to is that New Zealand European settlers were not partners: only the wealthy male landowners were. Trying to pretend that the social contract extends to all European is delusional when there's no historical basis for doing so."
Quite so! Imagine being born into a cultural matrix in which history proceeded on the basis of historical misconceptions. Who would take them seriously??
True believers in democracy, that's who. Democracy is a cerebral concept that keeps believers within the mental strait jacket it was devised to clamp them down in.
I don't see that "only the chiefs were partners" is a problem. The chiefs would be presumed to be acting as representatives of their people in any discussions or negotiations with the crown.
"Opposition MPs from the Green and Labour parties described the governing parties as lions willing to rip the nation apart, spiders coming to plague te ao Māori, taniwhā to be feared, and hoariri – enemies – akin to the red suits of the New Zealand wars who came to kill Māori and steal their taonga.
These speeches, from Labour’s Peeni Henare and Kelvin Davis and Green MP Teanau Tuiono, were unequivocal in their dire assessments about the current state of Crown-Māori relations.
What’s worse for the Government is how warmly mana whenua welcomed these MPs to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds."
LOTs of great reading this weekend: Pablo piece on our very own junta is excellent, if troubling.
"In October an election was held in which the major rightwing party (National) did not reveal its true policy intentions, preferring to instead focus on the usual canards of lower taxes, high crimes rates and too many regulations and bureaucratic red tape on property owners. They were assisted by a compliant corporate media interested in generating clickbait material rather than dealing deeper into party policy platforms, and who supported the “change for change sake” attitude of the NZ public by focusing on personal scandals within the Labour-led government ranks. It mattered little that, in public at least, the major rightwing party had little to offer. What mattered was that it win, be it in coalition or outright. As it turns out, it needed coalition partners in order to do so.
The more extreme rightwing parties, ACT and NZ First, were a bit more honest in their campaigns about their reactionary intent, but the corporate media chose to ignore the extent of their connections to extremist groups and foreign donors/patrons such as anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists and Atlas Institute seed-funded astroturf groups such as the overlapping Free Speech Coalition/Taxpayer’s Union that contributed to their campaigns. Nor did the political press seriously look into the backgrounds of candidates in these parties, instead preferring to focus on the leaders and their immediate subordinates."
Great minds think alike Robert. I linked to those two paragraphs yesterday on OM. 🙂
Good to see you repeat them because, imo, they lay bare some of the bullshit we have been fed by some on this site as well as in the media. The whole post needs to be read to see the full impact on the election.
Comprehending the real reason behind the loss is a big stepping stone towards regaining control of the narrative and getting the misguided amongst us back on track.
So here's hoping Labour, the Greens and Te Pato Maori are listening to Paul Buchanan – along with other good commentators like Nick Korero and David Slack.
Given how fundamental the Treaty is to NZ self-identity, at that point it is an open question whether the repressive apparatuses of the State– the police, the courts, the intelligence services, even the military– will side with the elected authoritarians. Stay tuned.
It will be interesting indeed. Given their warrior background, the military has many Maori soldiers, sailors and airmen in their ranks. Maori are also well represented in the Police. I wonder what they are thinking right now?
Something to think about there. What price Craig Harrison's Broken October now? A totally outdated social, political and technological scenario, of course, but it can still pose some disturbing questions.
In October an election was held in which the major rightwing party (National) did not reveal its true policy intentions
The notion that a political party ought to reveal future intentions seems to be embedded within the psyche of the author. Such moral finger-wagging is presumably being recycled from an earlier epoch of history since I've been observing politics for approx 6 decades and I've never seen any evidence of conformity to the proposition.
It would be helpful if the author could specify when in history this actually happened, to validate his thesis. Otherwise readers are likely to see it as a sign of dementia.
Sorry if you have taken offence, but that was a tongue-in-cheek reversal of a word D Frank used against another person and is clearly untrue. D Frank can bombard this site with thinly disguised smears about others with impunity.
[the only offence taken here is you wasting my goddam moderator time. Again. Up to you whether you want to learn here or not. My original mod note stands, I’m sick of explaining it to you – weka]
if you don't like something another commenter says, then say so clearly and explain what the problem is. This is helpful to moderators and the community. Flamming another commenter is really unhelpful and just builds up ill will over time.
Sorry Weka, but I'm out of here for the duration, I thought Anne's comment was as usual very thoughtful and made a good point about our fellow traveller Dennis Frank's 'thinly disguised smears about others with impunity'. It's been a worthwhile journey hearing what other left leaning commenter publish here, but so as to not earn a life time ban from you, I'm not going to partake for a long while, if ever again.
You're not even close to being on my moderator radar Jilly, I have no idea why you think you might get banned.
Anne on the other hand has a history and pattern of behaviour that is a problem. Short sharp bans have long been used in this way on TS.
From a moderator's pov, if commenters don't like a specific commenter and they choose to harass that commenter instead of explaining what the issues are, it just creates a bad atmosphere and more work for the mods.
So like I said, anyone can point out the problems with people's commenting style, and this is helpful for moderation as well as the community.
Sorry to see you take leave Jilly Bee. I have found your comments relevant, thought provoking and highly constructive, as are Anne's.
Both you and Anne in IMHO, have always had a great deal to offer from those of us of the senior left perspective, as does Patricia Bremner. You will be missed.
Nope, I just pointed out how he had set himself up sufficiently for readers to jump to that conclusion. The guy must be old enough to take responsibility for what he wrote. If he wanted his vapourings to be taken seriously, he would not have set himself up like that. He would, instead, have pointed to an historical rationale for his opinion: that democracy incorporates a rule requiring parties to declare their future intentions at each election.
You may also believe democracy contains his imaginary rule. If so, why not have a go at providing the historical evidence? Presuming he is incapable of doing so, you'd be doing him, and us all, a good turn.
You think he's a victim of his incompetence? That angle hadn't occurred to me but I suppose you're right. However I don't blame him for being himself – he can only perform at the level he naturally slots into.
[While being a sanctimonious and patronising arse isn’t technically against the site Policy, there is the discretion for moderators to step in on patterns of behaviour that cause problems for the commentariat. You now have multiple people taking potshots at you, and you seem to be quite poor at taking feedback on what is pissing people off.
Maybe you don’t care. I do though, and I’m giving you a holiday from the site for a week to let things cool down. This is to reduce moderator load, but I strongly encourage you to think about how how you communicate here. I will note you’ve had feedback on this kind of thing before here As always, feel free to ask for clarification about anything when you return. – weka]
Yes Robert. An impulsive response to a nasty little dig at someone with both national and international mana and respect. If it had been a one-off I would have passed, but its not.
and as I have pointed out, if you had named the problem without throwing something at another commenter, then that would have been helpful. The moderation issue here is that you seem to think you are above moderation.
No weka, I have never ever considered myself above moderation. Do I respond impulsively from time to time? Yes I do. Do I try to keep some comments too brief thus not making myself clear? Guilty as charged. Am I bit too forthright sometimes? Yes.
Some of the recent bullshit on this site has riled me and I can't be the only one. It must be even more frustrating for the authors who put time and effort into the site. It also turns some people off commenting for fear of ridicule. That's a shame because TS has the power to be very influential and with all the astroturfing going on at present, it is even more desperately needed.
There are only a small handful of people responsible, and they only turn up when there are major controversies in progress as is currently the case. They troll the regulars or fill the pages with distorted facts and misinformation.
They need to be discouraged, but have just picked up you have started. Thanks.
Anne – it's difficult for those of us who love pith, as in pithy, comments.
Detailed, drawn out descriptions are an invitation for some to nit-pic words and phrases; pithy one-liners seem an elegant way to stifle that sort of film-flam, but the down-side of being brief, is…apparent 🙂
Thanks Anne and Robert, for linking to the Kiwipolitico post.
The odd fellow who disparages me in this thread does have a point when saying that there is no universal rule of democracy that says that political parties should and must campaign honestly and transparently about their true policy agendas. Of course not. But that was not my point. My point was that, like many authoritarian-minded cabals who know that announcing their true policy agendas during campaigns will never see them get elected, the recently installed junta deliberately concealed their true intentions while hiding under milquetoast rightwing talking points about taxes, crime and housing. They fully knew that their true agenda would be rejected at the polls if announced in advance, so they deliberately hid it from the electorate, as well as the fact that many of their policy prescriptions were basically written by their big political donors and sponsors.
This amounts to a type of false advertising or "bait and switch" campaigning. It is utterly cynical and dishonest at its core. It is a clear manipulation of the electoral process, which it sees in instrumental terms (a means to achieve power and pursue their real agenda even if it runs against the public good) rather than as an intrinsically valuable form of political voice for the electorate. But sure, it did not break any ironclad rule of democratic politics even if it demonstrates utter contempt for the public who otherwise would have never voted them into office had they known what the junta is really about and who it really serves.
I will say that by pulling the thread into a meaningless sidebar, the odd fellow has performed a textbook example of successful trolling, so credit must given where it is due. Cheers!
Well, yes; meaningless sidebars serve their purpose, I suppose.
The "false advertising" from this junta, as you title it, causes them to recoil in a faint when charged with opaqueness, and they'll point to sidebars of their own that clearly state what they intend to do; details of the minor party's platform are available to the public and prove they have been open and transparent. It's a tricky discussion for the average Jo, but reeks of sinister behaviour from Seymour, Peters and co, imo.
Thanks Pablo for responding. As Robert Guyton has said… its a tricky discussion for the average Jo (and Mary) who don't study the intricacies of politics. For my part, Seymour is the truly dangerous one. He has been very well schooled in the art of astroturfing and stands to cause a level of strife in this country never seen before.
Just like Pinochet had to look over his shoulder at Air Force General Leigh in his junta, so must Luxon keep an eye on Seymour because he is the tail that wags the NZ junta's dog.
A libertarian who wants the president to have more power while government below is diminished.
While they approved the omnibus legislation in general terms … about articles relating to the privatization of state companies and the delegation of legislative powers to the president.
Other articles in the bill aim to lift state controls over the economy, reform the administrative, health and education sectors, and raise public service and utility rates.
"In October an election was held in which the major rightwing party (National) did not reveal its true policy intentions
You wrote
The notion that a political party ought to reveal future intentions seems to be embedded within the psyche of the author
The topic was not about ought to, as political practice, but comment on what National was doing and placing the direction of – in it for the few – as posing the risk of a junta era (use of fear of being the next target after Maori for conformity to the roused majority). Such methods of distraction draw attention away from the elitist oligarchy being established.
Your point that expectation of honesty (from those involved in the political practice) was not based on observation is mere cynicism – the risk of experience creating a curmudgeon is well known.
Apropos to our authoritarian minded junta and it's corporate media enablers.
Pretty obvious the groundwork is being laid for the government to punish Wellington's left leaning politics but sacking the council and appointing a commissioner.
This situation could have been avoided if repeated councils over the last 30 years had not ignored the impending issues.
Some other councils around the country have managed to plan, and find solutions to these types of problems, but seemingly not the coolest little capital.
Fine for opposition MPs to speak well at Waitangi, but National have set the map for future Treaty discourse.
With 16 years to the Bicentennial, both Maori and National are showing there's nothing to do but start talking properly right at the level of principles.
Labour/Greens/Maori Party may not like it but it's the right thing to do and at the right time.
I thought 3 Waters had a number of problems and was badly instituted, which is part of why we are where we are. The debate around it likewise, because there were plenty of people like me who objected to how it was being done but the debate often called dissenters racist as if that could be the only objection.
If we deny there were problems with it, and frame it solely as objectors to be neutralised, we are throwing fuel of the culture war fire. A war we are currently loosing badly.
Ah, but I didn't say "objectors", I said "the agents that caused its rejection", by which I meant the monied players who enabled and encouraged the take down, with their mass-email programmes, their expensive billboards and so on.
I'm still mystified why Labour chose not to explain 3 Waters and its (apparent) co-governance rationale. Consequently it became evident that their choice was producing a negative reaction.
Since I've often commented here in support of their policy initiative (whilst being agnostic re co-governance), I'm puzzled at your reluctance to admit that Labour shot themselves in the foot.
Isn't it obvious that the right won by default due to Labour choosing not to fight for the thing??
The agents I referred to, and the mechanisms they employed to create strong opposition to 3 Waters, are not the only factor in the failing of the proposal, but they are significant. If they were not active, the Government could have succeeded, through tailoring the programme and it's media, differently.
It was a good idea, shot down by agents from the opposite end of the spectrum, using money as ballistics, imo.
I'm not one of those agents. But this is the problem with the debate. People make unclear statements that end up being catchalls.
But now that you have clarified 🙂 I don't see how neutralising those people will solve the problem Ad is talking about. It might be necessary but it's not sufficient.
And talk of neutralising may in fact make it more difficult for large parts of NZ to relearn how to talk with each other.
"Counter", then. If those Atlas-backed agents have free-rein here in NZ, we will be shepherded by them, into the yards – not a comfortable place to find yourself in, imo.
In addition to that, I think we also at the same time have to build common ground with the people are are leaning towards the people representing those energies and politics, and call them back in. If we only tell them that those evil people over there must go or be stopped, this doesn’t tell them what is good and useful about our own position. Doubly important where people are being told that they themselves are bad/wrong because they haven’t accepted the progressive demand.
Maybe Joanna Macy is useful there. The three pillars of the Great Turning
So are the principles different from the Treaty proper?
Yes, they are. Despite Te Tiriti o Waitangi being New Zealand’s de facto constitution, we are one of only five nations without a proper written constitution. Because of that, Te Tiriti itself doesn’t feature explicitly in our law – but that’s where the principles come in. They are the Treaty’s representative within law, which seek to define the Treaty’s role in modern Aotearoa-New Zealand. https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/03-02-2024/the-principles-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi-explained
Really, what about postmodern Aotearoa? Not there yet? Well try & keep up, huh?
the principles are determined on a case-by-case basis. The three Ps – partnership, participation and protection – are the most well-known principles. Together they ensure Māori opportunities to provide input into decision-making and require the government to protect rangatiratanga (Māori authority).
Partnership: the Treaty created a relationship between Māori and the Crown and both parties must act with the utmost good faith.
Participation: the Crown will provide tāngata whenua with opportunities to engage with decision making processes at all levels.
Some other principles include kāwanatanga (the Crown’s right to govern), equality, redress, cooperation (concerning common issues), consultation, development (applying the Treaty to modern resources/technology) and informed decision making. Others include the Crown’s obligation to act in the best interests of Māori and that the law affirms iwi control of their taonga.
Okay that seems to create a list of 11 elements (endecad). Sufficiently complex as to keep law lords puzzling the complexity out for several months if not years.
the problem is that there is so much bad faith coming from ACT in particular, who say they want their version of the Treaty principles. Two problems with that. One is they're not interested in finding the best path for NZ. Two, their principles would essential remove power from Māori.
It's hard to see how to have a clear and useful debate about Te Tiriti and a formal constitution in the current climate.
I massively support Chloe Swarbrick for co-leader of Greens. I think she's the only real successor to James Shaw and I hope she carries on the pro-disability mahi that the Greens are doing.
"Do we really get how deeply 3 Waters has divided us"
nah the divisions were already there. They just became more acted upon and expressed in part due to the same happening in the US with Trump.
Very few Europeans and immigrants even bother to interact with Maori at a social level – white flight from schools, white enclaves such as Havelock North over in Hawkes Bay, or the Euro/Asian enclave of Epsom have very little to no experience of day to day activity on a marae.
During COVID-19, and indeed in other civil defense situations, the Maori response on the ground was quite impressive. The organising of food packages, the contacting of the elderly, the delivery of firewood, the clear protocols and explanations, including historical context, to restricting access to tangi and so on. These things continued throughout the pandemic. It was interesting that my European mother was contacted three times by iwi and not once by any of the usual health / welfare mechanisms during lockdown to make sure she and her neighbours were OK.
This is the view of Maori rarely shown in the media and talked about in on-line forums but more reflects the day to day reality of activity and why we should not be afraid of partnership with Maori as the courts have indicated.
This Waitangi Day how many European will be there at local ceremonies celebrating the signing of the Treaty – based on previous experience no more than half a dozen locally. Europeans don't value the Treaty and until they do any attempts to change to a constitution should be treated with the disdain it and they deserve.
Until we express and value those positive characteristics of Maori society and embrace them as meritful and worthy then we should have no say cause we have no respect. Some of those values are in conflict with the values that European capitalist values have constructed eg individual versus communal land ownership, looking longer term to the future in terms of land use, etc not just an extractive way of thinking and others are different and poorly understood eg kawanatanga. Maori have had to adapt and understand European concepts – we need to reciprocate.
I'm more than happy that my children have had a far better education in this respect than those of us did when we were young. The last people that need to be deciding the future are those that are about to die over the next twenty years – their future is a past they only wish existed and is more about now.
Good comment DOS, those on the Right of the political spectrum, some on the Left and some misguided Maori included, are just carrying on the British Empire superiority complex attitude that saw colonisation as a gift that should be accepted with gratitude, especially by people with a so called "stone age culture".
Basically its an 'our way or the highway' attitude that refuses to evolve, except perhaps as just recently in Ireland where the younger generation is making great strides in reforming and uniting a once troubled and divided society racked by six hundred years of colonisation.
My view is there’s an unwillingness to evolve from some people on both sides of the relationship.
Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed.
Those of us who are more recent arrivals to this country, or their children, tend to sit at the side waiting for those heavily invested to sort their shit out, while we just get on with life.
Do you not make some effort to engage with local Maori communities?
Why sit on the sidelines – all that is is avoidance and leaves you in a vacuum that can only be filled via media or social media. It seems a weird thing to say/do. If I moved to another country I'd always be trying to engage with the local community.
Maybe it is why you think this.
"Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed."
I took a short course on Te Reo as I thought I should know how to pronounce words correctly, but I have my own mix of cultures that I feel comfortable in so don’t feel a great need to adopt someone else’s.
It isn't about adopting it is about understanding that Maori are much more hospitable and engaging and want a better future for all – not just for themselves.
A picture quite different that that painted by media and social media. so you don't believe this sort of nonsense.
"Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed."
Treasury advises government that more revenue would assist the government manage its budget (it would also be mindful of infrastructure deficits, so does not reinforce the governments focus on spending cuts).
And its advice suggests a broader tax revenue base is the right direction to go to realise that.
But it said constraints on the personal tax system were creating increasing pressures and constraining the options for reform.
That was coming from the difference between the personal and company tax rates, and the lack of tax on capital and capital gains.
“These limit options to raise revenue, alter the mix of taxes, or make changes that would meet distributional and economic objectives.
“The lack of a comprehensive capital gains tax restricts the ability to manage gaps between company rates and personal rates and increases costs of income taxation. It has also contributed to higher house prices.
“Based on principles such as sustainability, efficiency and fairness, our first best advice is to address these two structural issues,” Treasury said.
I say place a stamp duty of 5% for locals who buy property over $2M and 15% for foreign investment. And a CGT on all property sold with a value over $2m or to foreigners.
PS And a question, which party with fishing quota wants to sell offshore?
The head of Wellington Water Nick Leggat and Daran Ponter (Chair of the Regional Council) are working as partners of National in
1.pressure on WCC to give more money to Wellington Water
2.require water meters, or impost financial sanctions up to 50% of water cost charges.
The cost of water meters is money not then available for pipe repair, so until they are at at the capacity to fix the pipes they already know they need to fix, adding extra knowledge of leaks via metering adds little.
3.User pays for pipe problems on ratepayer property.
Of course there would be charging of ratepayers for water leaks on their own property (and so ratepayers would be liable until they found someone to fix the pipes at their own expense).
Water meters are essential to provide an asset value for the sale of council assets. Though at first half might go to government – so they have an asset to borrow against when granting money to councils (this allows both the council and government to later sell their half shares to reduce debt).
Jeez…. what is it with New Zealanders and water meters.
The things are seen as existential threats by all sides of the political spectrum. Righties see them as an insult to their integrity and self worth, and 'you're going to give it to a Mawries'. Lefties see them as a portal to privatisation and TEOTWAWKI
Water meters are an essential tool for network management and without them you really haven't a clue where the water is going. In Wellington's case there's a good chance most of the leak problem is on private property, or a proportion of residents who are gross (ab)users. Some people will get by with 300 l/day, most households a bit more. A broken 20mm lateral could loose 20,000 l/day or more.
Without good data on where the water is going the managers are just flying blind and fixing leaks once they come through the ground. In Wellington's climate it's going to be a good leak to do that, and they're a small percentage to the number of leaks. The multitude of small leaks will go un-noticed (in our dry climate in Central Otago even quite small leaks are quite apparent in summer) and will add up to a lot of water.
Sorry, but I found your linked article a jumble of confused and just downright incorrect thinking. Things like,
Council-backed loans could cover the cost of repair with repayments added to the rates bill and attached to the property, not the owner.
Wellington's, and every other municipality in New Zealand's, water problem is due to a very longstanding practice of ratepayers not being willing to pay for the construction and maintenance of water infrastructure.
We can't see it and as long as there's water coming out the tap, all's good. Oh, and we can use as much as we like because it's 'free'.
Mr Osborne's assertion that water charges are regressive doesn't account for reality and human nature. In 40 years of involvement in the water industry I've seen a pretty strong correlation between property value / income and water use. It's very unlikely that a gross user (>10x average use) lives in the bottom end of town, and water use goes up dramatically once you get into the House and Garden set. Under current rates based charging practices this is something worse than regressive, it's downright theft.
From your points,
1.a case to fix the known leaks first with available funding.
Well either Wellington Water is incompetent, or they are being incompetently led by the elected Council. Or the rate payers won't pay the Council enough to fix the problem. Generally it comes back to the rate payers not being prepared to pay for it.
2.this might give time to look at equity in meter charging.
Have a serious look at the equity of current rates based charging first, and how that charging regime shapes usage / entitlement perceptions. I don't see much equity between Mr & Mrs Fancy Garden using as much water as they can get out the tap, and the family at the other end of town who treat every drop of water as their last, because they treat everything like that to get through to the next pay day.
Osborne does have a point around the issues in separating water charging from property charges, particularly in residential rental situations. Water charges should remain with the property, so that the owner is incentivised to fix leaks. In a gross usage situation there will probably be other tenancy issues that the landlord can act on.
Metering and Volumetric Pricing do not necessarily follow. Many water providers have installed meters for data collection to get a picture of where the water is going. QLDC and Central Otago have done this with considerable success. There's also a discrete supply (several hundred properties) where volumetric charging has sorted a very extreme usage / entitlement problem that threatened the viability of the supply.
It's very unlikely that a gross user (>10x average use) lives in the bottom end of town, and water use goes up dramatically once you get into the House and Garden set
Right, but what about the household that has two large low income families living in it, who pay nothing now, but would face a new charge with water metering?
Surely the solution here is to provide a certain amount of water per household without charge and to then charge for excess use?
While someone watering a 3 acre lawn is a problem, won't they just pay for the extra charges if they are wealthy? So the council generates some income, but doesn't solve the problem of excess use. Changing land use culture would go a long way to helping alongside other approaches.
that was one of the issues with 3 Waters right? Whether the legislation was Tory-proof enough to stop them from privatising. Better to not have 3W than to end up in the situation we are with power. I'm sure many would disagree with that, but that's part of the resistance.
In most cases small 20 or 25mm meters at the individual boundary are the cheapest and easiest option. The lateral is in a known location and already quite shallow (< 0.5m) and there's already a valve there. If the valve was installed in the last 20 years installing a meter can be a 10 minute job. Street or neighbourhood meters get expensive, the main is often a couple of meters under the street or footpath so quite a crater and disruption, and everything is bigger so costs go up exponentially.
It's wrongheaded to attack the engineering, we should be focusing on the council and government leadership that wants to try and privatise or use rates reduction, and subsequent under investment, to get elected. Fortunately water privatisation is going to be a hard sell to a New Zealand electorate, rates or tax reduction not so much.
who pay nothing now, but would face a new charge with water metering?
They do not pay nothing now. If they live in a town or city they are paying for water now through their rates. There's a lot of averaging that goes into setting rates, especially water, and low users are getting screwed by the current system. If they have good water habits then volumetric charging should be in their favour.
I feel for low income people under the current rating system as the costs of water failure come through, in many places the rates rises will be brutal. Gore is a town to keep an eye on.
Very much the devil is in the detail of how the charge is set up, some have a base rate pretty much as normal rates based charging with an excess charge on top, others it's a seperate invoice to rates. It depends on whether the water supply entity is council in-house or some sort of arms length entity. If there's going to be amalgamation of utility provision (essentially what 3 Waters was) then charging will get tricky, but with clever design could still be charged through rates. We'll see what National's "Local Water Done Well" brings, but I'm inclined to think they'll find it too hard and nothing changes from pre 3 Waters.
From what I've seen excess charges certainly change behaviours. You'd be surprised how tight entitled arseholes are, they haven't amassed their wealth by spending it. Trick is to make excess town water dearer than alternatives like storage or alternative sources.
Land use change, or more like expectation change is coming. There's a new golf course development coming up across the road. Residential lots (80 odd) are restricted to 100m2 of lawn to restrict water use and the developers have done a lot of deals buying irrigation shares to get water for the course. One little bit of the basin will be bright green and a lot will become fallow.
1.a case to fix the known leaks first with available funding.
Well either Wellington Water is incompetent, or they are being incompetently led by the elected Council. Or the rate payers won't pay the Council enough to fix the problem. Generally it comes back to the rate payers not being prepared to pay for it.
That is irrelevant. $300 M for water meters, is $300M not spent on fixing pipes. Ratepayers will be paying, whatever the $300M is spent on.
2.this might give time to look at equity in meter charging.
Have a serious look at the equity of current rates based charging first, and how that charging regime shapes usage / entitlement perceptions. I don't see much equity between Mr & Mrs Fancy Garden using as much water as they can get out the tap, and the family at the other end of town who treat every drop of water as their last, because they treat everything like that to get through to the next pay day.
In Wellington there is already a water use regime that limits garden watering. And in any case those with a large section (often a lot of trees and owned by older couples) currently pay more rates because of the land component of the capital value and would be better off with a move to water charging than those with larger families in infill sections.
For mine the move to $300M for water meter charges is not a move to equity, because of the opportunity cost of $300M not being spent fixing pipes.
For mine the focus on water metering, when they are so short of money to fix pipes, reflects an intent to set charges to force ratepayers to fix up pipes on their land.
The question is why DP and NL want to prioritise that over spending $300M (they do not yet have) to fix pipes on public land?
Is it because they intend to charge the cost of the water meters on top of rates?
Many people discovered The Taxpayers' Union today after they attempted to criticize the government funding of @davidfarrier& @DylanReeve's critically acclaimed and financially profitable documentary 'Tickled.' So for the initiated, here's a primer on The TPU.
“No laws need to be passed,” … “All that is needed is an executive order to require proof before granting an asylum hearing. That is how it used to be.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
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His wife is Chilean, but he has a dual nature by birth too, that provides an internationalist perspective:
Yes, it does seem an unprecedented achievement. It exposes the reality of cultural/political/ethnic Aotearoa – a social contract based on history. Seymour reckons it's time to renegotiate that contract. Maori are uniting to oppose doing so. Makes me think of the Springsteen song of 1980: The Ties That Bind. Bondage constrains.
The Treaty preserves the political contract between Crown & Maori chiefs. It is largely seen as an ongoing social contract between pakeha & Maori – so widely that it approximates common sense to see it that way. Encoded into law, this interpretation has become authoritative in recent decades. Seymour wants out of this tradition, but his rationale – same rights for all – is mere ideology.
Anchoring democracy in property rights was valid insofar as it brought feudalism through into the 19th century, which suited the empire just fine. Our state was six years old then, and the constitutional framework has evolved somewhat since, but not to the point of including indigenous rights as far as I'm aware. So those rights conferred by the Treaty remain chiefly and are not specifically allocated to other Maori, which makes them contestable…
Here's a helpful summary of what Seymour wants to overthrow:
That outlines the legal view, which sees the Treaty as an ongoing contract between partners. The obvious flaw that the judiciary seems blind to is that Maori generally were not partners: only their chiefs were. Trying to pretend that the social contract extends to all Maori is delusional when there's no historical basis for doing so. I presume the judiciary feels that they & the govt have created sufficient law to make it so – but who will believe them??
Erasure of judicial decisions can be achieved by parliamentary legislation, since parliament is supreme law-maker. Is doing so in our national interest? Not obviously, and very likely only feasible on an evidently mutual-interest basis. Any positive alternative to the status quo would have to spell that out clearly for all to agree.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/04/why-we-are-debating-the-principles-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi/
"The obvious flaw that the judiciary seems blind to is that New Zealand European settlers were not partners: only the wealthy male landowners were. Trying to pretend that the social contract extends to all European is delusional when there's no historical basis for doing so."
Quite so! Imagine being born into a cultural matrix in which history proceeded on the basis of historical misconceptions. Who would take them seriously??
True believers in democracy, that's who. Democracy is a cerebral concept that keeps believers within the mental strait jacket it was devised to clamp them down in.
I don't see that "only the chiefs were partners" is a problem. The chiefs would be presumed to be acting as representatives of their people in any discussions or negotiations with the crown.
Lively few days ahead.
"Opposition MPs from the Green and Labour parties described the governing parties as lions willing to rip the nation apart, spiders coming to plague te ao Māori, taniwhā to be feared, and hoariri – enemies – akin to the red suits of the New Zealand wars who came to kill Māori and steal their taonga.
These speeches, from Labour’s Peeni Henare and Kelvin Davis and Green MP Teanau Tuiono, were unequivocal in their dire assessments about the current state of Crown-Māori relations.
What’s worse for the Government is how warmly mana whenua welcomed these MPs to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350163781/whawhai-waitangi
LOTs of great reading this weekend: Pablo piece on our very own junta is excellent, if troubling.
"In October an election was held in which the major rightwing party (National) did not reveal its true policy intentions, preferring to instead focus on the usual canards of lower taxes, high crimes rates and too many regulations and bureaucratic red tape on property owners. They were assisted by a compliant corporate media interested in generating clickbait material rather than dealing deeper into party policy platforms, and who supported the “change for change sake” attitude of the NZ public by focusing on personal scandals within the Labour-led government ranks. It mattered little that, in public at least, the major rightwing party had little to offer. What mattered was that it win, be it in coalition or outright. As it turns out, it needed coalition partners in order to do so.
The more extreme rightwing parties, ACT and NZ First, were a bit more honest in their campaigns about their reactionary intent, but the corporate media chose to ignore the extent of their connections to extremist groups and foreign donors/patrons such as anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists and Atlas Institute seed-funded astroturf groups such as the overlapping Free Speech Coalition/Taxpayer’s Union that contributed to their campaigns. Nor did the political press seriously look into the backgrounds of candidates in these parties, instead preferring to focus on the leaders and their immediate subordinates."
https://www.kiwipolitico.com/2024/02/the-new-zealand-junta/
Great minds think alike Robert. I linked to those two paragraphs yesterday on OM. 🙂
Good to see you repeat them because, imo, they lay bare some of the bullshit we have been fed by some on this site as well as in the media. The whole post needs to be read to see the full impact on the election.
Comprehending the real reason behind the loss is a big stepping stone towards regaining control of the narrative and getting the misguided amongst us back on track.
So here's hoping Labour, the Greens and Te Pato Maori are listening to Paul Buchanan – along with other good commentators like Nick Korero and David Slack.
A further important quote from the link:
It will be interesting indeed. Given their warrior background, the military has many Maori soldiers, sailors and airmen in their ranks. Maori are also well represented in the Police. I wonder what they are thinking right now?
Something to think about there. What price Craig Harrison's Broken October now? A totally outdated social, political and technological scenario, of course, but it can still pose some disturbing questions.
In October an election was held in which the major rightwing party (National) did not reveal its true policy intentions
The notion that a political party ought to reveal future intentions seems to be embedded within the psyche of the author. Such moral finger-wagging is presumably being recycled from an earlier epoch of history since I've been observing politics for approx 6 decades and I've never seen any evidence of conformity to the proposition.
It would be helpful if the author could specify when in history this actually happened, to validate his thesis. Otherwise readers are likely to see it as a sign of dementia.
"sign of dementia"? A bit of of projection going on there.
if I see you making that kind of comment again, I will ban you. To make it clear:
Sorry if you have taken offence, but that was a tongue-in-cheek reversal of a word D Frank used against another person and is clearly untrue. D Frank can bombard this site with thinly disguised smears about others with impunity.
[the only offence taken here is you wasting my goddam moderator time. Again. Up to you whether you want to learn here or not. My original mod note stands, I’m sick of explaining it to you – weka]
if you don't like something another commenter says, then say so clearly and explain what the problem is. This is helpful to moderators and the community. Flamming another commenter is really unhelpful and just builds up ill will over time.
Sorry Weka, but I'm out of here for the duration, I thought Anne's comment was as usual very thoughtful and made a good point about our fellow traveller Dennis Frank's 'thinly disguised smears about others with impunity'. It's been a worthwhile journey hearing what other left leaning commenter publish here, but so as to not earn a life time ban from you, I'm not going to partake for a long while, if ever again.
You're not even close to being on my moderator radar Jilly, I have no idea why you think you might get banned.
Anne on the other hand has a history and pattern of behaviour that is a problem. Short sharp bans have long been used in this way on TS.
From a moderator's pov, if commenters don't like a specific commenter and they choose to harass that commenter instead of explaining what the issues are, it just creates a bad atmosphere and more work for the mods.
So like I said, anyone can point out the problems with people's commenting style, and this is helpful for moderation as well as the community.
Sorry to see you take leave Jilly Bee. I have found your comments relevant, thought provoking and highly constructive, as are Anne's.
Both you and Anne in IMHO, have always had a great deal to offer from those of us of the senior left perspective, as does Patricia Bremner. You will be missed.
Kia Kaha my friend.
Thank you Jilly Bee for your support. I will miss your equally thoughtful responses to those commenters who use this site for mischievous ends.
Sorry to see you go, Jilly and Anne. I'm hopeful you both can return.
mod note.
Dennis, are you implying that Pablo has dementia?
Nope, I just pointed out how he had set himself up sufficiently for readers to jump to that conclusion. The guy must be old enough to take responsibility for what he wrote. If he wanted his vapourings to be taken seriously, he would not have set himself up like that. He would, instead, have pointed to an historical rationale for his opinion: that democracy incorporates a rule requiring parties to declare their future intentions at each election.
You may also believe democracy contains his imaginary rule. If so, why not have a go at providing the historical evidence? Presuming he is incapable of doing so, you'd be doing him, and us all, a good turn.![smiley smiley](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/regular_smile.png?x42494)
Ah, victim blaming, I see.
If Pablo hadn't said those things, you'd not have had to link his name to the disease.
Not feeling the love.
Anne was right to comment, though not quite careful enough with her reflection, imo.
Sorry to see Jilly Bee announcing a holiday.
You think he's a victim of his incompetence? That angle hadn't occurred to me but I suppose you're right. However I don't blame him for being himself – he can only perform at the level he naturally slots into.![smiley smiley](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/regular_smile.png?x42494)
[While being a sanctimonious and patronising arse isn’t technically against the site Policy, there is the discretion for moderators to step in on patterns of behaviour that cause problems for the commentariat. You now have multiple people taking potshots at you, and you seem to be quite poor at taking feedback on what is pissing people off.
Maybe you don’t care. I do though, and I’m giving you a holiday from the site for a week to let things cool down. This is to reduce moderator load, but I strongly encourage you to think about how how you communicate here. I will note you’ve had feedback on this kind of thing before here As always, feel free to ask for clarification about anything when you return. – weka]
mod note.
Yes Robert. An impulsive response to a nasty little dig at someone with both national and international mana and respect. If it had been a one-off I would have passed, but its not.
and as I have pointed out, if you had named the problem without throwing something at another commenter, then that would have been helpful. The moderation issue here is that you seem to think you are above moderation.
No weka, I have never ever considered myself above moderation. Do I respond impulsively from time to time? Yes I do. Do I try to keep some comments too brief thus not making myself clear? Guilty as charged. Am I bit too forthright sometimes? Yes.
Some of the recent bullshit on this site has riled me and I can't be the only one. It must be even more frustrating for the authors who put time and effort into the site. It also turns some people off commenting for fear of ridicule. That's a shame because TS has the power to be very influential and with all the astroturfing going on at present, it is even more desperately needed.
There are only a small handful of people responsible, and they only turn up when there are major controversies in progress as is currently the case. They troll the regulars or fill the pages with distorted facts and misinformation.
They need to be discouraged, but have just picked up you have started. Thanks.
Anne – it's difficult for those of us who love pith, as in pithy, comments.
Detailed, drawn out descriptions are an invitation for some to nit-pic words and phrases; pithy one-liners seem an elegant way to stifle that sort of film-flam, but the down-side of being brief, is…apparent 🙂
Thanks Anne and Robert, for linking to the Kiwipolitico post.
The odd fellow who disparages me in this thread does have a point when saying that there is no universal rule of democracy that says that political parties should and must campaign honestly and transparently about their true policy agendas. Of course not. But that was not my point. My point was that, like many authoritarian-minded cabals who know that announcing their true policy agendas during campaigns will never see them get elected, the recently installed junta deliberately concealed their true intentions while hiding under milquetoast rightwing talking points about taxes, crime and housing. They fully knew that their true agenda would be rejected at the polls if announced in advance, so they deliberately hid it from the electorate, as well as the fact that many of their policy prescriptions were basically written by their big political donors and sponsors.
This amounts to a type of false advertising or "bait and switch" campaigning. It is utterly cynical and dishonest at its core. It is a clear manipulation of the electoral process, which it sees in instrumental terms (a means to achieve power and pursue their real agenda even if it runs against the public good) rather than as an intrinsically valuable form of political voice for the electorate. But sure, it did not break any ironclad rule of democratic politics even if it demonstrates utter contempt for the public who otherwise would have never voted them into office had they known what the junta is really about and who it really serves.
I will say that by pulling the thread into a meaningless sidebar, the odd fellow has performed a textbook example of successful trolling, so credit must given where it is due. Cheers!
Well, yes; meaningless sidebars serve their purpose, I suppose.
The "false advertising" from this junta, as you title it, causes them to recoil in a faint when charged with opaqueness, and they'll point to sidebars of their own that clearly state what they intend to do; details of the minor party's platform are available to the public and prove they have been open and transparent. It's a tricky discussion for the average Jo, but reeks of sinister behaviour from Seymour, Peters and co, imo.
Thanks Pablo for responding. As Robert Guyton has said… its a tricky discussion for the average Jo (and Mary) who don't study the intricacies of politics. For my part, Seymour is the truly dangerous one. He has been very well schooled in the art of astroturfing and stands to cause a level of strife in this country never seen before.
Anne:
Just like Pinochet had to look over his shoulder at Air Force General Leigh in his junta, so must Luxon keep an eye on Seymour because he is the tail that wags the NZ junta's dog.
A libertarian who wants the president to have more power while government below is diminished.
https://apnews.com/article/argentina-milei-reforms-chamber-deputies-libertarian-bdf04cc55e9bdcc1f5a4f2ba90b8ecf7
He wrote
You wrote
The topic was not about ought to, as political practice, but comment on what National was doing and placing the direction of – in it for the few – as posing the risk of a junta era (use of fear of being the next target after Maori for conformity to the roused majority). Such methods of distraction draw attention away from the elitist oligarchy being established.
Your point that expectation of honesty (from those involved in the political practice) was not based on observation is mere cynicism – the risk of experience creating a curmudgeon is well known.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/heather-du-plessis-allan-wellington-city-council-is-the-most-poorly-run-council-in-new-zealand/LAIOEH4IXBF5TEXRZXXPGENWCI/
Apropos to our authoritarian minded junta and it's corporate media enablers.
Pretty obvious the groundwork is being laid for the government to punish Wellington's left leaning politics but sacking the council and appointing a commissioner.
This situation could have been avoided if repeated councils over the last 30 years had not ignored the impending issues.
Some other councils around the country have managed to plan, and find solutions to these types of problems, but seemingly not the coolest little capital.
Someone has to clean up the mess.
Can you name those councils, give examples of their problem-solving and link to evidence, Chess? Please.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
That seems to be the case with the government's new policy which, yet again, involves gutting the environment to prop up our economy: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/fast-track-consenting-fast-lane
The underlying approach is one of "getting things done" without pesky objections like community values standing in the way.
And you can bet the house that anyone objecting to this approach will be introduced to the Natz old friend TINA – there is no alternative.
Fine for opposition MPs to speak well at Waitangi, but National have set the map for future Treaty discourse.
With 16 years to the Bicentennial, both Maori and National are showing there's nothing to do but start talking properly right at the level of principles.
Labour/Greens/Maori Party may not like it but it's the right thing to do and at the right time.
can you please explain that a bit more?
A simple opening question would be:
How do we talk to each other again after 3 Waters?
Principles of re-engagement are what you do first, well before trying to dialogue content.
completely agree. It's the core political need across a lot of things now.
"How do we talk to each other again after 3 Waters?"
Firstly by exposing then neutering the agents that caused its rejection.
out of curiosity, how do you propose to expose and neuter me?
Wrapping in a towel?
(Meant as a joke).
Neuter isn't the right word; I meant neutralise 🙂
Were you opposed to 3 Waters?
Were you one of the agents actively seeking to destroy it?
I wasn't.
I thought 3 Waters had a number of problems and was badly instituted, which is part of why we are where we are. The debate around it likewise, because there were plenty of people like me who objected to how it was being done but the debate often called dissenters racist as if that could be the only objection.
If we deny there were problems with it, and frame it solely as objectors to be neutralised, we are throwing fuel of the culture war fire. A war we are currently loosing badly.
Ah, but I didn't say "objectors", I said "the agents that caused its rejection", by which I meant the monied players who enabled and encouraged the take down, with their mass-email programmes, their expensive billboards and so on.
I'm guessing you weren't one of those agents.
I'm still mystified why Labour chose not to explain 3 Waters and its (apparent) co-governance rationale. Consequently it became evident that their choice was producing a negative reaction.
Since I've often commented here in support of their policy initiative (whilst being agnostic re co-governance), I'm puzzled at your reluctance to admit that Labour shot themselves in the foot.
Isn't it obvious that the right won by default due to Labour choosing not to fight for the thing??
The agents I referred to, and the mechanisms they employed to create strong opposition to 3 Waters, are not the only factor in the failing of the proposal, but they are significant. If they were not active, the Government could have succeeded, through tailoring the programme and it's media, differently.
It was a good idea, shot down by agents from the opposite end of the spectrum, using money as ballistics, imo.
I'm not one of those agents. But this is the problem with the debate. People make unclear statements that end up being catchalls.
But now that you have clarified 🙂 I don't see how neutralising those people will solve the problem Ad is talking about. It might be necessary but it's not sufficient.
And talk of neutralising may in fact make it more difficult for large parts of NZ to relearn how to talk with each other.
"Counter", then. If those Atlas-backed agents have free-rein here in NZ, we will be shepherded by them, into the yards – not a comfortable place to find yourself in, imo.
Completely agree and it’s a serious risk.
“counter” seems a useful framing.
In addition to that, I think we also at the same time have to build common ground with the people are are leaning towards the people representing those energies and politics, and call them back in. If we only tell them that those evil people over there must go or be stopped, this doesn’t tell them what is good and useful about our own position. Doubly important where people are being told that they themselves are bad/wrong because they haven’t accepted the progressive demand.
Maybe Joanna Macy is useful there. The three pillars of the Great Turning
Another explainer:
Really, what about postmodern Aotearoa? Not there yet? Well try & keep up, huh?
He cites a triad:
Okay that seems to create a list of 11 elements (endecad). Sufficiently complex as to keep law lords puzzling the complexity out for several months if not years.
The Treaty of Waitangi would be better replaced with a proper constitution.
It's a vague, poorly translated, unstable and over-freighted document that mostly just pisses people off – Maori and everyone else.
Do we really get how deeply 3 Waters has divided us, if we didn't understand the election result?
There's all to gain from a fearless reassessment.
the problem is that there is so much bad faith coming from ACT in particular, who say they want their version of the Treaty principles. Two problems with that. One is they're not interested in finding the best path for NZ. Two, their principles would essential remove power from Māori.
It's hard to see how to have a clear and useful debate about Te Tiriti and a formal constitution in the current climate.
Ought we regard other well known constitutions as exemplars?
For instance, that of the United States of America?
Are you saying we should? Why?
This aspect is interesting though,
https://daily.jstor.org/the-native-american-roots-of-the-u-s-constitution/
Māori are pissed off by Te Tiriti o Waitangi?
This I did not know!
I'm pretty sure they are pissed off by the attacks on it.
Certainly seems that way.
Those I work with at local government level aren't noticeably encouraged by those attacks.
I massively support Chloe Swarbrick for co-leader of Greens. I think she's the only real successor to James Shaw and I hope she carries on the pro-disability mahi that the Greens are doing.
Agreed gravel……she is eloquent and understands the issues…..but she has and is working on many other issues in addition to disability over the years.
"Do we really get how deeply 3 Waters has divided us"
nah the divisions were already there. They just became more acted upon and expressed in part due to the same happening in the US with Trump.
Very few Europeans and immigrants even bother to interact with Maori at a social level – white flight from schools, white enclaves such as Havelock North over in Hawkes Bay, or the Euro/Asian enclave of Epsom have very little to no experience of day to day activity on a marae.
During COVID-19, and indeed in other civil defense situations, the Maori response on the ground was quite impressive. The organising of food packages, the contacting of the elderly, the delivery of firewood, the clear protocols and explanations, including historical context, to restricting access to tangi and so on. These things continued throughout the pandemic. It was interesting that my European mother was contacted three times by iwi and not once by any of the usual health / welfare mechanisms during lockdown to make sure she and her neighbours were OK.
This is the view of Maori rarely shown in the media and talked about in on-line forums but more reflects the day to day reality of activity and why we should not be afraid of partnership with Maori as the courts have indicated.
This Waitangi Day how many European will be there at local ceremonies celebrating the signing of the Treaty – based on previous experience no more than half a dozen locally. Europeans don't value the Treaty and until they do any attempts to change to a constitution should be treated with the disdain it and they deserve.
Until we express and value those positive characteristics of Maori society and embrace them as meritful and worthy then we should have no say cause we have no respect. Some of those values are in conflict with the values that European capitalist values have constructed eg individual versus communal land ownership, looking longer term to the future in terms of land use, etc not just an extractive way of thinking and others are different and poorly understood eg kawanatanga. Maori have had to adapt and understand European concepts – we need to reciprocate.
I'm more than happy that my children have had a far better education in this respect than those of us did when we were young. The last people that need to be deciding the future are those that are about to die over the next twenty years – their future is a past they only wish existed and is more about now.
Good comment DOS, those on the Right of the political spectrum, some on the Left and some misguided Maori included, are just carrying on the British Empire superiority complex attitude that saw colonisation as a gift that should be accepted with gratitude, especially by people with a so called "stone age culture".
Basically its an 'our way or the highway' attitude that refuses to evolve, except perhaps as just recently in Ireland where the younger generation is making great strides in reforming and uniting a once troubled and divided society racked by six hundred years of colonisation.
My view is there’s an unwillingness to evolve from some people on both sides of the relationship.
Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed.
Those of us who are more recent arrivals to this country, or their children, tend to sit at the side waiting for those heavily invested to sort their shit out, while we just get on with life.
Do you not make some effort to engage with local Maori communities?
Why sit on the sidelines – all that is is avoidance and leaves you in a vacuum that can only be filled via media or social media. It seems a weird thing to say/do. If I moved to another country I'd always be trying to engage with the local community.
Maybe it is why you think this.
"Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed."
I took a short course on Te Reo as I thought I should know how to pronounce words correctly, but I have my own mix of cultures that I feel comfortable in so don’t feel a great need to adopt someone else’s.
It isn't about adopting it is about understanding that Maori are much more hospitable and engaging and want a better future for all – not just for themselves.
A picture quite different that that painted by media and social media. so you don't believe this sort of nonsense.
"Very entrenched fundamentalist views that may never be changed."
Treasury advises government that more revenue would assist the government manage its budget (it would also be mindful of infrastructure deficits, so does not reinforce the governments focus on spending cuts).
And its advice suggests a broader tax revenue base is the right direction to go to realise that.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350167952/capital-gains-tax-could-help-balance-govt-books-treasury
The government is planning to reduce the test for Investment in New Zealand down to national security only.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/01/26/plans-to-scale-back-ministers-powers-over-foreign-investment/
https://www.linz.govt.nz/guidance
This will allow the sale of farms, coastal land off farms, beachfront property, islands (and fisheries) to foreigners.
What will WP say.
Even land along the river in Hamilton is going for $4M
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/could-this-be-hamiltons-next-record-breaker-award-winning-home-hits-the-market-44910
I say place a stamp duty of 5% for locals who buy property over $2M and 15% for foreign investment. And a CGT on all property sold with a value over $2m or to foreigners.
PS And a question, which party with fishing quota wants to sell offshore?
NZF and partner want a Crown Monitor for the WCC, she cites Daran Ponter as wanting the same.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/heather-du-plessis-allan-wellington-city-council-is-the-most-poorly-run-council-in-new-zealand/LAIOEH4IXBF5TEXRZXXPGENWCI/
The head of Wellington Water Nick Leggat and Daran Ponter (Chair of the Regional Council) are working as partners of National in
1.pressure on WCC to give more money to Wellington Water
2.require water meters, or impost financial sanctions up to 50% of water cost charges.
The cost of water meters is money not then available for pipe repair, so until they are at at the capacity to fix the pipes they already know they need to fix, adding extra knowledge of leaks via metering adds little.
3.User pays for pipe problems on ratepayer property.
Of course there would be charging of ratepayers for water leaks on their own property (and so ratepayers would be liable until they found someone to fix the pipes at their own expense).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350132494/wellington-councils-given-ultimatum-water-meters
Water meters are essential to provide an asset value for the sale of council assets. Though at first half might go to government – so they have an asset to borrow against when granting money to councils (this allows both the council and government to later sell their half shares to reduce debt).
Wellington's water…
Watch, as Council incompetence is splashed all over the media. The Coalition government steps in, twisting the council's arm….
Then water meters……
And VOILA! Privatisation!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was the plan all along , of course.
Jeez…. what is it with New Zealanders and water meters.
The things are seen as existential threats by all sides of the political spectrum. Righties see them as an insult to their integrity and self worth, and 'you're going to give it to a Mawries'. Lefties see them as a portal to privatisation and TEOTWAWKI
Water meters are an essential tool for network management and without them you really haven't a clue where the water is going. In Wellington's case there's a good chance most of the leak problem is on private property, or a proportion of residents who are gross (ab)users. Some people will get by with 300 l/day, most households a bit more. A broken 20mm lateral could loose 20,000 l/day or more.
Without good data on where the water is going the managers are just flying blind and fixing leaks once they come through the ground. In Wellington's climate it's going to be a good leak to do that, and they're a small percentage to the number of leaks. The multitude of small leaks will go un-noticed (in our dry climate in Central Otago even quite small leaks are quite apparent in summer) and will add up to a lot of water.
There is
1.a case to fix the known leaks first with available funding.
2.this might give time to look at equity in meter charging.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350086660/case-against-water-metering-wellington
Sorry, but I found your linked article a jumble of confused and just downright incorrect thinking. Things like,
Wellington's, and every other municipality in New Zealand's, water problem is due to a very longstanding practice of ratepayers not being willing to pay for the construction and maintenance of water infrastructure.
We can't see it and as long as there's water coming out the tap, all's good. Oh, and we can use as much as we like because it's 'free'.
Mr Osborne's assertion that water charges are regressive doesn't account for reality and human nature. In 40 years of involvement in the water industry I've seen a pretty strong correlation between property value / income and water use. It's very unlikely that a gross user (>10x average use) lives in the bottom end of town, and water use goes up dramatically once you get into the House and Garden set. Under current rates based charging practices this is something worse than regressive, it's downright theft.
From your points,
Well either Wellington Water is incompetent, or they are being incompetently led by the elected Council. Or the rate payers won't pay the Council enough to fix the problem. Generally it comes back to the rate payers not being prepared to pay for it.
Have a serious look at the equity of current rates based charging first, and how that charging regime shapes usage / entitlement perceptions. I don't see much equity between Mr & Mrs Fancy Garden using as much water as they can get out the tap, and the family at the other end of town who treat every drop of water as their last, because they treat everything like that to get through to the next pay day.
Osborne does have a point around the issues in separating water charging from property charges, particularly in residential rental situations. Water charges should remain with the property, so that the owner is incentivised to fix leaks. In a gross usage situation there will probably be other tenancy issues that the landlord can act on.
Metering and Volumetric Pricing do not necessarily follow. Many water providers have installed meters for data collection to get a picture of where the water is going. QLDC and Central Otago have done this with considerable success. There's also a discrete supply (several hundred properties) where volumetric charging has sorted a very extreme usage / entitlement problem that threatened the viability of the supply.
Right, but what about the household that has two large low income families living in it, who pay nothing now, but would face a new charge with water metering?
Surely the solution here is to provide a certain amount of water per household without charge and to then charge for excess use?
While someone watering a 3 acre lawn is a problem, won't they just pay for the extra charges if they are wealthy? So the council generates some income, but doesn't solve the problem of excess use. Changing land use culture would go a long way to helping alongside other approaches.
Maybe street / small area water meters rather than individual household meters can solve most of the problem.
Less cost and would still give a very good indication of usage and where to investigate for issues and high usage.
This is why we don’t trust them. Already our power companies are doing the same thing.
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/environment/sewage-spills-university-research-how-much-profits-water-company-shareholders-4149319
that was one of the issues with 3 Waters right? Whether the legislation was Tory-proof enough to stop them from privatising. Better to not have 3W than to end up in the situation we are with power. I'm sure many would disagree with that, but that's part of the resistance.
In most cases small 20 or 25mm meters at the individual boundary are the cheapest and easiest option. The lateral is in a known location and already quite shallow (< 0.5m) and there's already a valve there. If the valve was installed in the last 20 years installing a meter can be a 10 minute job. Street or neighbourhood meters get expensive, the main is often a couple of meters under the street or footpath so quite a crater and disruption, and everything is bigger so costs go up exponentially.
It's wrongheaded to attack the engineering, we should be focusing on the council and government leadership that wants to try and privatise or use rates reduction, and subsequent under investment, to get elected. Fortunately water privatisation is going to be a hard sell to a New Zealand electorate, rates or tax reduction not so much.
They do not pay nothing now. If they live in a town or city they are paying for water now through their rates. There's a lot of averaging that goes into setting rates, especially water, and low users are getting screwed by the current system. If they have good water habits then volumetric charging should be in their favour.
I feel for low income people under the current rating system as the costs of water failure come through, in many places the rates rises will be brutal. Gore is a town to keep an eye on.
Very much the devil is in the detail of how the charge is set up, some have a base rate pretty much as normal rates based charging with an excess charge on top, others it's a seperate invoice to rates. It depends on whether the water supply entity is council in-house or some sort of arms length entity. If there's going to be amalgamation of utility provision (essentially what 3 Waters was) then charging will get tricky, but with clever design could still be charged through rates. We'll see what National's "Local Water Done Well" brings, but I'm inclined to think they'll find it too hard and nothing changes from pre 3 Waters.
From what I've seen excess charges certainly change behaviours. You'd be surprised how tight entitled arseholes are, they haven't amassed their wealth by spending it. Trick is to make excess town water dearer than alternatives like storage or alternative sources.
Land use change, or more like expectation change is coming. There's a new golf course development coming up across the road. Residential lots (80 odd) are restricted to 100m2 of lawn to restrict water use and the developers have done a lot of deals buying irrigation shares to get water for the course. One little bit of the basin will be bright green and a lot will become fallow.
1.a case to fix the known leaks first with available funding.
That is irrelevant. $300 M for water meters, is $300M not spent on fixing pipes. Ratepayers will be paying, whatever the $300M is spent on.
2.this might give time to look at equity in meter charging.
In Wellington there is already a water use regime that limits garden watering. And in any case those with a large section (often a lot of trees and owned by older couples) currently pay more rates because of the land component of the capital value and would be better off with a move to water charging than those with larger families in infill sections.
For mine the move to $300M for water meter charges is not a move to equity, because of the opportunity cost of $300M not being spent fixing pipes.
For mine the focus on water metering, when they are so short of money to fix pipes, reflects an intent to set charges to force ratepayers to fix up pipes on their land.
The question is why DP and NL want to prioritise that over spending $300M (they do not yet have) to fix pipes on public land?
Is it because they intend to charge the cost of the water meters on top of rates?
Thread.
Many people discovered The Taxpayers' Union today after they attempted to criticize the government funding of @davidfarrier& @DylanReeve's critically acclaimed and financially profitable documentary 'Tickled.' So for the initiated, here's a primer on The TPU.
https://twitter.com/StrayDogNZ/status/1419555716310847488
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1419555716310847488.html
Elon Musk claims that the illegal immigration is a Democratic Party/Biden's plan to make them legal residents for the purpose of a one party state.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/musk-biden-opened-border-floodgates-democrats-can-stay-power
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/musk-calls-out-biden-for-waiting-on-bipartisan-senate-deal-to-shut-down-border/
In the USA Detainee stuff.
Page 18 on
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf