Tony said rightly; “More funding shortfalls thanks to the nats.”
That’s what happens when the National Party “divert funds to their preferences” (for nine long years) as they did with taking all funds ‘payable’ from road and rail maintenance costs away from the regions, and putting them into their ”
pork belly “National roads of significance” playbook.
Truly a bunch of modern day “Robbing hoods” aren’t they just?
Some of what they don’t pay is spent on private health insurance premiums, retirement savings, private school fees, charitable donations and accomodation for adult family members, thereby reducing demand on the public purse.
Private health takes resources away from the public health system and thus making it worse.
Retirement savings are a scam – just like capitalism itself.
Charitable donations never cover the full needs of society.
We cannot afford the rich because they’re all bludgers.
And they import as many workers as possible to create a low wage economy and overload the welfare system with as many people all who qualify for subsidies, as possible to ‘stimulate demand’ for the private sector, such as building more prisons, privatising prisons, privatising healthcare, privatising charities, privatising welfare through private agencies, more roads, more houses, more PPP’s of ha ha ‘public’ transport…. etc IN short taking from the people and giving to corporations who are apparently the holy grail of a special type of community (who knew?).
Unfortunately the government have not worked out that in previous times aka 19th and early 20c this government investment in infrastructure led to local jobs and local goods being used to service the economy. In the 21c this doesn’t happen anymore, you borrow money or increase taxes, but it’s just as likely to go offshore corporations and not provide many local jobs, instead create havoc by lowering wages, decreasing jobs for local workers who suffer, not buying local products, create havoc more houses needed, more hospitals, more health care to provide for all the new previously offshore but now onshore workers.
Apparently government don’t keep any statistics and immigration is all based on arrival cards and what people decide to put on there. (likewise census). So I’m guessing if you are coming to NZ to work illegally as a stopper than you don’t exactly declare it… nor the people trafficking and so forth. Basically the government has no ways to even work out how many people are working illegally here or just using the welfare system under false names. How many people leave as soon as they obtain residency (clues are there is now a big amount of people going out of NZ). Migrants will behave the same way as Kiwi workers, if they are not paid enough or the opportunities are not there, they will leave as well… so it solves nothing to not look at the causes of skilled people leaving NZ.
Maybe time the government gets some hard facts on what’s actually going on. How many babies being born and registered as NZ citizens, how many people are actually on welfare and is it after they gain their residency, how many people who have just moved here will be able to claim the pension in a decade or less. How many people leave once getting residency. The get somehow who actually knows what they are doing to get some predictions going.
The original premise of migration in NZ was apparently to bring ‘young workers’ in to provide taxes for our aging population, but the story keeps changing, because now we seem to have a whole lot of young people who need WFF or social welfare if their relationship breaks up and elderly relatives and siblings seem to be able to come in as well, with a bit of creative paperwork. Skilled people can leave after gaining residency.
All roads are leading to a huge change in NZ society and look at what’s happened overseas, it does not lead to a left wing government after excessive migration (either in or out, aka some countries have been left with not enough skilled people aka Poland and trying to get them back). It leads to social disruption, and right wing governments getting in if the left wing government denies there is an issue.
And then those people paying taxes, are told, ‘pay more’, we also need more workers and more taxes to pay for the infrastructure of all the new workers.. the Ponzi continues
I’m complaining that the census and arrival/departure cards are based on what people choose to put in it and I think it’s time to look more at hard facts, like birth registration data, house and assets transfers, hospital and school records and welfare payments across all sectors from unemployment, WFF, super, DPB etc more in depth rather than relying on what people volunteer which is used as facts, to build a much more detailed picture of what happened in the last decade and how that is going to impact the country.
You seem to be looking for one shop that does everything, whereas pretty much all your requested data is already gathered by different departments.
People earning under the table are looked for by IRD, as well as companies fiddling books to pay the employees. Immigration officers look for overstayers or people in violation of their visas. Beneficiaries need id just to get into the bloody office, so it’s not like just putting a fake name on the form. IRD, WINZ and I believe a few other organisations all share data to detect frauds.
All a one-stop-shop data shop would do is maximise the damage of a data breach. For what? What is the clear, simple and explicit objective you wish to achieve with this data collation?
Stats NZ identified the issue with relying arrival cards a couple of years ago and have come up with a new report where they use Customs data to compare intentions with actions.
If we paid people unable to work the same way as pensioners, many problems could be solved. Taxation would even out anomalies of part time or full time work and it would replace the current pittance working for families etc.
I suppose that if you were challenged to produce some evidence for this claim you would offer something like.
“Well for XXX the overseas ownership is 0;.26%. That is “Up to 49%” so my statement is true.
What are the real numbers. If you don’t know you an simply admit you don’t know.
Your claim is about as honest as the statements by your leader when she says something is “an excise. It’s not a tax”.
Just look at the shareholding of each of the powercos. Anything “nominees” is a corporate holding (incl RBNZ). The actuals will be different across each but they’re already far from the Mum and Dad ownership that John Key sold the sale to NZers as.
That doesn’t answer the question.
You labelled them as “multi-nationals”, implying that the ownership was foreign based. I don’t dispute the accuracy of your answer but it says precisely nothing about where the beneficial owners are situated.
How can I see that the ownership is foreign?
It actually doesn’t matter. Selling them was a mistake and even that false market that National put in place was stupid. Power generation and distribution is a natural monopoly that should be run as a state service.
Power distribution may be a natural monopoly.
Power generation is not.
Indeed, many commenters on this blog argue that it really should be a small scale DIY operation with solar panels on the roof. That would be about as far from a “monopoly” as it would be possible to get.
Indeed, many commenters on this blog argue that it really should be a small scale DIY operation with solar panels on the roof.
Which is the really expensive way to go about it as it minimises economies of scale rather than maximising them. It also contributes to inequalities that are detrimental to society.
I’m all for solar panels on every house roof but have them emplaced and maintained by the state service. That gets the economies of scale maximised, the service to be stable and spreads the benefit across society at maximum speed.
LOL! The looting of Africa. A continent that receives the least amount of FDI than any other (bar Antarctica) is somehow being looted because people hardly invest there. You are having a laugh.
Then apply the same or similar scenario to just about anything that can be transported from Africa, and reflect on that going on for nigh on 200 years.
I haven’t ignored them. I’ve looked at what went wrong and the answer is almost always a hierarchy that mimics capitalism and a serious misunderstanding of economics and societies.
The USSR didn’t collapse because it was socialist but because it was state capitalist.
NZ’s hydro generation produced some of the cheapest sustainable power in the world. Since privatization consumers, far from enjoying the price reductions promised by disgraced former politician Max Bradford, now pay among the highest electricity prices in the world, including penalties to solar conversions. One average NZ bill would pay a year of my Korean power bills with some left over. It’s a fucking disgrace.
Based on that Table we are a long, long way from being amongst the most expensive in the World. Thanks for providing the link.
BTW that doesn’t take in to account purchasing power. 15 US cents per kilowatt hours is a lot more costly for the average South African than 19 US cents in NZ.
“Despite the rise in residential prices, New Zealand still has the 11th lowest residential electricity prices among the 32-country OECD, and the seventh lowest industrial prices.”
Thanks also Michael Cullen, Bill English and Grant Robertson and every future finance minister who sits by while this carries on. Only Robertson may yet redeam himself…
Can we add Big Supermarket to that?
granted Foodstuffs is NZ owned, but the duopoly that no government forever seems to have to balls to break up is responsible for unjustified extortion of basic food prices for the simple reason that they can. There is no “choice” for the vast majority of NZers where they get their food from and that extortion is a contributing factor to people not eating well, or enough.
Yeah that’s part of it too, possibly coming under a big food umbrella.
Reminds me of the Hughs War On Waste doco from the UK, that looks at consumer waste and how the supermarkets play their part in it too. Can watch it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3c4g04
Just look round the market man, now we see the cost of building products is now said to be 3 times the cost of Australian building supplies now and the cost per meter of building is four times higher according to a report i heard today on AM radio Duncan Garner.
The Australian reporter said ( quote;) “we are being screwed”.
Go look at the media releases on Australian building costs vs NZ costs.
Yes it was far better when everything was state controlled, the so called elite where those who had the various government licenses etc, no choice, no freedom, hey but every one had to put up with same shite, shoddy service, for god sake you could only get white bread, took 6 week to get a phone connected, could only move something by truck for 100 miles then had to rail ( good luck if it turned up at all or let alone in full) and needed permission to get 1000 dollars fix to go overseas on holiday but hey every one was equally miserable so all good however so all good
Where a nightwatchman could afford to own a large racing yacht. Almost all families were fed and housed adequately, you could support a family on one income, poverty almost non existent, it cost buggerall to play sports, to go tramping, swimming or exploring the back country. good medical care and education was cheap or free, weekends, and evenings, were free time, not only for a few rich, and we had one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Gotta agree that was my up bringing And I do think been a kid then was easier however the technology, choices, freedom you have today is fantastic but I do agree their are downsides and less certainty Irrespective give me today’s freedom and choice over the blandness and one size fits all of the pre 80s. The other thing that lifestyle was funded off the sheep backs where the uk brought all we had that all ended in the early 70s and we borrowed to maintain that lifestyle
We had plenty of freedom. Certainly more than we have today.
The service was shoddy and is actually getting worse as more cowboys enter the market and drive down wages.
Actually, it took three days to get a phone connected in most cases. Some took a little longer because we actually had to run the lines out first. Now, consider that in many places today it’s a six month wait and other places you can’t even get ADSL never mind fibre. Yeah, in telecommunications things have gone seriously backwards.
Moving anything by truck for more than 50km is bad planning as it uses excessive resources. See, forcing freight onto the trains had nothing to do with protecting the trains and everything to do with limiting resource usage.
Despite your complaints getting foreign exchange wasn’t really that hard. You just had to plan for it.
Crap about white bread. My parents owned a dairy in the 60’s and you could get brown and also this chunky whole meal. But true food was a bit limited back then
No, because they have not been accused of malpractice. They are just fortunate that the heralded crash has yet to occur, and shares have generally risen. Tuppence reflects the value of your contribution this time. (And others, I suspect.)
Ed made no mention of their practices, just the nationalistion of their profits. Nz superfund repatriates it’s off shore profits. How would we feel about those being nationalised by a foreign country
Personally, I would fully sympathise with the foreign country. I have no time for profit-gougers – those whom Bernard Shaw correctly called the Idle Rich.
Hine was a snow maiden who fell in love with Wawe, a warm-blooded man. Every time they touched, his warm hands would melt her frozen skin, so Hine, an experienced mountaineer, took Wawe up the mountain to see Aorangi, the frozen son of the sky father Rakinui, for guidance. Wawe had been forbidden from climbing the mountain and was blown off the edge by a vengeful Tāwhirimātea, the God of wind, sending Wawe plunging to his death. Hine Hukatere wept for Wawe, and her tears froze as they dripped down the valley forming what many now call Franz Josef glacier.
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young, some kill it when they are old;
Some strangle it with the hands of Lust, some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because, the dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long, some sell, and others buy;
Typical mean spiritedness from Ministry of Health Disability Support Services at calls for funding for carbon fibre splints to support normal gait and reduce falls and musculoskeletal issues in those with disabilities.
They, the Miserly of Health,really have no concept at all of ‘investment’ when it comes to disability, especially when it comes to funding equipment that has the potential to transform lives. And the difference with this technology is akin to the old ‘brick’ mobile phones being promptly ditched for pocket sized tech. Only fools would continue to use the old when the new is so much better for the user.
“”As technology improves over time and costs are likely to come down, there may be the ability to consider funding this type of technology in the future,” said Toni Atkinson, the ministry’s group manager of disability support services.”
And this lot seem unable to do cost benefit analyses….higher initial cost offset by lower downstream costs….foreign concept.
And god forbid they fund new technologies that enable people to go out into their communities with confidence.
Because that would mean that seeing more people with disabilities out and about would be normal….
NB…it is my understanding that this technology is funded by our lucky cousins on ACC.
Like the scrapping of funding reduced costs for funding visits to G’s I’m afraid.
Anything to improve health funding has to be sacrificed to fund a years paid holiday for would be “students”.
That and paying for the “Save New Zealand First” slush fund to make Shane Jones’ flights out of Kerikeri more comfortable.
alwyn. Sigh. Seriously? Sighs again, and decides not to do the TS thing of blaming the Natz for everything.
alwyn. The very least one should do before one comments is to read the post, maybe google the named persons and get a real sense of the history…
Toni ‘what a wonderful job we’re doing for the disabled’ Atkinson has been group Manager at MOH:DSS since way, way before the latest election. She is the problem, as are her fellow MOH bureaucrats.
The incumbents of the government benches are not in control here…this lot, or the previous lot….IMHO.
Quite true Rosemary, the MOH, PHARMAC and other health QANGOs with their assorted mandarins potter on in their usual way regardless of who’s sitting on the right hand side of the debating chamber.
My youngest son has Spina bifida and walks with the assistance of plastic AVO’s. We have to have these replaced ever 6 months or so due both to his growing and more importantly the fact that they just flat out can’t survive a 7 year old trying to run around at school for 6 months. I use try as they are also very limited in how much they do for him. They basically allow him to walk and try to run.
Obviously I can’t say if these would suit his circumstances however with what the article describes the difference it would make to my boys life to actually be able to run around the play ground with the other kids would be huge. To play tag and not always be it because you are easy to catch and then can’t catch others.
These sorts of things go beyond the initial cost. This sort of thing could help make going to school a far more enjoyable prospect for kids with disabilities.
Hiya crashcart, and thanks for commenting and giving your input as someone who has the benefit of lived experience.
“To play tag and not always be it because you are easy to catch and then can’t catch others.
These sorts of things go beyond the initial cost. This sort of thing could help make going to school a far more enjoyable prospect for kids with disabilities.”
Could someone put this before Clark or Genter please?
Labour’s positive changes coming for RMA to reverse the ‘rot ‘that national intentionally changed to benefit the rich investors for profit and charging the public for cost for their ‘perceived right’ to plan their commercial ‘extensions’ instead of considering environmental consideration and charging all investigative and legal costs to the taxpayer. and away from their rightful costs.
Super important to change RMA to give long term environmental risks much more importance, if we don’t, we turn into a polluted little back water, with a brigade of Bill n John’s truck stops… I’ve always thought we were working towards a Thailand type system… luxury overseas owned tourist ventures, with sewerage in the streets and cheap drugs with Los Angeles transport and large houses and a Phillipines type overseas population of workers escaping for better wages. But I’m not sure that government/business vision is a good one.
Yes because I’d prefer another McMansion and MegaStore/Mall luxury hotel /conference centre, with the small price to pay of sewage in the beaches, dead native forests and lower wages for the economic workers…. many of whom have to be ‘bought’ in for our ‘skills’ shortages but also need additional housing and cars… to keep the Ponzi going strong.
The other day, some recent migrant was caught having 3 babies concurrently to different women. That’s dedication to the cause…. imagine instead of 1 house 1 family, he now probably needs three houses to be supplied for his increasing brood … talk about increasing your own demand for housing…
With this in mind I’m sure there are more practical ways to stop the housing crisis through legislation, than destroying our immediate environment with bizarre short term RMA, for the next generation.
That imagination again, Solka. Someone give real examples of what is going on and you respond as usual without any sensible solution or even concern that that not be a good thing.
Never mind, I think someone might have made something up about someone in government and we can all spend government time and media on that rather than what is actually going on and then pretend what is going on, is not happening.
That’s because you talk such a load of shit where there is no actual discernible point. So one immigrant has gotten three women pregnant and you try to suggest from that that there is some kind of conspiracy – “That’s dedication to the cause”. Like WTF?
You say he was caught. What law did he break? Is there really no NZ born men who have done this?
I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy (as usual adding your own delusions), but we have a housing shortage and supposedly he’s got residency because he’s helping solve that??
And nope not broken any laws apparently immigration are fine with that, my guess only came to light due to the women going on a benefit and being investigated for fraud, which says a lot about who we think are the fraudsters in this country.
If you can’t see the relationship between more people and the effects on the housing crisis then that says more about your intellectual capacity… and your sense of justice seems more like a market driven one, oh Kiwi’s can do it, lets roll with that, the more the merrier having loads of concurrent kids …. if you were not a part time champion of the Greens (scary enough), you could easily be an ACT supporter.
and there we have your prejudice oozing out. You seem to be saying that we should have one set of rules and expectations for those who were born here and another for immigrants. Clearly you have no respect for human rights or natural justice.
Not sure how valuing such would make me an Act supporter.
Sounds like there’s property in Queenstown if you have $30 million. I don’t think we have any issues building houses, it seems more how the resources are being allocated and for whom, that might be the issue of shortages.
The Labour-led government invests $100 million to combat homelessness, and launches it on the same marae that took in hundreds and hundreds of people last winter:
Yes, it is good they are doing something, big plus for Labour led government. But are they looking at the changes in government policy under the Natz that have led to this massive rise in homelessness in particular over the past 6 years?
I’m more interested in policy that stops the homelessness happening in the first place. Increased wages and conditions that can provide a decent living not an increasing number of workers scrounging for benefit top ups because you can’t survive on wages, bigger focus on kids and education which is having the next generation of kids having skills, mental health and ability to cope, morals , decency for all, entrepreneurship and so forth, not having them scared out of their wits that someone is going to gun them down or a tree falls over and some private course will save them, also having little provision of them in the work force due to their lack of experience… a tax system that helps people who live in NZ and pay taxes here, not actually encouraging undercutting through offshore completion with lower wages and conditions and materials, having a decent retirement for people who lived and worked in NZ for most of their lives… a housing market that is not skewed by allowing people who don’t live here/pay full taxes here to invest here as though they do live here, a focus of quality exports, not cheap ones and making sure that Kiwis can afford their own quality food and buy a house and it is not all exported off for wealthier people, while through loopholes residents are expected to pay to support overseas families lifestyles (or in the case below, employers low wages), while not actually being able to afford a lifestyle of their own.
It’s not even about the money, so much as the rot it’s causing in society when people become commoditised.
This is an increasing type of employer. A ex Serbian man killed while working as a security guard probably on minimum wages with minimal training. When the union offered courses the company who employed him declined saying, I will just hire someone who already has the qualification. Companies whose prime motivation is profits, increasingly seem to see their employees as disposable commodities and when things go wrong the tax payer will clean up the mess, financially as well as socially and the family just suck up the death. Meanwhile another low paid, untrained worker will only be too willing to take his place in the race to the bottom. http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/05/union-hits-out-at-security-firm-after-guard-s-death.html
Of course income won’t push house prices higher. House prices are driven by demand. Demand comes from immigration, tourism, more people coming to live in NZ either permanently or temporality.
The cost of building a house is astronomical. The profit driven free market NZ system has created a monster when every step you take is a rout of profiteering.
That is why people concentrate on land creation for profit. Why would you build when it is so risky and you can just get the council to re zone your land and create massive value aka with rezoning land can go from 1 million to 30 million overnight. It’s free money created out of nothing. Natz love it. Council love it (more rates).
Building is a different kettle of fish because so much more can go wrong and profiteering is even more rife. You then have to provide the infrastructure as well and if you have not bothered to do that before consenting then you start getting big problems with pollution.
The numbers don’t work for Labour’s housing. I mean every day we hear how they need to import hundreds of people into NZ which of course takes up housing adding to demand. Even the hospitality people are jumping up and down these days about demand. I’m sure unemployed people/students/single parents could manage to be trained to wait a table or pour a drink, but no apparently hospitality also suffer severe ‘skilled’ sic. shortages!
As soon as immigration wanes, housing prices stop going up. Already happened in Auckland, the rapid increases have slowed with Labour getting in.
Labour have built 18 affordable houses so far. Good on them, but seriously when they go to ballot what is going to happen if 1/2 of them go to new migrants while long term tax paying Kiwi workers miss out? And if the migrants miss out people like the banned Wei will be up in arms too, as discrimination. What happens to the million+ residents who are renters?
Personally think all the taxpayer housing should be kept under taxpayer control and rented out with provisions in place so the Natz can’t sell them off when they next get in.
This is a moral question and there is no right answer, but in the interests of fairness or perception of fairness, I think the government will have a problem when the affordable houses start being divvided out on who gets them.
As soon as government bumps up wages to living levels aka $20p/h and removes zero hour contracts on jobs that are not casual aka fast food/supermarket/service stations then more people will be able to afford rents.
Rents are governed by what it costs to build a house and pay to maintain it. There is a massive discrepancy between wages and the price of building a house/buying a house/renting a house. Adding more houses is not going to solve that especially if you are adding more people into NZ than the new houses. Even if you add massive amount of new houses, where are the higher paid jobs for the people???
Why don’t you give us the news then Solka, how many house to be built this year and how many available under $650,000 by the government and how many available for renting… Personally I don’t think $650k should even be considered affordable.
I’m taking move in housing, not a spread sheet or plan for 2018.
So, let me help you out here with your awareness of actual policy being delivered since you clearly lack the motivation or skill to do it for yourself.
All you had to do, SaveNZ, as I recommended, is actually acquaint yourself with the number and interlocking impact of the policies and funded announcements and initiatives that are already underway.
The moral question you wail about is long since answered, and it goes like this: if you elect a Labour-led coalition government it is better for workers and home owners in a pretty short space of time.
he or she probably assumes your continual nasty invective is most commonly connected to a J Key Nat supporter. I, however, think your just another nasty 3rd way-er overly invested in neoliberal identity politics.
Seeing as Housing First providers manage the tenancies and the properties but don’t actually supply the homes, would it be correct to assume that out of the $63 million going to be given to Housing First, not a cent will be going to increase our housing supply?
The “Land Transport (Random Oral Fluid Testing) Amendment Bill” is a relic from last millennium’s War On Drugs, is deeply flawed, and should be binned. The presence of traces of a drug does not prove impairment!! The only regimes for drug testing of drivers which have any validity are those which involve blood testing and in which a limit has been set above which impairment is considered to be established. I’m a bit puzzled about the true intent of this bill. Is it Virtue Signalling? or is it a strike in a Class War of Social Conservatives Vs Drug Users??
The presence of a drug from urine tests in my industry is enough to have people marched off site. NZTA are continuing to roll out their anti-drug-driver campaigns for similar reasons to ours.
Like yourself I’m not sure what a further legislated testing regime adds to this picture. The existing enforcements surely are enough.
The “illegal” part is often much more problematic than the “drugs” part. You appear to be self-identifying as the Social Conservative sub-species of Right Whinger; it must be sad for you that John Banks is but a distant memory…
The thing is i don’t believe any National MP had anything to do with this, after everything that went down Dirty Politics you’d have to be completely brain dead to think no one would make a connection between the rumours and the National party
I suspect its either the non-affiliated National voter or (more likely) non-political trolls doing this
I did say nat henchmen . the MPs are far to greasy to be caught at it first hand . you need to reread the dirty politics book to see how national operate
Disagree Ad – it beggars belief that a spend of what will likely be in the order of 2 billion for a population of 250 thousand is considered a good spend when there are far larger population centres in NZ that a proportion of this spend could be targeted to.
It is long past time that NZ faced facts about trying to have a gold plated health service in every population centre.
See I don’t mind this at all in fact its a good idea, much better to spend big money on something like this (something but useful and tangible) then something dumb like a free years study
About 25% of people in Dunedin are directly or indirectly employed by Otago University.
The procuremement will be interesting because as a lead beneficiary of this investment I would expect the University to contribute substantially to the construction cost and fitout. After all the medical school and all the specialists who work between hospital and teaching and research have huge interdependencies.. And I would hope it is kept under very close surveillance by the Minister – just as Parker did with Americas Cup facilities in Auckland – to ensure that officials and planners don’t take the easy and cheap routes to success.
The construction itself is going to be really interesting for a number of reasons:
– at 4.4% headline unemployed where are we going to get the workers to build it? Construction workers with the skills to take on an entire hospital are few and far between here.
– at almost 0% rental vacancy in Dunedin where are we going to put the workers, even if we can get them?
The City of Dunedin itself will have some role to play as well to ensure that this isn’t just the largest single CAPEX to ever happen to the city; it should be a full spatial rejuvenation of the entire precinct. It will surely need a relaxation of their height rules to enable the long-needed hotel capacity into Dunedin. The have turned down multiple large high quality hotel projects there recently when they are sorely needed.
I sure hope this procurement and the whole project demonstrates a once-a-century boost to the whole of Dunedin.
The hotel projects were all a bit shit. 27 glass storeys on the waterfront? Bugger that.
I suspect it will be a bit like the stadium, where the university basically built the fourth wall as a separate building with their own stuff in it. The real issue will be whether they shift some of the anatomy/path folk down to a facility next to the hospital, as I think many of them are currently in varsity buildings across the road from the hospital (as well as some departments actually having facilities in the hospital itself).
Then I suppose they can rip the asbestos out of the current hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everyone’s happy lol
trying to have a gold plated health service… yes because that is why we have a private system gaining a lot more traction…
Funny though, US pay the most in the world for health care, but so many can’t afford health care, and American’s seem to be almost encouraged to be as unhealthy as possible through food choices and lifestyle, all putting $$$$ into private health.
About time people understood ‘the markets’ is about profitability, morals don’t come into it.
So a society based around ‘the free market’ can easily become a morally bankrupt, dysfunctional society because bad things tend to be just as profitable as good things.
You need other measures such as environmental regulation, societal regulation such as human rights and so forth to try to keep the balance.
Expecting social things like hospitals to make money creates stupidity of decision making. Such as at Middlemore hospital, government money was funded for extending buildings that housed things like meeting rooms for consultants (they could then artificially make a ‘profit’ on that not like the sick kids that returned a ‘loss’) while the mould and sewage in the children wards was not deemed worthy of government funding.
Our problem is that we firstly don’t have a closed free market system so the theory is wrong straight away, we are also becoming less moral as a society (days of leaving door unlocked gone, full prisons, more stories of fraud), and also massive changes in legislation or the way it is applied under law, under the Natz has removed most of the regulation governing any sort of standard from human rights to environmental safeguards to tax law to resource/building consenting standards and norms.
So fuck the markets. It’s one part of living a life, but unfortunately seems to have taken over and we are now in stupidity land of ideology of leadership/advice from free marketeers who stopped thinking practically years/maybe decades ago.
What tax laws, human right laws, environmental laws, resource building laws and consents did Natz remove I can’t really think of any, hey but I may be wrong Also do you have any stats to show fraud and crime is up most of what I see is a these crimes are down
It depends on how many lives get saved, not having to truck or chopper so many people up to chch or further. And that’s at DHB cost, not including “your appointment is on the 12th at 8am, get there somehow” transport barriers.
So you’ll probably find the capex offsets a lot of the operational costs that result from whatever crumbs of healthcare you want to throw in our direction.
Those services which are in high demand and which are in overflow to private providers such as orthopaedics and ophthamology and cardiology would be fully resourced in the major centres and decrease the need for private providers.
The very specialist services for rarer conditions and specialities would be fully resourced in the large population centres where there is the most resource and demand and which can be maintained as centres of excellence for such services.
It is long past time that NZ faced facts about trying to have a gold plated health service in every population centre.
Actually, it’s long past time that NZers stopped trying to do everything on the cheap as doing so means that we don’t get the service that we need and it costs more in the long run as we keep trying to fix the sub-par service to do the job which also never works because we’re doing that on the cheap as well.
Impractical in the Auckland isthmus under the current setup and with the current bricks and mortar we have in place.
There is however, very significant gains to be made from not having 3 DHBs replicating their own bureaucracy and IT systems, returning to the RHA system would be worth investigating.
People dying because they don’t get the treatment that they need soon enough in an emergency because they have to be freighted to Auckland first.
Having to wait for the necessary surgery and can’t do anything while they wait.
the added costs upon people as they now have to traverse the country to stay with people.
Added costs of having to find accommodation when they do.
If there’s work for them down here, why not base them here?
That goes for every damned speciality – the problem the Southern region faces isn’t that we’re demanding specialists to be paid full time to do one surgery a month as and when needed.
The problem is that over decades we’ve been fucked by a funding model that assumes three dhbs are within an hour or two’s drive of their neighbours’ base hospitals, or chopper range at a pinch. And this funding approach combined with sub-sustainable levels anyway has resulted in putting off capex to keep the lights on, and other false economies. Not just Dunedin hospital – Queenstown hospital has structural osh issues.
The place has lots of advantages that can be easy to overlook if you need a bucket in the operating theatre to catch drips from the leaking roof when it rains, or you can’t access patient records because they’re in the asbestos-contaminated area, or you have to knife-fight a funding manager to attend a conference because the DHB is the only DHB in the country with a core objective of meeting an unrealistic budget set in Wellington.
Dunedin and other such places are fine places to live. The lack of funding to provide decent services is the problem.
People get up and leave when the services that they want to provide aren’t funded enough so that they can provide them. It’s highly stressful knowing the job that needs to be done but unable to because because some fuckwit, usually in National, has come up with the slogan Do more with less and implements budget cuts that make it so that it’s doing much less with less.
This is what we’re seeing now. National has cut the budgets so much that the necessary levels of service are well below what’s needed.
Your 250 thousand population figure only covers Otago. Dunedin hospital is the primary facility for the whole lower South Island. So you can add in 100 thousand from Southland, some from South Canterbury (Waitaki patients go both ways) and in South Westland you go where ever they can get you quickest in the helicopter.
We’re really fortunate that the medical school is in Dunedin to make the hospital viable, if it wasn’t a lot of people would die getting to Christchurch. Distances are huge, From Queenstown or Invercargill to Dunedin is nearly 4 hours drive, so equivalent of Taupo to either Auckland or Wellington. Both are on the limit or helicopter transfer or recovery.
The Cadbury building sits at sea level. A hospital is vital infrastructure that’s meant to last many decades.
1m sea level rise by 2100 is essentially only taking thermal expansion into account.
The estimated several meters from Antarctica and Greenland that are going to accompany 2 degrees and 400ppm in the short to medium term have not been factored in to current projections.
So….as ideas go, that site for a hospital is bloody stupid.
Winter sea ice cover in the Bering Sea did not just hit a record low in 2018; it was half that of the previous lowest winter on record (2001), says John Walsh, chief scientist of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“Labour’s decision to issue no new oil and gas prospecting permits offers no impediment to utilising fully those already granted.”
Russel Norman National Director of Greenpeace Aotearoa
There are 31 oil and gas exploration permits currently active, 22 are offshore. These permits cover an area of 100,000 square kilometers, nearly the size of the North Island, and run as far out as 2030 and could go an additional 40 years under a mining permit.
As I read it; According to this above report, under Labour’s partial “ban”, new oil and gas reserves can be discovered, and then exploited up until 2070!
As well as this, the government’s so called and much vaunted “ban” on “issuing of new permits” is at best, merely a hiatus.
The hiatus on issuing new permits announced by this government, will not stop any new government reissuing new oil and gas exploration permits, (as Simon Bridges has promised to do). Only the banning the exploration for all new reserves and cancelling the existing permits could do that. Once done, the oil companies are unlikely to come back, even with a change of government.
The new analysis calls into question the gigantic sums of private and government investment being ploughed into exploration for new fossil fuel reserves, according to UCL’s Professor Paul Ekins, who conducted the research with McGlade. “In 2013, fossil fuel companies spent some $670bn (£443bn) on exploring for new oil and gas resources. One might ask why they are doing this when there is more in the ground than we can afford to burn,” he said.
“The investors in those companies might feel that money is better spent either developing low-carbon energy sources or being returned to investors as dividends,” said Ekins.
“One lesson of this work is unmistakably obvious: when you’re in a hole, stop digging,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org which is campaigning to get investors to dump their fossil fuel stocks. “These numbers show that unconventional and ‘extreme’ fossil fuel – Canada’s tar sands, for instance – simply have to stay in the ground.”
“Given these numbers, it makes literally no sense for the industry to go hunting for more fossil fuel,” McKibben said. “We’ve binged to the edge of our own destruction. The last thing we need now is to find a few more liquor stores to loot.”
Meanwhile away from the above government pantomime NZ Greenhouse emissions continue their inexorable rise, under this administration just as they have done under the last administration.
Isn’t everything deliberately planned and carried out ‘orchestrated’?
So Labour Party people planned to tackle a problem, get it sorted and that included at the end presenting it to the public. In what they hoped would be its final throes. It’s final 24 hours.
Soper said, “Make no mistake, Labour orchestrated the events of the past 24 hours.”
How disappointing that they orchestrated things. I can’t see why they didn’t leave it to reputable media folk like, say, David Farrar, Cameron Slater or Matthew Hooton since orchestrating is clearly their field. Or maybe they could’ve left it to those who caused the need for some orchestration.
Make no mistake, by presenting as he did Soper orchestrated further negativity to be aimed at Labour. What chance for that to be a 24 hour thing?
In a Fight Over Syria, Echoes of Spain’s Civil War and the Battle for Truth in Guernica
IF YOU LISTEN closely to the angry war of words over whether or not the Syrian government used poison gas in its final assault on the town of Douma, it is possible to detect echoes of a similarly heated dispute that took place during another civil war, eight decades ago.
In the days after the firebombing of the undefended Basque town of Guernica, on April 26, 1937, Spain’s embattled government drew attention to what was then an unprecedented atrocity, the result of more than three hours of airstrikes carried out by a fleet of bombers dispatched by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in support of their fascist ally, Gen. Francisco Franco.
Within 24 hours, as the blogger Joey Ayoub noted in a discussion of Syria last week, spokespersons for Franco’s rebel junta offered an alternative explanation. Guernica, the fascists said, had not been bombed at all, but set on fire by their retreating enemies as part of a plot to garner international sympathy…..
…..Although Steer’s report, which inspired Pablo Picasso to begin work on his painting about the massacre, was entirely accurate, Franco’s press office immediately offered a counternarrative, claiming in a statement headlined “Lies, Lies, Lies,” that the Basque president, José Antonio Aguirre, was attempting to blame the fascist air force for fires set by his own troops.
Pure lies, Says Berlin
Wireless to The New York Times.
Berlin,April 29. – The Diplomatische Korrespondenz, semi-official organ of the Foreign Office, after characterizing as pure lies reports that German planes participated in the bombing of Guernica, reminds the world and particularly Britain, that aerial bombing has been freely resorted to in Northwestern India and Aden.
The communique says that this evidently was overlooked by the Opposition in the Brtitsh Parliament. No country deplores more than Germany that methods of warfare are still employed that result in the suffering for cicilian populations, the paper continues.
Attention is drawn to Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s appeal of May 21, 1935, when he proposed an international agreement to stigmatize all air bombings as barbarism and forbid them absolutely. But this proposal, says the communique, “was unfortunately ignored by powers that at that time felt they possessed far superior air forces.”
German newsreels and propaganda of the time gave huge coverage of the crimes of the British Empire, and it was all true. The crimes of British Imperialism are some of the bloodiest in human history, resulting in over 40,000,000 dead. As well as death by fire and sword, carried out in countless wars of invasion, occupation and suppression, millions more died by disease and neglect resulting from imperial policies of economic dislocation and appropriation, theft and slavery.
Exposed to this twisted one-sided propaganda, millions of German Socialists and Leftists became committed National Socialists.
Apologists for the Assad regime today, even on this site, just like the German Nazis, continually bring up the crimes of the US and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and even occasionally, Vietnam.
At the same time as they point to the crimes of American imperialism, these apologists for Syrian style fascism, consciously and deliberately ignore, or deny the crimes of the Assad regime.
Sometimes, when they can’t deny these crimes, they alternatively use the crimes committed by the US and its allies, as an excuse to justify the genocidal crimes of the Assad regime committed against the Syrian people.
Just as the Nazis continually and repeatedly brought up the crimes of British Imperialism in India and Africa to hide their own criminal imperial designs and crimes against humanity.
This is why Bill and Ed and other committed Assad apologists on this site refuse to answer the question;
No she is not John Key, nor Bill English but she has worked with both and has their support.
Having seen her in action on the campaign trail in Wellington and having watched her maiden statement on Wednesday, and her first speech on the Second Reading of the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill on Thursday, I actually suspect that she is going to put up the backs of a lot of her National Party fellow MPs.
I agree that she is a good speaker – but IMO it also comes with a level of self-assurance that verges on the arrogant; and a self-expectation that she is going to be the one to make a big difference. I suspect this attitude may well get up the noses of some of her colleagues who have been in the House for a lot longer than her – for example, some of the more experienced women, and people like J-L Ross, and also possibly Bridges himself. We shall see.
Your logic is sound as far as it goes – certainly none of her colleagues have much to offer. And she hasn’t publicly blotted her copybook yet – though if she spent much time with Key the expectation must be that she will at the first opportunity.
IMO she is a very different kettle of fish to Key – more a younger Collins? I think she is going to get up the noses of her fellow (but more experienced) Nat Party colleagues in the House as mentioned in my comment above at 14.1,1,4. LOL
Exactly. I think that it is going to be interesting in the months ahead to see what happens within the National ranks. I suspect we are going to see some new internal groupings forming. Willis certainly had the support there on Weds for her maiden speech – Key, Joyce and many others.
On Thursday, support for Willlis was very evident from two of the other new Nats, Denise Lee and Erica Stanford, sitting immediately behind her.
Mind you IMO, Stanford is also a competent speaker and I suspect also very ambitious. Despite only coming into Parliament in Sept 2017, Stanford has already scored a position as Associate Spokesperson on the Environment in Bridges’ reshuffle in March 2018 under Scott Simpson who was appointed by Bill English last Nov as main Environment Spokesperson. (In March, Bridges also replaced Maggie Barry appointed by English as Conservation Spokesperson with Sarah Dowie in this position – another ambitious young woman …)
Stanford in the General Debate on Wednesday, 11 April. Enough said.
I think your criticism is unfounded, Cleangreen. It could even be said that you are opportunistically taking a cheap shot.
Personally I think that the Nats have shot themselves in the foot on this one. And the “Nat trolls” you speak of, are in full retreat. Good one.
I also might add here;
That it not just the Left that has fallen for the Assad regime, and like you will use any excuse to shut down any criticism of the regime.
This is because, as well as being a darling of the Centre Left, Assad is also a darling of the Right and Far Right, and not because Assad falsely paints himself as an anti-imperialist and secular leader, (which is Assad’s attraction to the Left), It is not because of this fiction that the Right love Assad, but because they acknowledge and applaud the real nature of the Assad regime as repressive and sectarian and reactionary.
But don’t take my word for it;
Miream Salameh is a refugee from Syria. She gave this speech at a refugee rights rally in Melbourne on Saturday, 5 November, 2017
My name is Miream Salameh. I’m a Syrian refugee artist who came to Australia three years ago.
I am from a Christian family. I never needed to say that here or in my country because Muslims and Christians always live together in harmony and peace, but I say this today because I need to explain that my family and I escaped from the Syrian regime violence before ISIS even existed in my country.
The Assad regime claims that it protects minorities like us from extremist groups. That is not true. The regime protects itself by using minorities as a playing card to tell Western societies that it is the only source of protection for us.
You Tokoroa sandflys I have observed you enough to know your behaviors everyone seen the 2 who you hired to try and intimidat me in Putaruru yesterday.
I don’t believe in coincidences so everyone knows who my Whano is in this neck of the woods and I say that if anything happens to my Mokopunas on the roads they will know that it was uses who are to blame for anything bad happening to them this raru is one you started we me so leave my – – – – – Whano out of this Ana to kai. If I did not have this wonderful website and the backing of MY——— I would be locked up druged up in Jail on FALSE CHARGES ECO MAORI FEELS for the others that this has happened to. Ka kite ano
Good evening Newshub that volcanic eruption on Hawaii show us that man is nothing with out mother nature blessing I send my condolences to the natives who are displace by Ruaumoko in Hawaii .
Sugar is a poison to Te tangata te Pacific and should be taxed higher than other foods a lot of us have 10 15 cups of tea or coffee a day x 2 to 3 teas spoon of the stuff = 20 to 45 teaspoon of sugar a day one’s body can not cope with that our body are designed to use the unprocessed sugar that comes naturally in the food we eat not the man made sugar.
Prosessed food once again.
Boxing in not the only sport that can cause early dementia in people any contact sport that cause concussion can cause this problem and not only in Pacific people it’s all people who suffer from this we need head gear as a compulsory law in all contact sports. The old Maori tradition te manaw is highly Tapu you never hit a Mokopuna on the head for very good reasons Eco Maori says. It’s a good weekend of sports I see it Ka kite ano
Eco Maori will have to be extra dilagint in what he say to whom as the sandflys put a mean spin on everything I say it’s a phonomen that I will have to be careful what I write on this site to as I have not had a schools education but life has educated me and I read things and tell it like I see it with out knowing that the people I write about have had a very significant role in OUR history. Their are other reasons as well that I will have to be careful to. Eco Maori can see all te tangata that reads his post and it is quite a vast and diverse audience. Ka kite ano
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Mariupol, on the Azov Sea coast, was one of the first cities to suffer almost complete destruction after the start of the Ukraine War started in late February 2022. We remember the scenes of absolute destruction of the houses and city structures. The deaths of innocent civilians – many of ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – Ten years ago, I wrote the following in a Listener column: Every year around one in five new-born babies will be reliant on their caregivers benefit by Christmas. This pattern has persisted from at least 1993. For Maori the number jumps to over one in three. ...
Climate change is expected to generate more and more extreme events, delivering a sort of structural shock to inflation that central banks will have to react to as if they were short-term cyclical issues. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s ...
It’s a simple deal. We pay taxes in order to finance the social services we want and need. The carnage now occurring across the public sector though, is breaking that contract. Over 3,000 jobs have been lost so far. Many are in crucial areas like Education where the impact of ...
Hi,A friend had their 40th over the weekend and decided to theme it after Curb Your Enthusiasm fashion icon Susie Greene. Captured in my tiny kitchen before I left the house, I ending up evoking a mix of old lesbian and Hillary Clinton — both unintentional.Me vs Hillary ClintonIf you’re ...
This is a re-post from Andrew Dessler at the Climate Brink blogIn 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something ...
The schools are on holiday and the sun is shining in the seaside village and all day long I have been seeing bunches of bikes; Mums, Dads, teens and toddlers chattering, laughing, happy, having a bloody great time together. Cheers, AT, for the bits of lane you’ve added lately around the ...
Today in our National-led authoritarian nightmare: Shane Jones thinks Ministers should be above the law: New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is accusing the Waitangi Tribunal of over-stepping its mandate by subpoenaing a minister for its urgent hearing on the Oranga Tamariki claim. The tribunal is looking into the ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. ...
Citizen Science writes – Last week saw two significant developments in the debate over the treatment of trans-identifying children and young people – the release in Britain of the final report of Dr Hilary Cass’s review into gender healthcare, and here in New Zealand, the news that the ...
One night while sleeping in my bed I had a beautiful dreamThat all the people of the world got together on the same wavelengthAnd began helping one anotherNow in this dream, universal love was the theme of the dayPeace and understanding and it happened this wayAfter such an eventful day ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
Headline: The moment of friction. – 36th Parallel Assessments In strategic studies “friction” is a term that it is used to describe the moment when military action encounters adversary resistance. “Friction” is one of four (along with an unofficial fifth) “F’s” in military strategy, which includes force (kinetic mass), ...
The Fast-track Bill, if passed, would allow three Ministers, unchallenged and unchecked, to approve the immediate extraction and exhaustion of one-off resources. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne iamharin/Shutterstock For many people, the term “bulk billed” refers to a GP visit they don’t have to pay ...
Emmas Hislop, Sidnam and Wehipeihana discuss what’s in a name. Emma Sidnam: Hello Emmas! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. My first question for you is related to what’s been on my mind for a while. It’s very important. You see we’ve recently had some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Sievers, Research Fellow, Global Wetlands Project, Australia Rivers Institute, Griffith University Chris Brown Humans love the coast. But we love it to death, so much so we’ve destroyed valuable coastal habitat – in the case of some types of habitat, ...
Josh Thomson on the 80s milk ad jingle he can’t stop singing, the beauty of The Simpsons, why Jersey Shore is as good as Shakespeare and more. For someone who spends a lot of time on our screens, popping up in everything from 7 Days to Taskmaster, Educators to Good ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
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 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
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Opinion: With maths understanding at 42 percent for Year 8 students, there’s no doubt something has to be done. But how? The post Financial literacy should be on all of us appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Hineaupounamu ‘Missy’ Nuku has been scaling mountains in Canada for her college basketball team, the Lakeland Rustlers. Alberta is currently home for the 20-year-old point guard, who is in her first year of a scholarship at Lakeland College, where she is studying for a business degree. She has certainly made ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
More funding shortfalls thanks to the nats.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/103585348/education-minister-reveals-the-11-billion-problem-facing-schools-nationally
That’s what happens when the rich don’t pay enough tax.
Tony said rightly; “More funding shortfalls thanks to the nats.”
That’s what happens when the National Party “divert funds to their preferences” (for nine long years) as they did with taking all funds ‘payable’ from road and rail maintenance costs away from the regions, and putting them into their ”
pork belly “National roads of significance” playbook.
Truly a bunch of modern day “Robbing hoods” aren’t they just?
Some of what they don’t pay is spent on private health insurance premiums, retirement savings, private school fees, charitable donations and accomodation for adult family members, thereby reducing demand on the public purse.
None of which is any good for society.
Private health takes resources away from the public health system and thus making it worse.
Retirement savings are a scam – just like capitalism itself.
Charitable donations never cover the full needs of society.
We cannot afford the rich because they’re all bludgers.
😩
ah the rich vein of resentment that emanates from a bludger when they see someone doing better than themselves
I’m not resentful of the bludgers – I’m angry.
They’re stealing from us and government keeps supporting it.
Thanks for the tuppenny wank TS.
And they import as many workers as possible to create a low wage economy and overload the welfare system with as many people all who qualify for subsidies, as possible to ‘stimulate demand’ for the private sector, such as building more prisons, privatising prisons, privatising healthcare, privatising charities, privatising welfare through private agencies, more roads, more houses, more PPP’s of ha ha ‘public’ transport…. etc IN short taking from the people and giving to corporations who are apparently the holy grail of a special type of community (who knew?).
Unfortunately the government have not worked out that in previous times aka 19th and early 20c this government investment in infrastructure led to local jobs and local goods being used to service the economy. In the 21c this doesn’t happen anymore, you borrow money or increase taxes, but it’s just as likely to go offshore corporations and not provide many local jobs, instead create havoc by lowering wages, decreasing jobs for local workers who suffer, not buying local products, create havoc more houses needed, more hospitals, more health care to provide for all the new previously offshore but now onshore workers.
Apparently government don’t keep any statistics and immigration is all based on arrival cards and what people decide to put on there. (likewise census). So I’m guessing if you are coming to NZ to work illegally as a stopper than you don’t exactly declare it… nor the people trafficking and so forth. Basically the government has no ways to even work out how many people are working illegally here or just using the welfare system under false names. How many people leave as soon as they obtain residency (clues are there is now a big amount of people going out of NZ). Migrants will behave the same way as Kiwi workers, if they are not paid enough or the opportunities are not there, they will leave as well… so it solves nothing to not look at the causes of skilled people leaving NZ.
Maybe time the government gets some hard facts on what’s actually going on. How many babies being born and registered as NZ citizens, how many people are actually on welfare and is it after they gain their residency, how many people who have just moved here will be able to claim the pension in a decade or less. How many people leave once getting residency. The get somehow who actually knows what they are doing to get some predictions going.
The original premise of migration in NZ was apparently to bring ‘young workers’ in to provide taxes for our aging population, but the story keeps changing, because now we seem to have a whole lot of young people who need WFF or social welfare if their relationship breaks up and elderly relatives and siblings seem to be able to come in as well, with a bit of creative paperwork. Skilled people can leave after gaining residency.
All roads are leading to a huge change in NZ society and look at what’s happened overseas, it does not lead to a left wing government after excessive migration (either in or out, aka some countries have been left with not enough skilled people aka Poland and trying to get them back). It leads to social disruption, and right wing governments getting in if the left wing government denies there is an issue.
And then those people paying taxes, are told, ‘pay more’, we also need more workers and more taxes to pay for the infrastructure of all the new workers.. the Ponzi continues
Weren’t you one of the ones complaining about the census? The most basic of tools the government uses to get some of those hard facts.
I’m complaining that the census and arrival/departure cards are based on what people choose to put in it and I think it’s time to look more at hard facts, like birth registration data, house and assets transfers, hospital and school records and welfare payments across all sectors from unemployment, WFF, super, DPB etc more in depth rather than relying on what people volunteer which is used as facts, to build a much more detailed picture of what happened in the last decade and how that is going to impact the country.
You seem to be looking for one shop that does everything, whereas pretty much all your requested data is already gathered by different departments.
People earning under the table are looked for by IRD, as well as companies fiddling books to pay the employees. Immigration officers look for overstayers or people in violation of their visas. Beneficiaries need id just to get into the bloody office, so it’s not like just putting a fake name on the form. IRD, WINZ and I believe a few other organisations all share data to detect frauds.
All a one-stop-shop data shop would do is maximise the damage of a data breach. For what? What is the clear, simple and explicit objective you wish to achieve with this data collation?
Stats NZ identified the issue with relying arrival cards a couple of years ago and have come up with a new report where they use Customs data to compare intentions with actions.
11bn
Number 11 featuring…again…
11bn dollar holes…
Do rightwingers in positions of power undervalue education because they feel threatened if people know too much, ie… dodgy dealings?
Space for comments below article
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/removing-the-conditions-on-welfare-works
If we paid people unable to work the same way as pensioners, many problems could be solved. Taxation would even out anomalies of part time or full time work and it would replace the current pittance working for families etc.
When will a New Zealand journalist bother to challenge the Australian bankers about the obscene profits they loot out of this country every year?
When are they going to state this is another failed market?
Banking
Insurance
Power
Oil
Failed markets.
That allow.
Multinational corporations.
To loot our country.
Thanks Roger Douglas, John Key and Ruth Richardson.
Friends of international finance.
Traitors all to the ordinary citizens of this country.
Which of our power companies are multi nationals ed?
Up to 49% of pretty much all of them. Only that much because John Key knew he couldn’t sell a full sale to the public.
I suppose that if you were challenged to produce some evidence for this claim you would offer something like.
“Well for XXX the overseas ownership is 0;.26%. That is “Up to 49%” so my statement is true.
What are the real numbers. If you don’t know you an simply admit you don’t know.
Your claim is about as honest as the statements by your leader when she says something is “an excise. It’s not a tax”.
Just look at the shareholding of each of the powercos. Anything “nominees” is a corporate holding (incl RBNZ). The actuals will be different across each but they’re already far from the Mum and Dad ownership that John Key sold the sale to NZers as.
That doesn’t answer the question.
You labelled them as “multi-nationals”, implying that the ownership was foreign based. I don’t dispute the accuracy of your answer but it says precisely nothing about where the beneficial owners are situated.
How can I see that the ownership is foreign?
It actually doesn’t matter. Selling them was a mistake and even that false market that National put in place was stupid. Power generation and distribution is a natural monopoly that should be run as a state service.
Power distribution may be a natural monopoly.
Power generation is not.
Indeed, many commenters on this blog argue that it really should be a small scale DIY operation with solar panels on the roof. That would be about as far from a “monopoly” as it would be possible to get.
Which is the really expensive way to go about it as it minimises economies of scale rather than maximising them. It also contributes to inequalities that are detrimental to society.
I’m all for solar panels on every house roof but have them emplaced and maintained by the state service. That gets the economies of scale maximised, the service to be stable and spreads the benefit across society at maximum speed.
How do Multinationals “loot” anything?
By owning it.
So when you own something you loot it do you? How very odd.
I might be interstellar from time to time but I’m not a multinational.
Ownership allows unearned income. This is income from everyone else for doing nothing.
Otherwise known as theft.
https://medium.com/nine-by-five-media/looting-africa-299932cc22f1
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/24/world-is-plundering-africa-wealth-billions-of-dollars-a-year
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/new-report-shows-corporations-and-western-governments-continue-to-profit-from-looting-of-africa/
Gosman, Google “Looting countries by companies”.
Stop asking questions and start looking for answers yourself.
You can do it.
LOL! The looting of Africa. A continent that receives the least amount of FDI than any other (bar Antarctica) is somehow being looted because people hardly invest there. You are having a laugh.
You seen “Darwin’s Nightmare“?
Have a wee watch.
Then apply the same or similar scenario to just about anything that can be transported from Africa, and reflect on that going on for nigh on 200 years.
See if you’re still so blase then.
He will be. Anything that proves his ideology wrong will be ignored.
And the countless failed attempts at socialism you’ve ignored?
I haven’t ignored them. I’ve looked at what went wrong and the answer is almost always a hierarchy that mimics capitalism and a serious misunderstanding of economics and societies.
The USSR didn’t collapse because it was socialist but because it was state capitalist.
NZ’s hydro generation produced some of the cheapest sustainable power in the world. Since privatization consumers, far from enjoying the price reductions promised by disgraced former politician Max Bradford, now pay among the highest electricity prices in the world, including penalties to solar conversions. One average NZ bill would pay a year of my Korean power bills with some left over. It’s a fucking disgrace.
Where is your evidence that we pay amongst the highest electricity prices in the World?
Gosman, Google world power prices.
Go on, you can do it.
Then you’ll find this out.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/electricity-rates-around-the-world.html
Look at the table, and then add in New Zealand at $US 0.19.
Then you will know, and no longer have to ask questions.
Where did you get $USD 0.19 for NZ electricity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing
Based on that Table we are a long, long way from being amongst the most expensive in the World. Thanks for providing the link.
BTW that doesn’t take in to account purchasing power. 15 US cents per kilowatt hours is a lot more costly for the average South African than 19 US cents in NZ.
This would tend to support the view that your opinion is nonsense.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11941663
“Despite the rise in residential prices, New Zealand still has the 11th lowest residential electricity prices among the 32-country OECD, and the seventh lowest industrial prices.”
So you can do it? Knew you could.
You seem to suggest NZ has some of the highest rates yet that isn’t supported by any figures I have seen.
And it is not amongst the most highest in the World according to the link you very kindly provided me. Thanks for that.
Not a problem. I’m not involved in the argument.
Just pointing out that you can do your own research if you want, and thereby stop asking questions for which the answer is readily available.
Are you aware of the ratio of questions to answers you provide in your ‘comments’?
Yes. And so what?
The reason I ask the question is to highlight the fact that the person making the claim has NOT provided any supporting evidence.
You understand the concept of burden of proof I presume. Apply the concept here.
BTW your links “supporting” the idea that Africa is being looted were risible.
Facts do not align with neoliberal propaganda
Kids in the cold: outcomes for New Zealand households with children using prepayment metering for electricity
Power Failure: New Zealand Electricity Deregulation
Kiwis lose $871 million from power company privatisations
Messy Path to Privatization for New Zealand Power Company
Something is very wrong with New Zealand’s electricity market
Behind Auckland’s power crisis – Profiteering, deception and anti-democracy
When the capitalists take over, services turn to shit
Yeah nah – a Herald article vs actual bills? Nope. $8 a month was about average for my time in Seoul.
And they of course don’t have enormous state built hydro assets.
Who’s gonna be the last one to turn off the lights after we all leave?
We’ve got such cheap power nobody will bother to turn the lights off…
Thanks also Michael Cullen, Bill English and Grant Robertson and every future finance minister who sits by while this carries on. Only Robertson may yet redeam himself…
I don’t have any faith that Robertson will redeem himself. He’ll still support the capitalist plunder of the country.
Here’s some related ones according to Guy McPherson too,
Big Ag
Big Ad (no relation)
Big Pharma
Big Energy
Can we add Big Supermarket to that?
granted Foodstuffs is NZ owned, but the duopoly that no government forever seems to have to balls to break up is responsible for unjustified extortion of basic food prices for the simple reason that they can. There is no “choice” for the vast majority of NZers where they get their food from and that extortion is a contributing factor to people not eating well, or enough.
Yeah that’s part of it too, possibly coming under a big food umbrella.
Reminds me of the Hughs War On Waste doco from the UK, that looks at consumer waste and how the supermarkets play their part in it too. Can watch it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3c4g04
How are any of those failed markets ?
Just look round the market man, now we see the cost of building products is now said to be 3 times the cost of Australian building supplies now and the cost per meter of building is four times higher according to a report i heard today on AM radio Duncan Garner.
The Australian reporter said ( quote;) “we are being screwed”.
Go look at the media releases on Australian building costs vs NZ costs.
Yes it was far better when everything was state controlled, the so called elite where those who had the various government licenses etc, no choice, no freedom, hey but every one had to put up with same shite, shoddy service, for god sake you could only get white bread, took 6 week to get a phone connected, could only move something by truck for 100 miles then had to rail ( good luck if it turned up at all or let alone in full) and needed permission to get 1000 dollars fix to go overseas on holiday but hey every one was equally miserable so all good however so all good
Where a nightwatchman could afford to own a large racing yacht. Almost all families were fed and housed adequately, you could support a family on one income, poverty almost non existent, it cost buggerall to play sports, to go tramping, swimming or exploring the back country. good medical care and education was cheap or free, weekends, and evenings, were free time, not only for a few rich, and we had one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Terrible times, Indeed!
You could by a decent, watertight, durable 3 bdrm house on a quarter acre in an Auckland suburb for less than 3 x your annual income.
All the local kids (and quite a few of the adults) would play cricket, spotlight, etc together out in the street with no fear of getting run over.
Milk cost 3 cents and was delivered to your door.
People actually physically talked to one another. You knew all your neighbours.
10 bucks an hour was a decent wage.
Space Invaders.
Bare feet.
Bull Rush
Sunday night double features at the local cinema. 40 cents a ticket.
Nothing open on Sundays except the dairy.
Nothing miserable about anything back then. Life was great and we appreciated how lucky we were.
Gotta agree that was my up bringing And I do think been a kid then was easier however the technology, choices, freedom you have today is fantastic but I do agree their are downsides and less certainty Irrespective give me today’s freedom and choice over the blandness and one size fits all of the pre 80s. The other thing that lifestyle was funded off the sheep backs where the uk brought all we had that all ended in the early 70s and we borrowed to maintain that lifestyle
What freedom?
What choice?
We had plenty of freedom. Certainly more than we have today.
The service was shoddy and is actually getting worse as more cowboys enter the market and drive down wages.
Actually, it took three days to get a phone connected in most cases. Some took a little longer because we actually had to run the lines out first. Now, consider that in many places today it’s a six month wait and other places you can’t even get ADSL never mind fibre. Yeah, in telecommunications things have gone seriously backwards.
Moving anything by truck for more than 50km is bad planning as it uses excessive resources. See, forcing freight onto the trains had nothing to do with protecting the trains and everything to do with limiting resource usage.
Despite your complaints getting foreign exchange wasn’t really that hard. You just had to plan for it.
Crap about white bread. My parents owned a dairy in the 60’s and you could get brown and also this chunky whole meal. But true food was a bit limited back then
WTF do you mean by ‘true food’?
New Zealand superfund makes a better return of its assets than the Aussie bankers. Shall we ask them to explain at the same time?
No, because they have not been accused of malpractice. They are just fortunate that the heralded crash has yet to occur, and shares have generally risen. Tuppence reflects the value of your contribution this time. (And others, I suspect.)
Ed made no mention of their practices, just the nationalistion of their profits. Nz superfund repatriates it’s off shore profits. How would we feel about those being nationalised by a foreign country
Personally, I would fully sympathise with the foreign country. I have no time for profit-gougers – those whom Bernard Shaw correctly called the Idle Rich.
‘
The Tears of Hine Hukatere
A love story
Typical mean spiritedness from Ministry of Health Disability Support Services at calls for funding for carbon fibre splints to support normal gait and reduce falls and musculoskeletal issues in those with disabilities.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/health/news/article.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=12007443
They, the Miserly of Health,really have no concept at all of ‘investment’ when it comes to disability, especially when it comes to funding equipment that has the potential to transform lives. And the difference with this technology is akin to the old ‘brick’ mobile phones being promptly ditched for pocket sized tech. Only fools would continue to use the old when the new is so much better for the user.
“”As technology improves over time and costs are likely to come down, there may be the ability to consider funding this type of technology in the future,” said Toni Atkinson, the ministry’s group manager of disability support services.”
And this lot seem unable to do cost benefit analyses….higher initial cost offset by lower downstream costs….foreign concept.
And god forbid they fund new technologies that enable people to go out into their communities with confidence.
Because that would mean that seeing more people with disabilities out and about would be normal….
NB…it is my understanding that this technology is funded by our lucky cousins on ACC.
Like the scrapping of funding reduced costs for funding visits to G’s I’m afraid.
Anything to improve health funding has to be sacrificed to fund a years paid holiday for would be “students”.
That and paying for the “Save New Zealand First” slush fund to make Shane Jones’ flights out of Kerikeri more comfortable.
alwyn. Sigh. Seriously? Sighs again, and decides not to do the TS thing of blaming the Natz for everything.
alwyn. The very least one should do before one comments is to read the post, maybe google the named persons and get a real sense of the history…
Toni ‘what a wonderful job we’re doing for the disabled’ Atkinson has been group Manager at MOH:DSS since way, way before the latest election. She is the problem, as are her fellow MOH bureaucrats.
The incumbents of the government benches are not in control here…this lot, or the previous lot….IMHO.
Quite true Rosemary, the MOH, PHARMAC and other health QANGOs with their assorted mandarins potter on in their usual way regardless of who’s sitting on the right hand side of the debating chamber.
My youngest son has Spina bifida and walks with the assistance of plastic AVO’s. We have to have these replaced ever 6 months or so due both to his growing and more importantly the fact that they just flat out can’t survive a 7 year old trying to run around at school for 6 months. I use try as they are also very limited in how much they do for him. They basically allow him to walk and try to run.
Obviously I can’t say if these would suit his circumstances however with what the article describes the difference it would make to my boys life to actually be able to run around the play ground with the other kids would be huge. To play tag and not always be it because you are easy to catch and then can’t catch others.
These sorts of things go beyond the initial cost. This sort of thing could help make going to school a far more enjoyable prospect for kids with disabilities.
Hiya crashcart, and thanks for commenting and giving your input as someone who has the benefit of lived experience.
“To play tag and not always be it because you are easy to catch and then can’t catch others.
These sorts of things go beyond the initial cost. This sort of thing could help make going to school a far more enjoyable prospect for kids with disabilities.”
Could someone put this before Clark or Genter please?
Labour’s positive changes coming for RMA to reverse the ‘rot ‘that national intentionally changed to benefit the rich investors for profit and charging the public for cost for their ‘perceived right’ to plan their commercial ‘extensions’ instead of considering environmental consideration and charging all investigative and legal costs to the taxpayer. and away from their rightful costs.
Clever deceptive people weren’t National?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1805/S00034/change-to-eez-act-is-start-of-resource-management-reform.htm
And at the same time they will somehow be able to get more houses to be built to solve the housing crisis – Yeah right.
so you have finally admitted there IS a housing crisis, how long did that take????
nine years and some breathing space 😉
You mistake me for a National party supporter
all tories look alike.
and smell.
“Yeah right”
Super important to change RMA to give long term environmental risks much more importance, if we don’t, we turn into a polluted little back water, with a brigade of Bill n John’s truck stops… I’ve always thought we were working towards a Thailand type system… luxury overseas owned tourist ventures, with sewerage in the streets and cheap drugs with Los Angeles transport and large houses and a Phillipines type overseas population of workers escaping for better wages. But I’m not sure that government/business vision is a good one.
Yeah and then see how housing costs increase even further.
Yes because I’d prefer another McMansion and MegaStore/Mall luxury hotel /conference centre, with the small price to pay of sewage in the beaches, dead native forests and lower wages for the economic workers…. many of whom have to be ‘bought’ in for our ‘skills’ shortages but also need additional housing and cars… to keep the Ponzi going strong.
The other day, some recent migrant was caught having 3 babies concurrently to different women. That’s dedication to the cause…. imagine instead of 1 house 1 family, he now probably needs three houses to be supplied for his increasing brood … talk about increasing your own demand for housing…
With this in mind I’m sure there are more practical ways to stop the housing crisis through legislation, than destroying our immediate environment with bizarre short term RMA, for the next generation.
Yes, obviously male immigrants should be sterilized at the border.
That imagination again, Solka. Someone give real examples of what is going on and you respond as usual without any sensible solution or even concern that that not be a good thing.
Never mind, I think someone might have made something up about someone in government and we can all spend government time and media on that rather than what is actually going on and then pretend what is going on, is not happening.
That’s because you talk such a load of shit where there is no actual discernible point. So one immigrant has gotten three women pregnant and you try to suggest from that that there is some kind of conspiracy – “That’s dedication to the cause”. Like WTF?
You say he was caught. What law did he break? Is there really no NZ born men who have done this?
I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy (as usual adding your own delusions), but we have a housing shortage and supposedly he’s got residency because he’s helping solve that??
And nope not broken any laws apparently immigration are fine with that, my guess only came to light due to the women going on a benefit and being investigated for fraud, which says a lot about who we think are the fraudsters in this country.
If you can’t see the relationship between more people and the effects on the housing crisis then that says more about your intellectual capacity… and your sense of justice seems more like a market driven one, oh Kiwi’s can do it, lets roll with that, the more the merrier having loads of concurrent kids …. if you were not a part time champion of the Greens (scary enough), you could easily be an ACT supporter.
“oh Kiwi’s can do it, lets roll with that,”
and there we have your prejudice oozing out. You seem to be saying that we should have one set of rules and expectations for those who were born here and another for immigrants. Clearly you have no respect for human rights or natural justice.
Not sure how valuing such would make me an Act supporter.
ps. The first Key Principle in the Greens Immigration Policy is:
Treat all migrants with dignity, compassion, and respect in accordance with international conventions on human rights.
https://www.greens.org.nz/page/immigration-policy
I just want to see more houses built. I don’t care about their size particularly.
Sounds like there’s property in Queenstown if you have $30 million. I don’t think we have any issues building houses, it seems more how the resources are being allocated and for whom, that might be the issue of shortages.
The Labour-led government invests $100 million to combat homelessness, and launches it on the same marae that took in hundreds and hundreds of people last winter:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12044775
Makes me feel good paying taxes for that one.
Yes, it is good they are doing something, big plus for Labour led government. But are they looking at the changes in government policy under the Natz that have led to this massive rise in homelessness in particular over the past 6 years?
Are you aware of the government’s housing policies?
Go have a read. There have been a few announcements this year on that topic if you go through the Beehive site.
I’m more interested in policy that stops the homelessness happening in the first place. Increased wages and conditions that can provide a decent living not an increasing number of workers scrounging for benefit top ups because you can’t survive on wages, bigger focus on kids and education which is having the next generation of kids having skills, mental health and ability to cope, morals , decency for all, entrepreneurship and so forth, not having them scared out of their wits that someone is going to gun them down or a tree falls over and some private course will save them, also having little provision of them in the work force due to their lack of experience… a tax system that helps people who live in NZ and pay taxes here, not actually encouraging undercutting through offshore completion with lower wages and conditions and materials, having a decent retirement for people who lived and worked in NZ for most of their lives… a housing market that is not skewed by allowing people who don’t live here/pay full taxes here to invest here as though they do live here, a focus of quality exports, not cheap ones and making sure that Kiwis can afford their own quality food and buy a house and it is not all exported off for wealthier people, while through loopholes residents are expected to pay to support overseas families lifestyles (or in the case below, employers low wages), while not actually being able to afford a lifestyle of their own.
It’s not even about the money, so much as the rot it’s causing in society when people become commoditised.
This is an increasing type of employer. A ex Serbian man killed while working as a security guard probably on minimum wages with minimal training. When the union offered courses the company who employed him declined saying, I will just hire someone who already has the qualification. Companies whose prime motivation is profits, increasingly seem to see their employees as disposable commodities and when things go wrong the tax payer will clean up the mess, financially as well as socially and the family just suck up the death. Meanwhile another low paid, untrained worker will only be too willing to take his place in the race to the bottom.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/05/union-hits-out-at-security-firm-after-guard-s-death.html
How will increased wages solve the housing crisis? Won’t more income just push prices higher?
You don’t mention housing policy. As Ad asks, are you aware of the government’s housing policies?
Of course income won’t push house prices higher. House prices are driven by demand. Demand comes from immigration, tourism, more people coming to live in NZ either permanently or temporality.
The cost of building a house is astronomical. The profit driven free market NZ system has created a monster when every step you take is a rout of profiteering.
That is why people concentrate on land creation for profit. Why would you build when it is so risky and you can just get the council to re zone your land and create massive value aka with rezoning land can go from 1 million to 30 million overnight. It’s free money created out of nothing. Natz love it. Council love it (more rates).
Building is a different kettle of fish because so much more can go wrong and profiteering is even more rife. You then have to provide the infrastructure as well and if you have not bothered to do that before consenting then you start getting big problems with pollution.
The numbers don’t work for Labour’s housing. I mean every day we hear how they need to import hundreds of people into NZ which of course takes up housing adding to demand. Even the hospitality people are jumping up and down these days about demand. I’m sure unemployed people/students/single parents could manage to be trained to wait a table or pour a drink, but no apparently hospitality also suffer severe ‘skilled’ sic. shortages!
As soon as immigration wanes, housing prices stop going up. Already happened in Auckland, the rapid increases have slowed with Labour getting in.
Labour have built 18 affordable houses so far. Good on them, but seriously when they go to ballot what is going to happen if 1/2 of them go to new migrants while long term tax paying Kiwi workers miss out? And if the migrants miss out people like the banned Wei will be up in arms too, as discrimination. What happens to the million+ residents who are renters?
Personally think all the taxpayer housing should be kept under taxpayer control and rented out with provisions in place so the Natz can’t sell them off when they next get in.
This is a moral question and there is no right answer, but in the interests of fairness or perception of fairness, I think the government will have a problem when the affordable houses start being divvided out on who gets them.
As soon as government bumps up wages to living levels aka $20p/h and removes zero hour contracts on jobs that are not casual aka fast food/supermarket/service stations then more people will be able to afford rents.
Rents are governed by what it costs to build a house and pay to maintain it. There is a massive discrepancy between wages and the price of building a house/buying a house/renting a house. Adding more houses is not going to solve that especially if you are adding more people into NZ than the new houses. Even if you add massive amount of new houses, where are the higher paid jobs for the people???
Are you aware of the government’s housing policies? It doesn’t seem so.
Why don’t you give us the news then Solka, how many house to be built this year and how many available under $650,000 by the government and how many available for renting… Personally I don’t think $650k should even be considered affordable.
I’m taking move in housing, not a spread sheet or plan for 2018.
Go do your own research.
So, let me help you out here with your awareness of actual policy being delivered since you clearly lack the motivation or skill to do it for yourself.
Here’s today’s policy on homelessness:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/100-million-tackle-homelessness
First KiwiBuild homes going up:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/frames-go-first-kiwibuild-houses
Increase the minimum wage substantially …
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/minimum-wage-increases-weekend
… together with putting $28 billion into high paying jobs in the civil construction industry:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/record-investment-get-auckland-moving
Further investment from Kiwibuild:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/unitec-deal-marks-major-kiwibuild-milestone
Reversing market forces into public housing:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/government-stops-sale-state-houses
And put a billion dollars into regional growth initiatives, along with a whole bunch of other initiatives:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/pre-budget-speech-business-nz
All you had to do, SaveNZ, as I recommended, is actually acquaint yourself with the number and interlocking impact of the policies and funded announcements and initiatives that are already underway.
The moral question you wail about is long since answered, and it goes like this: if you elect a Labour-led coalition government it is better for workers and home owners in a pretty short space of time.
@Ad/Solka So either you don’t know the number, too lazy to provide it, or there is nothing concrete for delivery for this year! Thought so.
If you can’t find the numbers in those releases then you’re not ever going to understand numbers better than a primary school child.
Waste someone else’s time.
Yep, you don’t know, and probably neither does the Labour Party or the Greens.
If you can’t actually give proper figures and delivery times after allocating all that money, something is wrong with accountability.
As i’ve explained before, the problem lies with Woolworths and the crappy magic wands that they supply.
Still no number even though a primary school child can apparently work it out…
But the child has to do it themselves if they’re going to learn anything.
solkta; – “Was you aware of national’s ‘housing policies” – you know the one that failed us all?
Not sure what your point is.
he or she probably assumes your continual nasty invective is most commonly connected to a J Key Nat supporter. I, however, think your just another nasty 3rd way-er overly invested in neoliberal identity politics.
I’m a “3rd way-er” now am I? I’ll add it to the collection.
So funny the labels that get thrown at you here just for challenging something stupid that someone said.
Seeing as Housing First providers manage the tenancies and the properties but don’t actually supply the homes, would it be correct to assume that out of the $63 million going to be given to Housing First, not a cent will be going to increase our housing supply?
Saliva testing bill drawn from parliamentary ballot
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/356560/saliva-testing-bill-drawn-from-parliamentary-ballot
The “Land Transport (Random Oral Fluid Testing) Amendment Bill” is a relic from last millennium’s War On Drugs, is deeply flawed, and should be binned. The presence of traces of a drug does not prove impairment!! The only regimes for drug testing of drivers which have any validity are those which involve blood testing and in which a limit has been set above which impairment is considered to be established. I’m a bit puzzled about the true intent of this bill. Is it Virtue Signalling? or is it a strike in a Class War of Social Conservatives Vs Drug Users??
The presence of a drug from urine tests in my industry is enough to have people marched off site. NZTA are continuing to roll out their anti-drug-driver campaigns for similar reasons to ours.
Like yourself I’m not sure what a further legislated testing regime adds to this picture. The existing enforcements surely are enough.
Meh – dont do illegal drugs and it wont be a problem.
Don’t make people so devoid of hope for a better life, that they turn to drugs, or gambling, or alcohol, or borrowing from loan sharks.
Fixed it for you.
Have a look at Portugal or Iceland, if you really want to solve drug problems.
Drug tests are another rort by a solution looking for a problem, Like the P house testing.
+111
Most illegal drugs are no worse than the legal ones.
The “illegal” part is often much more problematic than the “drugs” part. You appear to be self-identifying as the Social Conservative sub-species of Right Whinger; it must be sad for you that John Banks is but a distant memory…
Hmmm, I sound a bit grumpy there. Am usually reasonably goodnatured; it must have been a particularly inane comment…
It’s National being their normal authoritarian selves and seeking to cut the fun that other people have in some belief that it will help employers.
DNA Database?
Thats (one of) the problems with rumours, the speculation
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12043768
Soper proves he’s to stupid to understand that if the nats scummy hench men had not spread lies then labour would not have had to deal with it .
The thing is i don’t believe any National MP had anything to do with this, after everything that went down Dirty Politics you’d have to be completely brain dead to think no one would make a connection between the rumours and the National party
I suspect its either the non-affiliated National voter or (more likely) non-political trolls doing this
I did say nat henchmen . the MPs are far to greasy to be caught at it first hand . you need to reread the dirty politics book to see how national operate
I don’t think theres any need for National and their “henchmen” for this kind of thing to happen.
Theres always been rumours and innudendo only now, with social media, its much more easier to spread and to have people listen
Does that decrease your workload, or do folks just have higher expectations of your output?
I don’t do social media
oh wow, you’ll have to work harder to catch up with them then. Don’t want to be downsized.
I appreciate your concern but i don’t need to worry about that sort of thing 🙂
Wait until the Russian bots take yer jerb 😛
Who do you think programs the bots…
In that case, it’s not job security that’s the problem – be careful who pours your tea…
Soapy can’t moralise and pontificate if some rotten spoilsports go around quashing rumours.
hurled link pucky?
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
Minister of Health David Clark puts the new hospital on the site of the Cadbury’s Building:
https://www.odt.co.nz/in the South
At over $1 billion this is the largest single build the South Island has had for a very long time.
More taxpayer money well spent.
Disagree Ad – it beggars belief that a spend of what will likely be in the order of 2 billion for a population of 250 thousand is considered a good spend when there are far larger population centres in NZ that a proportion of this spend could be targeted to.
It is long past time that NZ faced facts about trying to have a gold plated health service in every population centre.
Well presumably it will also include stuff for the university as well so not just a hospital
Yes the Chancellor and vc is neck deep in ot.
See I don’t mind this at all in fact its a good idea, much better to spend big money on something like this (something but useful and tangible) then something dumb like a free years study
About 25% of people in Dunedin are directly or indirectly employed by Otago University.
The procuremement will be interesting because as a lead beneficiary of this investment I would expect the University to contribute substantially to the construction cost and fitout. After all the medical school and all the specialists who work between hospital and teaching and research have huge interdependencies.. And I would hope it is kept under very close surveillance by the Minister – just as Parker did with Americas Cup facilities in Auckland – to ensure that officials and planners don’t take the easy and cheap routes to success.
The construction itself is going to be really interesting for a number of reasons:
– at 4.4% headline unemployed where are we going to get the workers to build it? Construction workers with the skills to take on an entire hospital are few and far between here.
– at almost 0% rental vacancy in Dunedin where are we going to put the workers, even if we can get them?
The City of Dunedin itself will have some role to play as well to ensure that this isn’t just the largest single CAPEX to ever happen to the city; it should be a full spatial rejuvenation of the entire precinct. It will surely need a relaxation of their height rules to enable the long-needed hotel capacity into Dunedin. The have turned down multiple large high quality hotel projects there recently when they are sorely needed.
I sure hope this procurement and the whole project demonstrates a once-a-century boost to the whole of Dunedin.
“I sure hope this procurement and the whole project demonstrates a once-a-century boost to the whole of Dunedin.”
Couldn’t agree more
The hotel projects were all a bit shit. 27 glass storeys on the waterfront? Bugger that.
I suspect it will be a bit like the stadium, where the university basically built the fourth wall as a separate building with their own stuff in it. The real issue will be whether they shift some of the anatomy/path folk down to a facility next to the hospital, as I think many of them are currently in varsity buildings across the road from the hospital (as well as some departments actually having facilities in the hospital itself).
Then I suppose they can rip the asbestos out of the current hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everyone’s happy lol
Because the stated “unemployment rate” is total bullshit, as we know.
At least half the young people in Whangarei are unemployed, or in zero hours, or 90 day trial non jobs, for one.
“Planet Key” statistics.
Plenty of work available up north picking kumera if they want it according to one news
Great. So the farmers up north will:
1. Pay for people to shift their entire families up north.
2. Pay a living wage once they get there and
3. Not abuse the shit out of them.
Yeah, not holding my breath.
Yeah. If they want to live on minimum wage and pay $300 a week, out of it, to live in a cowshed.
You will be able to determine its plating once the design and coatings come out.
If you have been a patient or visitor or medical professional to Dunedin Hospital you will understand.
Ad I have been to Dunedin Hospital a number of times and agree it is in dire need of destruction and rebuild.
trying to have a gold plated health service… yes because that is why we have a private system gaining a lot more traction…
Funny though, US pay the most in the world for health care, but so many can’t afford health care, and American’s seem to be almost encouraged to be as unhealthy as possible through food choices and lifestyle, all putting $$$$ into private health.
🙄
About time people understood ‘the markets’ is about profitability, morals don’t come into it.
So a society based around ‘the free market’ can easily become a morally bankrupt, dysfunctional society because bad things tend to be just as profitable as good things.
You need other measures such as environmental regulation, societal regulation such as human rights and so forth to try to keep the balance.
Expecting social things like hospitals to make money creates stupidity of decision making. Such as at Middlemore hospital, government money was funded for extending buildings that housed things like meeting rooms for consultants (they could then artificially make a ‘profit’ on that not like the sick kids that returned a ‘loss’) while the mould and sewage in the children wards was not deemed worthy of government funding.
Our problem is that we firstly don’t have a closed free market system so the theory is wrong straight away, we are also becoming less moral as a society (days of leaving door unlocked gone, full prisons, more stories of fraud), and also massive changes in legislation or the way it is applied under law, under the Natz has removed most of the regulation governing any sort of standard from human rights to environmental safeguards to tax law to resource/building consenting standards and norms.
So fuck the markets. It’s one part of living a life, but unfortunately seems to have taken over and we are now in stupidity land of ideology of leadership/advice from free marketeers who stopped thinking practically years/maybe decades ago.
What tax laws, human right laws, environmental laws, resource building laws and consents did Natz remove I can’t really think of any, hey but I may be wrong Also do you have any stats to show fraud and crime is up most of what I see is a these crimes are down
Thieving by National and their mates, for some strange reason, “is not a crime”.
No answer but silly cliches as I expected
human rights: right of prisoners to vote
Was it them that removed that?
It depends on how many lives get saved, not having to truck or chopper so many people up to chch or further. And that’s at DHB cost, not including “your appointment is on the 12th at 8am, get there somehow” transport barriers.
So you’ll probably find the capex offsets a lot of the operational costs that result from whatever crumbs of healthcare you want to throw in our direction.
Instead you want us to pay twice as much for a private service, like the USA?
No you dunce, quite the opposite.
Those services which are in high demand and which are in overflow to private providers such as orthopaedics and ophthamology and cardiology would be fully resourced in the major centres and decrease the need for private providers.
The very specialist services for rarer conditions and specialities would be fully resourced in the large population centres where there is the most resource and demand and which can be maintained as centres of excellence for such services.
Actually, it’s long past time that NZers stopped trying to do everything on the cheap as doing so means that we don’t get the service that we need and it costs more in the long run as we keep trying to fix the sub-par service to do the job which also never works because we’re doing that on the cheap as well.
So lets’s have services like paediatric neurosurgery at every centre in NZ and damn the costs.
More diatribe and drivel from DTB.
Let’s just have one hospital in Auckland.
Impractical in the Auckland isthmus under the current setup and with the current bricks and mortar we have in place.
There is however, very significant gains to be made from not having 3 DHBs replicating their own bureaucracy and IT systems, returning to the RHA system would be worth investigating.
Heard of sarcasm?
Apologies, long day dealing with bureaucrats – my sarcasm meter has become faulty.
It’s you who are ignoring the costs.
People dying because they don’t get the treatment that they need soon enough in an emergency because they have to be freighted to Auckland first.
Having to wait for the necessary surgery and can’t do anything while they wait.
the added costs upon people as they now have to traverse the country to stay with people.
Added costs of having to find accommodation when they do.
The list goes on and on.
As I say, doing things on the cheap costs more.
If there’s work for them down here, why not base them here?
That goes for every damned speciality – the problem the Southern region faces isn’t that we’re demanding specialists to be paid full time to do one surgery a month as and when needed.
The problem is that over decades we’ve been fucked by a funding model that assumes three dhbs are within an hour or two’s drive of their neighbours’ base hospitals, or chopper range at a pinch. And this funding approach combined with sub-sustainable levels anyway has resulted in putting off capex to keep the lights on, and other false economies. Not just Dunedin hospital – Queenstown hospital has structural osh issues.
Also assuming specialist want to live provincal nz, their work place choices and demand for their skills are global
The place has lots of advantages that can be easy to overlook if you need a bucket in the operating theatre to catch drips from the leaking roof when it rains, or you can’t access patient records because they’re in the asbestos-contaminated area, or you have to knife-fight a funding manager to attend a conference because the DHB is the only DHB in the country with a core objective of meeting an unrealistic budget set in Wellington.
Dunedin and other such places are fine places to live. The lack of funding to provide decent services is the problem.
People get up and leave when the services that they want to provide aren’t funded enough so that they can provide them. It’s highly stressful knowing the job that needs to be done but unable to because because some fuckwit, usually in National, has come up with the slogan Do more with less and implements budget cuts that make it so that it’s doing much less with less.
This is what we’re seeing now. National has cut the budgets so much that the necessary levels of service are well below what’s needed.
Your 250 thousand population figure only covers Otago. Dunedin hospital is the primary facility for the whole lower South Island. So you can add in 100 thousand from Southland, some from South Canterbury (Waitaki patients go both ways) and in South Westland you go where ever they can get you quickest in the helicopter.
We’re really fortunate that the medical school is in Dunedin to make the hospital viable, if it wasn’t a lot of people would die getting to Christchurch. Distances are huge, From Queenstown or Invercargill to Dunedin is nearly 4 hours drive, so equivalent of Taupo to either Auckland or Wellington. Both are on the limit or helicopter transfer or recovery.
The Cadbury building sits at sea level. A hospital is vital infrastructure that’s meant to last many decades.
1m sea level rise by 2100 is essentially only taking thermal expansion into account.
The estimated several meters from Antarctica and Greenland that are going to accompany 2 degrees and 400ppm in the short to medium term have not been factored in to current projections.
So….as ideas go, that site for a hospital is bloody stupid.
St John’s water taxis ?
There is a bit of a buffer there – the baseline is MHWS +10 – so it’s more like 11 metres above sealevel under normal circumstances.
http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/1370/regional-land-elevation-maps-otago.pdf
A low pressure bomb and spring tide might test it, but in most cases it would remain dry – excluding permanent sea level rises from melted ice.
Yep, was thinking that it was actually higher than Bill said.
South Island?
South Island!
Is that like….a place..
hehe
“Shock and Thaw”
Alaskan Sea Ice Just Took a Steep, Unprecedented Dive
Scientific American – May 2, 2018
By Andrea Thompson
“New Zealand is banning future offshore oil and gas exploration”
Mission Accomplished
(Not quite)
As I read it; According to this above report, under Labour’s partial “ban”, new oil and gas reserves can be discovered, and then exploited up until 2070!
As well as this, the government’s so called and much vaunted “ban” on “issuing of new permits” is at best, merely a hiatus.
The hiatus on issuing new permits announced by this government, will not stop any new government reissuing new oil and gas exploration permits, (as Simon Bridges has promised to do). Only the banning the exploration for all new reserves and cancelling the existing permits could do that. Once done, the oil companies are unlikely to come back, even with a change of government.
“Looking for more liquor stores to loot”
Meanwhile away from the above government pantomime NZ Greenhouse emissions continue their inexorable rise, under this administration just as they have done under the last administration.
“Latest greenhouse gas figures show a rise in emissions”
Thursday, 12 April 2018, 10:58 am
Press Release: New Zealand Government
Orchestrated? What?
Isn’t everything deliberately planned and carried out ‘orchestrated’?
So Labour Party people planned to tackle a problem, get it sorted and that included at the end presenting it to the public. In what they hoped would be its final throes. It’s final 24 hours.
Soper said, “Make no mistake, Labour orchestrated the events of the past 24 hours.”
How disappointing that they orchestrated things. I can’t see why they didn’t leave it to reputable media folk like, say, David Farrar, Cameron Slater or Matthew Hooton since orchestrating is clearly their field. Or maybe they could’ve left it to those who caused the need for some orchestration.
Make no mistake, by presenting as he did Soper orchestrated further negativity to be aimed at Labour. What chance for that to be a 24 hour thing?
Whataboutism as practiced by the German Nazi ally of the Spanish fascists in the 1930s.
How can people on the Left be so stupid as to fall for this stuff again?
Spanish Fascists claimed that Guernica was a false flag attack
In a Fight Over Syria, Echoes of Spain’s Civil War and the Battle for Truth in Guernica
German newsreels and propaganda of the time gave huge coverage of the crimes of the British Empire, and it was all true. The crimes of British Imperialism are some of the bloodiest in human history, resulting in over 40,000,000 dead. As well as death by fire and sword, carried out in countless wars of invasion, occupation and suppression, millions more died by disease and neglect resulting from imperial policies of economic dislocation and appropriation, theft and slavery.
Exposed to this twisted one-sided propaganda, millions of German Socialists and Leftists became committed National Socialists.
Apologists for the Assad regime today, even on this site, just like the German Nazis, continually bring up the crimes of the US and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and even occasionally, Vietnam.
At the same time as they point to the crimes of American imperialism, these apologists for Syrian style fascism, consciously and deliberately ignore, or deny the crimes of the Assad regime.
Sometimes, when they can’t deny these crimes, they alternatively use the crimes committed by the US and its allies, as an excuse to justify the genocidal crimes of the Assad regime committed against the Syrian people.
Just as the Nazis continually and repeatedly brought up the crimes of British Imperialism in India and Africa to hide their own criminal imperial designs and crimes against humanity.
This is why Bill and Ed and other committed Assad apologists on this site refuse to answer the question;
Who did this?
And is it not evidence of genocide?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BSOJdSVtVE
Ladies and gentlemen, the next PM of NZ:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12043677
John Key clone much said there.
John Key era is gone now dreamer.
Shes not Sir John Key, shes what Jacinda Ardern aspires (pretends) to be.
Dunno about that, but she can’t be much worse than the last fmr blinglish staffer who got into parliament.
In opposition?
TO 14.1.1
She was a john Key clone didn’t you even know this?
I am surprised there.
No she is not John Key, nor Bill English but she has worked with both and has their support.
Having seen her in action on the campaign trail in Wellington and having watched her maiden statement on Wednesday, and her first speech on the Second Reading of the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill on Thursday, I actually suspect that she is going to put up the backs of a lot of her National Party fellow MPs.
I agree that she is a good speaker – but IMO it also comes with a level of self-assurance that verges on the arrogant; and a self-expectation that she is going to be the one to make a big difference. I suspect this attitude may well get up the noses of some of her colleagues who have been in the House for a lot longer than her – for example, some of the more experienced women, and people like J-L Ross, and also possibly Bridges himself. We shall see.
Maiden Speech (15 mins) https://www.parliament.nz/en/watch-parliament/ondemand?itemId=200020
Families Commission Act Repeal Bill speech (3 mins) – https://www.parliament.nz/en/watch-parliament/ondemand?itemId=200078
Nope, sadly the next PM of NZ is Winston.
Well thats a downer for the weekend
Nah – Winston will be too old by 2026. It might be Golriz – that’d please you eh munted?
Winston will be PM in a couple of months.
If things go to plan, Peters will be Acting Prime Minister in exactly six weeks’ time – for six weeks. Not a big deal really.
Acting Prime Minister, not PM himself. There is an important difference.
Muldoon spent a hell of a lot longer three sheets to the wind than Ardern will ever spend in maternity, but Talboys was never Prime Minster as such.
No he won’t be. He’ll be Acting PM.
Quite a difference.
Your logic is sound as far as it goes – certainly none of her colleagues have much to offer. And she hasn’t publicly blotted her copybook yet – though if she spent much time with Key the expectation must be that she will at the first opportunity.
IMO she is a very different kettle of fish to Key – more a younger Collins? I think she is going to get up the noses of her fellow (but more experienced) Nat Party colleagues in the House as mentioned in my comment above at 14.1,1,4. LOL
Both coherent and rhetorically competent – rings like a death knell for Bridges. Shame she’s applying her skills to a bad cause.
Exactly. I think that it is going to be interesting in the months ahead to see what happens within the National ranks. I suspect we are going to see some new internal groupings forming. Willis certainly had the support there on Weds for her maiden speech – Key, Joyce and many others.
On Thursday, support for Willlis was very evident from two of the other new Nats, Denise Lee and Erica Stanford, sitting immediately behind her.
Mind you IMO, Stanford is also a competent speaker and I suspect also very ambitious. Despite only coming into Parliament in Sept 2017, Stanford has already scored a position as Associate Spokesperson on the Environment in Bridges’ reshuffle in March 2018 under Scott Simpson who was appointed by Bill English last Nov as main Environment Spokesperson. (In March, Bridges also replaced Maggie Barry appointed by English as Conservation Spokesperson with Sarah Dowie in this position – another ambitious young woman …)
Stanford in the General Debate on Wednesday, 11 April. Enough said.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/watch-parliament/ondemand?itemId=199854
That a heread link pucky?
Nope.
Good one Jenny good one here, on a day when lots of Nat trolls are attacking us all eh?.
They are livid today and seem worried the crap about nationals failing “brighter future” is dimming much now.
I think your criticism is unfounded, Cleangreen. It could even be said that you are opportunistically taking a cheap shot.
Personally I think that the Nats have shot themselves in the foot on this one. And the “Nat trolls” you speak of, are in full retreat. Good one.
I also might add here;
That it not just the Left that has fallen for the Assad regime, and like you will use any excuse to shut down any criticism of the regime.
This is because, as well as being a darling of the Centre Left, Assad is also a darling of the Right and Far Right, and not because Assad falsely paints himself as an anti-imperialist and secular leader, (which is Assad’s attraction to the Left), It is not because of this fiction that the Right love Assad, but because they acknowledge and applaud the real nature of the Assad regime as repressive and sectarian and reactionary.
But don’t take my word for it;
Miream Salameh is a refugee from Syria. She gave this speech at a refugee rights rally in Melbourne on Saturday, 5 November, 2017
“No to detention and no to dictatorships”
So Farrar left defamatory comments on his sewersite until the media asked him about them and explained that he doesn’t pay much attention to his own website.
What a disingenuous fuckwit.
Well said McFlock,
Wonders never cease to amaze us.
Natz = fiction.
beware of bots.
Why? What’s wrong with us bots? Explain what you mean by bots, please.
You Tokoroa sandflys I have observed you enough to know your behaviors everyone seen the 2 who you hired to try and intimidat me in Putaruru yesterday.
I don’t believe in coincidences so everyone knows who my Whano is in this neck of the woods and I say that if anything happens to my Mokopunas on the roads they will know that it was uses who are to blame for anything bad happening to them this raru is one you started we me so leave my – – – – – Whano out of this Ana to kai. If I did not have this wonderful website and the backing of MY——— I would be locked up druged up in Jail on FALSE CHARGES ECO MAORI FEELS for the others that this has happened to. Ka kite ano
Good evening Newshub that volcanic eruption on Hawaii show us that man is nothing with out mother nature blessing I send my condolences to the natives who are displace by Ruaumoko in Hawaii .
Sugar is a poison to Te tangata te Pacific and should be taxed higher than other foods a lot of us have 10 15 cups of tea or coffee a day x 2 to 3 teas spoon of the stuff = 20 to 45 teaspoon of sugar a day one’s body can not cope with that our body are designed to use the unprocessed sugar that comes naturally in the food we eat not the man made sugar.
Prosessed food once again.
Boxing in not the only sport that can cause early dementia in people any contact sport that cause concussion can cause this problem and not only in Pacific people it’s all people who suffer from this we need head gear as a compulsory law in all contact sports. The old Maori tradition te manaw is highly Tapu you never hit a Mokopuna on the head for very good reasons Eco Maori says. It’s a good weekend of sports I see it Ka kite ano
Eco Maori will have to be extra dilagint in what he say to whom as the sandflys put a mean spin on everything I say it’s a phonomen that I will have to be careful what I write on this site to as I have not had a schools education but life has educated me and I read things and tell it like I see it with out knowing that the people I write about have had a very significant role in OUR history. Their are other reasons as well that I will have to be careful to. Eco Maori can see all te tangata that reads his post and it is quite a vast and diverse audience. Ka kite ano